The wonderful Dave McCobb

Great to see Cllr Dave McCobb from Hulll, also known as the Liberal Democrat Director of Field Campaigns, getting the credit he rightly deserves in The Independent:

On 10 November, a week after the North Shropshire by-election was called, Dave McCobb, the Liberal Democrat director of campaigns, drove up to spend a couple of days in the sprawling rural constituency.

With the party having finished third or fourth here for all but one election since 1992, his aim was to find a way of achieving a strong second place that could be built on in the future.

“His way of doing that is to just get out the car at random and knock on doors,” a party source says. “The very first house was someone who worked at the local Conservative club but said they’d be voting for us. The second was an elderly woman who’d voted Conservative all her life but was so fed up with them she ended up putting one of our posters in her window.”

Two days later, McCobb went back in London with an improbable message for party bosses. The Tories’ 23,000 majority and near 200-year hold on this seat could, he said, be overturned. The Lib Dems could win it.

The full piece on Dave’s role in a remarkable campaign is well worth a read.

Although I still think Dave’s finest moment was turning a night out on the town into a street letter to local residents…

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