Holiday break

We've taken a break to recharge our batteries and will be blogging again in September. We'll still be sending the occasional tweet so follow us at @LabSouthFront

NEC Consultation

As a constituency member of the National Executive Committee I want to ask Southern Front readers for their views about some proposed changes to membership rates and local party finances.

Membership rates

Many members have raised with me the need for the membership subscription system to be fairer.

Some suggestions for change include a lower joining rate, a local joining rate as an incentive to those who join on the doorstep, a lower rate for those on low wages and the unemployed, a system where those who earn more pay more, a lower joining rate for registered supporters, extending the parliamentary rate to all elected representatives, a more gradual increase for members who come off a reduced membership rate.

We also need to find a way to make the on-line joining process easier, with clearer information about rates and we need to find new ways to encourage payment by direct debit.
I would welcome your views on how you think membership rates could be reformed so that we are more inclusive party that attracts and retains members but at the same time maintains steady finances for the party.

Local Party finances

Currently, CLPs receive an amount of money based on the number of individuals who are paid up members within their CLP. Therefore, CLPs with large memberships therefore receive greater levels of membership subscriptions than those with a low membership. Membership subscriptions should reflect actual membership, not least because this serves as an incentive to recruitment. However, some CLPs struggle to recruit, despite their best efforts, due to demography and geography.

Too many CLPs have ended up in a situation where they cannot pay the European Levy or Election insurance and get more and more into debt each year. Many CLPs do not have the funds to buy Contact Creator. Other CLPs have not sent a delegate to conference for years as they cannot meet the cost.

Current proposals include a system where all membership subscriptions go into a national pot. Out of that pot the party nationally would cover the cost of the European Levy and Election Insurance.

With the remaining money in the pot, some would go to a democracy and diversity fund, to help the poorest CLPs with sending delegates to conferences and encouraging diversity at local level. Some would go into a fund to support local campaign activity, innovation, fund-raising and party renewal, which would allow CLPs to apply for money for organisers, community campaigning and other projects.

The remainder would be distributed to CLPs based on total national membership. However, each CLP would receive the same amount irrespective of how many members they have as this would be based on national rather than local membership numbers.

Further, every CLP would be given Contact Creator for free and all existing debt would be written off.

This is a difficult area for reform and I would welcome your views on these proposals ahead of the NEC meeting in September. It is important that we have a system that is fair, enables CLPs to get out of debt and encourages participation and activity. The question is how you think that can be best that can be achieved?

Please do let me have your views. I can be contacted at eleanorreeves@aol.com

Ellie Reeves is an elected constituency representative on the Labour Party National Executive Committee

Boundary Review: Hampshire

The South East’s largest county, with 1.3m voters, loses a seat. The seat that disappears is basically the newly created Meon Valley constituency in the south east of Hampshire: one less Tory to worry about.

The really interesting change is Portsmouth, which is proposed to change from Portsmouth North and South to Portsmouth East and West. Portsmouth West in particular looks very promising for Labour: with Cosham, Paulsgrove, Hilsea and Nelson. Most if not all of these areas have had Labour representation at some time. Portsmouth East is proposed to take in the rest of Portsmouth North and South and Purbrook ward from Havant (62% Tory). But given the calamities under the coalition, this seat could be winnable for Labour.

Southampton, Labour’s strongest presence in Hampshire, needs to change little. John Denham’s marginal seat of Southampton Itchen, with 74,500 electors, has no need to change boundaries, but will likely see its marginal status change to a safe seat next time. Southampton Itchen, the safer seat, with 71,000 electors, falls foul of the 5% tolerance and will have to take in a ward from a neighbouring area, e.g. Swaythling, which risks diluting Alan Whitehead’s majority, although Southampton Labour Party is strong, having picked up 4 council seats in 2011.

Basingstoke (75,740), where Labour slipped from 2nd to 3rd in 2010, looks set to keep its existing boundaries. It has been a Tory seat since 1922 and is unlikely to change at the next election, although it came close in both 1997 and 2001 – under its current boundaries it would have returned a Labour MP in those years. With Lib Dem council seats lost or vulnerable to Labour, the Libs are likely to be back where they belong in third place next time.

Aldershot (71,908), which had a Tory majority of nearly 6,000 in 2010, is set to take in Lib Dem Yateley North and Yateley East. This will reduce the Tories’ majority as the Libs came 2nd in Aldershot in 2010, but still it to remain above 4,000. While Labour have a good team in Aldershot which is capable of gaining council seats, they finished a distant 3rd in 2010 (10,000 votes behind the Lib Dems), and unless the Lib Dem vote spectacularly collapses, the electorate is effectively presented with a coalition one-party state.

This is as good as it gets for Labour in Hampshire. Eastleigh remains close to the optimal total for a seat and is unlikely to change size but may well change hands – to the Tories. The Lib Dems are strong in this town but with the Tories taking Romsey, Winchester, Guildford and Newbury, it’s only a matter of time before Eastleigh falls as well.

Fareham takes in part of Meon Valley: Whiteley and Wickham wards in Winchester City Council, both Lib Dem marginal wards. But that’s unlikely to dent the Tories’ thumping 17,000 majority. There is an outside chance Labour could snatch second place, giving electors a real choice.

Gosport, of Duck House fame, takes in the Titchfield ward of Fareham. I still can’t figure out how the duck the Tories gained a county council seat off Labour in 2009, there is a Labour presence as the county result was close, and the demographics of much of Gosport are working class voters whose inclination up until 2005 was to vote Labour. But Titchfield is true blue with a Tory receiving nearly 60% of the vote in 2010, and Fareham’s majority of 14,500 won’t be under threat, although again Labour could snatch second place.

Hampshire East is set to take in nearly 24,000 voters from Meon Valley, with the Tories polling 56% in both seats and Labour getting less than 10% in both. If the 2011 elections are anything to go by, with the Tories wiping out the Lib Dems in Alton, if anything they may increase their dominance. The less said, the better.

North East Hampshire is set to take in Alton from East Hampshire and the Alresfords from Winchester. The Tories got 60% of the vote last time (majority of nearly 20,000) and Labour polled less than 10%. It’s not likely to change significantly next time.

North West Hampshire also had the Tories on 60% with a majority of nearly 20,000. It looks like it will take in four very Tory wards from North East Hants (Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council) where the Tories regularly poll over 70% of the vote (85% in Upton Grey). This could well be one of the top ten safest Tory seats in the country.

Havant loses Purbrook but gains Hart Plain from Meon Valley. The Tories won’t lose any sleep. Similarly New Forest East and West swap wards with other Tory areas, but these changes are unlikely to change the overall picture of the Tories on over 50% and Labour on less than 10%. And Romsey is likely to remain Tory as well.

The dilemma for Labour in Hampshire is how best to concentrate resources to win the most council seats and take back parliamentary seats in the next General Election, with the only real opportunity for this happening being in Portsmouth. Expect similar initiatives from Region as for 2010 with constituency twinning meaning most of Hampshire being asked to pitch in for Portsmouth, and the Northernmost constituencies being “twinned” with the Reading seats.

Andy McCormick is Chair of Basingstoke CLP

How the South will be won

The battle lines are already being drawn for the next General Election. The reckless coalition government is doing all it can to stifle growth in the economy, whilst ludicrously maintaining that Britain is a “safe haven” because its bond rates are so low. It hasn’t occurred to George Osborne that the real reason for this is that he has choked off the recovery – a paltry 0.2% growth over the past 3 quarters.

The Tories at local level are in denial that their policies are strangling their communities. Savage cuts and a lack of building and investment means high rents, high wage demands, and overcrowding. The South is not an attractive location for businesses. People fear losing their jobs (or have lost them already), and face rising bills and falling income.

The recent economic news from both the US and the EU does not augur well for the UK economy, as George Osborne is relying on exports to them to bring growth. A double dip is more a probability and less a possibility with every passing day.

The recession has hit the young first. Their prospects are much worse than three years ago, with the trebling of tuition fees, abolition of the EMA, and youth unemployment over 20%. Job security and secure accommodation outside the parental home are becoming ever more distant dreams. And when they see no reward for hard work and playing by the rules, and no reward for engaging with the democratic process, they disengage. And when they feel they have nothing to lose, it gets dangerous.

It will take longer for the recession to hit the middle-aged and older people, but when it does, they will be severely affected. Middle-aged people losing their jobs are less employable, less adaptable, and less able to relocate to find new work. They risk repossession or bankruptcy if their income drops sufficiently low for a sufficiently long period of time. People on pensions can not hope to earn their way out of trouble if living costs rise and pension incomes fall.

The Tory vote is skewed towards people who haven’t felt the cuts bite yet, hence their vote has held up. The Lib Dem vote, on the other hand, was made up of sizeable numbers of younger voters and people who have been hit hard by the recession, hence their vote has collapsed.

The current situation, largely of the coalition’s making, gives us a number of messages that will resonate powerfully with the electorate, but to be sure of effecting change at the ballot box we have to make sure the message hits home. How do we do this in the South?

This is the $64,000 question. One which has answers you will all want to know about, including the Lib Dems and Tories who read this blog, so I’m not going into details on this public web site. But suffice to say it means more voter contact, with careful planning, and sufficient knowledge of the new campaign tools and techniques, and of your electorate.

The battle lines are not so much demographic or ideological: they are organisational. Any CLP whose activism has stayed above a critical level in the hard times of 2007, 2008 and 2009 can expect to win back seats, and win big. Because maintaining dialogue with the electorate is the key to it.

Labour’s recovery started in London and the North. This is hardly surprising – our resources are greatest in these areas, and this means a great deal of contact with the electorate. But in the South, we need to work smarter as well as harder. We need to train members up so their voter ID and analysis is as accurate as possible. We need to accurately assess the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of our local parties relative to our rivals.

Campaign techniques are changing more rapidly than at any time in history. What used to win elections in the mid-90s may not be enough now. But we had great results in places like Ipswich, and similar gains are possible with half the resources that they had.

While we did less well this year in the three Southern Regions than we did in the North, patterns emerge:

- a direct correlation between Labour strength in the South East and Lib Dem losses,
- the Tories picked up seats from minority parties and independents, offsetting their losses to Labour
- a direct correlation between Labour near misses in Tory battlefront seats and last minute Tory panics
- we won more seats in Eastern region where safe seats were left with skeleton crews while the main effort piled into the marginals. Any plans which involve concentrating on our safer seats should be buried.

Even where we have only a handful of activists, we should be getting our message out there. The real battle line is between these frontier areas, and the areas beyond them where we might never recover. We should focus our attention on places like Winchester, Aldershot, Basingstoke and Guildford where we have either started to take back seats or are just about to take them back, and, in so doing, be more confident about taking our parliamentary seats back in places like Reading, Portsmouth, and Swindon.

The coalition policies are so disastrous that we’re seeing a rapid return to the early 1980’s. There have been so many policy failures and U-turns in the last 12 months, they blur together so that the electorate will forget some of them and give the coalition an easy ride, unless we remind them and keep setting the record straight. And to have maximum impact in doing this, we need to get organised.

Andy McCormick is Chair of Basingstoke CLP

To continue this debate on the CFL Forum: planning for victory, winning by numbers, knowing your electorate…contact Andrew by email at cllr.andrew.mccormick@basingstoke.gov.uk

Boundary Review: Bedfordshire & Hertfordshire

These two counties are among the hardest to redraw under the new boundary rules. And the review will, unavoidably, be bad news for Labour, because every single one of the seats the party holds - or might aspire to hold - is too small and needs to be expanded into Conservative territory.

And just to make things even more difficult, the Boundary Commission is, for Bedfordshire, using council wards that no longer exist as their building blocks - in the case of North Bedfordshire the old ward boundaries of Bedford Unitary Authority, and in the case of South Bedfordshire the (now abolished) Beds County Council. That's problematic because it means whatever boundaries are drawn there are going to be loads of split wards (on existing ward boundaries), and because the county council wards are of vastly differing sizes.

Between them, Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire need to lose one seat. That seat will be Hitchin and Harpenden. But unlike any other paired set of counties, this pairing could see more than one cross-county seat. That's because of the number of large towns that lie close to and right along the boundary: Leighton Buzzard, Dunstable, Luton, Hitchin, Harpenden and Letchworth, for example. Because of these clusters of large blocs of electors that won't easily be split apart, it may well be that two cross-county seats are created.

The biggest problem for Labour is Luton: both the town's seats have significantly less than 70,000 voters apiece and both need to grow.

In the model above, Luton South loses the South West Bedfordshire County Council ward and is now entirely within the town's boundaries. That should make the seat safe enough. But the consequence is that Luton North becomes even smaller and, as was the case prior to 1997, has to stretch far beyond its boundaries.

There are two satellite towns to the north west of Luton: Houghton Regis and Dunstable. Dunstable is a large town of over 22,000 voters - far too large to be amalgamated wholly with Luton. It's also strongly Conservative. Houghton Regis, on the other hand, is more diverse: on the new Central Bedfordshire Unitary Authority it elects 4 Liberal Democrat councillors but with Labour competitive in all divisions (and the Conservatives not even contesting two of the wards, presumably tactically). In other words, including Houghton does not end Labour's prospects in Luton North. But the seat is still not large enough with Houghton included - it needs a bit more territory - which in the model above it gets from Barton ward (which becomes Toddington ward on new boundaries and is completely different from the Toddington ward that used to exist and which the boundary commission is basing its constituencies on, which is now called Heath & Reach ward...do you see the problem with using non-existant wards?). This is much more Conservative and this may have been enough to have made Luton North, on these boundaries, Tory in 2010.

The picture is the same for two of the three most winnable seats in the counties: both Bedford and Stevenage too small, expanded into Conservative-voting surrounds. But that's not so for Watford - only needing minor change; and Hemel Hempstead likewise (but Labour now trails a long way behind here and the boundaries can't get much more favourable). Likewise, Welwyn Hatfield will be a little better but Grant Shapps has turned this into a safe Conservative seat for the time being.

The one interesting seat on the model above is the biproduct of the abolition of Hitchin & Harpenden. Harpenden, a strongly Conservative town, has been put in with South West Bedfordshire (Leighton and Dunstable) but Hitchin at the northern tip of Hertfordshire used to be part of the Stevenage constituency Shirley Williams once represented. Hitchin is part of a larger connurbation that includes Letchworth, Baldock and - slightly further afield - Royston. There are Labour votes aplenty in each of these towns: Hitchin in particular, and the loss of much of rural East Hertfordshire from the constituency would probably have halved the Tory majority in 2010 - still leaving a Conservative seat, but a much more competitive one.

Rising tide of repossessions

Repossessions are beginning to hit the headlines again and in the south, Britain’s repossession hotspots read like a list of key marginals Labour has to win back. Research by Shelter shows that among the worst places for repossessions are Thurrock, Harlow, the Medway Towns, Swale, Milton Keynes, and further north, Corby and Northampton.

Those facing repossession are typically families on middle and low incomes. They are often younger families who stretched themselves to buy during the mid-2000s and do not have much of a cushion to absorb a loss in income or an increase in their mortgage rate. Whether you want to call them the squeezed middle, C1s and C2s, or ‘Squeezed Strugglers’, they are some of the people Labour needs to win back to regain the seats we need in the south. Many are facing great insecurity and seriously strained finances.

The repossession rates are just the tip of the iceberg. Up to 12% of mortgages are in ‘forbearance’ - that is, banks choosing not to repossess even though homeowners are behind in their payments. Below that are millions of homeowners with incomes at breaking-point – just about covering their mortgages on flat or shrinking wages with other costs going up.

One of the lasting experiences from the previous Tory government for many families was facing the risk of repossession, as a result of recession and soaring interest rates. Government action then was insufficient, and saw 75,000 people losing their homes in a year.

During the financial crisis Labour pulled out all the stops to keep repossession rates low (less than 40,000) through a raft of measures, including extensive and free financial and legal advice, new rules in the courts to make repossession the very last resort, pressure on the banks not to repossess and mortgage rescue schemes.

This government has cut back on even the cheapest ways to support people who find themselves in trouble by reducing the financial and legal advice available. On top of this, the level of support homeowners can claim to help with mortgage costs has been halved and Labour mortgage rescue scheme has been shrunk.

Labour is fighting hard for the right of social tenants to have security in their home (with some success). As the Tories step back from supporting struggling homeowners, we must show that we will fight for the security of those who worked to buy their own homes as well.

And as interest rates can only rise, many more in southern England will find that security sorely lacking.

Tony Clements edits Red Brick, a Labour housing blog and is a former policy adviser to John Healey MP when he was housing minister.

Boundary Review: Gloucestershire, Wiltshire and Bristol

Although Gloucestershire and Wiltshire will probably be paired in the boundary review - something that will probably see the loss of a Liberal Democrat seat in Thornbury & Yate (though the expanded Filton & Bradley Stoke seat may well flip back; the expanded North Wiltshire is probably going to be beyond them), there is not a huge amount of change required to most of the seats in this area.

In Bristol, just one ward needs to be transferred to Bristol East from Bristol North West for the whole city to retain its four seats in tact.

Elsewhere in Gloucestershire, Forest of Dean will need to be expanded slightly - and the least uncomfortable change would be to take a couple of wards from Gloucester, which in turn could take back the one ward it currently donates to Tewksbury. Cheltenham and Tewksbury do not otherwise need any change, while The Cotswolds will need one extra ward, presumably from Stroud. Kingswood needs slight expansion, but that should not alter its status as a Labour seat in all but the very weakest years (like 2010).

Likewise, in Wiltshire, Swindon North is the right size, while all the remaining seats: Devizes, Chippenham, Salisbury and what used to be Westbury are all broadly unscathed. But the one bit of bad news for Labour is in South Swindon, which is too small to survive in tact. It will need to take a ward from one of the surrounding seats - probably Devizes - which could double its geographic size and make the task of recently selected candidate and former MP, Anne Snelgrove, that much harder.


AMENDMENT: It has been pointed out to us that South Swindon on its current boundaries is within the BCE's quota for the new sized constituencies, which means it is incorrect to state that South Swindon is "too small to survive intact". It remains possible that South Swindon's boundaries might change as a consequence of changes required elsewhere in the Glos/Wilts review area. The BCE are due to publish their recommendations on 13 September

Community campaigning in North Norfolk

Since the general election last year a lot of questions have been asked about “how the East was lost” by the Labour party and how it can rebuild its image in Southern and Eastern rural areas. While the central party continues to mull over ways to address this, there is a wide-consensus that individual constituencies must formulate their own game plan ahead of the next batch of local elections and the next general election.

In my constituency of North Norfolk, the party is active on a scale that has not been seen since Labour returned to power in 1997. Trust in the Liberal Democrats has hit rock bottom and young people like me have joined the party wanting to provide an alternative to the parties in power locally and nationally. We fought a positive campaign in the District Council elections in May and we became the only party fielding 48 candidates in all seats. Although we still have not gained any positions, we managed to make an impact. Former Labour voters returned from voting Lib Dem, and those who had not voted in previous elections turned out for us. The overall figures showed a 15.72% swing to the Labour party compared to elections in 2007, and that 1 in 5 was now voting Labour.

What we realised when running this campaign was that in local elections the national politics only plays a small part in voting in rural areas. We had people thoroughly disgusted by the way Nick Clegg had cosied up to David Cameron, but would still vote Lib Dem because they had a tendency to pick the already recognisable people from the community to represent them. We realised that we needed to demonstrate how our candidates have the people’s interests at heart and that they will work for the residents if they are voted in. So in the same month we also worked to make sure our party was being represented on town and parish council level too. This meant that, although we had no elected representatives on district level, we had started building up a network of local councillors that can show Labour here is a progressive party that is setting a local agenda as well as a national agenda.

Throughout North Norfolk we now have these party representatives attending regular meetings, talking to the local community, and trying to gather cross-party support to improve the welfare of the people living in our towns and villages. These people have not contributed their time just to help the party move forward in the next set of local elections in 2013, but they are there because they feel they can make a difference and have the passion to do so.

Many constituencies in rural areas in this part of the country may question how they can make an impact on local politics without having district or county councillors on their side. We have discovered the importance of using enthusiastic party members at parish and town council level can be a great springboard for leading us on to greater things. While the boundary reviews prevents us from choosing a PPC for 2015 for the foreseeable future, and with the next set of local elections not until 2013, I feel this grassroots movement is a great way to demonstrate how Labour is back in business and ready to work.

Jono Read is vice-chairman of a Norfolk CLP but writes in a personal capacity.

Boundary Review: Sussex

Theoretically, at least, East and West Sussex don't need to be combined in this boundary review: West Sussex is entitled to 7.9 seats and East Sussex 7.7. But that 0.3 variance for East Sussex, though it sounds tiny, would mean that the electoral average for the county would be barely 73,000, meaning that all 8 seats would have to have literally almost identical electorates - and that would mean ward splitting - which the Commission is reluctant to do.

Even together, the electoral average for Sussex is less than 75,000, but that at least makes it possible to draw 16 seats without splitting any wards.

In West Sussex very little needs changing: Chichester and Horsham are slightly too big; Crawley and Littlehampton slightly too small; and South Downs and the other coastal seats broadly the right size. But Mid Sussex has become a very strangely shaped seat - essentially three growing commuter towns (East Grinstead, Haywards Heath and Burgess Hill) linked by an increasingly tenuous strip of farmland. By combining the two counties, this seat can be radically reshaped - and that has political consequences.

In the model above, Haywards Heath and Burgess Hill form a fairly compact new seat with Lewes town - and that will be un-winnable for the Lib Dems. Lewes also loses Newhaven to bring Brighton Kemptown up to size. Newhaven votes Lib Dem in Lewes but in a seat like Brighton this relatively deprived port could well offset the Conservative votes Peacehaven has brought to Kemptown as the seat has expanded along the coast away from Central Brighton.

Which leaves rural Lewes - far less Lib Dem inclined than the county town itself, combined with chunks of Wealden and Bexhill and Battle; again a very difficult seat for the Lib Dems to win, even with a trenchant campaigner like Norman Baker. Of the two main seats Lewes is divided between, this one is slightly easier simply because more of it has had experience of electing a Lib Dem MP, but plenty more has not and will not.

The one piece of good news for the Lib Dems is that Eastbourne does not need to be changed at all - nor can it be without splitting wards or radically redrawing the borough, which is unlikely to happen.

For Labour, the changes to Sussex will be broadly neutral: Crawley can only expand into Conservative surrounds, but it only need gain one small ward from Horsham and if Labour is in the lead nationally Crawley should be competitive. Hastings loses Rye - which again is not unhelpful to Labour. And as referred to earlier, Brighton Kemptown should be a little better. Brighton Pavilion is unaltered and will increasingly become a two way battle as the Conservatives and Lib Dems fade. But Hove needs to gain a ward - a small ward - and because the Unitary Authority's wards are large, the only easy way to bring it up to size without wreaking havoc elsewhere is to include Hurstpierpoint just to the north.

The problem for Labour is that the party is incredibly weak here: no candidate was even fielded at this year's council elections in this ward, and the last time the county council seat was fought in 2009 Labour polled just 5.7%. Clearly, this won't help win Hove back, though the ongoing demographic shift away from the Conservatives in Brighton probably will, eventually, offset this problem.

Winning back Swindon

I basked in the glory of my re-selection as the Labour candidate for South Swindon for about five minutes, and then reality kicked in. Whilst we had a better result in 2010 than many Southern constituencies, the Tory MP still has a majority of 3,500 for us to overcome. There are 8000+ Liberal Democrat voters for us to squeeze, but the results of the recent local elections showed that whilst Labour gained most from the collapse in their vote, the Tories also made gains.

That’s how it is in the South. The Tories are still making progress amongst voters and we cannot expect our vote to come back unless we work harder, smarter and more ruthlessly than ever before. The Liberal Democrat vote allowed the Tories to win my seat, but they’re not the main target for us at the next General Election. A vote to the Lib Dems in Swindon means we’ve lost the argument with natural Labour voters.

To win back voters we need to acknowledge what we did wrong in Government otherwise we’ll never be credible in their eyes. This includes immigration and libertarian issues which turned different groups off Labour, as well as social issues such as benefits and problem families. Many people who voted Tory or Lib Dem in 2005 and 2010 left us for those reasons. Europe is a big issue for many of them so I hope reports that Ed Miliband is rethinking our approach are correct. We must also acknowledge what we could have done better regarding the deficit. During our long leadership election the Tories wasted no time in sticking the deficit on us; the public don’t blame us for the recession but they do blame us for the deficit.

The Tories locally and nationally are vulnerable on trust, which will become more important as the Government goes on. As cuts bite deeply into frontline services and the economy continues to flat line, Labour nationally must continue to point out the madness of cutting public services so deeply and quickly and contrast the outcomes with the promises made before the election. This needs to be tied locally to Tory councils’ performance and their MPs’ reluctance to criticise them. In Swindon, Tory councillors have made disastrous decisions such as spending over £450k of council tax payers’ money on a Wi Fi scheme that’s fallen flat on its face; they’ve screwed up on section 106 money, owe a vast amount of money to developers and tried to build a school on a site with no safe access, yet their MPs have been silent. Each of these issues has shown the Tories up as secretive and untrustworthy; it’s up to us to expose this to the electorate.

It’s great that the party has brought back trainee organisers and we’re ecstatic to have one in Swindon. Unfortunately our experience is that other areas with a stronger Labour presence often claim our regional staff during election campaigns. Mysteriously everyone disappears to Scotland, London or the latest by-election. This is short-term thinking: to be a truly national party we need more MPs in the South, and we’ll only win again if the party nationally recognises that we need party organisers on the ground during our own election campaigns.

Keeping up contact numbers through traditional campaigning is still vital. We’re out every week knocking on doors and we run a regular phone bank, even during the dog days of the summer. But it’s not enough, and we need to expand into the community in a big way if we’re to earn people’s trust back again. For example, I’m tapping into some networks in Swindon and organising social meetings at friends’ and sympathisers’ houses. I want to know directly from them why local people did or didn’t vote Labour last year - we’ll see if they’re interested in telling me.

In Swindon we are now much better now at using social networking properly instead of just talking about it, which is what we mainly did in 2010. My blog http://www.annesnelgrove.org.uk/ is gaining readers and we’re working to increase the readership. In the last ten years the left trailed the right in using social media: opposition gives us the opportunity to reverse this.

Finally, we have to accept the same discipline about target seats we had in 1997. The South loses fewer parliamentary seats than other regions, but even this has the effect of turning previous Labour seats into ones with safe Tory majorities. We can’t afford to waste time on squabbles about who is on and who is off the target list; scarce resources and experienced campaigners must reach those constituencies with a decent chance of winning.

Anne Snelgrove is Labour's prospective parliamentary candidate for South Swindon and was the Labour MP for the seat 2005-2010