[Archived] News Article -> "Venky's Out" candidate launches general election campaign

[MCMC1875]

[Miller11]

9 hours ago, MGPensioner said:

Duncan,

Has Kate Hollern been in contact with you or done anything since she was rubber stamped by the Blackburn electorate ?

Didn't she promise to get you an audience with the FA... ?

Or has she forgotten all about the plight of the community football club in her constituency ?

 

Not heard anything from her as yet. There was a recent celebration party they threw to mark her re-election, and I think parliament is now in recess, so she should now be working locally and meeting constituents.

she did indeed promise an audience with the sports minister. I will be chasing her up on this over the next week or so.

 

On a related note, I'd be really interested on people's views on whether or not we should continue with the political protest idea... basically, I have two ideas (one of which I'm leaning towards:

1) Register a "Venky's Out" party and contest elections locally (whether general, local, council etc)

the pros are that we put across a really clear message as to what our aims are, the main con is that with the current prevailing mood amongst a large section of our fan base, it would be met with apathy ("You did this last time, didn't get anywhere") or outright hostility ("things are looking up, don't spoil it")... in all honesty some of the comments I've seen, primarily on social media have left me absolutely flabbergasted. Personally I will never forgive and forget, I despise Venkys and want them gone. I feel I may be in the minority presently though.

 

2) Launch a "Football Reform" party, encouraging candidates to unite together and try and push a political movement. 

We could contest more local seats either way, but this would allow us to gain a lot more exposure and support. Obviously the message would have to be wider than Venkys Out, so maybe we'd lose some of the local interest. I could see candidates supporting other clubs all over the country getting involved.

Probably the single most difficult aspect of the campaign was being so limited in what I spoke about. I tried to remain fairly politically neutral, but this excludes you from a lot of debate and discussion, and potentially lessons the impact and can make you look like you are simply playing at it... while it was only ever a publicity vehicle, there is a really serious point to be made about the state of the game.

I felt a little hamstrung at times, and having a party line to follow would be easier - we could get the common points across while still allowing individual candidates from different clubs to focus their campaigns on their individual agendas...

Thoughts?

 

[Stuart]

The second option is a good and very noble idea, and you would potentially be able to get candidates from lots of different towns and cities. It would require individual protest groups or Trusts to buy into the idea - and to use their (presumably) meagre budgets.

As an ambition though it would have to ultimately be to get a single MP. To do this you would need to have somebody in a specially chosen constituency who has more about them than just the football reform line (which is kind of counter intuitive). They would therefore need to be an experienced campaigner or councillor or maybe even an existing "out of work" Independent.

Without this as an ambition it will simply be a newspaper talking point for the first time it happens and then would disappear forever into the chip shop wrapping. The trouble is that football fans are very fickle. A few years ago the Spirit of Shankly group would have been real contenders if a Merseyside town. As it is I expect they are much happier. The real disgruntled fans are now the former PL North West clubs who nobody gives two stuffs about.

If it's just about poking the establishment in the eye and trying to put pressure on a local MP to fight our corner then I'd be inclined to go with option 1. We won't get any non-Blackburn support but we would have much lower ambitions anyway. A permanent fly in Madame's ointment.

An interesting thought you've sparked though. It's a shame that the make up of government is formed from representatives of the mini-majorities of arbitrary (of historic) geographic locations. If there was a version of proportional representation and (in today's social media age) no requirement for ties to a specific location then we might get a different kind of MP. Groups who represent interests and ideals could garner votes from all over the UK and make it more about the cause and less about local 'personalities'.