Basically, your troll is a deluded wazzock.

Following yesterday's blog about the anonymous person who regularly criticises West Kent for our alleged lack of campaign support, I have received this lovely email from the Chairman of a nearby critical marginal seat. I have reproduced this as

(a) It shows how much our efforts are appreciated, and
(b) highlights some of the problems we, as a party, still need to address.

I have reproduced this with the writer's permission, having removed any references to his name or the Associations referred to.   I am grateful to the writer for his kind words and consideration.

Andrew,

Regarding your blog about West Kent's support of marginals - as far as I can see, you are the only "safe" Tory area doing anything similar.

Some examples from my own personal experience:

(Constituency A). I met the Chairman at a function for 40/40 seats and potential benefactor constituencies. I quickly established that they have loads of members, a lot of councillors/safe council, an MP with a big 5-figure majority and by his own admission no real campaign targets in their patch. They've been asked to help with a nearby marginal (20 mins away), but it became apparent that they haven't given any actual support ("I suppose we ought to really, but..."). Instead I heard a long tale of woe about the impossibility of finding new council candidates to replace the over-mighty and lazy incumbents, the inability of the chairman to challenge the selection of these councillors because there are no alternative candidates available, and how all this makes it impossible to rally troops or really do much of anything because, you know, it's all just such an uphill battle. I asked what he'd done to recruit new councillors, mentioning some of your ideas and things we'd tried...tumbleweed rolled past.

Constituency B. This was supposed to provide help for (name of correspondent's constituency), but I don't think we heard anything from them. At the time we assumed that for some reason they took a dislike to us and/or went elsewhere, plus there was some story that they were worried their new candidate might not win (15k majority...). Well, one of our main activists moved to that area a couple of years ago and is now travelling back 1 day per week to help in because there's just nothing going on there. They didn't have Merlin. He's got them up and running on it, but they seem to have lost interest because it requires data to be put in first. They don't canvass. He tried to set up a delivery network, but no one could really see the point. For all their members and funds, they appear to have no effective campaign strength or expertise.

I have also heard via a couple of sources that a number of the 'big' (nearby rural county) seats are in dire financial straits because they spend so much money on an old building, and staffing it. In total there must be many tens of thousands of pounds every year which could be funnelled into campaign funds in marginal seats. No wonder we haven't won an election for 22 years...sometimes I wonder that we ever won!

On the bright side, we have had support from a number of constituencies, nearby (name) and (name) for instance are quite active on our behalf and  (name of MP) was here this weekend in fact. 

Even so, what you do with mentoring, helping to build capacity and spread good ideas personally and via your blog goes far beyond simply turning out out with a team of activists, which itself is vastly more than what many "strong" Tory associations are doing.

Basically, your troll is a deluded wazzock. But you knew that.

cheers,