Chris Fox, Lib Dem Chief Executive: four problems, four good responses?
There will be another Liberal Democrat Voice poll of party members along shortly, including the regular questions about how people rate various figures in the party. It’ll be particularly interesting to see how Chris Fox, Liberal Democrat Chief Executive, comes out of those given four major decisions he has been central to in the last few months:
- Introducing a new online database system for fighting elections, based on the VAN system used in many American and Canadian campaigns, and most notably by Barack Obama
- Moving the party HQ from Cowley Street to Great George Street
- Dealing with the fallout of the loss of Short Money after the general election, yet managing to avoid running up a large deficit
- A major reorganisation of the party’s campaigns staff
For me, those have been four big decisions which he and his colleagues have got right. Two important caveats are that the implementation of the last one (the reorganisation) was done in a way that left a lot of staff unhappy about the process and that both the new database and the new HQ have yet to be really put to the test.
So far though the big decisions look to be going the right way. So will that be reflected in the views of Chris Fox expressed by party members in the poll?
I have come to view headquarters as distant, unresponsive and pretty irrelevant. Sorry to have to say that but that is how I feel based on my personal experience.
The first three, fair enough. So far the re-organisation of Campaigns Staff has been irrelevant on the ground as usual. They have provided a platform on Huddle for local parties to grab templates off each other. Aside from that they are of little use to me and most activists.
A solid press machine would be more worthwhile. Perhaps a Twitter based press feed run by Cowley Street similar to Labour's @labourpress so we know national stories to put out and when.