One of the spin-offs of Grant Shapps’ cheesy-sounding yet quite impressive ‘Team 2015’ strategy for campaigning in the local elections and now in Newark is that the energetic campaigning atmosphere seems to be making activists and MPs very happy.
This sounds like a minor consideration when by-election campaigns are for winning seats, not counselling party members. But given the rather fractious few years that the Tory party has had, this is rather important. Activists and MPs need to feel they’re sailing with the wind behind them as they approach the election, and so gathering large numbers of campaigners together at once, rather than leaving them to canvass and deliver in little motley groups, is a good way of creating the impression of momentum.
Activists returning from the constituency say they are genuinely impressed by the campaign, which they think has improved leaps and bounds on the way the Tories ran things in Eastleigh.
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