Blogsclusive: Newcastle Tories Direct Mail Campaign

While the MSM op cit passed on the facebook story a couple did make it through.

One I'm prepared to own up to is the hilarious news that Jason Smith (36) Chair of the Newcastle-on-Tyne Tories wrote to all 44 Lib Dem councillors on N-o-T council asking them to come home to the Conservatives.

Why write to, 'phone or visit tens of thousands of voters and try to persuade them to switch votes when you can just pick up a majority group second-hand?

So far Jason's phone has not been ringing off the hook on this one. As in Manchester it is around 15 years since the Tories have had even one seat. In both cases it was Labour that cleared them out. Only for the Liberals, SDP and Lib Dems to beg the blues to back them in a "two horse race" with come on lines like "The Conservatives Can't Win Here".

They would even say this when lying in third. LYING in third, ha! Anyway, it is often possible to study election results over the last 10-15 years and see "Blue Flight" as tactical Tories ship out drip by drip to the nefarious "lefties" of the Lib Dems. So perhaps Jason isn't so daft after all? More Tories than Liberals vote for most of them after all.

Cllr Greg Stone (32) - the Sedgefield By-election pretender with the specs-or-no-specs dilemma and the ex-drunkard press agent - originally alerted me to the story via an off topic comment at Lib Dem Voice. Now he's got his name in the papers.