May 2011 Election

[Ivo den Bieman]

Is that it?

That's the much anticipated "re-launch"?

A putting the failed "vote SNP and the sky will fall in" line from 2007 into the microwave to re-heat it, four years after its sell by date?

[archie guevara]

What Gray will say

From The Daily Record. Apparently Labour have been delivering in Scotland over the last 20 years. Delivering an increasing gap between rich and poor, delivering long term debt via PFI and so on. I'm sure you can all add your own examples.

[The Master]

I don't think even John Aaron* can save this particular (re)launch.

*Look him up

[capybara]

All the stuff seems to say that Labour are going to "go negative"...you mean they're not already?

I heard they are about to wheel out their election attack dog...Lord Foulkes.

[craigkillie]

I heard they are about to wheel out their election attack dog...Lord Foulkes.

He already accused the SNP of "fighting dirty" which would have passed for good satire if he hadn't been serious.

[Gordon EF]

I heard they are about to wheel out their election attack dog...Lord Foulkes.

[capybara]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-13182731

Well the Gray man has struck back. Cant see Salmond losing any sleep.

[nessies long lost ghost]

I would love to see the look on that useless c***s face if he loses his seat

[Enigma]

I would love to see the look on that useless c***s face if he loses his seat

A work in progress! I saw my parents, normally Lib Dem votes, and they are going to vote SNP to get Gray out!

Should add they will be voting, like me, in Gray's East Lothian constituency.

[T_S_A_R]

surely gray's best option would be to do a gideon osbourne and hide for the remainder of the campaign.

some other tory posh boy did it as well. the clown that had a nanny until he was 30 odd, his campaign involved doing absolutely nothing and wait for people to vote tory.

here it is

Jacob Rees-Mogg: Maybe he’s canvassing in the King of Spain’s private loo

He’s very posh and very rich. No wonder the Tories want to keep Jacob Rees-Mogg out of sight

Camilla Long There’s always one, every election. The barmy candidate: the shouty, bright, novelty vote, the loopy kazoo-tooter, the yogic flyer, the Kilroy-Silk or Screaming Lord Sutch.

This time, the token rosette-toting joker is Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Tory parliamentary candidate for Somerset North East and David Cameron’s worst nightmare. Educated at Eton and Oxford, the cane-stroking hedge fund manager is an immaculately besuited Lurch lookalike who has always refused to tone down his act, or as he puts it, “drop my aitches”.

He is well known for his unique way of electioneering: in 1997, he waged a memorable campaign in Central Fife, crawling the dank, staunchly Labour streets in a Bentley and distributing leaflets with the help of his nanny, Veronica Crook. “I do wish you wouldn’t keep going on about the nanny,” he said afterwards. “If I’d had a valet, you’d think it was perfectly normal.”

He lost Fife because “whatever I happened to be speaking about, the number of voters in my favour dropped as soon as I opened my mouth”, he says. He stands a much better chance in genteel Somerset, in a former Tory stronghold, now an ultra-marginal. Rees-Mogg, 40, needs only a few votes to swing it. Even he couldn’t goof it up.

Or could he? Weirdly, the man who once referred to people who hadn’t been to Oxbridge as “potted plants” and who shares the use of an “exclusive” loo at Claridge’s with the King of Spain, is on something of a tight leash this campaign, so tight, in fact, that he’s probably the only prospective MP in campaigning history whose main object seems to hide until polling day. He politely declines my request for an interview, so I decide to catch up with him on the trail instead. His campaign HQ is in Keynsham, just outside Bath, a typically poky drag of pound shops and pet stores.

Although Rees-Mogg has lived in Somerset all his life, I don’t expect he hangs round here much, a whole 100 miles from the Ritz, sitting on benches with girls like Paige, a giggly 18-year-old hairdresser kicking her Primark Uggs opposite his offices. I show her his picture: has she seen him? “No,” she says. Rees-Mogg is notoriously partial to top hats, so I stick one on the picture. Anything now? “No,” she says.

A man sitting nearby, who identifies himself as a “lorry driver waiting for sausages”, shouts: “He’s a prat! They’re all prats. It’s not a class thing; they’re in it for power.”

Has he seen Rees-Mogg at all? He looks at the picture. “Jason Rees-Mogg. He’s a Cameron clone, isn’t he. Why’s he got such a stupid hat on?”

Next stop is Rees-Mogg’s offices, where his campaign manager Margaret, a flinty rural matron, is masterminding — well, what? Nothing, apparently. She says she doesn’t have a schedule for him, or a mobile number, doesn’t know where he is, where he’ll be, or even when he might be back.

“He’s out in the local community now, door-knocking,” she says. Can she be a bit more specific perhaps? “No, I really couldn’t, sorry.” Behind her head I notice a massive chart with all the places he is visiting this week, so I make a note.

Before we leave Keynsham, we pop by the local bar (latest promotion: “Buff Hosts”, a girls’ cocktail party featuring nearly nude waiters) where the landlady tells us that Rees-Mogg sometimes comes in “for a latte or business meetings”. Has she seen him at all? Turns out she has: “Yesterday,” she says. “Outside. Lurking ... sorry, canvassing. A tall, willowy man and he had someone with him.” A valet? “Could have been.”

She can’t help otherwise, so we drive to some of the places on the secret list, including Radstock, a town whose high street seems to be a ring road, and Clandown, a ghostly council estate where a man in sweat-pants stands puffing on a cigarette by a car on bricks. He hasn’t met Rees-Mogg, no.

We call Margaret a few times, but she’s still masterminding her pen-top. We call Conservative Central Office to see if he can be coaxed: nope. We even try to contact his sister Annunziata, who, in a slightly creepy bit of his’n’hers political interfacing, is fighting Somerton and Frome, the seat next door. A former business writer, Annunziata was once memorably asked by David Cameron to plebify her name to Nancy Mogg.

At least she’s has been out and about: a pair of butchers in the market in Frome say they saw her “earlier on”, but “shouted her out of the market,” chuckles one, holding up a cut of meat. “This steak’s not blue, it’s red.”

Although I do find chasing the Rees-Moggs across the countryside momentarily amusing, I don’t think I’d like to employ someone capable of being this slippery. I don’t expect them to feel bound to give me an interview, but I am surprised that neither of them can apparently handle an encounter out on the campaign trail, apart from a few questions from, say, a work experience at Heart FM Bath.

A local newspaper reporter tells me she and her colleagues have had similar problems.

I certainly can’t see someone like Michael Ancram, also known as the 13th Marquess of Lothian, behaving like this in the nearby seat of Devizes. And anyway does anyone think the Rees-Moggs are going to be more answerable after they are elected?

Meanwhile, we trawl the villages, talking to passers-by, shopkeepers. I look in a church; the photographer asks me: “Did you check the crypt?” After 36 hours, I have begun to wonder if Rees-Mogg is canvassing at all. Is it all a massive conspiracy? Perhaps he’s just at home, settling down to eggs and soldiers? I head over to West Harptree, a pretty village where Rees-Mogg lives with his wife, the heiress Helena de Chair, two children — another’s expected in May — and nanny.

The place is quiet and manicured and the gates are open when we arrive so I gingerly walk up the drive and ring the doorbell. The door is answered by a housekeeper who tells me she doesn’t know where he is and or when he’ll be back. Obviously, she’s been speaking to Margaret, a suspicion that is confirmed when, barely reaching the bottom of the drive, my mobile phone rings.

It’s the editor’s office: they have had a complaint that I’ve been “trespassing on Jacob Rees-Mogg’s land, causing a disturbance and making a general nuisance of myself”, which is probably the most elaborate description of knocking on doors that I’ve ever encountered. How does Jacob do it himself? Stand at gates and throw leaflets? I decide to go back to Keynsham and confront Margaret.

“We’ve been trying to track down Jacob for the last 36 hours and you’re not helping,” I say, bursting in through the doors. “Well, Jacob’s out there, knocking on doors, talking to people, doing the campaigning,” she says.

Can you tell us where he is now? Call him on the mobile perhaps?

“No, I don’t think so.”

Why not?

“Because he wants to get on with his local campaigning.”

He’s avoiding us?

“He wants to get on with his local campaigning.”

Well, nobody’s seen him.

“You can go down a road and not find him,” Margaret says. Don’t I know it. She continues: “As a matter of fact I’ve just sent someone to find him . . .”

Oh, so you do know where he is. She nods. So if you won’t help me, I say, what about this chart? Is that where he is? I point, defiantly, to “Ubley”.

“Could be,” Margaret says. “Could you please leave now?”

Obviously, Rees-Mogg is not in Ubley, and he’s not at home either, and we stay outside his home for quite some time, and by “quite some time” I mean I don’t think I have ever stood outside a mini-stately at 6 o’clock in the morning without it being totally fun-related.

Eventually I begin to wonder if he might be somewhere else altogether — a bow-tie factory? The King of Spain’s loo? — so in a last-ditch attempt to find him we head over to Mells, where the family home is.

Jacob’s mother, Lady Rees-Mogg, a calm, sweet type, opens the door. She glances at a twig in my hair and gives me a look as if to say, “What’s all this silliness?”, but, of course, what she actually says, is: “Jacob’s not here.” Where is he? She sighs. “I don’t know, sorry. He could be anywhere. He has been at home, but as far as I know, he’s out campaigning.”

How’s it going? Do people like him? “Well, he’s got quite a weird reputation,” she says. “He’s outspoken and ... unusual. But he and Annunziata like sticking their heads above the parapet.” She sighs. “Can you imagine if they both got in?”

[Michael W]

Is there much chance of Gray losing his seat?

It would be hilarious if he lost his seat, and it would probably actually do the Labour party some good as they would be forced to find someone else to lead the party. Maybe they don't have any outstanding candidates for the job, but surely they have someone better than Gray?

[nessies long lost ghost]

Is there much chance of Gray losing his seat?

It would be hilarious if he lost his seat, and it would probably actually do the Labour party some good as they would be forced to find someone else to lead the party. Maybe they don't have any outstanding candidates for the job, but surely they have someone better than Gray?

This is 2 other senior members

[jester]

Frantically posting anything to get THAT picture off my screen.

[jester]

That didn't work, try again.

[jester]

She's STILL there. AAAAAAAAAARGH!

[Ad Lib]

Given the irony of Baillie as Shadow Health minister and Andy Kerr and Labour's general ineptitude with numbers, can we just say they've bust their briefs when they lose their seats?

[Reynard]

That's the beauty of using this system of election for the diddy parliament . If people really want rid of their sitting MSP they can gang up and get rid of them.

Oh. No they can't.

[xbl]

That's the beauty of using this system of election for the diddy parliament . If people really want rid of their sitting MSP they can gang up and get rid of them.

Oh. No they can't.

Why not? I was under the impression they could? Anyway, haud on to your seats everyone, because the Telegraph are running with:

Scottish Election 2011: ten days to save the Union, Labour leader Iain Gray says

[Colkitto]

Why not? I was under the impression they could? Anyway, haud on to your seats everyone, because the Telegraph are running with:

Scottish Election 2011: ten days to save the Union, Labour leader Iain Gray says

The Scottish Daily Mail has the headline of "INDEPENDENCE IMMINENT" Don't get me wrong I wish it was, but I think they may have jumped the gun a little on that one...

[Gowfer_Lichtie]

Anyone listening to Call Kaye on Radio Scotland? Iain Gray has been torn a proverbial by said Ms Adams. The man is hopeless, his only response when asked a question, regardless of the content, is to highlight the Labour Party's manifesto commitments and ignore the substance of the point being put to him.

Complete and utter shambles of a political party leader.

Might be on the I-Player at some point if anyone is interested. Alex Salmond is on tomorrow, hopefully Ms Adams will be as direct and forceful with him.