Each week a different PPC provides us with an insight into life as a candidate and gives us a flavour of their own campaign and interests. If you are a candidate and are keen to be featured, please email Jonathan Isaby.
This week’s diary is written by Ed Northover, who was selected in March 2009 for Leyton and Wanstead. He comes from Liverpool, read History at Merton College, Oxford and is now a corporate lawyer in the City. He is also a Waltham Forest councillor. It was only at the weekend that a Labour candidate was finally selected to defend the party's notional majority of 7,253 (see entry below for Sunday) since sitting MP Harry Cohen is retiring. Read more about Ed on his website.
Monday 22nd February
The week begins with the fallout from the “bully Brown” allegations. The co-founder of the Bullying Helpline has added fuel to the fire, whilst Baron Mandelson of Foy and Hartlepool has been wheeled out to extinguish the flames. The whole episode is very distasteful but, with such negative headlines, I think that the one thing that will be extinguished is the prospect of a 25th March poll.
It’s a busy evening after an equally busy day in the office dealing with my private equity clients. I start the evening by leading a delivery session in Forest ward in the Waltham Forest part of my seat. It’s cold and damp but there is a very pleasing turnout of activists at Leytonstone tube station. I know virtually every paving stone in this part of the constituency having stood (and lost) here in a Council by-election back in 2008 in which we greatly improved our share of the vote. In fact, given the number of by-elections I stood in around here before I finally got elected to the Council in March 2009, there aren’t many wobbly paving stones in this part of my constituency that I haven’t stood on!
Council work takes up the second half of the evening as I dash up to Walthamstow Town Hall for a Conservative Group Meeting. We have 15 councillors in Waltham Forest, an authority run by a Labour-Lib Dem coalition which has pretty much brought the borough to its knees. We have a lively debate about our budget proposals. We propose that, if in power, we would cut Council Tax by 2.3% by, amongst other things, reducing the Council’s monstrous communications budget, axing the propaganda rag known as “Waltham Forest News” and removing the much hated CCTV spy-cars that roam our streets like hyenas.
Tuesday 23rd February
I open my inbox to find an email from a lifelong Labour supporter in Leyton who has received one of my leaflets and wishes to help with my campaign. This is the tangible evidence of a desire for change which those obsessed with polls omit to see.
I then head up to Wanstead High Street with local councillor Sue Nolan to meet businesses who were recently affected by a power cut. The cut lasted for nearly 8 hours but the electricity provider refused to compensate them for a lost day’s business as it need only to do so where the outage lasts for 17 hours or more (and even then the compensation is a meagre £100!). The record profits of the electricity provider in question are in sharp contrast to the dwindling returns of small business trying to cope with a recession and the prolonged cold snap. Most of the traders sign my petition to Ofgem on the issue and we have a photo with the local paper.
Wednesday 24th February
A difficult day which I spend with my fiancée, Kitty. I will only be catching snippets of her between now and our wedding in Oxford this summer as she will be working in Hong Kong (where we met as young lawyers in 2005). Vast numbers of people I know have moved out to Hong Kong and Singapore in the last 12 months as the Far East flourishes - in contrast to a City of London in the doldrums. There are tough times ahead for “UK plc” and in government we must make this country the enterprise economy it can and should be.
There are many tears shed at Terminal 5 before I make my way back around the M25. A torrential rainstorm on the Hertfordshire stretch provides the journey home with near-Shakespearian symbolism.
Thursday 25th February Busy, busy, busy. Tonight Boris Johnson has kindly agreed to host a joint fundraising reception for me and Simon Marcus, our PPC in Barking. I have spent weeks planning it and spend most of today dashing around with my catering team and, of course, ensuring there is somewhere to keep the Mayoral bike.
The evening is a fantastic success. What a relief! We have a huge turnout and people are very generous with their donations and support. As ever, Boris is natural and charming and makes sure he speaks to everyone present. It reminded me of when he came up to Chingford during my final (and successful!) by-election last year, where he wandered into shops and schools completely unscripted and unphased. His easy manner and willingness to go off piste are increasingly rare gifts in modern politicians. Of course, as a scouser by birth, I cannot help but remind him of an occasion when he (or, more accurately, The Spectator) made a few off piste comments about Liverpudlian sentimentality…
Friday 26th February
I spend the morning at home putting together a new leaflet to send to the printer. As a corporate lawyer I have an eye for detail and so it takes me longer to write and proof it than I had anticipated. A hangover from last night’s sparkling reception doesn’t help my productivity either…
I spend time talking to the press about the sale of Harry Cohen’s controversial “second home” in Wanstead. Harry is standing down as MP after 27 years, having received enormous and justified criticism over his expenses claims. It seems his second home – which he refurbished at taxpayers’ expense (including the notorious bath) – is now on the market for considerably more than he (sorry, we) bought it for in November 2005. This is no great surprise given the net movement in property prices in Wanstead since 2005, but it does once again raise the question about MPs deriving a capital benefit from taxpayer-funded improvements. I’m sure those people in Leyton and Wanstead trying to get a mortgage or keep-up their repayments are not amused by his antics.
I spend the evening with friends, trying to salvage some element of my social life from the ashes of being a PPC.
Saturday 27th February We meet on Wanstead High Street to hold a stall and canvass local voters. The reception is very positive, notwithstanding the rain. I am very lucky to be supported by a strong group of activists and six excellent councillors in Wanstead and Snaresbrook. Having been appended to safe Labour Leyton in the boundary changes of 1997, many Conservative voters in Wanstead (once part of Winston Churchill’s seat of Wanstead and Woodford) don’t feel they get due attention on a parliamentary level. Hopefully that will change if more and more people follow the path of the man form Leyton on Tuesday’s and join our cause!
After a well-earned pub lunch, I head up to a consultation on the future of Wanstead Flats with Wanstead councillors, Michelle Dunn and Alex Wilson. After a spot of councillor admin for my ward, I then brave the North Circular for a dinner party in Muswell Hill. Listening to the “solutions” proposed by one of the guests - an earnest champagne-wielding girl of the socialist variety - to social problems in a part of London she had never visited, reminded me why I am a Conservative.
Sunday 28th February
On the day of Spring Forum, as David Cameron tells the Party it is its patriotic duty to win the election, the local Labour Party finally chooses its Parliamentary candidate. After months of infighting and speculation surrounding such Labour luminaries as Jack Dromey and Tristram Hunt, it seems the man I will be facing is John Cryer, former Labour MP for Hornchurch who lost his seat in 2005. The financial might of Unite no doubt secured his nomination. I am relieved that the phoney War is over but amazed at the arrogance of the regional Labour Party in choosing someone with no local credentials. Leyton and Wanstead was once a safe Labour seat; it is no more. Watch this space. Or better still, come and help.
> Last week's Diary was written by Simon Reevell, PPC for Dewsbury