How not to conduct a political campaign

The Labour candidate for Stroud is in hot water this morning, after posting a video on X, formerly Twitter, in which a woman called Milly described herself as having been a 'centrist Conservative all my life' but said she was now voting for Labour and for him.

There is one slight problem. The Guido Fawkes website swiftly pointed out that "Milly" is in fact Labour councillor Milly Hill, who represents the Cam East ward on Stroud District council.

You can find Guido's article at

Labour's "Hero Conservative" is Labour Councillor – Guido Fawkes (order-order.com)

and more details on the Daily Mail site at  'Lifelong Tory voter' now backing Starmer exposed as Labour councillor (msn.com)

When challenged about this, Councillor Hill admitted she last voted Conservative when David Cameron was leader - so at least three elections ago - and voted for Jeremy Corbyn in 2019.

Sadly, there are people in all parties who play this kind of trick but this is a particularly egregious case - it isn't just less than honest, it's a downright insult to the intelligence of the electorate. And very silly - what were the chances that nobody in Cam East would notice?

Unless he was disgracefully ignorant about the members of his own constituency Labour party, the Labour candidate cannot have been unaware that the woman he was presenting as a "lifelong Conservative" is in fact a Labour councillor in the area.

This is exactly the sort of thing which brings politics into disrepute, and raises questions about whether the Labour parliamentary candidate and Labour councillor concerned have either the integrity or the political judgement required to be a good public servants in those roles.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nick Herbert on his visit to flood hit areas of Cumbria

Please note that the post below was published more than ten year ago on 21st November 2009 Nick Herbert MP, shadow cabinet member for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, was in Cumbria this morning to see the areas affected by the flooding. He writes on Conservative Home about his visit. Here is an extract. I’ve been in Cumbria today to see the areas affected by the floods. I arrived early in Keswick where I met officials from the Environment Agency. Although the river levels had fallen considerably and homes were no longer flooded, the damage to homes had been done. And the water which had got into houses wasn’t just from the river – it was foul water which had risen from the drains. I talked to fire crews who were pumping flood water back into the river, and discovered that they were from Tyne & Wear and Lancashire. They had been called in at an hours’ notice and had been working on the scene ever since, staying at a local hotel. You cannot fail to be impressed by the...
Read more

Quotes of the day 19th August 2020

Image
"Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise."  ( Cato the Elder , who lived 234 BC - 149 BC, quoted in "Lives" by Plutarch.) There is a similar saying by Germany's Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck: Benjamin Franklin is supposed to have put the same saying in a more humorous form: "Wise men profit by the mistakes of others, while fools will not learn even from their own blunders." See also this thread on the "Quote Investigator" website . Let us all be wise and learn from the events of the last few days.
Read more

Quote of the day 24th July 2020

I was moved to put the passage below forward as a quote today when I saw a horrible post on twitter from someone writing that it was "excellent" that someone who took a different view from her about Brexit had died. I won't write which way round it was so that all the Remain supporters can assume the post was from a Brexit fanatic welcoming the death of a remainer and all the Leavers can assume it was a Remainiac welcoming one less Brexiteer. There's been plenty of nasty stuff on both sides but if you catch anyone of your own viewpoint  posting something like that who might listen to you, please do call them out on it - and point out that they're giving everyone on your side of the argument a bad name. Anyway, here's the quote from John Donne.
Read more