Hearing You Loud and Clear

One good way of campaigning is to write back to everyone who has filled in a survey, to let them know what the main results are. This shows that you have read their answers and taken them on board, and that you are listening and in touch. The only small downside is that a few of the people that you send it to will have sent in completely different answers, and whinge about it.

I filled in Jon Cruddas' survey, a little while back, and got an e-mail entitled 'Hearing you loud and clear' back the other day. It explained that my opinions were already influencing Jon's campaign, that overwhelmingly people who responded felt local party activism was on the decline, and that there needed to be a full-time Deputy Leader.

Only thing is, my answers were that party activism had increased in my area (both where I used to live and where I live now), and that I didn't care about whether the Deputy Leader was also Deputy Prime Minister.

That said, I still like that his campaign have done the survey and followed it up, and Cruddas' campaign so far has been leagues ahead of the other deputy leader candidates, which have been surprisingly feeble and uninterested in appealing to activists.

I think that Hilary Benn, Alan Johnson and Jon Cruddas are all competent and have extremely similar political views, and any of them would be perfectly reasonable deputy leaders. I'll planning to vote for Cruddas because he has pitched his campaign as the leftie candidate who has sensible things to say about organising the Labour Party better, and the other candidates haven't. Even if he doesn't win (and the fact that the only people who have heard of him are people who write about politics on the internet means that he probably won't), he's probably done enough to be appointed Party Chair, which offers the same opportunity to be the voice of the grassroots and build up membership activism. And if he can get local members out canvassing all year round right across the country, all the better.