The words above were used by Lib Dem candidate Layla Moran, speaking to me in a video interview for Cherwell, to describe Oxford West & Abingdon. It was a sentiment echoed by the Conservative candidate Nicola Blackwood, who won the seat five years ago with a margin of 0.3 per cent. She told me she would be “fighting for every vote”.
Of course, it’s politically convenient for the two frontrunners to portray the seat as a close one, as they hope it will encourage all their supporters to turn out on the day, and to vote tactically. But is Oxford West and Abingdon really a key marginal?
A Lord Ashcroft poll from September 2014 told a rather different story. He found that the gap between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats had widened to eight per cent, with the Lib Dem share falling to 30 per cent.
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This is all part of a Lib Dem narrative we can see playing out across the country. Their time in government with the Conservatives seems to have poisoned their brand, with voters angry at the level of co-operation visible between Nick Clegg and David Cameron. Those who voted tactically for the Lib Dems in order to keep the Tories out feel betrayed, and many who supported the Lib Dems on ideological grounds have been dismayed at some of the measures that Liberal Democrat MPs have voted to support, including the Health and Social Care Act and the bedroom tax.
For students, this dismay centres on tuition fees. The NUS has come under fire for its aggressive #liarliar billboard campaign against the Lib Dems, but a poll by Cherwell (below) shows the collapse in student support for Lib Dems that was also revealed by a poll of students nationwide in April. Perhaps the NUS shouldn’t be playing political games, but it would be hard to argue that they aren’t reflecting the general views of students in expressing anti-Lib Dem sentiment.
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Of course, our polling data is not particularly reliable. 177 students from Oxford West & Abingdon filled out the survey, and the incredible success of the Green Party perhaps reveals that students from the left are keener to participate in surveys. But then, it might also suggest that they’re keener to turn out and vote.
It must be disappointing for the Lib Dems to see so many left-minded voters (65.9 per cent of respondents), and yet such meagre support for their own party. Seemingly, supporting the Lib Dems is too high a price for students to pay to unseat a Tory MP.
Layla Moran, however, remains confident that Labour voters will return to the Lib Dem camp on 7th May, since realistically, she’s the only one who can beat Nicola Blackwood. If that happens, Labour and Lib Dem support combined would be enough to win the seat; it’s just a question of whether left-wing voters trust the Lib Dems enough to vote tactically.
The incumbent: Nicola Blackwood, Conservatives
Oxford West and Abingdon had been widely viewed as a Lib Dem safe seat, until Nicola Blackwood stormed to victory in 2010. Boundary changes had moved muchof the city into Oxford East, and brought rural voters into the constituency, meaning the Lib Dems lost many of their key supporters, and Conservative voters were drafted in. Blackwood ran on an overtly Christian platform, which must have won her a fairly signifi cant number of votes, as then-MP Evan Harris facedattacks from Christian groups over his views on abortion and euthanasia.
Probably the most controversial moment of Blackwood’s tenure at Westminster came over the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill of 2013. After intimating tostudents that she would vote in favour of same sex marriage, in response to a letter signed by 38 JCR and MCR presidents, she ended up voting against the bill,for which she was condemned by OUSU. Blackwood told me she did this to protect religious freedom, saying, “What I think we should have done is separated civil marriage and religious marriage, so that only civil marriage would have been regulated by the state, and religious marriage by the churches, mosques,and synagogues.” She went on to emphasise, “I am a firm believer in the separation of church and state.”
Revelations that members of pro-fox hunting group Vote-OK have campaigned on her behalf, and that she accepted a £10,000 donation from hedge-fund boss George Robinson, who, as Layla Moran took great pleasure in pointing out to me, was signed up to the same tax avoidance scheme as Jimmy Carr, must worry students who don’t want such a right-wing MP. But Blackwood is happy to defend her record, and insisted that it is not her responsibility to turn away people who wanted to help her campaign.
On the topic of George Robinson, she told me, “The incident happened over three years ago, he’s paid back the taxes which he shouldn’t have not paid, and I don’t think it’s for me to sit as judge and jury.” She wanted to make clear, though, that she had no time for tax dodging, declaring, “I’ve voted consistently for stronger measures to crack down on tax avoidance.” Nicola Blackwood is in a strong position to keep her seat, but must be wary of complacency in an ever-changing political landscape.
Layla Moran, Lib Dems
Oxford West and Abingdon’s most likely challenger isn’t from Oxford at all. In 2010, she stood as the Lib Dem candidate for Battersea, coming third with 14.7 per cent of the vote. However, it seems she’s done the groundwork and earned a crack at regaining one of the Lib Dems’ old heartlands.
Moran is basing her campaign on the fi rm belief that Oxford West & Abingdon is “a centre left constituency”. She told me she wants Labour voters to “lend” her their votes, saying, “We need to get a coalition of the Left together.” Indeed, many of the students who told Cherwell they would be voting Labour in Oxford West and Abindgon might have voted Lib Dem if this were the 2010 election. But trust in the party has evaporated, especially among students, and Moran must fear that this will be borne out on 7th May.
She addressed students’ concerns over the now-infamous broken pledge on tuition fees with a rather familiar refrain, fairly pointing out, “We didn’t
win the election, I wish we had.” She also insisted that the Lib Dems hadn’t fully reneged on their promises, telling me, “The second part of that pledge was about a more progressive and fair system. We did deliver that.” However, clearly she didn’t feel that the party had done enough, as she told me that if she had signed the pledge, “I would have voted against tuition fees.” Positioning herself as a supporter of free education, she nevertheless criticised Labour’s plans to reduce fees to £6,000, calling them “a gimmick”, which would only help middle-class students.
Sally Copley, Labour
Sally Copley is in the rather unenviable position of a Labour candidate polling in third place. Despite Labour’s strong showing in Cherwell’s poll, the chances of Labour causing an upset in Oxford West and Abingdon are extremely low, judging by Lord Ashcroft’s poll, which gave Labour 18 per cent of the vote.
However, Copley remains confi dent. A working mother, she told me she wanted to see “more mums in Parliament”, and positioned herself as more left-wing than Labour in general. This came out as we discussed immigration. After the infamous ‘Controls on Immigration’ mug produced by Labour, many have accused the party of participating in a ‘race to the bottom’ on the issue. According to Copley, she wants “to say more about the benefits of immigration to the UK”, and was withering in her criticism of the Coalition, pointing out, in reference to the recent tragic deaths of 900 migrants in the Mediterranean, “It is actually a current Conservative-Liberal Democrat policy to let children drown in the ocean.”
She was circumspect, though, about Labour’s own attitude towards immigration, and while she stopped short of saying that the party was just trying to take working-class votes back from UKIP, she said that the rise of that particular party made things “difficult” and that “what Labour’s trying to do is show that it has heard concerns”.
Layla Moran wants Labour supporters to switch to the Lib Dems, as, she says, they represent the best opportunity to beat the Conservatives. Perhaps Copley would agree, ‘for the greater good’? “They’ve borrowed our vote,” Copley agreed, “but they’ve squandered it.” She pointed out that many people voted tactically for the Lib Dems five years ago, and ended up with a Conservative-led government anyway.
And the rest…
One of the other candidates for Oxford West & Abingdon couldn’t be reached for an interview. He’s also stopped turning up to hustings and no longer answers his emails. His name is Alan Harris, and he’s the UKIP candidate. His sudden disappearance seems to be the direct result of the exposure of certain activities on Facebook.
Last month, anti-UKIP group ‘Hope Not Hate’ posted screenshots taken from Harris’ Facebook page. One, from October 2011, read, “Why cant i say in my own bloody country black is still a colour and gay are still queers [sic].” Another, from February 2013, which was posted on the wall of fellow UKIP candidate and former Oriel porter Dickie Bird, read, “A bacon sandwich – a piece of English heritage the fucking Muslims don’t want.”
Harris blamed hackers, and argued that he would never say anything bad about gay people as his son is gay.
It’s certainly not clear, however, that Harris is the most extreme candidate in this election. That title might have to go to Mike Foster, of the Socialist Party of Great Britain.
His party, he told me, “is in favour of abolishing the entire political system as we know it, and replacing it with a world of common ownership and free access”. Anyone who’s watched five minutes of Prime Minister’s Questions might be inclined to agree with this, but Foster is a little unclear on
how this will ultimately be achieved.
He’s certainly not hoping, he says, to be elected to Parliament, and instead is using the election as a platform to encourage people to think about socialist ideas.
Another man who seems to have thought about socialist ideas is Larry Sanders of the Green Party. He was withering in his criticism of the constituency’s two leading parties, telling me, “A very very small number of rich people are running the country. The Tories are their best allies; the Lib Dems will go with anyone who allows them to put a suit on in front of the cameras.”
Sanders, whose brother is running for President of the USA, also responded to criticism of the Greens’ anti-austerity politics, remarking, “You can find an economist for everything. The whole austerity story is a lie, it’s a fabrication.”
Helen Salisbury is also vehemently against Conservative austerity, but her party, the National Health Action Party, has narrowed its focus to defend the NHS from what Salisbury termed “galloping privatisation” by calling for the Health and Social Care Act to be repealed.
She insisted, however, that they were not a single issue party, and that there was far more to health than hospitals.
It’s highly unlikely that any of the candidates featured here will win the election. However, although they might not be influential in this immediate sense, some of their ideas may well shape the political discourse of the years to come.
