How not to run a campaign

We see that the Beans on Toast and Swansea’s Lib Dems managed to screw up their ‘campaign’ to hold onto out-of-hours minor injuries service in the west of the city. By all accounts, heckling from parliamentary wannabe Peter May during a presentation sufficiently un-nerved health watchdogs to send them scuttling off into private session to make a decision. They later emerged to state they backed the hospital board and not the protestors.

May told the Post that he was going to “seek advice” from the Board of Community Health Councils on how to overturn the decision but an official pointed out that the body “does not have a specific power to overturn any decision." Perhaps we’re being picky, but we can’t help feeling that this is the sort of information that someone purporting to lead a campaign should know beforehand. It's no wonder that the Uplands councillor has a reputation for being noticeably ill-prepared when answering questions – or not – on his cabinet Housing brief in chamber debates.

There will also probably be a few smirks among another group of campaigners over May’s complaint that the CHC went into private session. The irony is he was meeting with other cabinet members behind closed doors this afternoon to look at proposals by users to manage Swansea’s Tennis Centre after the Lib Dem-run council ditched all responsibility for running the publicly provided facility.

We hear that they could have won their fight – which proves that an effective campaign to hold on to something takes a bit more than a petition, a few inept headlines and an uncontrollable tendency to mouth off.

(or dressing up as Batman)