To fail to prepare is to prepare to fail

If ever a phrase were to be an appropriate epitath, that phrase perfectly sums up the Conservative election campaign for the General Election 2024.

I've wanted to write this article for a week or more, but held off because I wanted to give our MP, Damian Hinds, the best possible chance of returning to Parliament. In that, I'm pleased to report we were successful in that aim (albeit with a drastically reduced majority) and I congratulate Damian in his new role as Shadow Education Secretary.

As a Conservative activist for a number of years (and a political activitist for many more years), I can say without hesitation that in my lifetime of experience, for the centrally run campaign this General Election campaign has been the worst that I have ever seen or been a part of, by a country mile.

To use his own words, I respect that Rishi Sunak wasn't dealt a great hand of cards - that was not in his gift, but what most definitely was in his gift was how to play them.

So let's take the campaign of shame step by step (and beware dear reader, some steps are so extreme it may seem they must be a work of fiction, or, as some suspected and I remain open minded on, that they were deliberate moves by Rishi and his inner circle either because they had been infiltrated by Labour or Reform plants (unlikely), or that Rishi intended to lose the election right from day one (a theory I do give some weight to)).

So, back to 22nd May 2024, that fateful late afternoon when Rishi stood in the Downing Street monsoon and announced the nation would be going to the polls on July 4th (remarkably this own goal number one, handing the SNP the opportunity to declare the election day as Indepence Day, passed almost unnoticed - maybe because the SNP was already on a Destruction Derby of its own). Why oh why did Rishi choose to make the announcement in the pouring rain? the lifetime of his Savill Row suit probably reduced to the same number of days as his premiership. That pathetic image of him turning and reentering Number 10 well and truly resembling a drowned rat, accompanied by the "Things Can Only Get Better" soundtrack from the gates of Downing Street will live long in the Conservative psyche.

Now, if as speculated, Rishi's plan was to seize the moment, catch the opposition off-guard (and freeze the new Reform party in its tracks) then this could have been considered a master stroke - it certainly caught everyone off-guard, even if by mid afternoon the political journalists from all of the main media outlets had gathered in Downing Street, each sensing something was in the air (and hoping their instincts weren't wrong or this would be an embarrasing 4-7 hours of live TV). This plan however had two distinct flaws, firstly the element of surprise works best if you surprise your opponents while your own team have been given the nod and are ready and prepared (when in fact I'm now pretty certain no-one outside of the Number 10 cabal knew what was about to happen - indeed in a rare display of political nous, Rishi had even outwitted his own Cabinet - there couldn't be a leadership contest as he'd already asked the King to dissolve Parliament before he even told his Cabinet. "Baldrick, I have a cunning plan!").

The second element of surprise was that you'd catch your opponents completely napping, there were two issues with this, firstly the Labour party for sure had been preparing for a May election, so a July one didn't give them two many issues (even Angela Rayner's bus "you'll love it, it's even got a fridge" was ready), and then, and this I will forgive Rishi for, I don't think even he believed members of his team could be this stupid, in the couple of days before the announcement, those of his cabal "in the know" trotted off to Betfair (other betting exchanges are available) and placed a bet on a 4th July General Election. Where was the harm? It would raise enough for a social gathering (the word party in all connotations could no longer be muttered in Number 10, it had long fallen out of favour). Unfortunately what they either hadn't realised or didn't care about was that a GCSE computing student could access Betfair betting trends and spot odd bets, someone within or friendly with Reform noticed this and guessed what was about to come - so instead of being taken by surprise, their orders for posters, leaflets, signs, candidate recruitment etc were already in action before Rishi stood before his sodden lectern. Of all the hills to die on, who would have guessed the Tories would choose to die on William Hill!!

On the subject of candidate recruitment, Rishi might have at least given a nod to CCHQ since there were at least 160 seats without agreed candidates, the then party Chairman, Richard Holden didn't yet have a seat and in the rush that followed, despite aforesaid Mr Holden learning to parachute faster than a passenger in a spiralling helicopter, one seat remained with no Conservative candidate by the close of nominations.

The call went out to all constituency associations, the text and photos for your EA1 (the election address delivered free of charge by Royal Mail) must be in by 26th May to meet the deadline for sending to print. In our local association, we, like I'm sure many others, burnt the midnight oil to get our EA1 ready for print, sent it off as required to our Battleground Campaign Manager (our interface to CCHQ). The wording all looked fine and 'on message' to us, but no our first draft was rejected. Make some changes, try again, rinse and repeat and so this frustrating process went on until finally, 48 hours after our draft was ready, it finally went to print. What a total waste of time and resources, surely if the candidate is happy with the content, the exec committee of the constituency is happy with the content, it should be possible to just press GO and who knows we may not have wasted 48 hours of a desperately short period. If CCHQ survives the major reform it must now go through, please can we have a bit more of the 'localism' we've been shouting about for the last 5 years and let constituency execs and candidates make their own decisions.

It is a sad side effect of the increasingly Presidential view from the mainstream media, that there is disproportionate focus on the activities of the Party leaders and not the rest of the cabinet / potential cabinet, but even taking that into account, as soon as the election was announced, most of the Cabinet went to ground, many never to be seen again until the result of their poll on 4th July. To be fair, for a few (Jeremy Hunt please step forward) this worked, but the overall feel was that Rishi was fighting a one man campaign.

So what of Rishi's activity? His first campaign visit to a factory to give his first speech on the stump and take random questions from factory workers. For not the first time (and sadly not the last), Rishi and Co seemed to not consider the optics of this event. Why? - firstly this visit was to a seat where the Conservatives currently had a sizeable majority and secondly, these factory workers were not what they seemed - those selected to ask questions were not workers at all, but rather Conservative party members drafted in for the event (and presumably therefore Rishi had been primed on at least the topics if not the precise words of the questions they were going to ask).

Now in years past, that may have gone unnoticed but with today's use of social media and AI, the ink was barely dry on the page before our opponents were able to shout "Foul!" and identify the Conservative party members involved.

Still, Rishi could console himself, Things Could Only Get Better. And so we move to the D-Day debacle. First we have the situation where having attended the UK focused part of the day, Rishi "decides" to return to London for an interview with ITV which was not even scheduled to be broadcast until the following week (puts a whole new meaning into urgency). This is one of those parts where I can begin to subscribe to the conspiracy theory - why in God's name did not Rishi or one of his team stop for a moment, think about the optics of this situation and decide to stay in France after all?? Did it really, really not occur to a single one of them? But no, off Rishi pops, by helicopter of course, back to the ITV studios and then to add insult to injury he actually apologises to ITV! for being late. Apart from the public view of his faux pas, this occassion also handed Kier Starmer the great opportunity of appearing in loads of footage with the different heads of state while Lord Cameron did his best to stand in for an absent Rishi (some of these scenes must have given Macron et al a distinct sense of deja vu).

Just when it seemed this couldn't get any worse, it then transpired that this decision had not been made in the heat of the moment, but made days before, even before the ITV interview had been put in the diary. Rishi (and presumably his cabal) actually thought it would be good optics to leave the D-Day commemorations early, and so good they'd even pre-planned his early departure).

To his credit, next day, Rishi realised his mistake and apologised to the nation (too little, too late). His comms team weren't finished yet though - they sent him on a visit to a school (good optics there surely, even he couldn't screw this one up) - until the camera pans out from the school, and the name of the road the school was in? You've guessed it - "Veterans Way"!! eek!! - you really couldn't make it up!!. If one thing now would not surprise me, it would be to find that the No 10 comms department were all now script writers for the Thick of It, if they're not then the producers of that show should snap them up, they've certainly got talent.

So what else could go wrong? There were murmurs that people were unhappy with Rishi's use of private helicopters. You could almost hear his cog wheels whirring - "I know, let me go to Cornwall by sleeper train, that will show I can mix it with the common people". So off he went to Cornwall, lots of snaps of him leaving the train, this was going well. Hey, we all thought, a whole day when they've got the optics right - uh oh, spoke too soon, how was Rishi getting back to London? you've guessed it, there was the bloody helicopter again!! (oh and not forgetting that while in Cornwall he goes for trip on a fishing boat, given a choice of two lifejackets, a blue one and a red one, he chooses the red one (I told you, you couldn't make it up!!)

Sadly there aren't enough hours in the day to cover every mistake in detail, but after the long campaign what did we learn about Rishi (other than that he proved what no one thought possible, it really was possible for someone to have poorer political vision than Liz Truss) - well we learned that he had a hard childhood (no Sky TV, bless) and his favourite meal? Sandwiches - yep, sandwiches, chicken, ham, egg, beetroot, marmite, nutella you name it, who cares, if it goes between two slices of bread then in Rishi land it's paradise.

In my own constituency of East Hampshire, we Conservatives have always believed in attacking the post and not the poster - i.e. attack what someone says, but don't attack them as a person. So what does the national party do? - latch on to a throwaway comment from Kier Starmer that where possible he would like to keep Friday evenings after 6pm as family time for him and his young family, a tradition he'd established while leader of the opposition. Someone in CCHQ chose to seize on this as the worst crime known to man since Adam was a boy, while most people probably could associate with Kier's family values (especially given his wife's family's Jewish heritage wihch of course gives Friday's special significance).

And so we come to the day before polling day, and the image in the header of this article - the best attack line the party can come up with?? Vote for us or the kitten gets it!!

Perhaps then none of us should be surprised that across the country on July 4th, we got the kicking many would say we deserved.

So now we find ourselves in opposition, and it is indeed the role of each and every one of our MP's to hold the Government to account. First though, we have to go through another leadership contest. Some are arguing for a short contest, some that the contest should go on until the end of the year (someone shoot me now!), indeed some arguing that Oliver Dowden should be caretaker leader (pass the port!!). I've tried really hard to like Oliver Dowden, but I can still only think he is as useful as a chocolate fireguard. I hope (though I'm not sure I've got enough things to cross for it to be anywhere near certain) that two excellent candidates (whether they be established names or new entries) will come to the fore and the membership can choose wisely. The only thing I would say to our MP's, please, the first bit is in your hands, please give us a genuine choice, please do consult us before you make your selection of the final two, please don't give us a choice between "hasn't got a clue" and "hasn't got a care" (or if you prefer, Dumb or Dumber) - we can rebuild our party, we must rebuild our party - surely just for once, we must stand a chance of getting it right - each and every Conservative MP, our eyes are on you, our hearts are with you, don't let us down.