Just wanted to say congratulations to my erstwhile opponent in Oxford West and Abingdon, Amanda Mclean, on being accepted onto the A-list of Tory candidates.

/normal rabidly-partisan service resumes shortly

Last night, I was invited to give a presentation to Oxford Women in Politics (OxWiP for short), a student society who do exactly what they say on the tin. Now that I’m not a PPC, I don’t get so many invitations to speak at events, so it was a really nice opportunity to reflect on what I learned as a candidate and what I’d advise other young women thinking about getting involved in politics, at whatever level. The executive committee were kind enough to take me out to Chiang Mai afterwards, which was unexpected for a student group, and even apologised for me being the only British diner at a table of young American students! As if, with my mania for American politics, I’d turn down the opportunity to discuss the South Dakota decision, the new Supreme Court, the state of the UK and US health services, whether I should go and do a masters degree at UPenn, where American women buy underwear with no M&S and a hundred and one other vital issues over a free dinner with a bunch of expat graduate students! A really fascinating evening.

I’ve been trying recently, in between campaigning for the local elections, doing my job, having a cold and trying to get through the frankly mediocre season 4 of Buffy on DVD, to make it to a few meetings that are about political issues, rather than, as has seemed to be the case in the last year, only getting to meetings about political organising. The strategy seems to be working, as I’ve been to four this month.

Last Saturday, I went back to college to an alumnae event (yes, I know they are normally deathy!) with the two new Somervillian MPs, Nia Griffith and Helen Goodman. They’re both Labour, which is nice, and were joined on the panel by the Somervillian Labour MEP, Mary Honeyball. I thought all three were solid, if uninspiring - they’d given an undertaking not to be party-political, and in consequence it seemed from where I was sitting that their comments were rather muted and colourless, and the discussion didn’t really come alive.

I was asked to speak at another event last week as well, a meeting about pro-choice issues for the Labour club and OUSU women’s campaign. They had titled it something like “Moving beyond a debate on time-limits to a campaign for free publicly-funded abortion on demand”. It wasn’t clear to me why I was invited to speak, so, with the luxury of not having to represent anyone but myself, I was able to talk freely. I’m strongly of the opinion that, whether we want it to or not, a debate about time limits on abortion provision is coming to bite us on the bottom - it’s only as far away as Ann Widdecombe or David Amess winning the private members’ ballot - but I’m not sure that’s what the organisers wanted to hear. I also don’t think they wanted to hear me tell them to stop calling for “abortion on demand”, but to find a more concilatory way to express the concept; or to suggest using the agenda around choice in public services to the benefit of pro-choice campaigning; or to suggest that the pro-choice movement should run a campaign not targeted exclusively at Guardian readers. Oh well.

The week before I attended the Oxford Child Poverty Action Group’s meeting about poverty and educational underachievement, which I meant to write up at the time. The speakers who made the most impression were the head of one of the primary schools on Blackbird Leys, a large estate in the south-east of Oxford, who really nailed the myth that Oxfordshire is entirely made up of affluent middle-class kids with fantastic support from home, and Tim Brighouse, who I believe directs the London Challenge programme, talking about the impact that “butterflies” can have - small ideas that once implemented in schools, have an impact disproportionate to their expense.

Finally, this month, I also went to a speaker meeting with a wholly-unimpressive representative of the International Union of Sex Workers. I should say that, thanks to the nagging from Chris and others and to the spectacle of the GMB winning their first sex worker employment tribunal, I’ve come round to the idea of unionising workers in the broader sex industry. However the speaker seemed to assume that all sex workers, including women prosititutes on the streets, chose to do what they do, were rarely victims of abuse or trafficking and were not selling sex through desperation. She rejected out of hand the government’s proposals around prostitution, and called for outright legalisation and for toleration zones. It was interesting to listen to her, but I was disappointed in the audience, who seemed to be unwilling to pick up on the contradictions of what she was saying - calling at one point for legalisation of prostitution, and then a few minutes later saying that the way that magazines such as Nuts and Zoo depict women feeds into a culture that doesn’t value women’s autonomy.

So that was the month that was, for me anyway. One of the reasons I like living in Oxford is because there are opportunities to go to really interesting events like this pretty regularly, not that I’ve always used them. It just feels good to talk about policies as well as process sometimes.

Update: one of the other interesting things about living in Oxford is the ongoing debate - and increasingly tiresome protests from the antis - about the new Oxford animal research laboratory. Tomorrow, there will be the first ever pro-research demo in Oxford, as I flagged up a few days ago. Unfortunately I can’t be there, as I have a longstanding committment to be somewhere else. I’ll say this for Evan Harris, despite being wrong on many things, he’s sound on this issue.

Seems he was one of those who signed the statement that precipitated Charlie’s resignation. Nothing less than I would expect from our friend the good doctor.

As a local resident said to me on the doorstep this morning, haven’t they shown themselves up this week? Now, who’s it going to be next? I’m sure there will be plenty of volunteers.

It’s my last week in my current job and some sodding liberal has resigned from the city council, bestowing on us all a December by-election, so unless you want tales from the stump, there won’t be much coming from me until that bit of business is disposed of. And to think that I had thought I’d never have to tramp the mean streets of OxWAb again…

Evan Harris re-opens that can of worms. Cheers mate.

Glad you’re so liberal and leftwing as to support a woman’s right to choose. Your mates at the BMA rejected shortening the time limit, didn’t you hear?

This Tuesday, Dr Evan Harris, the Liberal Democrat MP, will call for the government to set up an inquiry into whether the upper abortion limit should be lowered to 22 weeks.

In a Commons debate, he will argue there is evidence that the age of viability of the foetus could have changed because premature babies now survive at just 23 weeks gestation.

More in the Sunday Times.

Is a new, excellent, Labour blog. Go visit it. Trees for Labour.

My favourite post is this one, on the lack of rational informed argument against the bill to introduce a new offence of incitement to religious hatred:

“To take a specially egregious example, one of the more slow-witted politicians ever produced by Oxford University, Dr Evan ‘Two Planks’ Harris for the Liberal Democrats said “The government’s measure would stifle religious debate and feed an increasing climate of censorship”. It, errm, doesn’t look like that if you read the bill. … Gamma double minus, Dr Harris. I’ll be having a word with your tutor.”

Bumming around the internet and found this fascinating article by Benjamin Katz about distributed campaigning - basically, using IT to get the work of campaigning in elections out to your staff and volunteers. Love the idea of being able to farm out call lists, making calls *and* data entry to volunteers on their own computers working from home, though I do see the problems with quality-controlling the messages they’re giving out that he raises.

Can’t imagine that the horrible database we Labour people use would be able to cope with this level of activity any time soon, though!

So, maybe it’s a bit self-indulgent, but then as our count declared at 6am in the morning and most of the Oxford Labour Party were rightly in Andrew’s count anyway, I guess I can be forgiven for writing my thanks. The vast majority of the people I want to thank were volunteers, so as well as my thanks here, they all know that they can claim the liquid portion of my appreciation any time they want!

Thanks, firstly, to the OxWAb team: Susanna, James, Chris Brooke, Kathy Gospel, Peter Stalker, Brian Chang, Nicola, Tom, Rita, Sue and Peter Ledwith, Peter Johnson, Christopher McCready, Pat and Archie Brown in Oxford; Andrew H-S, Catherine Arekelian and Chris Robbins in Kidlington; Rod Dacombe, Emma and friends, Bobbie, Bridget, Caroline and Les in Abingdon; James and Phil in the villages; everyone else who had leaflets dropped at their door, ran polling stations, canvassed and knocked up. Many thanks for your efforts - I promise there are no more deliveries at least for a while! Thanks.

Thanks, in particular, to Andrew Nairne, who’ll make a great councillor somewhere, even if it’s not for WestCentral; to Rachel and Joe Eden and Rod Dacombe; to Oscar, who achieved a lesser swing than me in Newbury.

To the Oxford East team: Andrew and Val, always ready with advice for a novice; Chris Hurn, Tom, Lawrence, Pete and Dan Simpson - lots of responsibility for young shoulders and you coped amazingly well. Good luck in whatever you do next - travelling, university, finals, finding a new job and lazing around all summer respectively! Val C - your union should be proud of you, and we certainly are. Thanks.

To Mum and Dad, who made me what I am and who coped admirably - as non-party members and first-time activists - with the chaos of election day, and night, and next morning. My little brother Marcus, 18 last month, who worked above and beyond the call of duty, even with a grazed hand, and who Dad thinks has been bitten with the political bug too! Carole and Shannon, for your friendship and enthusiasm for what we were doing, even in the small hours of the count with no end in sight. Thanks.

Thanks to the young turks - Ed and Rick, who have proved themselves good drinking buddies and better friends; Tim, who’ll always be an Oxford young turk even if he’s off elsewhere - Haringay is not in Oxford, Tim!; and Dan - it’s all your fault I did this. Thanks, I think.

To my agent, Colin - sorry for making you go outside the ring road twice. If I ever do this again I want you to come too.

And to Jo, who knows how I feel about her.

As a candidate, you get all sorts of emails from the party, including the funny ones from John O’Farrell, the American style ones pleading for more money to fight those marginal seats on the last few days of the campaign, and the earnest ones from party bigwigs. Now, for the most part, my disagreements with my party on the conduct of the campaign, as opposed to policy, have been kept quiet for the sake of unity and for those candidates in tight fights around the country. But I thought I’d put my tuppence up on the blog so people know where I stand - this was a reply to the congratulations email sent by the general secretary of the Labour Party.

Subject: Re: You won it for Labour
To: Matt Carter, General Secretary of the Labour Party
Date: Sat 7th May 2005

Dear Matt,

Thanks for your message. I’m sharing the joy of a third Labour term.

However I’m worried by this part of your message: “We … have a clear mandate for new Labour’s radical programme of reform”. I would hope that after Thursday when we were made to suffer for Iraq and the other mistakes and timidities of our first and second terms, that we approach a third term in a spirit of humility, recognising that the electorate have rejected the excesses of new Labourism. I hope that we now have a chance to revitalise our party, and re-energise our members.

To help you resist the temptation of dismissing me as a member of the awkward squad, I’d like to make clear that I’ve worked for months to get Andrew Smith re-elected in Oxford East, despite my profound disagreements with him on some areas of policy.

Our victory this week has finally put the ghosts of 1983, 1987 and 1992 to rest - perhaps now it’s time to put the tired brand and firefighting mentality of “new” Labour to rest? I believe it’s time for a new generation and a new attitude in the party, formed not in opposition to Thatcher, but in awareness of the possibilities of government. There are members here in Oxford and all over the country who have worked for this third term because of the tax credits, the SureStarts and the goal of ending child poverty, but despite PFI, council house privatisation, top-up fees and Iraq - unnecessary and counterproductive policies that make not a jot of difference to middle England but seriously disillusion our members and traditional supporters.

Thursday’s results - in Oxford East, Bristol, Manchester, Brent and elsewhere - make it clear that although we must fight the traditional battle against the Tories on our right, we also have to come up with a better strategy for fighting the Lib Dems to our left - “Lib Dems soft on crime” just won’t cut it anymore. I firmly believe that we are the left choice, and no other party can match our committment to delivering social justice, but we do it too quietly, without fanfare, in a way that is overshadowed by policies to appeal to former Tory voters. I hope for a third term that is bolder and better - on international development, ending poverty, climate change and opportunity through education.

I’d be interested to hear your views on how we can move forward from here towards a broader party and a socialist future.

with very best wishes,

Antonia Bance
no longer PPC Oxford West and Abingdon

My thoughts on policy priorities for the historic third term and the long-overdue thanks to the team to follow.