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Spent a very pleasant lunchtime celebrating Margaret Eaton’s DBE with the Shipley Constituency Party. I made comment on Margaret’s honour here so won’t revisit except to say how impressed I was by her today. If you want to learn what class really is you could do no better than work with Margaret for a few days.
Two things struck me about the gathering.
Firstly, how old we’re getting. I’ve been active here for about 20 years and it’s the same faces – just all those years older. This shows the problem that all political parties are facing – indeed I had a conversation along these lines with some fellow guests. The parties – once a million or more strong – are now shadows of their former selves, only help together by our longevity and a trickle of new activists.
Secondly, how important places like Bradford are to the Party. And that – as I’ve said before – our strategy in such places might be slightly misplaced. These people want steak and chips not polenta – we need to put a little blood in the water. The voters of Bingley Rural – 60% of whom will vote Tory – are not the cartoon middle-class beloved of the BBC. They are people who go to the pub, smoke, drink more than the BMA says they should and holiday in Torremolinos. They hate Gordon – I know because they tell me they do – but without that red meat, without a real sense that the scrounger state will be capped, they might not bother.
Some of the stuff we hear is good – promises of business friendly tax cuts, sorting out the deficit, scrapping quangos and handing across a little more local control. But the stuff about countline bars, booze prices and sex education is rubbish – just more of the nanny state that we all hate. Bingley Rural voters know smoking’s bad for them, that they shouldn’t drink too much, too often and that chocolate bars can make you fat (as part of a calorie controlled diet) – what they don’t want is the government to ram that in their face all the bloody time.
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