The Oldham result was disappointing but not without merit. Lessons needed to be learned for future reference. A pre-election understanding of the area is paramount, otherwise we are essentially playing a hit and miss game.
This involves understanding both the ethnic make-up of the area in question but notably also the additional socio-economic constitution of the area.
There are major lessons that have been learned.
In truth we needed to experience this bad result in order to convince both ourselves and the general activist base of the need for improvement and introduction of more sophisticated electioneering strategies.
The next few months will be interesting indeed.
