A couple of weeks ago I blogged that Lib Dem canvassers on the doorstep  had been misleading voters in Horsell West about the size of the existing Conservative majority in Woking. It’s not that the size of the majority is particularly important because it’s the vote on May 6 that counts but my feeling was that people deserved to know how a majority of 6,612 was being misrepresented as 2,000-4,000 to manipulate the psychology of the election. Clever – yes, honest – no.

I did not name the culprit as reported to me because I don’t think it’s hugely fair or relevant – the Lib Dems can’t simply cite one “rogue” doorstepper as any canvassing operation is a carefully organised process. That didn’t stop the Horsell Lib Dem candidate and her sidekick from challenging me on this allegation and demanding proof. Fair enough – I’d have done the same, although I am at least aware of what my team are telling people on the doorstep.

What I’d like to know is that if the Lib Dems really are serious about stamping this misleading information out, if they are taking it so seriously, why is it repeated in their latest leaflet?

Unless of course it’s a typo and the word “thousand” has been missed out between “few” and “votes”. Come to think of it, that’s probably the explanation. It would be no great surprise to learn that their proofreading is as bad as their maths.

Any Conservative voters who really believe that a vote for Nick Clegg will get them a sort of Labour-lite – avoiding the upheaval of a change of government, keeping the half-decent things that Labour has done while not having to put up with the “old party” of Gordon Brown or even Gordon Brown himself – should read this post at ConservativeHome.

We are choosing a government and people need to look at what the Lib Dems will actually deliver if elected. They want to give all pension tax relief at the basic rate – so if you earn more that £37,400 your contributions above that limit will get relief of 20%, not 40%. They also want to tax capital gains at the same rate as income – a 2% increase on the basic rate and 22% on anything above £37,400. They want to scrap the Child Trust Fund, scale back the HomeBuy programme that helps people onto the property ladder, cancel the next tranche of Eurofighter aircraft and cancel Trident. Then there’s the local income tax, the stopping of people going to prison for fewer than six months (effectively ending the power of magistrates to send people to prison) and the threats to reform our voting system so that they will remain in coalition with either the Conservatives or Labour in perpetuity.

In addition, the Lib Dems will push for further European integration and there will certainly be no support for withdrawal from the EU, they will open our borders for unlimited immigration, are proposing an amnesty for illegal immigrants and will continue to be staunch supporters of handing continuing amounts of sovereignty over law and order, foreign policy and taxation to Brussels. Quite a price to pay for a fresh face on the telly.

All of this policy may not be Conservative or Labour and it may not come directly from the mouths of those associated with past ills, although let’s not forget Michael Brown and the fact that Lib Dems too were invovled in expenses and other scandals, but that doesn’t stop it being regressive and contrary to the national interest.

The equation that we face is shockingly simple. The Conservative manifesto sets out a positive future for Britain under David Cameron that builds on opportunity, self-empowerment for individuals and communities and a focus on a high-technology economy to pay off our crushing debts. If you don’t agree with the Conservatives and you’re not convinced that we can deliver, the only other option open to you at this stage is a Labour/Liberal coalition with Gordon Brown as PM. I can’t think of a worse place for Britain to be on May 7 – an outright majority for either of those parties would be better.

We must leave The  X-Factor to Simon Cowell and the pop music industry and keep our sense of proportion in politics. It is time for change and not chance, confidence and not compromise and a future that shows to the world Britain has a plan for recovery.

“The two old parties” – that is how Nick Clegg described both the Conservatives and Labour in his manifesto and the media has been quick to latch onto this descriptive. It’s the usual bare-faced Liberal trick – to claim the exact opposite of what you really stand for or really are on the basis that no-one would ever believe that a political party would hope to get away with such outrageous variances.

So let’s just remind ourselves for a second where the Liberal Democrats come from - a merger 22 years ago of the SDP, itself formed from the “old” Labour party and the Liberal Party, which dated back to the dawn of British parliamentary democracy. The Conservatives and Labour may both be single old parties – but if anyone can claim to be made up of “two old parties”, it is the Liberal Democrats!

I’ve just been out and come back from a Horsell Village Hall meeting and on my way I was told by a resident that they had been canvassed by the Liberal Democrats. Unfortunate enough at any time but particularly as this canvasser, who shall remain nameless, tried to tell the resident that the current Conservative parliamentary majority was “two or three thousand”. When challenged, they upped this to “three or four thousand”.

For those Lib Dems that don’t know and aren’t sure, perhaps you ought not to be misleading residents on the doorstep. It’s actually 6,612.

It’s little stunts like these that make me realise that while the Lib Dems like to profess ethical social views, their election tactics can be anything but.

There’s nothing better than a bit of politics when the sun’s shining, people are in and willing to talk and the parliamentary candidate is getting greeted on the street by people who recognise him from literature. But so it was this morning when we held an Action Day in Horsell for my campaign along with Jonathan Lord.

I’ve read an awful lot of baseless rubbish about him elsewhere and in some election literature, which I have addressed previously. While our opponents campaign on the importance of locality because they have little else to recommend their candidate, Jonathan is interested in meeting people to demonstrate the broad portfolio of personal and political skills that we believe would make him a strong and effective MP for Woking. It seems that people in Horsell High Street this morning understood this.

Far from quizzing him about where he lives – as Lib Dem activists have been asked to do if he calls – they are concentrating on the big picture. That is that we need someone to stand up in parliament and argue Woking’s case to the highest democratic authority in the land and that person needs to be charismatic and credible. He was greeted warmly both on the doorstep and in the street this morning by people from all parts of the village who can see what he would offer Woking as our representative if they back him on May 6.

It’s a common theme of Lib Dem literature to erect barriers - a barrier between Jonathan and his party, a barrier between Jonathan and Woking or between anyone else and the people they want to represent. Well, those barriers are all very well as election tools but they don’t exist in reality. As Conservatives, we must not talk the language of barriers, problems and disconnects but of accessibility, solutions and relationships – and watching Jonathan’s reception in Horsell this morning demonstrated to me the value of that approach and why I believe that ultimately it will win through.

Winning where, exactly?

On the junction of Grange Road and Woodham Road, the Liberal Democrats have decided to put one of their large posters up. That’s okay, they are allowed to do that and it doesn’t bother me – while posters are good to keep up the morale of activists, I don’t believe a single vote changes hands because of them.

What’s more difficult to understand is the Lib Dem slogan “winning here” on the orange background. Winning where, exactly? Certainly not in Horsell East and Woodham, where I cannot recall a Lib Dem councillor ever having been elected. In fact, the Lib Dems haven’t won a single election in Horsell in four years and we’re obviously working hard to try and make it five.  Nor can the poster refer to Woking constituency, where they have never held the parliamentary seat and according to the excellent Times Election 2010 website, there’s only a 10% chance that they will this time. So they aren’t “winning there” either.

Don’t get me wrong, there are places where the Lib Dems have won. I wouldn’t argue with the poster in Goldsworth Park, for example, nor in South Woking where they won last year. But putting up a sign on the Woodham Road saying that they are “winning there” is bogus and total nonsense. I prefer the one being used outside a house in Wheatsheaf Close that advertises Rosie Sharpley’s name – at least it’s honest and doesn’t give a totally false impression of the local politics.

During the past few weeks, I’ve encountered all sorts of nonsense about Jonathan Lord from Lib Dem campaigners and activists across the borough. It is quite normal that Lib Dem campaigns in areas where there is Conservative incumbency focus on current areas of discontent and supporting “Motherhood and Apple Pie” while at the same time furiously attacking the Conservative candidate. In the past, it has been very effective – less so now as voters see through it more.

I know that Jonathan is intent on running a positive campaign based on the direction that the Conservatives want to take Britain while emphasising his credentials as a communicator and man of action who will be a great representative for Woking. So it’s left to me to defend some of the negative rubbish that the Lib Dems are blogging and tweeting among themselves.

Myth #1 – Woking was Jonathan Lord’s third choice. This is a very strange use of the word “third”. Jonathan fought Oldham West and Royton in 1997 but hasn’t stood for Parliament since. Before Humfrey Malins announced his retirement and the Woking seat became available, he sought selection for two other seats unsucessfully. Compare this with Rosie Sharpley, whose been a councillor in Woking since 1988. If she is such a popular and passionate candidate, why was she not selected to stand in 1992, 1997 or 2001 and why did she stand in Horsham in 2005?

Myth #2 – Jonathan is a “career politician”. Jonathan is an experienced council politican who was deputy leader of Westminster City Council and in charge of multi-million pound budgets. He is a campaigner and a campaign manager with a proven track record of getting elected. He stood for parliament once before. In between elections and being a councillor, he held down a job like anyone else. Let’s compare again to Rosie – her political career started in 1988, she too has been deputy leader of a  council in Woking and stood for parliament once, while holding down a job in between her duties. The only different between Jonathan and Rosie is that his political career has been on a bigger scale than hers.

Myth #3 - Jonathan’s not around in Woking much. Jonathan is out in Woking all the time – from Horsell to Brookwood and from Maybury to Mayford, Jonathan has been knocking on doors, attending functions and meeting with community organisations to understand their successes and problems in equal measure. If he hasn’t knocked on Lib Dem doors, that’s probably because they were out. It’s not uncommon. And has anyone actually seen Rosie outside of her full-colour 42-picture literature? I saw her in Sainsbury’s the other day in the cheese aisle - it didn’t look impressed either.

Myth #4 – Jonathan’s Conservative colleagues don’t like him. In order to back this one up, the Lib Dems are quoting the same person over and over again. We’ve no idea who he is, whether he is who he says he is and even if he’s genuine, people don’t always agree in politics. You have to take decisions and that entails pleasing some people and not others. As a journo I heard many people say many things about Rosie Sharpley too. Most of them were positive – as I’ve said before, Rosie’s a good councillor. But not all of them were – that’s the nature of the political arena. It’s no big deal.

I’m sure that they’ll think of more myths in the coming weeks…part II to follow.

Tom Miller

I was taken aback to read such a personal attack of Woking’s Labour candidate Tom Miller by Spiderplant88 on her blog the other day. There really isn’t any need for such things and she followed up with another personal post about him soon afterwards. This is clearly what the Lib Dems mean when they insist that it is always they who are the victims of negative campaigning.

I’m not going to link directly to either because as a former journo I know a thing or two about the Defamation Act 1996. Just because things are in the public domain is not a defence to libel and the fact that they haven’t been actioned before with another author offers no protection either. And libel stretches all the way along the line – the author, the publisher, the domain owner and anyone who provides another pathway to the words complained of by linking.

I consider her remarks about Tom defamatory – whether or not they constitute libel is not for me to say. Understandably, Tom is not particularly happy about her comments and that is reflected in his response. I enjoy reading Spiderplant’s blog 99% of the time but for someone who in her About section decries personal attacks, she doesn’t seem averse to dishing them out.

I’ve never met Tom but I have it on good authority that he is an affable guy who’s easy to get on with. From his website, he seems to have a young, energetic and driven approach to his Old Labour politics, which I might not agree with but for which there is no better advocate locally. I don’t think he’ll ever be MP for Woking but my call is that he is politically astute, intelligent and ambitious enough to be an MP for somewhere in 2014. Whatever service he may or may not have given to the Labour Party, he doesn’t deserve the scattergun smear that he’s been dealt.

I couldn’t ever advocate that anyone in Woking voted Labour. Leaving aside the listless leadership and economic mismanagement of Gordon Brown, voting Labour in Surrey doesn’t exempt you from the terrible central government funding deal that the party has foisted on the county. But if you do admire Gordon, if you think he’s a misunderstood genius who’s going to pay off our debt, cut our taxes and transform public services while re-discovering his human touch on May 7, 2010 then from what I can see Tom Miller is as good a Labour candidate to represent that view as you could want.

There may still be two months to go before an election is called but already the Liberal Democrats are beginning to show that they are far more comfortable talking about personalities than policies. The latest attempt to smear our excellent parliamentary candidate Jonathan Lord comes from Spiderplant Land, where a load of hackneyed drivel masquerades as an informed piece of opinion.

The blogger in question has already got the number of times Jonathan has stood for parliament wrong, amusingly confused Jonathan’s current place of residence five miles away with somewhere 25 miles away and stated quite catagorically that he knew nothing about Woking, despite the fact that she has never met him. She then sought to blame our literature for the faulty information! The Lib Dems really need to learn the difference between blogging and blagging.

In addition, the “anonymous” comments that she quotes from ConservativeHome (and which have now been removed) originate from someone know to be a compulsive fibber, who is not a Guildford party member and doesn’t even appear to be on the electoral roll in Guildford or Waverley. Still, that’s about the standard of reasonsing that underpins most Lib Dem policies, so expect to see these fake “quotes” used again.

I have stated before how impressed I have been with Jonathan’s commitment to Woking since he was adopted as our candidate. Last week, he visited Woking Community Hospital to emphasise our commitment to the NHS, something I know he feels strongly about. This weekend, he is campaigning – by which I mean knocking on doors rather than tweeting friends like @RosieSharpley – in opposite ends of the borough because he wants to listen to concerns and articulate the Conservative message of change and recovery.

People who have seen Jonathan at events and visits will tell you that as well as being a great communicator he is usually the last to leave, wanting to spend time with the hosts who are usually busy during the event itself. Jonathan is a dynamic, intelligent and experienced man with a record of getting things done in the public and private sector. He has fantastic connections within the Conservative Party that will help Woking – should he be elected – get its voice heard at the highest level.

After 13 years of being punished by Labour for being in Surrey, Woking deserves that opportunity once again. Don’t be seduced by Lib Dem untruths and heresay – it may suit them locally but it is not in the best interests of the constituency or the country.

Update 16/2: For those that can stand it, Spiderplant Land has responded at some considerable length here.  It’s typical baseless Lib Demmery. But it gives me a good indication of what we can expect going forward. For the record, I have not smeared Rosie Sharpley above – I’ve talked about Jonathan, save for plugging Rosie’s Twitter account (I think Twitter is marvellous but a very limited campaigning tool).  She’s right though - it’s not worth responding to. So I’m going to get on with our Horsell In Touches instead.

Enough information to fill a blue bin

A couple of days ago I received among the more dubious of Lib Dem leaflets, which was masquerading as a National and Local issues survey. Actually, there was only one short and very general question on national issues and the rest of it was dedicated to stirring up local matters, which the Lib Dems usually achieve with some skill. None of the issues probed about was particularly surprising.

The one thing that did catch my eye though was question six, which asked people “Do you have all the information you need about the new food waste collections (starting January 2010)”? Apart from inviting the answer “no” and provoking a small degree of antipathy among voters, I’m left wondering what all this is about. In case the Lib Dems hadn’t noticed, a whole section of the Woking Borough Council website is dedicated to answering a myriad of questions on the service and it is also linked to on the homepage.

In addition, I had my caddies delivered today and there is included in the package an eight-page booklet that describes in more detail than you could ever need why the scheme is being introduced, how to use it, what can go in the bins and includes a tear-out calendar of collection dates. As a PR officer, I’m fairly certain that this covers most bases.

Anyone who still doesn’t have enough information on the scheme after that either has an unhealthy interest in the mechanics of waste collection or simply isn’t listening. To me, question six demonstrates that the Lib Dems suffer from one of these afflictions. Answers on a postcard.