My week ahead, 12 - 18 August 2013

Monday 12 August – 4pm, Culture Portfolio meeting
6pm, Labour Campaigning, Bixley Ward, Ipswich

Friday 16 August – 2pm, Ipswich Labour daytime campaigning, West Ipswich

Start of a quiet two weeks (political wise) as August tends to be the month with least council meetings but as I am involved with the Culture portfolio, there are always briefings and updates as we deal with topics like Ransomes, Town hall, regent and our next cycling event.

Meetings may have reduced in number but we are using that as an opportunity to do even more campaigning – we had yet another big team out in Ipswich yesterday morning with one new member attending his first canvass session. The camaraderie, the social side afterwards and the knowledge that we need to do this seems to dive our volunteers and great to see big numbers out each week. At the sa e time we are stepping up our campaigning and we have an influx of new members to help the Tories both nationally and in Ipswich are struggling both for members and activists.

Tory Chair, Grant Shapps seems to be taking most of the flak (but David Cameron seems the main cause of the drop in membership). Shapps has come under a constant daily attack from Tory donor, Lord Ashcroft, who continues to ask for both the membership total and the number who voted in their MEP elections. He has now been joined by Essex Tory MP, Douglas Carswell, whose constituency – Clacton is one of the few who have seen a rise in Tory membership – Carswell attacks Cameron and Shapps but keeps the Tory whip? They must be worried that he would just jump to UKIP and take most of the Clacton members with him.

Ed Miliband has seen a rise in national membership and one thing that Labour has always been better at is helping neighbouring constituencies and this was seen with the great result in Thetford two weeks ago and the Labour win in Waveney this week.

Roll on May!

Footnote: Lib Dems in Ipswich – membership total?? My guess is lower than 20!