Cllr Ian Lewis is a councillor in Wirral and was Leader of the Conservative Group from 2017 to 2020. He is the Deputy Chairman of the Wallasey Conservative Association.
It has been fascinating to read on Conservative Home of the experiences of colleagues at the May 2023 council elections. Learning from the experiences of others, whether successful or not, and whether in our Party or not, is excellent early preparation for the next campaign.
So thank you Cllr. Gareth Lyon for advice on making better use of resources
Thank you Aaron Jacob in St Albans on learning the lessons of defeat
And thank you very much indeed Anthony Boutall for your analysis of campaigning techniques in Bedford and Croydon
Prior to May, in fact, back in October 2022, an analysis of the polls by Dr David Jeffery of Liverpool University made uncomfortable reading over the cornflakes: ‘Expert says Tories could see local election Wirral wipeout’
It would give Labour outright control of the one Merseyside Council where they didn’t have a majority. This would also be even worse than back in 1995 when my own ward, Wallasey, was last lost to Labour.
In May 2022, Cllr Lesley Rennie had held Wallasey Ward by 109 votes. Labour needed a swing of just 1.1 per cent to gain the ward in May 2023. And that was before the Party’s Autumn troubles…
The Wallasey constituency would be going into the campaign with six Conservative councillors (and 12 Labour) but, if Dr Jeffery was right, all six (including three in Wallasey Ward) would be gone come May 4th. And gone by some distance…
So, we had to augment the CCHQ and CCA advice and come up with a hard-hitting local strategy.
First, we assessed what Labour’s local approach would be. They lost their majority in Wirral on the back of their lacklustre support for the Borough’s Green Belt.
We judged (correctly) that they would not make the same mistake again and they would seek to neutralise this as a dividing line between the parties.
So, in response, we switched much of our focus away from ‘risk’ to the Green Belt to ‘risk’ from a majority Labour Council.
We tested this early on with our key supporters – the message hit home and our Campaign Appeal Fund brought in the most donations since 2010.
Over the course of the long campaign we referred to this risk with target voters.
Over the short campaign we went hard on the risk of a Labour takeover and that Wirral would be a one Party state and on the Liverpool road to ruin.
But knowing that this ‘risk’ was not enough to win over the ‘swing’ voters, we had to also project a positive message to the wider electorate and win over the ‘soft’ voter who simply wants a local ‘community champion’.
We were fortunate in both wards that we were defending to have candidates and councillors who had a track record of working on local issues, supplemented by a good media presence from social media, Toolkit newsletters and direct mail. Each ward had at least three strong, local issues and campaigns that we could point to.
Incidentally, one opportunity which is not used enough is our own local party websites. Why on earth do Associations buy a site from Bluetree only to rarely update it? An out-of-date website is worse than no website.
We made sure our local site was updated frequently and, crucially, referred to in all literature in order to drive traffic and collect data.
So we followed the CCHQ advice and repeated the messages in print and online until the voters were repeating them back to us.
And without giving too much away to our opponents in this article, I can say we also added to the evolving target audiences on VoteSource with several vital local variations.
Just before the start of the ‘Short Campaign’ we used the monies raised in our Campaign Appeal to write (and post) a letter to every single target voter in both wards.
During the ‘Short Campaign’ we made sure that we used almost every penny available from the increased maximum campaign expenses when having ‘all out’ elections to maintain this personal contact, including:
However, come the day of the count, and with seats falling like ninepins elsewhere, we psyched ourselves up to losing. Opponents came to our tables to gloat. Or so they’d thought.
In the event, and to their consternation, we held five of the six seats we were defending in Wallasey constituency.
Incredibly, we also increased our actual vote. Indeed, Cllr Lesley Rennie secured the most votes of any Conservative Candidate in the North West that day.
So, the final word goes to Wallasey Socialists who told their Facebook followers that:
“Had Labour won the other two seats in Wallasey Ward and the three in Moreton West (and Saughall Massie), we would now have a Labour controlled council.”
Quite.