Any of us who actually live in the real world read with a certain amount of incredulity and a whole lot of laughter the article in “Political Diary” in the Courier yesterday which claimed Dundee LibDems “were certain of coming of coming second and had a decent chance of winning” the Lochee by-election.
This is simply not true. I think we can all work out Steve’s “source”, who undoubtedly deserves a tartan P45. If Steve's source seriously believes we thought that, from less than 7% of the poll back in May, we were going to win the seat, they are living in cloud cuckoo land.
Our aim all along was to increase our share of the poll (we increased by far more than any other party and indeed Labour and Tory fell back) and put ourselves in position to have a decent chance of picking up one of the 4 seats here in the next Council STV elections. Mission more than accomplished and all credit to Chris Hall, the LibDem candidate who ran a dynamic campaign. A great future lies ahead for Chris.
Steve says Nicol Stephen visited four, perhaps five times. Err, actually three times. It is not tremendously difficult to ask Nicol to visit Dundee as he drives through the city numerous times each month between his constituency in Aberdeen and the parliament in Edinburgh!
The SNP and Labour poured huge resource into the by-election. SNP candidate pictured with Alex Salmond, Kenny McAskill, Nicola Cheerful … you get the picture. Labour threw everything including the kitchen sink into the by-election – I came across two Labour MSPs delivering leaflets in Charleston the Saturday before polling day and bumped into Cathy Jamieson and large Labour Team on a very wet Monday before polling day sheltering from the rain at Tesco in Lochee. Despite all the Labour effort (they had an army out on polling day) Labour fell back, the LibDems moved forward. As an aside, you get a really good value breakfast in Tesco Lochee!
Some haven't done the maths - but the party feeding the inaccuracies to the Bargeton column has. A LibDem increase of 3.9% of the poll across each ward in the City next Council elections means 2 LibDem holds plus LibDem gains in at least two further seats. The Salmond honeymoon is ending, the SNP promises galore are broken and the Dundee Liberal Democrats have never been in better shape to move forward right across the City.