So after being a bit rude about the Invisible Mark, the Liberal Democrat candidate Mark Dyson, (and getting him to reply in Ipswich Spy) I thought I’d give him a call, so we arranged an interview for today. I think that this is his first interview of the campaign.
So how did it go?
Firstly I asked him about when his site will go up (the votedyson.com site is still on a parked domain as I write). He said that he didn’t have any Ashcroft cash so the Liberal Democrats had to do this themselves and that he was the man doing the website.
Then it was a question about what campaigning he had done in Bridge Ward. He hasn’t done any yet, at the moment he is looking at the town as a whole. Later on he will be campaigning ward by ward. There’s a meeting tomorrow at which they expect to fill the 70 seat meeting.
So I asked about a local issue that has been bothering people, the cement ship noise. Well he’s still got to be briefed fully on this. It wasn’t clear whether or not it was a genuine issue or whether it had been whipped by someone with an axe to grind about the port in general. He was not prepared to comment further until he had the full facts.
So I asked him what he thought was affecting Bridge or South West Ipswich in general. He said that the issues in the South West were likely to be the same as Ipswich as a whole. Unemployment was the number one issue with a 52% increase in unemployment in the last year in Ipswich. So Ipswich needed inward investment and should play to its strengths with a Waterfront that had made great strides and that reminded him very much of Bristol where he had a lot of knowledge.
Then there was the environment, that was a big issue – although he didn’t mention any axe grinding. He thought that there were too many cars in Ipswich and people should get out of their cars an onto buses which would be done through getting minibuses that could hop on and off at non-appointed stops.
So in short he would be fighting for the hospital, the jobs and the buses.
So I asked him about the buses. What was his opinion on that particularly the Ipswich Buses proposed partnership with Go Ahead?
Well he knew about Buses. When he was a regional TV correspondent in the North West of England he talked about it so much that they would joke about him being the buses correspondent. He’d seen metropolitan operations being picked off one by one by large operators and so the halfway house was very interesting. And why shouldn’t metropolitan services be efficient?
So I asked him about Wherstead Road bus services. He politely told me, not for the last time that he didn’t have answers on the very local issues.
So I asked him about a hot local issue, the housing offices. Was he in favour of their closing so that housing services should be delivered on the ground in the estates? He said that he wasn’t going to comment on that as he was going to learn about the big issues and go downwards. He had not yet been briefed on this issue so he did not want to talk out of line.
So I asked him what people were concerned about around the port. Flooding was an uncomfortable subject that people were talking about in whispers.
So would he be devoting time to the campaign in the next six weeks? Oh yes, 100%. Ipswich deserves a proper constituency MP. When asked whether he would move into the constituency he said that he was planning to do so any way – before he got selected – as his wife had roots here and with a young family this was a good place for a child to grow up.
So what were my views of this. Of course he sounds like a nice guy, who doesn’t? He’s also accessible and he knows some macro issues. But his grasp of local issues is remarkably sketchy for someone who wants to represent the town. I’ve no doubt he’ll find out more, but that’s not really the point.
Overall I got the feeling that he was like a Tory candidate in Liverpool or a Labour candidate in Surrey, someone who needs to get a box ticked before going on to the next level. I’ve no doubt he’ll sound quite good on discussion panels, particularly if there are not local issues coming up out of the blue.
There is already a candidate who is making a big issue about fighting for the constituency, and has actually shown some ability to do so. And Ben Gummer actually has a chance of winning the seat. Mark Dyson’s only point of difference with Ben Gummer seemed to be that Mark Dyson wasn’t a Tory, and while that will be good enough for some people I’ll be surprised if he pulls any surprise in this campaign.
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