Isn't it funny, some of the people you meet at these conferences?
One delegate I met last night was very, very close to the Labour Party in Norwich during the 1990s and early 2000s when things were going so wrong for them against the Liberal Democrats. Apparently, he took the Labour leadership aside and warned them about the LibDem threat. He got the seats they'd win correct and the years they'd do it in. He detailed what the LibDem messages were going to be and how they'd do their campaign. He got all the LibDem gains correct, down to who the candidates would be and what the winning majority was. Not hingsight, he did all this years and years in advance. Labour's high command - which at the time had Cllr Ferris, Cllr Waters, Nick Williams and Barbara Simpson in it - chose to reject his advice.
I will tell you his advice some time in the future. But the real question is - why, when presented with the facts, did Labour choose to ignore their own political friends and did they sleepwalk into electoral disaster?
2 comments:
Thing is this person may be telling the truth up to a point but also exaggerating it somewhat, as one or two of the Lib Dem targets were not even known by the Lib Dems til v.close to the elections themselves, ditto the candidates.
Thanks for that Iain - good to hear from you!
Annon, I don't think that is the case. This is the years when Lakenham, Mancroft and St Stephens fell to the LibDems. Apparently both the council staff and some middle ranking Labour officials were well aware of the threat. Unlike, I have to say, the Tories or the top Labour team.
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