Tories Sowing Oates in Milford?
Thanks to Carmel Oates throwing her bonnet into the by-election ring at least Milford knows it will be spared Adam Taylor-Smith. Thanks be to whoever had the good sense not to allow him to , try, try and try again to join the Tory trough at ‘Your Waverley.’
Carmel has stepped up and suddenly morphed from being an Independent on Witley Parish Council with no obvious track record of any serious activity in Milford into the Conservative Candidate in the Milford by-election.
So why isn’t Carmel described as the ‘Conservative Candidate’ in the recent Tory data harvesting exercise? By the time this dropped through the post onto the doormats of a considerable number of Milford residents on 20 January, Carmel had already been nominated to run for the Conservatives in the Milford Ward By-election on 13 February. She was also being touted by other Conservatives as their candidate on social media. So you would have thought that they would be broadcasting this all over the place. But no, on the data harvester she is just 50% of “the Conservative Team” along with Tory perennial, Peter Martin.
Here’s our earlier post outlining the data harvesting exercise.The Tories data harvesting has begun in a bid to snaffle a vacant seat in Milford.
It all seems a bit odd to us bunch of old cynics at the Waverley Web.
According to the Electoral Commission, the question to ask about the any piece of material is, was this …
…”material that can be reasonably regarded as intended to promote or procure the election of a candidate at an election”
Could it possibly be that the reason she isn’t called the “Conservative Candidate” and it doesn’t refer to the election, is because somebody in Tory HQ at Hindhead thinks that by not labelling her as the candidate they won’t need to include this expensive piece of Tory propaganda in her election expenses? Tut, tut!
Waverley Web can see it must be a bit frustrating for the Tories. They are awash with money but the limits on what you can spend in a Borough Council election are peanuts compared to what they are used to chucking at elections. But do they really expect people to swallow the idea that Carmel and Peter have suddenly developed this burning interest in the views and voting intentions of (some) Milford residents at the same time as she stands for election? Surely not. The Tories may be rich but they aren’t stupid and we are sure that Carmel herself wouldn’t want to entertain such behaviour, would she? We look forward to hearing from her.
Link to electoral commission website here…… just in case the Oates/Martin duo have forgotten how the rules work.
They used this same ploy before the General Election and unless they are putting this leaflet out to every ward (with substitute name) then they won’t get away with it.
Has anyone in Farncombe received this flyer?
Let us hope someone reports this to the authorities then?
Next time we should all just return freepost envelope completely empty.
Costs them but they get nothing.
Simples
What a really good idea Aleksandr.
To be honest the leaflet itself was not the thing that bothered me most (which I’m sure electoral services at WBC has seen). I also think residents see through this stuff.
But this does bug me:
1) you have a major local party put out an election leaflet for a single ward by-election with as close to zero content actually concerning that ward as it’s possible to get. Milford has very clear local issues, and you’ve made it a purely a pop at the current WBC
2) Some of us spend a great deal of time trying to empower residents in a number of ways, and one of those is understanding our overly-complicated local government structure.
This leaflet seeks to conflate Waverley, Police/PCC and Surrey stuff together.
Anyway, they have underestimated the electorate in Milford with that.