Gisela Bucked the Trend | Gisela Stuart Labour MP for Birmingham Edgbaston

Gisela Bucked the Trend // May 16th, 2010 // Speeches, Articles and Interviews

Diary Extract from The House Magazine

Gisela Stuart bucked the national trend and held on to her marginal seat in Birmingham. Visits from the party’s high command helped keep spirits high, but it was hard work and the local touch which won the day…

Saturday, May 1

“I’m Labour, my values are Labour, but I think for myself.” Well that’s what it said on the plastic carrier bags we were handing out at the street stall on Harborne High Street. Harry Takhar from the Impact Party and his loudspeakers make so much noise that I’m not sure I can think at all, but then this is the last weekend of the campaign and we’re all tired. The Tories are out in large numbers, but the Lib Dems are nowhere to be seen. Cleggmania has not reached Edgbaston.

German journalist Thomas Kielinger from Die Welt joined us. It’s the third general election he’s reported from here. The sun is shinning and everyone is friendly; even those who tell me that they will be voting Tory are polite. Thomas muses that “you’re winning here” but I counsel caution. They are polite. For all I know they are saying ‘Thank you for your hard work, but we are giving the other side a chance now’.

Weekend

Bank holiday or not, we are getting the troops together. There’s a final week push delivering the last targeted letters, and phoning voters and polling day helpers as well as knocking on doors. And we can offer David Miliband as a star attraction. We start in Bartley Green were a previously staunch Labour couple explain to him why they wont’ be voting for us this time. David does his best to make our case, but they seem unconvinced. The voter works in Redditch and objects to Polish workers taking jobs.

It’s freezing cold but somehow the adrenaline keeps us going. We meet at a restaurant for dinner. There are about 30 of us, and David chats to the team, including my ‘night shift’ - the two Toms, Ash and Caroline, who in the previous week had put in two 26-hour shifts to get mailings out. No glossy Ashcroft money leaflets here. Clearly Edgbaston is blissfully unaware of the European Working Time Directive.

Tuesday, May 4

The focus is now on phone work. Peter Mandelson pops in to the campaign centre to make calls. One or two people don’t quite believe it’s him and suspect they’re on the receiving end of a hoax - but we know it’s the real thing. Gathering everybody into one room, Peter wonders “where are all these people coming from” and I confess I too sometimes wonder how we got so many people to work on this campaign. Before he leaves he signs one of my ‘Re-elect Gisela Stuart’ posters. “Just do what it says,” he writes. We’ll have to auction this off after the election to raise funds. Any offers welcome.

Wednesday, May 5

The calm before the storm. We clean up the campaign centre. Black rubbish bags, spent printer cartridges, superfluous leaflets - all go off to the skip and for recycling. We didn’t use any national Labour Party material. Apart from one leaflet from USDAW on what Labour’s done for families, every single word had been written by us.

Tomorrow hundreds of people will come and go. Tomorrow is the only day that counts.

‘Sorry you were out’ and ‘eve of polling day’ leaflets are printed. Everything in this campaign is done at the very last moment. The politics are shifting too quickly. More and more we are picking up ‘I’d vote for Gisela but I don’t want to vote to Gordon Brown’. Difficult to say how many will stay with me.

Thursday, May 6: Polling day

We start with bacon sandwiches in the campaign centre at 8.45. The room is full and in the course of the day people just keep coming. To phone, to knock on doors, to stand outside polling stations, to give voters lifts …there is no end to it. At one point in every room, in every corner and even in the broom cupboard, there is someone making a phone call. The little annex with a couple of mothers and their sleeping babies becomes the nursery.

It’s like a beehive. Everyone knows what they have to do, or know someone who can tell them. If there is a problem, they’ll have to sort it themselves.

At 9pm one of our door knockers runs into the Tories who tell them to go home as they’ve won. We take no notice.

Friday, May 7

I get to the count just after midnight. Ten of the Birmingham seats are counted in the National Indoor Arena. So it’s quite an atmosphere. I hear one of the Tories say “we’ve got it by 2000″. I have no idea if this is true or not. We were too busy getting the vote out and didn’t take any samples. Sunderland had come in with an 8% swing against us, and all the Tories need here was a 2% swing. So a defeat by 2,000 would be quite honourable. But today is Saint Gisela’s day - so we’ll wait and see.

When the returning officer reads out the provisional result just before 2am I try to get my head around the numbers. I can’t work out how much I lost by, but put my inadequate arithmetic down to exhaustion.

Then there is a stunned silence, followed by forceful queries from both sides. ”Are you sure you got these figures right?” Firm intervention is called for. I ask an official: ”Just let me be clear. Are you saying I’ve won?” He looks at me perplexed and just says “yes”. Our side erupts with cheers and laughter.

But the Tories aren’t taking this lying down. The bundles are checked and re-checked. Votes are verified. Even Harry Takhar’s 146 votes are flicked through in search of the Tories’ missing 1300 votes, but they couldn’t be found. Finally by about 4.30am they concede.

“I’m Labour, my values are Labour, but I think for myself,” is how my speech starts, to ecstatic screams from the floor. And Birmingham has stayed red. Only later do I see what’s happened elsewhere. Slowly it begins to sink in. Mike Foster, Jacqui Smith, Mike O’Brien, Rob Marris, Charles Clarke…. they’ve all lost. And Labour has lost. A night of mixed fortunes.

Good job the campaign centre is in a non-residential area. There’s a raucous reception when I finally get there. My partner Derek makes bacon sandwiches and gets out the Champagne. My phone rings and it’s a Tory businessman who’s currently in Australia “You’re the only one of our top 50 target seats we didn’t take.” I tell him he should have known better!

Saturday, May 8

In the morning, the team gathers for the street stall. It’s cold, wet and windy. But this doesn’t matter to us. We still can’t quite believe it, and can’t stop laughing.

Several days blur into one. Catching up with sleep, watching Aston Villa on Sunday, not answering the phone to anybody from the media. But when I get back to my office at Westminster I finally accept it’s not a dream. I’ve won, Labour is in opposition, and there are so many new faces in the tea room that I’m wondering whether I’ve stumbled into the wrong room by mistake.