Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg parks his battle bus right on Glenda’s front lawn

Published: 8 April 2010
by RICHARD OSLEY

NICK Clegg spent most of the week insisting the General Election was not a two-horse race – but nowhere did he want to emphasise it more than the place where he launched his campaign battle bus: the Lymington Road estate in West Hampstead.

The Liberal Democrat leader pre-empted Gordon Brown’s calling of the General Election for May 6 by unveiling his yellow coach – decorated with giant portraits of himself and his finance spokesman Vince Cable – a day earlier on Bank Holiday Monday morning.

By choosing a launch location slap in the middle of the Hampstead and Kilburn constituency,  Mr Clegg was conferring   his personal blessing on Lib Dem candidate Ed Fordham as a genuine contender for the seat, hoping to dismiss claims on rivals’ leaflets that the party “can’t win here”.

The move was characterised as parking the Lib Dem tank on the lawn of Glenda Jackson, the incumbent Labour MP.

Labour and the Conservatives have previously suggested the battle for the north Camden constituency, which for the first time takes in part of Brent, is a straight fight between their candidates, and such a critical one in deciding who forms the next government that a vote for the Lib Dems cannot be countenanced.

They have presented the constituency as one of the main barometers for whether the country will stick with Gordon Brown or go for David Cameron, with the Lib Dems as an irrelevance.

But bookmakers’ odds and recent polling suggest Mr Fordham is right in the mix and could turn the area yellow for the first time. Supporters believe he could win by “cracking Kilburn” while his opponents concentrate on Hampstead.

It is the second time Mr Clegg, a close friend of Mr Fordham, has visited the patch in six weeks, although this occasion was the most high-profile intervention yet.

He was swamped by cameras as he stepped off the bus and was welcomed by applause from local Lib Dems. He gave a series of television interviews before visiting the estate’s community hall in Dresden Close, a frantic scene of party volunteers stuffing envelopes with leaflets. 

Although people in Camden will vote on May 6 in council elections and in Holborn and St Pancras as well, the media spotlight will focus on Hampstead and Kilburn where Ms Jackson has endured months of being told that her days in Parliament may be numbered.

During an interview with the New Journal, Mr Clegg reached out to voters who have been disappointed by the Labour government but who like Ms Jackson as an MP and a candidate.

He said her record of voting against unpopular government policies under Tony Blair should not earn her a reprieve, characterising her as an old Labour loyalist blindly propping up a New Labour regime.

“Glenda Jackson can say she’s against all these things but it isn’t about that – it’s about what actually happened,” he told the New Journal. “I can remember 1997. I didn’t vote for Tony Blair but I can understand the hope and excitement that people felt, the mood that things were going to change. That mood has changed back now. People in areas like this feel Labour has let them down over the last 13 years.” He singled out the invasion of Iraq and the handling of the economic crisis as issues over which Labour voters could desert their party.

Labour and Conservative campaign teams in the area insist that only a vote for their candidates makes sense in deciding the colour of the next government.

But Mr Clegg said that a vote for Mr Fordham would get them  “a good constituency MP who will take constituents seriously”.

Ms Jackson was dismissive of the Lib Dems at her party’s local elections manifesto launch last week and concentrated instead on the threat of the Conservatives.

“When you explain to people that if you don’t vote Labour, you will get the Conservatives – the whole mood changes,” she said last week. 

Today, in the New Journal’s Forum she promises a better deal for council housing.

Meanwhile Conservative candidate Chris Philp is adamant the Lib Dems are not realistic contenders. His leaflets insist that “Lib Dems can’t win here” and accuse Mr Fordham’s team of misleading voters by suggesting he only needs 474 votes to turn the tide.

Winning Hampstead and Kilburn  was crucial to Conservatives being able to form the next government, he said. 

“We need to pick up 117 new MPs to form a government with a majority of one – and Hampstead and Kilburn is target seat number 120. So Hampstead and Kilburn is right in the front line of the election and will directly help decide who runs the country: Brown or Cameron.”