And when I was out shopping on Sunday a complete stranger said, “Hello Tim,” That’s something I always find disorientating.

So we are getting somewhere. Next job is to decide a campaigns theme.

I am just off to the campaign kick-off meeting in a pub in the Old Town. In fact, we held most of last year’s Chells campaign meetings in pubs in the Old Town. The Old Town is home.

The more I think about it, the better the Old Town decision is. Team building is our main priority at the moment. So the fact that I know quite a few people who live in the Old Town is another plus. We might be able to build a decent team here.

Everyone I’ve discussed the Old Town campaign with is enthusiastic. The notable exception is Robin Parker, the leader of the Lib Dems on Stevenage Borough Council.

When I last saw him last Thursday, he was still harping on about why he thinks the campaign should be run in Longmeadow and not The Old Town. I do not understand why he is so concerned. He obviously has no intention of getting involved. In an email he sent me he said:

I assume that none of this e campaign will detract in any way from our efforts in Manor and Chells.

But how could we do that? I know they had a leaflet drop in planned for the summer, but I no one I know living in Chells has seen one yet.

And to be completely honest there was no serious campaigning in Manor or Chells until March 2011 for the May 2011 elections.

No doubt all will become clear at the next executive meeting on the 15 September.

We have a winner in the Old Town.

Thanks to everyone who took part and thanks for the comments, they made interesting reading.

We will be kicking off this mainly electronic campaign over this weekend and look forward to your continued interest. I promise to keep you as up to date as possible, considering anything published online can be read by anyone.

So I have decided to run an experiment.

I have picked two wards in which we received similar votes at the last election and there will be a campaign in only one of these wards. This will give us a way of testing how effective e-campaigning is.

The wards picked are The Old Town (195 votes) and Longmeadow (196 votes).

You can help by voting on which ward you think I should campaign in and which should be left as the control.

More information on these wards is here.

This email list will only be used to keep subscribers up to date on the Re-launch campaign and to offer them ways of influencing it. It is a spam free zone.

You can sign up below, be part of the future.

We have three councillors in Manor. In the rest of the town we have no councillors, little campaign machinery, sparse canvassing data and almost no money to spend.

So no problem then. It’s a good job I like a challenge.

This is my opening appeal from the Stevenage Lib Dems web site and Members Newsletter.

I think we all were a bit disappointed by May’s elections results in Stevenage. Admittedly there was a large national swing against us, but we could have done better.

We fielded candidates in only 11 of 13 Stevenage wards and UKIP beat us into fourth place in 8 of those. In the past we did a lot better than this in Stevenage. With your help we can again.

We have a vision of the Liberal Democrats campaigning in every ward in Stevenage. We want to once more be a constituency wide party. We want there to be an effective opposition in Stevenage. We believe that should be us.

For this to happen we need you.

It is not an easy task, we have a long way to go, but with your help we can do it. If you share our vision and want to help the Lib Dems become a constituency wide party again please get in contact. Any help, no matter how small, will be greatly appreciated.

If you have never been actively involved in a political campaign before now is the time to start. There are free training sessions being run by the party in St Albans. Or, if you have campaigned before and have become a little rusty, why not come along and brush up your old skills and help rebuild the Lib Dems in Stevenage.

This result was on a day which saw big swings against the party across the country.

It was always going to be difficult to come into Chells as a new candidate against an incumbent councillor. The national tide flowing strongly against us made it an impossible task. I would like to thank all those who attempted the impossible anyway, and of course everyone who voted for me.

Still the story in the paper quoted me saying

The response from the public was mostly positive, a lot of people were undecided, and a surprisingly large number of people had not heard any explanation on how AV works.”

See the full Comet Story Here (328 kb)

We went to the main hall for the evening rally. This was fairly uplifting. Setting the tone for the rest of the conference nicely.

The various fringe events in the evenings were worth attending, and it was nice to be addressed by “the Government minister for… “ Instead of “the spokesperson on…”

I was staying quite a long way out from the City Hall and travelling in by taxi. On the way in on Saturday morning I had an interesting chat with the taxi driver. e was tellingh He was telling me how great British democracy is. He comes from Ethiopia where the government gets 98% of the votes. This put me in a good mood to face the protesters outside the conference hall.

It turned out there were none, but there was a concerted lobbying effort in favour of Shirley Williams’ amendment to the NHS policy statement. This polite engagement was very effective.

The business that stood out in the morning was when we added amendments to the NHS motion, changing it’s meaning entirely. Conference did not like the nature of the reforms being proposed. A stirring speech by Shirley Williams telling people to stand up as Lib Dems carried the day and we made headline news.

The pick of the afternoon’s debates was the motion to set up a Leadership program me in order to improve the diversity of MPs. As Nick Clegg had said during the rally “We are still too pale and too male”. This was passed overwhelmingly. I was one of the few to vote against (as I had agreed to do). Those arguing against any kind of quotas in principle have diminished over the past 20 or so years in the face of the hard fact that of the three main parties in the UK, we are still the least representative of the population of UK today.

Only about 2000 of the expected 10,000 demonstrators turned up. Most left once the drizzle set in. I doubt if chanting abuse through a megaphone influenced anyone in any way. The morning lobbying was much more effective.

After the fringe meetings, Saturday evening spent at traditional sing along in the main hotel. Was a time to meet up with some old friends and make some new ones. This all gets a bit hazy……

The centrepiece of Sunday morning was Nick Clegg’s speech. These show pieces are my least favourite parts of conference. Particularly cringeable is when we all chant “NO” when Nick Clegg asks “Would that have happened if the Lib Dems had not been in government?” I felt like shouting out “He’s behind you.” Surely we can do better than this?

I enjoyed my first national conference. It was a good mixture of politics, learning and socializing. I was impressed by Tim Farron, who will make a great party president or, if that fails, a superb stand up comic.

One complaint was that due to the small size of the City Hall, fringe events were held at other locations. This is fine for the evening events, but made attending day time events very time consuming, especially as there was the need to pass security on the way into the City Hall. This meant that I did not attend any training events.

Still I will be going to the Autumn Conference and would recommend anyone else to do so.

The full PDF download is here (655 KB)

Chells FOCUS Election Special 2011