I can’t think of a great deal more to say, except that it is worth noting that the Conservatives are celebrating wildly losing 2,000 of the votes they had at the General Election. It was great to see the New Labour betrayers getting almost totally deserted by their followers, and instructive that the LIBDems also lost a third of their vote.
The real lesson is that the total vote for the three “Main parties” fell from 42,000 votes at the general election to 23,000 now, with each of them shedding votes. That is a profound statistic. The political landscape is indeed shifting sharply, even if my own efforts to affect it were rubbish. Tory braying is futile and shallow.
In this “great victory”, 18% of the electorate voted for them. I know form doostep experience that many of those who stayed at home were not merely apathetic, but actively hostile.
@JB
“Iain Dale – so you ‘retweeted’ it did you? get out the gutter you childish fool. All that wall-to-wall coverage and you still lost shit-loads of votes. A total blackout for Craig and he gained 1000 votes. Don’t you get it yet?”
In a nutshell!
By-elections are tough for independents as the big parties can bring paid workers and volunteers from all over the country (i talked to some at the count). The parties had also been campaigning for about 18 months already in anticipation of a possible general election – compared to 2 weeks for the independents.
I didn’t like the first leaflet with the picture of the ambassador’s residence and chauffeur driven car you’d given up as it gave the completely false impression that you were from a pampered background and wouldnt understand ordinary peoples’ concerns. In fact you grew up in a council house and throughout your life have had to put in the maximum effort, endure hardship and help others too.
The word “distinguished” was one i wasnt sure about for the same reasons.
However your 2nd leaflet was great and if the BBC had allowed you into debates your honesty, intelligence, immense knowledge and respect for other people would have shone through as it did at the hustings which werent televised, in which you were clearly the best candidate.
In that context beating the BNP vote after spending about 2 or 3% of the time they spent campaigning and getting themselves known in the constituency is pretty good going.
@Rhisiart Gwylim
Very thoughtful contribution.
Should be framed as a critical analysis for future action, even if that action is limited to contesting a general election seat.
Craig am byth!
@Craig
Good to see the site back up again. I was getting a completely blank page (in Firefox). Most unusual and very disturbing. Does it reflect the unreliability of the RU server you have been forced to use to get yourself heard?
Purposeful lack of coverage of your campaign by the BBC certainly makes a case for having access to an extra-UK server, but brings its own problems with it.
Your stand in NN has been inspirational, and, even if your total vote was down on the previous one, don’t forget that constituencies have their own individual dynamics and justice (of which he is Minister) will eventually catch up with Jack Straw. What a creep.
Rhisiart Gwilym is absolutely right.
The only way to achieve a say in government is through a non-violent revolution. The whole political process is manipulated by the Establishment/unelected permanent government, who are desperate for us to believe we have true democracy.
Chloe Smith has been processed to bring young people back into the political system. The young people are going to be the hardest hit when the economy hits rock bottom. For our rulers it’s vital to engage more voters; people who feel they’re not part of the political process are dangerous.
Our economy has been vulnerable for many years and I believe was on the verge of collapse around 1992. After that date I believe illegal activities on a vast scale were implemented to hold it up. I don’t just mean illegal wars or government involvement in terrorist acts.
Everything is controlled to hide illicit activities and to contain the citizens. The measures taken to prevent terrorism are for two reasons: to control us when the hard times come and to create hatred against Muslims so the greater part of this population won’t squeal when oil and gas in Muslim lands are grabbed.
The picture created is that Muslims are evil and don’t care who they blow up. In every terrorist incident there are so many questions left unanswered, which leads me to believe that it’s the intelligence services blowing people up to protect our economy.
Craig’s answer as to why Deloitte would pay Chloe Smith to run as a Conservative candidate I found simplistic. I think the answer runs much deeper.
Perhaps the first step to a non-violent revolution is to opt out of the political process: DON’T VOTE. Voting maintains the controlled and corrupt political system.
@Craig
Finally, and in conclusion, and not forgetting to thank the Parish Priest for the use of the hall, you should be proud of a blog that champions free speech, including the obstructive and diversionary tactics of the Trolls.
That’s for the long haul.
‘Scuse the consecutive posts, but your site was down!
@Ingo
Good to meet you and share the excitement of the campaign, even if we were so poorly rewarded. I agree with much of what you say. I think ‘pre-revolutionary’ stage might be overstating it, but there is definitely a new confidence happening – the student demos over Gaza, the worker occupations we’re seeing recently, a genuine public shift in the perceptions of Afghanistan as a ‘good war’, and establishment tut-tutting over the perils of free market capitalism!
One other point that I’d make is that I think we should have no quarrel with Chloe Smith personally. As I have mentioned before, I think she will work hard for the constituency, and she will geuinely wish to prioritise ‘local issues’. Our real problem is the party she has chosen to represent, which I think we should recognise is part of the establishment that seeks to preserve the status quo. The ‘cutting of public finances’ that is presently Conservative policy will *really* hurt the disenfranchised if the Tories come to power in the GE, and then voters will realise that when voting to kick out a government, you had best pay attention to who you are inviting in.
I mention Chloe’s “local” focus mainly because – and I mean no offence to her when I say this – local issues are the only things she will be allowed to have a say on. As far as I know across the whole of her campaign, she did not say anything about Afghanistan, decent legal control of the worldwide economy, casino banking, or meaningful environmental measures, since conservatives generally have retrograde positions on these issues. (Neither could she have deliberately contradicted Central Party thinking either, lest she get a public rebuke from Cameron et al. One can expect her to be extremely well briefed about what she is allowed to say).
Chloe will at some point come up against the contradictions of right-wing party politics – although she will want to help poor and underprivileged constituents in her surgery – i.e. the people who most need her help – she may privately recognise that the same people are being substantially and deliberately undermined by the policies of the party she is proudly a member of.
—
As an aside, although one genuinely suspects something fishy in Deloitte Touch loaning Smith to the Conservative Party Implementation Unit, I am at odds to decide whether Smith personally feels this is dubious. I am of the view that it is quite possible that when you have been fully accepted by the establishment, one becomes automatically inculcated with the prevailing mindset. Thus, it would take an outsider to point out to her that she is far too close to big business for a govt minister, and that it is possible that she genuinely can’t see why people think this ‘backroom deal’ looks a bit shady!
Sam Hunt – Craig has never said that everything he’s done in his personal life was right and has openly said he felt bad about a great deal of it.
His children don’t hold the grudges you seem to hold. I was leafleting along with Craig’s son Jamie and staying in the same house for over a week and it was obvious that father and son get on very well and care a great deal about each other.
Perhaps you should compare Craig’s past infidelities to starting an un-necessary war that has killed hundreds of thousands and caused the July 7th bombings which killed dozens more; or to members of government colluding with torturers and dictators who burn people with boiling water and pull out their finger nails. Then you might have some sense of perspective and see that, while none of us are perfect, Craig’s good points massively outwiegh his bad ones.
@Polo – the web server is in Holland, see the link below. My guess is that the server crashed due to load, as it has unfortunately done before. Hopefully they will sort it out!
@Jon
That’s encouraging. I share your hopes. We don’t want to fuel any paranoia here 🙂
What’s done is done. Concerning what to do next, here’s an idea for something completely different, but I suggest having a break before thinking about it:
Start a local newspaper in Norwich that focusses on commentary on international and national issues as well as local news. Its title could be inspired by a samizdat publication in the former Soviet Union, “The Chronicle of Current Events”, perhaps by having “Chronicle” in the title somewhere. Its favourite causes could include protecting the Eastern seaboard and increasing the number of independent MPs in Parliament.
@Craig/campaign team, incidentally I dare say a good number of us would be interested to find out more about –
* how a joint independents complaint to the BBC goes
* whether there is any response from UCU on cutting out Craig from their event
* any follow up on the allegation that local Labour activists were removing posters of other candidates. The LibDems would be likely to assist on this one, I think 🙂
Jon
And also why the count was left till the morning
Apart from Imran from Bradford and discounting Mr Dale who is paid, I agree with all of the heartfelt praise for Craig and his campaign expressed above. Well done , Craig.
As for Tory Braying, if there is going to be a landslide victory for the tories at the general election, are we going to have the fun of seeing the Bradford Imrans crawling like hungry bed-bugs into bed with the new masters like the vicar of Bray? They are a stain on Islam and the pious name of Imran.
I am sorry that the voters of Norwich North let you down. You were not rubbish.
There once were some vicars of Norwich
Who spoke from their pulpit on courage
But under their troos
They wore True Tory blues
And their hearts were the colour of borage.
Didn’t Craig get only a few more votes than the BNP candidate?
Jon,
Have you ever considered that the government may be inextricably linked to big business?
Is it not possible that taxpayers’ money has been/is used to underpin big business so that the government becomes a secret shareholder?
Bollox. It ain’t the winning it’s the…err… who gives a toss? You tried, you failed, you can try again. All the best to the family Craig.
Norwich eh? Lot of swimming medals round them there parts!!
Re Jon (3:46 PM)
Yes, would love to hear follow-up on the matters mentioned — and Ruth’s.
Is there any reason for suspicion that the result was fraudulent? What was the impression of the workers who spoke to voters in Norwich? Such fraud would need, for example, over 95% of ballots of people who voted for Craig being destroyed or spoiled. It would have be done overnight where the ballot papers were stored, and would explain why the counting not being done immediately.
I’m sorry to rant on about this, but I think it is important that people should understand an important reason why the vote was so much, much lower than it could have been. Quite simply, most of the voters never actually got the chance to find out what Craig Murray stood for.
The first leaflet was the only one that arrived in time for most people to read it. It showed an Ambassador’s car, which was supposed to demonstrate what Craig gave up. What it mainly conveyed to most readers was an impression of wealth and self-importance. The first leaflet said a lot about Craig’s personal achievements, but very little about what Craig was actually offering to do for the voter. It contained no policies. It said almost nothing about the sleaze issue. It did not explain what Craig was standing for, or why anyone should really want to vote for him.
The later leaflets and the DVD were better, but arrived amongst a blizzard of literature from all the other parties over the last few days of the campaign. So they will largely have gone unread.
Coming from a bigger-party background (Lib Dem), it was frustrating for me to see the campaign making mistakes that all the established parties have long ago learned not to make. I’ll pick on just one simple example to illustrate this: the “poster leaflet”. Craig’s number 2 leaflet contained a full-size A3 poster on its inside pages, which the voter was asked to display. That was a big mistake. So how do I know that?
Well, because the big parties never do it, because they have tried it before, and because they know it doesn’t work.
Posters, these days, are a bit of an embarassment. Fewer and fewer people put them up. In every election, the display looks less and less impressive. Each party would really like to give them up – but they can’t, because then they’d look out-gunned by the others.
Tories, for example, will have been able to console themselves with the thought that, OK, there weren’t all that many Chloe posters around, but, perhaps that just meant that the Tories weren’t much bothered with postering. Perhaps there were plenty of people around who would not put up posters, but would just quietly go and vote Tory.
Things look very different, however, if you and your neighbours all receive a big poster of Craig Murray, and are asked to display it. You look at your neighbours’ windows, and you can see that none of them have a Murray poster in them. So you immediately learn (or at least, you think you learn) that this guy Murray is on a loser! So the “poster leaflet” is actually quite counter-productive. All the big parties have worked this out by now, which is why they don’t do it.
It’s a real shame to see such effort, idealism, and hard work achieve so much less than it could have done. I don’t agree with comments such as those of John Hemming MP, to the effect that this campaign was doomed to fail. It could have done much better. It did not fail for lack of effort, and it certainly did not fail because of its outstandingly able candidate. It just should have been done smarter.
Dear Craig
You had a learning experience.
You try and did your best, I wouldn’t be too hard on yourself on this.
Politics is like law, it is about who tells the best story.
There is always another day to fight.
Yours sincerely
George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University
Craig, you did the best job possible with the bias in the way of independants. I think the DVD was an inspired move, and had the post office cleared it, and delivered it sooner, you would have gained alot more votes. Take a well earned rest, and recharge the batteries. Your army of supporters is growing. One day soon, we shall scale them damn fortress walls.
better luck next time.. u will win hope for the best.
Craig
Forgive me if I am asking something on which your position is already public but,
what is your position on independence for Scotland?
better luck next time.. u will win hope for the best.
Just woke up after sleeping most of last 36 hours. Gather blog was mostly down.
I favour independence for Scotland.
Quite frankly somewhat of a deception. Did not expect a miracle but at the end of, and as much as I hat to write that, the the beeb was right: you were not a “serious” candidate
alexT – Your comment is hard to take seriously as it, like the BBC’s argument, is based on circular reasoning – i.e that candidates with a lower vote in past elections should get no media coverage, ignoring the fact that the vote for each candidate depends to a great extent on the amount of media coverage they get.
The BBC is a publicly funded organisation which is meant to be politically neutral yet it is openly favouring the largest established parties, even after the expenses scandal, the Iraq war and PFIs, which have discredited them.
The BBC decided Craig was “not a significant candidate” on the basis that he had never had any share of the vote in previous elections in Norwich North, which was a somewhat ridiculous way to judge it since he’d never been a candidate in the constituency in any previous election.
Then they excluded him from the televised BBC Look East debate, ensuring most voters would never see his performance in debates. At the hustings debates, which were sadly not televised and were poorly attended, Craig’s performances showed him head and shoulders above every other candidate – only Rupert Read came close.
Probably the first time I have ever voted for someone worth voting for.
Your campaign – and your continuing willingness to speak out as an honest and well-informed critic of the creeping police state – gave encouragement to people around the world (I’m in Australia).
I doubt the conformist yuppie who won can say the same.
Do British Tories really say ‘ha ha double ha!’ these days? Remarkable. I always learn something new when I visit this blog 🙂
This is why we need STV.