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Emily Frith: “It’s a dream job”

As speculation continued about Emily Frith’s sudden decision to stand down as Lib Dem PPC for Hampstead & Kilburn, I thought perhaps someone ought to ask her a few questions. So, via e-mail, I did.

WHL: When were you offered this new government job?
Emily Frith: It was the weekend after the hustings [19th/20th January] I was asked to apply, having previously worked for the party on health policy

WHL: And when did you decide to take the job?
EF: Last Wednesday [February 13th]. I wanted to make sure I had spoken to the key people in the Lib Dems locally and to my current employers before making an announcement public.

WHL: What exactly is the position you’ve taken?
EF: A special adviser in Health and DWP [Department for Work and Pensions] issues.

WHL: What was your motivation?
EF: I’ve always wanted to do this job – it’s a dream job.

WHL: Do you see yourself standing as a PPC in the future?
EF: Absolutely – my experience in Hampstead & Kilburn made me realise I definitely want to do this in the future.

WHL: To what extent did the scale of the battle in H&K have a bearing on your decision to step down?
EF: None at all. The seat is extremely close and a key London seat for the party. They are a brilliant team of local activists and I was looking forward to moving up and joining the campaign.

Emily starts her new position on Monday. I wish her all the best. If she wants to stand as a PPC again, I suspect it’s unlikely to be in Hampstead & Kilburn.

Shouting into an empty room: Emily’s gone

No great surprise that the other parties made hay over Emily Frith’s decision to stand down as Liberal Democrat PPC for Hampstead & Kilburn.

It reflects badly on her, and is a headache and a half for the local party (not for the first time).

Conservative councillor Gio Spinella argued on Twitter that a Tory-style primary would have weeded out the half-hearted. Hard to see how – if anything, a primary approach is typically more about style and rhetoric than substance. Spinella admitted that the three Tory candidates had been through a vetting procedure beforehand at which such questions were asked.

Cllr Gio Spinella

When I pointed out the natural implication of his argument

@camdentories that implies the local LDs are so incompetent that they can’t spot a weak link? Do you think that?
— West Hampstead (@WHampstead) February 19, 2013

he stopped short of an outright yes, but

@camdentories I think their candidate quit after a month for another job. I think that answers your question…
— Giovanni Spinella (@GioSpinella) February 19, 2013

Keith Moffitt, local councillor, chair of the Camden Liberal Democrats, and chairman of the PPC selection committee, said that “commitment” was indeed one of the areas that all the shortlisted candidates were grilled on.

Apparently (and frankly, unsurprisingly), it wasn’t the case that she accepted the nomination knowing that there was another option in her back pocket. Instead, Emily was approached at a weekend for newly nominated PPCs and effectively recruited by a minister to become a Special Advisor working, I’m led to understand, across health and pensions.

It’s very reasonable to criticise a minister for recruiting a PPC, knowing how disruptive that would be locally. It’s also very reasonable to criticise Emily herself for committing to the constituency and then bailing out. Surely if this had been a safe Lib Dem seat (are there any of those left?) then her decision would have been different. On the other hand, she has a family and everyone – even a politician – has to think about providing for their children. Being a PPC doesn’t bring any financial reward and it’s a long process. Nevertheless, that’s something you know before you sign up and I would imagine her short-lived tenure as PPC will leave a bad taste in many local Lib Dems’ mouths. Don’t expect her to stand here again.

There will be a pause before the nomination process starts again. Expect to see some more familiar names in the fray – the party has quite a large pool of experienced campaigners from which to draw. Both existing and former councillors could well be in the hat. Could Russell Eagling follow in the footsteps of his partner Ed Fordham who placed third in 2010? Might James King, ardent Lib Dem campaigner and former Kilburn councillor, have a tilt? Janet Grauberg and David Abrahams – also former Kilburn councillors might be tempted. The faithful might be very wary of taking another candidate parachuted in from outside the area.

Meanwhile, as I suggested in yesterday’s post, it would be good to see the Conservatives taking advantage of their rivals discomfort not by ramming it down their throats but rather by hogging the pulpit for as long as they can to tell the voters of Hampstead & Kilburn why they should overturn that 42 vote deficit that kept Chris Philp out of Westminster in 2010.

[update: http://www.westhampsteadlife.com/2013/02/emily-frith-its-dream-job-0056.html]

Another story rumbles on in the background to all this. Nigel Rumble has been a member of all three main politicial parties. At the moment he’s a Labour card holder. He’s been dropping not very subtle hints on Twitter that he’d be an excellent candidate – no-one seems to be talking about him for the Labour nomination and if it’s an all-women shortlist then he’d be ruled out anyway. So, will Nigel be the first independent candidate to throw his hat in the ring?

Unlike the LibDem PPC looking for a quick “safe house”. I have a principle main home in H&K and am part of this wonderful vibrant community!
— Nigel Rumble (@nigelrumble) February 19, 2013

What H&K needs will be an “independent” candidate who engages with the local people of the constituency not for party CV profile building !
— Nigel Rumble (@nigelrumble) January 21, 2013

Emily Frith stands down as Lib Dem PPC

I met Emily Frith last Monday at the local Area Action Group. She seemed rather nice, if perhaps a little timid. I am assured that she can turn on the steely politician-speak when needed.

Emily, centre stage, when she won the nomination

Were she to have had any chance of playing a meaningful role in the next general election then she’d certainly need to find that inner steel. As the Lib Dem PPC for Hampstead & Kilburn she was going to face an uphill battle. But now we’ll never know if she had what it takes as she’s had to relinquish the role as would-be MP just a month and three days after being nominated.

She released a statement this afternoon:

“It is with regret that I have to let you know that I am standing down as the Liberal Democrat Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Hampstead and Kilburn just a few weeks after I had the honour of being selected by Liberal Democrat members in the constituency.

This has come about because I have been offered a job in government in which I will be working to give the Liberal Democrats a stronger voice within the Coalition in key areas where I have expertise. However, as this job is politically restricted I will not be allowed to continue as a parliamentary candidate.

I am very sorry to be leaving the campaign at this stage, as I have enjoyed working with Hampstead and Kilburn’s excellent team of campaigners backed by the strong membership I have enjoyed getting to know in recent months.”

It’s a shame that she wasn’t able to be more specific about the job she’s taking on “in key areas where I have expertise”. One wonders what it says about her belief deep down of her chances of winning this seat. Remember that although the Lib Dems came third in 2010 here, Hampstead & Kilburn was the closest three-way seat in the country but at the moment pundits are calling the next election here a two-horse race.

Now the Lib Dems have to go through the selection process all over again – apparently it’s not as simple as just choosing the person who came second in their ballot. Cllr Keith Moffitt, who leads the Lib Dems in Camden said, 

“Obviously our members and supporters in Hampstead & Kilburn will be disappointed as Emily had impressed during the selection and was already working hard with local campaigners… We will be looking to advertise for a new Prospective Parliamentary Candidate shortly.”

One would think that the Lib Dems need to put up someone that already has a power base in the constituency if they are to have any hope of taking this seat.

Meanwhile, Conservative PPC Simon Marcus will be thinking that the start to his campaign couldn’t be going any better – as things stand he has no Labour or Liberal Democrat candidate to campaign against. This would be a great opportunity for him to set out his stall before the party apparatus falls into the negative campaigning that – whatever the protestations of candidates and party workers – seems to be an inevitable part of electioneering.

[update: http://www.westhampsteadlife.com/2013/02/shouting-into-empty-room-emilys-gone-0055.html]
[update: http://www.westhampsteadlife.com/2013/02/emily-frith-its-dream-job-0056.html]

Emily Frith is Lib Dem’s H&K candidate

Last night, the local Liberal Democrats nominated Emily Frith as their candidate for the Hampstead & Kilburn seat at the next general election.

Frith is the first candidate from the main three parties to be named. The Conservatives will be choosing from a shortlist of three at the end of the month, while Labour are being much cagier and it may not be until the summer that we find out who will be the third name in the ring.

What do we know of Emily Frith. According to one of her two Twitter accounts (@EmilyFrith and @EmilyFrithHandK) she’s a “Blackheath mum”. As Richard Osley has already pointed out, this gives us the (outside) possibility of two consecutive Blackheath residents as MP – Glenda Jackson also lives there. I know lots of you feel strongly about such things.

The more politically focused account, describes her as “a comms advisor working for two national charities. I have over 10 years’ campaigning experience, for charities, community groups & the Liberal Democrats.” Her LinkedIn profile tells us that she’s had experience with the Prison Reform Trust, Driver Youth Trust (a charity for children with literacy problems), as well as for the Lib Dems themselves.

On her own website, emilyfrith.net, the Cambridge graduate explains why she wants to be an MP.

“I’ve seen the job of an MP first-hand, and I think its one of the best jobs you can have. Yes its busy, yes the hours are silly and you are doing at least two jobs – being present in your constituency and campaigning on its behalf in parliament, but the rewards are immense.

I want to be a really good backbench MP. Someone who helps individual families with their housing problems or campaigns on issues like transport or access to local schools. Yes I know casework can be frustrating, when progress is slow and the demands are high, but to actually succeed in changing someone’s life in such a fundamental way is a privilege.

I want to stand up for the issues I care about, which tend to be the kind of Cinderella services which are too often neglected by mainstream political debate – prison reform, children in care, mental health services and homelessness. I think that the intractable seeming nature of some of these problems is really down to a lack of political will to solve them. I want to be a voice for those people whose voices are so often ignored.”

So far, so fairly predictable.

Hampstead & Kilburn is a very high profile constituency, even more so after the incredibly close race in 2010 that saw her colleague Ed Fordham place third, just 841 votes behind Labour’s Glenda Jackson. Emily has a big task on her hands if she is to overcome the antipathy towards Lib Dems nationally and climb ahead of the two other parties. At least, while campaigning on Sunday, she saw at first hand some of the unique challenges of H&K:

“Spotted two celebrities at different times of the morning– James Corden and Matt Smith. This is such a glamorous constituency.”

Before she was selected as the candidate, Emily wrote that she would “Design a strategy to engage diverse groups such as young commuters, families and people from different backgrounds with key messages and different communication tools, e.g., Twitter and Facebook”. Now that she’s been chosen, does this mean we’re about to endure a social media onslaught? Glenda won without much recourse to social media, but Ed – by far the most active online of the three – no doubt garnered some votes because of his tweeting. Aside from the two Twitter accounts, there’s also a Facebook page already.

Based on this trawl of her online presence, Emily seems to be an enthusiastic candidate with a strong record of creating campaigns but it’s not immediately clear what many of these campaigns have achieved. This may just be a communication issue, but she does describe herself as a communications professional.

No doubt we’ll get to know more about her in the coming months – we’re still more than two years away from the election. At least we can be fairly sure that if she should surprise the early pundits and become the next MP for Hampstead & Kilburn, she’s unlikely to disappear off to the jungle. Here’s what she tweeted about Nadine Dorries’ recent escapade:

“Being on telly and eating insects is not a good enough reason for having a month off work. What does #nadine think she’s being paid to do?”