Chris Galley

Up at 6 am, and to the terrible news that Wendy Morton had not succeeded in winning Tynemouth. She is a good friend and would have been a wonderful MP. She worked remorselessly in trying to win over the voters, but it simply didn’t work out. Other results confirm that we are heading to a [...]

This is the weekend round up. On Saturday we spent the morning in Ovingham and Wylam, and the afternoon at the top end of Hexham’s Beaumont Park. Sundays have been frowned about in Tory circles. I can well remember as a kid seeing Tory campaign calenders with Sundays blocked out with the phrase “Dies non” and [...]

One of the things that make elections so interesting is when something happens quickly. Believe or not, the picture shown left was almost a spontaneous demonstration! The back story is that we had planned for Theresa Villiers (Shadow Transport Secretary) to visit us possibly next Monday to talk about the A1. The Conservatives have promised [...]

Today I’ve been campaigning for Anne-Marie Trevelyan, who is standing as the Conservative candidate against Sir Alan Beith in Berwick upon Tweed. This is (like Hexham) a massive constituency, it takes multiple hours to get from one corner to the other. My canvasss and leaflet round was based on the left hand side of the [...]

On Friday we packed off to Carlisle to help out John Stevenson, who is fighting to win Carlisle off Labour – we call it mutual assistance. We canvassed a lot of houses, but it was only a small chunk of what seemed like a huge estate. Being Tories, we benefit from top flight canvass board managers, [...]

Today’s highlight was undoubtedly the Hexham Abbey hustings. Personally I also greatly enjoyed the Sung Evensong beforehand, using the Book of Common Prayer. The language of that service is familiar to many, many generations of my family. There’s a line in it towards the end: “by Thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers [...]

The secrets of canvassing won’t be revealed here. Other than that we use various letters to describe voters. So C is Conservative, P for potential Conservative, L for Liberal and so on. Labour’s code letter is S, as in Socialist, which sounds perversely quaint now. Actually those who get an S in this election’s canvass [...]

Today’s crowd of supporters come from Ogle, which is not one of the larger villages, so it didn’t take long to get the place canvassed. It was deceptively cold this morning and so we were glad that mugs of coffee in the heated conservatory were laid on, though I managed to leave my camera there [...]

Canvassing everywhere it feels. First off was Wylam, then Ovington. After that I went with Guy, Fiona and Bev to Ovingham, before ending up in Horsley.
Then we did one good canvassing chunk of Corbridge with the assistance of this motley crew! Plus a camera shy Penelope. Lovely warm day, tanned if not burnt.

Not many orgies in Corbridge, or so Guy Opperman was told today by an 85 year old resident, and who are we to challenge that? Location will remain anonymous to protect the guilty, and I am sure Guy’s blog will tell us more in due course. And not many Liberal Democrats either, it would appear, [...]

I guess Chris Grayling gets fed up of people commenting on his height, but he really is tall. He is also cool, cerebral and likeable, particularly on a one to one basis. Today I was asked to take the shadow Home Secretary around the North East, which we did at break-neck speed.
First stop was Alnwick, [...]

And so to Gosforth to help out Nick Holder, who is standing for the Conservatives in the new seat of Newcastle Central. Newcastle also has local elections for its unitary authority, and so for the first time I came across Labour and Lib-Dem election material. Incidentally I’ve still not seen a single poster for anyone [...]

I spent the whole day in Prudhoe. Now this is unlikely territory for us, but we rolled in with 18 helpers and got 85% of the town leafletted and canvassed. Not sure where the other parties were, not much evidence of them on the ground. I was with a team of 6 and we really [...]

One enormous privilege I have already had out of this election campaign has been to take shadow cabinet ministers around the area. For a number of reasons I was particularly pleased that Nick Herbert was able to visit Belsay and then Berwick, speaking at farmers’ meetings in both locations. Nick is the shadow secretary of state for [...]

Today we finish off Otterburn and Tarset. The weather is very pleasant and I meet a few residents pottering around in their gardens, or farmers busy with lambing. I’ve been asking whether our leaflet is the first one to get out, and everytime we’ve beaten the competition, so far at least. One local character, when I [...]