By Jonathan Isaby
I returned to London late last night from a 48-hour trip to Oldham East and Saddleworth, where I saw at first hand the Conservative by-election campaign in action and stuffed more envelopes, delivered more leaflets and hit more doorsteps than I cared to count in support of our candidate, Kashif Ali.
Readers will be aware that before Christmas I was not uncritical of the party's perceived sense of urgency (or lack thereof) about fighting the by-election; but be in no doubt, Kashif's team, expertly headed by Darren Mott from CCHQ and Andy Stephenson MP, are in no way giving the other candidates an easy ride - they are fighting for every vote and they deserve the help and support of all Conservative members.
This week has seen a steady stream of senior members of the Government visiting the seat, including Andrew Lansley, Oliver Letwin, Andrew Mitchell and Patrick McLoughlin, along with dozens of other MPs, many bringing activists from their patch with them. There will be many more there today and over the coming days.
Many of those who have not been able to get to Oldham in person have been doing telephone canvassing from wherever they are.
At the general election - with a very small local party membership and without target seat status and all its associated benefits - Kashif was less than 2,500 votes behind the victorious Labour MP. He was the only one of the candidates from the three main parties to increase his share of the vote.
So I hope that with a week to go, all Conservatives reading this will be moved to volunteer to help him, preferably by paying a visit to the seat, or alternatively by volunteering to do telephone canvassing from the comfort of wherever you are. It is especially important that a large number of people are there on the ground to help get out the vote on polling day, next Thursday.
To volunteer, please email the campaign or call 07506 028382 or 07939 622561. Click here to download the map of where to find the campaign HQ.
Over the coming days I will be looking at some of the parties' campaign themes and reproducing some of the literature being distributed.
