‘What do you have in mind?’ asked Emma.
‘The moment your brother leaves the house in the morning, I need to know which constituencies he plans to visit, and which senior Labour politicians will be accompanying him, so our workers can be waiting for them as they get off the train.’
‘That’s rather underhand, isn’t it?’
‘Be assured, Lady Clifton—’
‘Emma.’
‘Emma. We are not trying to win a baking competition at your local village fete, but a general election. The stakes couldn’t be higher. You must look upon any socialists as the enemy because this is all-out war. It’s our job to make sure that in four weeks’ time, none of them are left standing – and that includes your brother.’
‘That may take me a little time to get used to.’
‘You’ve got twenty-four hours to get up to speed. And never forget, your brother is the best, and Griff Haskins is the worst, which makes them a formidable combination.’
‘So where do I start?’
Lacy got up from behind his desk and walked across to a large chart pinned to the wall.
‘These are the sixty-two marginal seats we have to win if we hope to form the next government,’ he said, even before Emma had joined him. ‘Each of them needs only a four per cent swing or less to change colour. If both the major parties end up with thirty-one of these seats’ – he tapped the chart – ‘it will be a hung parliament. If either can gain ten seats, they will have a majority of twenty in the House. That’s how important our job is.’
‘What about the other six hundred seats?’
‘Most of them have already been decided long before a ballot box is opened. We’re only interested in seats where they count the votes, not weigh them. Of course there will be one or two surprises, there always are, but we haven’t the time to try to work out which ones they’re going to be. Our job is to concentrate on the sixty-two marginals and try to make sure every one of them returns a Conservative Member of Parliament.’
Emma looked more carefully at the long list of seats, starting with the most marginal, Basildon, Labour majority of 22, swing needed 0.1 per cent.
‘If we can’t win that one,’ said Lacy, ‘we’ll have to suffer another five years of Labour government.’ His finger shot down to the bottom of the chart. ‘Gravesend, which needs a 4.1 per cent swing. If that turned out to be the uniform swing across the country, it would guarantee the Conservatives a majority of thirty.’
‘What are the seven little boxes alongside each constituency?’
‘We need every one of them ticked off before election day.’
Emma studied the headings: Candidate, Swing Required, Agent, Chairman, Drivers, Adopted Constituency, AOP.
‘There are three seats that still don’t even have a candidate,’ said Emma, staring at the list in disbelief.
‘They will have by the end of the week, otherwise they could return a Labour member unopposed, and we’re not going to let that happen.’
‘But what if we can’t find a suitable candidate at such short notice?’
‘We’ll find someone,’ said Lacy, ‘even if it’s the village idiot, and there are one or two of those already sitting on our side of the House, some of them in safe seats.’
Emma laughed, as her eye moved on to ‘Adopted Constituency’.
‘A safe seat will adopt an adjoining marginal constituency,’ explained Lacy, ‘offering it the assistance of an experienced agent, canvassers, even money when it’s needed. We have a reserve fund with enough cash to supply any marginal seat with ten thousand pounds at a moment’s notice.’
‘Yes, I became aware of that during the last election when I was working in the West Country,’ said Emma. ‘But I found some constituencies were more cooperative than others.’
‘And you’ll find that’s the same right across the country. Local chairmen who think they know how to run a campaign better than we do, treasurers who would rather lose an election than part with a penny from their current account, Members of Parliament who claim they might lose their seats even when they have a twenty thousand majority. Whenever we come up against those sorts of problems, you’ll be the one who has to call the constituency chairman and sort it out. Not least because they won’t take any notice of an agent, however senior, and especially when everyone knows you have Mother’s ear.’
‘Mother?’
‘Sorry,’ said Lacy. ‘It’s agent shorthand for the leader.’ Emma smiled.
‘And “OAP”?’ she asked, placing a finger on the bottom line.
‘Not old age pensioners,’ said Lacy, ‘although they may well decide who wins the election because, assuming they can turn out, they’re the most likely to vote. And even if they can’t walk, we’ll supply a car and driver to take them to the nearest polling station. When I was a young agent I even helped someone get to the poll on a stretcher. It was only when I dropped him back at his house he told me he’d voted Labour.’