By Election news

Disappointing vote in the Trumpington by-election last night with just over 5%, which is a slip backwards. However our local election guru tells us that we've always performed badly at by-elections and it does not seem to effect our vote at core election time. I'll have to take his word for that.

It's interesting I feel disappointed, because from the beginning I said it isn't how many votes we get but how many people give us active support. That was the strategy and it worked. On a very limited campaign we had a dozen new people come out for us, people putting up posters who never had before and even people come leafletting in the target ward across town as a result of the campaign.

In terms of all the things I wanted out of the campaign we got every single one. But the vote, which I never cared about before the election, suddenly seems really, really important - understandably I suppose. I guess the fact that the Lib Dems targetted our vote and said in every leaflet not to vote for us (as I mentioned earlier) did have an effect and their vote went up in almost exactly the same proportion as ours went down.

In concrete terms all that matters is that we've brought new people into Green Party activity and the target ward but you'll have to allow me a little self indulengent pout at the fact we didn't 'score' as well as we had done in the past.