Hendon Constituency special - How not to increase your majority as a local MP

I live in the Hendon ward. Since I've been old enough to vote, I've had four MP's. Two have been Tory. The first was Sir John Gorst. He was a mate of my Dad, who was also a Tory. Although I disagreed with his politics, he always struck me as a decent constituency MP. I knew many people he helped in the course of his casework. The next was Andrew Dismore. I have to be honest and say I couldn't stand Dismore and he is one of the reasons I left the Labour party. He arranged for me to be banned from party membership in the most dishonest and devious manner in 2011. However I cannot fault his work ethic and despite my personal feelings, I can honestly say he was a good MP. He built up a large personal vote on the back of this and nearly retained his seat when Labour were swept from power in 2010, only losing by 103 votes. To this day, I believe he lost because he stupidly alienated Lib Dem voters in Mill Hill, who he put a leaflet out attacking. Previously they had voted Labour to keep the Tories out. Dismore was trying to shore up the Labour vote, but his leaflet was really counter productive. A classic example of shooting yourself in the foot. He was replaced by Matthew Offord. Offord was a bit of a strange character. I can't say I got on with him, but he was crafty enough to know who he had to be in bed with locally if he wanted to win. He was very popular with a whole raft of groups that normally gave the Tories a wide berth. The seat transformed from safe Labour in 2005, to marginal in 2010 and relatively safe Tory until Boris Johnson destroyed the Tories credibility. If you want to know how to build a local following and a strong core vote, Matthew Offord is a great case study. Offord realised that the Tories were on a hiding to nothing and decide to jack it in in 2024. 

His Tory replacement Ameet Jogia seemed to me to be a very lacklustre candidate. I suspected that no one really wanted the job of getting walloped by Labour. His opponent was David Pinto-Duschinsky. He always seemed to me to be a decent, steady, if rather undynamic character. The assumption was that of the three seats in Barnet (Hendon, Finchley and Golders Green and Chipping Barnet), Hendon was the biggest target for Labour, the others looked a bit more elusive. As expected, Labour won a landslide, but whereas the other seats delivered four figure majorities for Labour, Hendon became the most marginal seat in the country, with Jogia losing by fifteen votes.

It was pretty clear to me that if Matthew Offord had stood, he'd have won. My assumption as to the closeness of the result was down to the complete lack of campaigning nous that Barnet Labour have traditionally shown. Of course they will point to the stunning council results in 2022, but this was a perfect storm for the Tories nationally. Of course, they took it as a vindication of their brilliant campaign. It wasn't. The Tories had replaced a wily leader in Richard Cornelius, who defied all expectations in 2018 to keep Barnet blue, with an inept and disengaged replacement in Dan Thomas. Thomas alienated many of the hard working backroom campaigners, who simply downed tools.

As Labour assumed Hendon was in the bag, they threw resources at FGG and Barnet, neglecting Hendon. It nearly went very wrong. Both the Tories and Labour, to me drew the wrong lessons. The Tores thought they had a brilliant candidate. Labour thought they had enacted stunning coup across Barnet. The truth is that in Hendon the turnout was 55%, in Finchley it was 63% and in Chipping Barnet it was 65%. In Hendon, the lack of effort meant 10% fewer voters turned out. In short, neither man excited the voters.

A year on, we are starting to be able to assess the relative merits of the new MP in Hendon. As someone who got in by the thinnest of margins, there are certain things I'd expect to be taken as read, to build local profile. Things like getting behind popular campaigns, ensuring all casework is done properly, being seen as on the side of the voters. So how has Mr Pinto-Duschinsky doing?

I have to say, the signs aren't good. At the start of August, I wrote to him. I got no reply. I'd almost forgotten, when I got this email today

Dear Roger

Many thanks for your recent email. It is good of you to take time to get in touch.
 
Please be assured that my team and I read every one of the many hundreds of emails we receive each week. We also track the mix of issues raised by constituents, and regularly review how the views of residents should shape my activities locally and in Parliament.

As well as responding to email correspondence, we are working hard each week on helping constituents with individual local issues, speaking and asking questions in Parliament, arranging and attending events locally, and pushing for improvements to the lives of Hendon residents. Over the past year alone, we have worked on over 8,000 cases to try to help local residents.
 
I am very grateful for you sharing your views on this important issue. Your mail has been read, categorised and logged and will inform the work we do and the decisions I take.
 
Please let me know if you would like to receive a more detailed answer. I would be delighted to reply in more depth if you’d find that helpful. Simply reply to this email and let me and the team know and we will aim to reply to you within three-four weeks.
 
Thank you so much again for getting in touch.
 
With all my best wishes,
 
David

David Pinto-Duschinsky MP
Member of Parliament for Hendon

So there you go. It would have been better if he hadn't bothered. IMHO it is worse to get nothing than to get a patronising fob off. He says "Please let me know if you would like to receive a more detailed answer" you do not have to be the Brain of Britain to figure out that I wouldn't have contacted him unless I wanted a proper answer. When I looked today, his website had out of date surgery information on.

click for more readable version

Now there are three possibilities regarding his non answer email. The first is he knows I am a Barnet blogger and I am not particularly sympathetic to Barnet Labour, so he's decided to annoy me, so he can tell all his mates what a jolly jape it is to try and annoy me. The second is that he replies to everyone like that, and can't really be bothered to do too much work. The third is that he suspects that the email I sent was setting a trap to make him look bad and thought a non reply would be the safest option. Well for his information, I don't need to set traps for local politicians. They are perfectly capable of being useless without my help. I raised a serious point and wanted a serious answer. As far as I am aware, people don't write to MP's for the fun of it. I've written to him once since he was elected. 

Mr Pinto-Duschinsky seems keen on Facebook to promote all of the work he's doing. This is a recent post from him

David Pinto-Duschinsky MP, Member of Parliament for HendonMill Hill

ernodStopsmielff8084gt9539ef2tm45 c619aa b:pi535r480Sch61 te ·

Mill Hill East station users: I know you’ve put up with travel disruption and reduced tube services for far, far too long.

Having raised this repeatedly with TfL, I’m happy to say some safety-critical work has now been carried out and services should be back to normal. That means trains running up to every 12 minutes at peak times.

I'll keep pressing TfL to improve transport connectivity at Mill Hill East, and across our constituency. Email me at david.pintoduschinsky.mp@parliament.uk with any issues and I'll do all I can to help.

Now this all sounds very good, doesn't it. Just what a good, hard working MP does.However, there is one small point missing. TFL is run by the Labour Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, who has been in charge since 2016. There is no mention of this in his post. The people of Hendon are not stupid.

I had a look through his Facebook page. Lots of turning up at local faith groups, praising the local council, knocking on doors (mostly in safe Labour areas). Very little about campaigns, successful casework, etc. I can see almost no engagement with difficult local issues that actually improve the lives of locals. My concern when he was selected was that Labour wanted a nodding dog MP in what they thought would be an easy win. They didn't want someone who might be a bit difficult and independently minded. For all my reservations about former Tory MP's Gorst and Offord, they were at least their own man. Dismore would give proper responses and would proactively ensure that correspondence was answered in a way that displayed a degree of interest. 

There is a long time to go before the next election. I have no idea at all as to how it will go, but it is clear to me that unless our local MP ups his game and starts responding properly to people, he will be shown the door at the first opportunity.