Michael Moore's Outlook on his personal experience as a candidate as the UK awaits the general election outcome
Third in a two horse race is not where you want to be. But after 18 years in the House of Commons that was my political fate in 2015. The seat had been in the hands of Liberals (and then Liberal Democrats) for 50 years. And then, very definitely, it wasn’t.
People often ask when you learn your fate at election time? In my experience, winning was actually harder to predict than losing. Mine was a (reasonably) marginal seat, with a majority always below six thousand. With ballots cast across a vast rural area, the counting was slow and the result was only ever confirmed late into the night.
But when I lost? That was a lot easier to tell. I kind of knew a few months (maybe even years) before. The data points from the national polls were clear (and bad). But you can’t give up. If you believe in your cause you should be there when things are lost just as you want to be there when it is winning. And there’s always the hope that things will turn around.
So despite the expectations, in that campaign more money was raised and spent locally than ever before. All for the sake of a 50% reduction in votes and a similar decline in vote share. Not a return on investment that anyone in the industry would entertain, I appreciate.
Preparing mentally for the election count itself is not easy. When the polls close at 10pm you are powerless and in limbo. There is always the exit poll by the national broadcasters to keep you busy, though. In 2015 it projected only 10 Liberal Democrat seats (a loss of nearly 50) and mine was not going to be one of them.
As a fresh data point after months of bad polls, this was compelling and grim. And it tallied with the more recent mood music in the constituency. If people hadn’t quite been avoiding eye contact they were not exactly greeting me enthusiastically either.
At the count this lack of enthusiasm was matched by a lack of votes. A fact that was relayed to me at home not long after midnight.
Best practice holds that the candidate should know what is happening before they appear at the count. This good or horrid responsibility falls to the agent (legally responsible for the candidate and their campaign) who, with a small team of activists, is allowed in to watch as independent officials count and tally the bundles of votes.
Which is how I came to know nine years ago that I was third in that particular two horse race.
But it would be several more hours before this was official. And that would only happen once one of the most sacred of election rituals was complete – the adjudication of ‘spoilt ballots’ by the Returning Officer (the lead official overseeing the count and declaring the result).
People who want to vote, but not for the candidates they have been offered, are amongst the most creative in the country. OK, ‘creative’ is a euphemistic way to describe what some people write across their ballot papers.
But the Returning Officer shows these ‘spoilt’ papers to all of the candidates, huddled around a table before the final result is announced. For a brief moment, the character assessments (and other thoughts) scrawled across the voting papers have everyone’s attention. I have to say it is much more impactful than not bothering to vote.
Aside from this, and consoling my friends at the count throughout the night, I filled in a lot of time doing broadcast interviews. As I finished the last one about 6am I turned round to an empty room. All the officials and party activists were gone, the tables dismantled, the room swept. The world had moved on. Very quickly.
As I write this the UK is well into its latest general election, the results of which will be known not long after this column is published.
As I wrote last month, I loved my time in politics, but don’t miss the gruelling election campaigns as such. But politics matters and just as it did in 2015 on a personal level, the world will move on very quickly once again in July and there will not be much time to catch our breath.
We are ready for that. As a major contributor to the UK, the private capital industry will be at the heart of the efforts to boost growth across the country. So we look forward to working to deliver our ‘Manifesto for Growth’ with whomever forms the new government. More about that next month.
Michael Moore
Chief Executive, BVCA
This article was originally published on 4 July 2024 on the Private Equity News website here.
