If Norwich North was anything to go by, CLPs will have to learn to wrest control of their campaigns back from Victoria Street

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By Cath Arakelian

As I dutifully delivered, leafleted, stickered and Voter ID’d for two days at the end of the Norwich North campaign, I was secretly in despair with much of the centrally produced rubbish that myself and the other activists had to put out. In the campaign itself we had the usual team of central party outsiders bossing local activists about while the literature was bereft of a single authentic word.

Let’s take a look at just one of the missives that Victoria Street hoped would make all the difference, a “Broadland Matters” double-sided mock-up of a newspaper, printed on crisp white paper. Let’s assume for a moment that an undecided voter paid the leaflet even a first glance:

“Helping people through the downturn will be Chris Ostrowski’s number one priority as the new MP for Broadland. That’s why Chris has wasted no time in persuading jobs minister Yvette Cooper to visit Norwich”.

How many clichés can you stick together in one sentence? (I make it at least 4).

Over the photo is the caption:

“Chris brought Yvette Coooper to Norwich to discuss action on jobs”.

Pull the other one! Yvette Cooper was not there because of Norwich’s problems, or Chris’s sterling efforts – she was there because she was told to be there for a photo opportunity, just as many, many other ministers had been. I’d have a fat chance of getting any ministers to visit me in Chingford, even if we had 75% unemployed!

Next, do you believe that:

“as a student Chris was a regular at Carrow Road and he can hardly wait for the season to start again next month so he can go and cheer City on again”.

I’d like some hard evidence: perhaps a ticket? Or can he name last season’s captain? I believe most supporters are gutted by Norwich’s relegatio, but, while Chris and local campaigners spoke about that, the centrally produced literature didn’t mention it.

But most damning, most meaningless and most condescending was a section on Chris and what he was going to do for pensioners. It seems to have been penned in a hurry by a party hack cobbling together a few random constituency statistics, including (curiously?) improvement in care for cancer patients. It also drops in Ian Gibson’s name for good measure.

Yet not one word could be construed as a promise or pledge to pensioners; no mention of the green paper on social care – or the devastation to pensioners’ savings in the aftermath of the economic crash.

Add all the deeply off-putting negative claptrap about the Conservative candidate being a “Westminster insider” (unlike Ed Balls when he was a candidate?) and the campaign literature felt, even as I delivered it, meaningless and out of touch.

Oh, and there’s a cartoon of two jockeys next to the inevitable bar chart. Oh I get it ! A two horse race! D’oh! Those bar charts are so routinely manipulated by all parties that even if this one is the real deal no-one would have take any notice. Perhaps because of such ploys, the race turned into a single-horse dash. So, a memo to all organisers at every level of every party: stop printing bar charts showing the so-called status of the parties. I have not met one person who believes they are honest. They always look and feel crooked.

The rest of the centrally produced stuff – acres of it – was similarly vapid and patronising. It had nothing to do with communicating with the electorate in any meaningful interactive way.

When a local party knows how to communicate with its supporters what is the sense in the central party taking over the “message” let alone the “medium”? Surely, at the very least, it’s imperative to involve the local party in writing something that speaks authentically to the people of their constituency. And in case you ask, I volunteered to go over to Norwich before the Central Party told us PPCs to go lend a hand.

I had a great time meeting a few local party activists received fantastic hospitality. I just hope the people of Norwich have better luck in keeping their campaign in their own hands at the General Election.

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