The Labour Lib Dem needle starts to draw blood
Published: 22 April 2010
by RICHARD OSLEY
RIVALRY between Labour and the Liberal Democrats in Camden has sharpened as the general and local election campaigns enter the final fortnight – with the parties jostling to be seen as the preferred “progressive” alternative to the Conservatives.
Labour has insisted the “Clegg bounce” after the Lib Dem leader’s performance in Thursday’s historic TV debate – had made next to no impact in Camden.
Instead their canvassers say that because the Lib Dems have had a turn in power at the Town Hall, voters “already know about them in north London and what they say and what they actually do”.
It is only in other areas where the party had not yet made a political breakthrough, Labour strategists believe, that Clegg’s new-found popularity truly comes into play.
Senior figures are nonetheless “flabbergasted” at the pages of positive reaction in the national press to just 90 minutes of TV and were this week pointing out that many of the issues where Mr Clegg appeared to impress were strong areas for Frank Dobson and Glenda Jackson.
Both Camden MPs, for example, voted against the Trident nuclear missile replacement programme – one of the policies on which Mr Clegg went down well.
The claim from the Labour campaigners in Camden is that Mr Dobson in particular is having his record smeared by the Lib Dems. Even his vocal opposition to the Iraq War – he sat next to Robin Cook for moral support when the former Foreign Secretary resigned over the invasion – and his clean expenses record are being traduced, they say.
Legal advice, it is understood, has been taken by Labour organisers to see whether any leaflets break the rules and a formal request has been made for Lib Dem candidate Jo Shaw to apologise.
The Lib Dems, who in neighbouring Islington were sued by Labour MP Emily Thornberry for claims made in party literature, deny any wrong-doing and say that Mr Dobson’s name does not appear on all of the recorded votes when the Commons approved a final declaration of war.
Lib Dem councillor and election agent Matt Sanders said: “Amazingly, Frank Dobson slipped out of Parliament just before the ‘most crucial issue that has been before the House’. Jack Straw’s words not mine. He needs to confirm his record and frankly if Labour wants to have a debate about which party got it right on Iraq I think we are happy to have it.”
With not even the veneer of a friendly fight, Labour members in Camden are making hardly any overtures towards a working relationship with the Lib Dems in the future – even though the prospect is a hot topic nationally.
The General Election and council elections both take place on May 6 and in Camden’s current political climate, there is a good chance that no one party will win enough council seats to take overall control of the Town Hall. Power-sharing partnerships will then have to be brokered.
Mr Dobson, speaking at hustings chaired by the New Journal’s editor Eric Gordon in the grand setting of St Pancras International on Tuesday night, said the Lib Dems locally had ignored a fresh offer of financial help from housing minister John Healey to invest in council homes and were instead prepared to continue the policy of raising money through selling council homes.
“There is new financing available for council housing and the minister has asked the council to desist selling council housing – but they will not,” he said.
The MP added that the Lib Dem/Tory council had diverted money from school refurbishment projects in the south of the borough to schools in the north. He singled out Edith Neville School in Somers Town, which is facing a wait for much-needed refurbishment, as a case of mistreatment.
“The poorest ward in the poorest part of the borough is missing out while money is taken away from them and put into a new school in Hampstead,” Mr Dobson told the hustings.
Ms Shaw said the money to pay for school improvement works came from the government and due to lack of funding “we are always having to lobby them”.
On the subject of council housing, she added: “If I was your MP for 30 years and I was sat here then and could not show that I had got investment in council housing I would feel like a failure.”
That line was echoed in the Lib Dem attack against Labour in Hampstead and Kilburn where candidate Ed Fordham said: “Labour’s had 13 years to fix our council homes. That should be long enough to get it done, even if Glenda did it herself. She may have voted against some of the things that Nick Clegg is opposed to, but she is sounding like a broken record.”
In the northern constituency, observers believe that Labour, the Lib Dems and the Conservatives could be level-pegging and that whoever pulls clear from now onwards will win one of Britain’s few genuinely three-way contests.
With Labour and the Lib Dems at daggers drawn, the Conservatives believe that Chris Philp has achieved crucial “face recognition” among Hampstead and Kilburn’s voters.
Mr Philp said: “Because our campaign has been strong, I don’t think Clegg has had any effect at all. If you vote Lib Dem here you risk getting Gordon Brown again.”