{"id":6,"date":"2015-02-05T11:18:20","date_gmt":"2015-02-05T11:18:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.edgehill.ac.uk\/election\/?p=6"},"modified":"2015-05-12T11:42:33","modified_gmt":"2015-05-12T10:42:33","slug":"late-to-the-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.edgehill.ac.uk\/comment\/2015\/02\/05\/late-to-the-party\/","title":{"rendered":"Late to the party?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Among all the pre-election coverage of policy launches and manifestos, we&#8217;ve now had the first pre-election human drama \u2013 a defection.\u00a0 Time will tell whether we&#8217;ll see more of these in the febrile atmosphere of the run up to May 7.\u00a0 But as the world of football has its transfer season, we may well be into the equivalent in the world of UK politics.<\/p>\n<p>The January defection, of UKIP MEP Amjad Bashir to the Conservatives, had its element of slapstick.\u00a0 Did he jump or was he pushed? (UKIP would claim the latter).\u00a0 Was he in fact a serial rosette changer? (Respect claim him as a former member ).\u00a0 Are the Tories keeping him under metaphorical lock and key to avoid unfortunate remarks? (<a href=\"http:\/\/order-order.com\/2015\/01\/28\/guy-news-special-free-amjad-bashir-protest-outside-cchq\/\">Blogger Guido Fawkes, in his usual inimitable style, thinks so)<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Defections are not really about one-in\u00a0\u00a0 one-out.\u00a0 Parties see these moves as primarily about publicity.\u00a0 And the publicity can be immense if handled properly .\u00a0 The trick is to surprise as many people as possible while manoeuvring for the best news coverage.\u00a0 Former Conservative MP Emma Nicholson\u2019s defection from the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/news\/tory-defection-how-emma-did-the-deal-to-the-sound-of-harps-and-teacups-1527904.html\">Tories to the Lib Dems<\/a> is a textbook case.\u00a0 The then Lib Dem leader Paddy Ashdown and colleagues had the announcement planned with military precision (as you would expect from a former Royal Marine).\u00a0 Every detail, from hand- delivered letters to Conservative office-holders in Nicholson\u2019s Devon constituency\u00a0 to the exclusive BBC TV interview, was timed to the minute.\u00a0 \u00a0Both Nicholson, in <a href=\"http:\/\/books.google.co.uk\/books\/about\/Secret_Society.html?id=Rxd0QgAACAAJ&amp;redir_esc=y\">Secret Society<\/a>, and Ashdown, in <a href=\"https:\/\/books.google.co.uk\/books?id=C0qgAAAACAAJ&amp;dq=Paddy+Ashdown+diaries&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=_z_NVP2dGKXV7AaZpYHICQ&amp;ved=0CD4Q6AEwBQ\">Diaries Volume 1<\/a>, give inside information about the events of that December in 1995.\u00a0 The announcement on \u00a0the 29<sup>th<\/sup> caught the usually quiet news period between Christmas and New Year thus guaranteeing even more prominent coverage.\u00a0 (And political geeks will also spot the significance of that date \u2013 William Ewart Gladstone\u2019s birthday).<\/p>\n<p>Defections during actual election campaigns do happen.\u00a0 1994 saw a Parliamentary by election in Newham in East London. \u00a0Candidate Alec Kellaway defected from the Lib Dems (for whom he was the official candidate) to Labour just before polling day.\u00a0 He had reportedly wanted to defect dramatically from the stage at the count <a href=\"http:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/news\/uk\/labour-reaps-easy-harvest-of-challengers-defection-newham-byelection-liberal-democrats-remove-all-traces-of-the-candidate-who-wrecked-their-campaign-1421610.html\">but was persuaded to bring the announcement forward.<\/a>\u00a0 Voters had the odd experience of seeing Mr Kellaway&#8217;s name on the ballot paper as a Lib Dem (as by then nominations were well and truly closed and the papers printed) while hearing that he was in fact now a Labour member.\u00a0 And in 1983, National Chair of Young Social Democrats, Keith Toussaint, moved from the SDP to the Conservatives during the campaign.<\/p>\n<p>Lower level political defections are surprisingly common.\u00a0 At local councillor level most weeks see a story about someone &#8220;disgruntled&#8221; or &#8220;principled&#8221; changing allegiance.<\/p>\n<p>But national level, and therefore politically significant, moves are both a lot less common and a lot more newsworthy.\u00a0 Will we see more between now and polling day? You know I think we might.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Among all the pre-election coverage of policy launches and manifestos, we&#8217;ve now had the first pre-election human drama \u2013 a defection.\u00a0 Time will tell whether we&#8217;ll see more of these in the febrile atmosphere of the run up to May 7.\u00a0 But as the world of football has its transfer season, we may well be [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1269,"featured_media":25,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32286],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-election-2015"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Late to the party? - Comment<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.edgehill.ac.uk\/comment\/2015\/02\/05\/late-to-the-party\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Late to the party? 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