STILL on the subject of politicians hacking off voters, I was reminded this morning of an unfortunate incident during my first election campaign in 2001. What reminded me was a Royal Mail card put through our door at the weekend asking Carolyn to collect a letter for which the sender had paid insufficient postage; “£1.30 to pay” reads the scribbled legend on the card.

My election agent (we’re back in 2001 now — do keep up) had decided it might be a good idea for me to write personally to all the first-time voters in the constituency. And to save the time and effort that would be involved in hand delivering them, he decided that, since there was enough cash left in the kitty, and we were still well below our legal spending limit, we could afford to splash out on a few hundred second class stamps. A local volunteer agreed to affix the said stamps to the envelopes and to post them. 

So far so good.

And then the phone calls began. Rather unwisely, I had included my home number on the letter and invited any young voter to call me to discuss any issue of concern in the run-up to polling day. Bad move. Actually, very few of the letter’s intended recipients bothered to call, but only because they had left it to their parents to take the Royal Mail card reading “postage to pay” to the sorting office to collect my words of wisdom.

A large proportion of the letters had been posted sans stamp. Can you imagine how well disposed you would feel towards a politician if you arrived at a sorting office to collect what you might reasonably suspect was an important letter, only to be told you had to fork out over a quid to receive it… and then to discover it’s from a candidate in the general election!?

My profuse (and, frankly, panic-laden) apologies seemed to assuage most of my callers and a dread fear of having to pay out hundreds of pounds of compensation to the recipients (and therefore of being disqualified for going over the spending limit) eventually receded.

I have advised Carolyn, therefore, not to bother collecting the under-stamped letter. It’ll probably only be from some bloody politician anyway…