THE big political guns were out and about in Henley when party leaders David Cameron and Nick Clegg came to the town to kick off their respective by-election campaigns.
As soon as the writ was served and the date of the by-election — June 26th — became official, both men arrived in Henley within hours of each other to endorse their candidates.
There followed furious campaigning by all parties in the town this week, with the Tories even setting up campaign headquarters in an empty shop in Station Road.
The only ’big gun’ missing was a name from Labour. By yesterday (Thursday) no one had turned up, although a Labour spokesman said that ’a Cabinet minister’ was likely to be in the constituency with Labour candidate Richard McKenzie on Monday.
In confident mood, Tory leader Mr. Cameron told the Standard he had been well received on a walkabout with Conservative candidate John Howell in Market Square although one supporter did ’ask me why I was wearing a red tie’.
Mr. Cameron need not have worried about appearing a little ’different’. By-elections bring out that famous English eccentricity and Henley is to be no exception.
Candidates who had declared officially by the 4 p.m. deadline on Wednesday ranged from the soberly serious to the glamorous and those in it for fun (and the publicity).
Declared runners apart from those from the main parties included the ’dual’ blonde and brunette candidates from the Miss Great Britain Party, Harry Bear, a character from a children’s book, and a candidate from the irrepressible Official Monster Raving Looney Party.
What is certain is that they will all be trying in the two weeks before election day to persuade the people of Henley to vote for them.
Asked if the ’unthinkable’ could happen in Henley, as it nearly did in Bromley in 2006 when the Lib-Dems reduced a Tory majority of more than 13,500 to just 600 votes, Mr. Cameron, on a visit to the Standard’s newsroom, replied: “We are not going to take anything for granted. There is no such thing as a safe seat and that’s why we are campaigning so hard to get John Howell elected.“
Did he have any message for the people of Henley: “Get on the web,“ he said. “Have a look at the Henley Standard on the web and, if you have time, go to webCameron and see what I have been up to, including the speech I made here in the town.“
Asked about Henley’s chronic traffic problems he said there was ’no easy answer’. “It would be wrong to suddenly say with a red pen we can pedestrianise this or change that.“ He added that he would like to see new roads to ’get traffic moving across the country’.
Mr. Clegg, while endorsing Lib-Dem candidate Stephen Kearney, said that the by-election would be ’very much a two-horse race between the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives’ and it was a contest that would ’test the two candidates’.
Asked if it was possible to win, he said: “Everything is feasible in politics if you do it with commitment and energy and that’s exactly what we will be doing in our by-election campaign.“
The other candidates are: the Rev. Dr. Richard Rodgers (Common Good party); Mark Stevenson (Green Party); Chris Adams (UK Independence Party); Derek Allpass (English Democrats); Louise Cole and Amanda Harrington (Miss Great Britain Party); Harry Bear (independent Fur Play); Tim Rait (British National Party) and Peter Owen (Official Monster Raving Looney Party).
lSee next week’s Standard for a full list of candidates and their details.
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Published on 16 June 2008
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