Graeme Brown: Why didn't we the general election? Reflections on the campaign from the coalface of a Midlands marginal

Graeme Brown was the Conservative candidate in Dudley North from September 2009 until the General Election. He cut Labour’s majority from over 4,000 to 650.

With a Conservative Prime Minister in office, it is understandable that the result of a General Election held less than two months ago appears to have been forgotten by most of us. Yet, the Conservative Party didn’t win an overall majority. If we are to win one in future, (and I hope that is still our aim!) we need to understand why.

Tim has already written a comprehensive account of why he thinks we failed to get a majority, and I don’t wish to repeat his analysis. I do hope I can offer a slightly different perspective on it though – I was one of the Tory candidates who lost in a marginal seat  – I may have been an MP now if we’d won a majority in the Commons, so I guess I have a vested interest in understanding why we didn’t!

Every marginal seat is unique, and the reasons why one seat is won and another seat is lost will vary markedly. As a candidate who lost, I of course made mistakes, and will readily admit to them. However, there are some issues that stood out to me during the campaign ‘on the ground’ which I’m not sure individual candidates could have had much effect on – I set them out below.

The Economy
I was knocking up in one of my ‘good areas’ at about 6.30pm on election day – I met a man in his late 30s in his driveway and I asked, of course, if he’d vote for me. He said he still wasn’t sure – he was a disillusioned Labour voter who didn’t want to vote for Gordon Brown – but, that, he "wasn’t sure, with the economy as it was, that now was the time for a change”.

My heart sank at that point. We had just endured the worst recession in our history (with the West Midlands the worst affected region of the UK). Banks had collapsed under a regulatory regime established by the then current Prime Minister 13 years ago. Our budget deficit was massive and unsustainable, and entirely the fault of the government. (There are of course 20 other points all of us could make here about the Labour government’s economic incompetence). And yet at 6.30pm on election day, a relatively affluent middle class voter in Dudley was still weighing up if he’d be safer with Gordon Brown.

Graeme Brown: The FTSE at 5,000 is still a mark of Labour failure

Graeme Brown was Conservative candidate for Ashton-under-Lyne in 2005 and works for a 'Big Four' accountancy firm.

There was great excitement last week in the financial world as the FTSE 100 moved above 5,000 for the first time since the collapse of Lehman Brothers a year ago. The FTSE 100 has now increased by more than 40% since March, and many economists and analysts are pointing to rising stock markets across the world as evidence that we are moving out of recession earlier than many people had hoped.

While indeed it is good news for shareholders, employees and anyone with a private pension that the FTSE 100 is rising again, we are danger of ignoring the Labour Government’s terrible record over the FTSE 100, the cradle of much of the nation’s wealth.

The FTSE 100 was formed in January 1984, with a starting level of 1,000. Thirteen years later, when the Major government was defeated, the FTSE 100 had more than quadrupled, to well over 4,000.

The day Labour was elected in May 1997, the FTSE closed at 4,456. Last Friday, September 11th 2009, it closed at 5,011. So after more than 12 years in power, the UK’s main stock market index has risen just 12% under Labour - less than 1% a year.

Compare this to other countries. In the same period from May 1997 to September 2009, the Dow Jones has grown 35%. France’s CAC has grown 40%. The German DAX has grown 60%. Australia’s main index has grown a whopping 80%, a testament to the Howard government’s handling of the Aussie economy.

So why has the UK stock market performed so poorly when compared to our European neighbours and our Anglosphere cousins?

Graeme Brown: The greatest debates

Graeme Brown reviews the debates about slavery between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas.

During the past few weeks, Americans have had the chance to watch their two Presidential candidates take part in three 90 minute debates. The general consensus seems to be that the debates were a disappointment – that neither candidate quite lived up to the significance of the coming election, that neither candidate made a compelling case, that neither candidate seemed to understand the causes of, nor was able to offer solutions to, the major issue of the election – the crisis in global financial markets.

This year is a significant anniversary of the forerunners of the modern Presidential debate. 2008 is the 150th anniversary of the debates that took place in Illinois in 1858 between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas for one of the Illinois seats in the US Senate, a contest that was of course repeated two years later during the Presidential election of 1860. Just like today, in 1858, there was one issue dominating the election above all others. It was a moral issue rather than an economic one that dominated the debates between Lincoln and Douglas. And that issue was slavery.

Slavery had always divided North and South, from America’s birth. The Constitution protected slavery in states where it already existed. But as America acquired new territories that were destined for statehood, arguments about whether those new territories should allow slavery threatened to tear the nation apart. The Missouri Compromise of 1820, which set geographical limits on where slavery would be allowed, settled the question for a while. 30 years later, the issue was re-ignited due to territory (including California) captured during the Mexican wars, and the Compromise of 1850 again found a balance between the interests of north and south which both sides could live with. Four years later, Kansas and Nebraska sought statehood. The Kansas Nebraska Act gave the citizens of those new states the option to be slave-holding or free states, enraging many in the North, as it over-rode the geographical limits set out in the Missouri Compromise. In 1857, the Supreme Court pronounced its infamous opinion on the Dred Scott case. Dred Scott was a slave suing for his freedom. Mr Scott lost. The court ruled that because Mr Scott was black, he was not a citizen, and therefore had no right to be heard in a US Federal court. The Court further claimed that slaves were private property protected by the Constitution. Mr Scott was bought, and promptly freed, but the Supreme Court's judgement further inflamed opinion in the north. This was the atmosphere in which Lincoln, the candidate of the newly formed Republican Party prepared to fight the well-known supporter of slavery Stephen Douglas, a much more prominent national figure, and the incumbent Democratic Senator.

Graeme Brown: Literate prisoners teaching illiterate prisoners

Graeme Brown is the former PPC for Ashton-under-Lyne and a volunteer in Wandsworth Prison with The Shannon Trust.

There are now more than 82,000 people in prison in the UK, higher than ever before. I seem to have read the Headline, “Prison Population hits new high” on a monthly basis for the last year. Anne Owers, The Chief Inspector of Prisons has said that the prison system is oscillating between, “panic stations to just about containing crisis.” Our prisons are bursting at the seams, thousands of prisoners live in over-crowded jails and thousands of prisoners are being released early under the government’s Early Release Scheme. Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, is pressurising Magistrates to use non-custodial sentences in a bid to avert the crisis. 

So, what is the answer? Some, such as the current Lord Chief Justice, and his predecessor, would like to see sentences passed match the resources available, which suggests sentences passed down by judges and magistrates should be based as much on the number of prison places available as on the seriousness of the crime committed. This cannot be right. Criminals must be imprisoned based on the seriousness of their crime, not on whether there is sufficient space in our prisons. 

Graeme Brown: State schools should encourage their pupils to apply for independent schools

Graeme Brown, a primary school governor and former PPC for Ashton-under-Lyne, says independent schools need the co-operation of state ones if they are to help poorer children.

The Charity Commission announced last week that it would publish guidance for independent schools that would require them to show that they offered a public benefit if they wanted to retain their charitable status. In particular, independent schools must prove that they are not 'exclusive clubs' but are 'outward-looking and inclusive'. Dan Hannan and Melanie Phillips among others have already written, far more eloquently than I can, about whether the Charity Commission should be publishing such guidance. I would like to offer some thoughts, from my own experience, of how the state can help the independent sector help children from poorer backgrounds.

I am a governor of a primary school in South London. It's in the middle of a relatively deprived area. Many of the children who attend the school have English as a second language, many are recent immigrants, and more than 50% qualify for free-school meals. The choice of state secondary schools open to the kids and their parents is not inspiring. About a year ago, I approached a well-known independent secondary school in South London, to make tentative enquiries about encouraging the kids at my Primary to apply to the school and about the scholarships available. The independent school could not have been more helpful. It invited me to bring a teacher from my Primary to look around the school and discuss how we could work together to enable kids from my Primary to apply. Optimistic with the enthusiasm of the independent school, I asked the Head of my Primary to give some dates when a teacher and I could visit the independent school. Despite repeated reminders, I never got a commitment on a date, and no-one from my Primary has visited the independent school with me.

Graeme Brown: MPs should lead, as well as listen

Graeme Brown was the Conservative Candidate for Ashton-under-Lyne in last year's General Election.

As someone who was born and grew up in Burnley, I always keep a look out for Kitty Ussher, the new Labour MP for the town, and was eager to read her article in the New Statesman last week. Kitty begins her article by describing her visit to a Muslim friend in Burnley who asked her, "Why are you allowing our people to die?" Her friend was referring to the conflict in Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah.  Kitty then discusses how she responded to her friend's question, and she expresses her views on the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel.

She organised a public meeting in Burnley to allow her constituents to discuss the situation in the Middle East. In the conclusion to her article, Kitty repeats a question which was put to her at the public meeting, "Why is it that Muslim blood is seen as cheaper than Christian or Jewish blood?"

It is of course part of an MP's job to listen to and represent to the government and the media the views of their constituents. It is also an MP's job to explain the views of their government, especially when they are a member of the governing party, to their constituents. Her article, and one assumes therefore, her discussions with her constituents, takes an extraordinarily narrow view, both of the Prime Minister's foreign policy, of who died during the conflict in Lebanon and Israel, and what is at stake in the Middle East.