Back in January, I had a plan to overturn a 16,000 vote Conservative majority in the Forest of Dean, bring an end to almost two decades of the incumbent, Mark Harper, and install a Labour Member of Parliament for the first time in what has seemed a very long dark age.

I had no right even to have such a plan. I had been out of local politics for several years, and held no position of note. But I did have a clear vision. And Step One was to convince the Regional Office in Bristol that we, the FoD Constituency Labour Party, could once more be a fighting force.

For more than twenty years, we had, as a CLP, none of the tools we needed to win this fight. We lacked volunteers, we had no political data as we had done no canvassing; in my view we lacked effective leadership. We had been metaphorically floundering, up one of those badly polluted minor tributaries of the River Wye sans paddle.Yet my first meeting back told me that things had changed. The entryist Left had abandoned ship when former captain Jeremy Corbyn was made to walk the plank.

The dour, rule-obsessed left that ran things before that had become old and retired from the fray. Instead here were DFLs, ‘down from Londons’, to steal a phrase from that gently observant crime drama, Whitstable Pearl. BBC this, former BBC that, a different class of activist, in more senses than one.

Remarkably, here were also old friends and allies: the former staff of two-time FoD Labour MP, the redoubtable Diana Organ, now long retired. Having quit the field of battle long before me, in search of a more sensible life, said staff had returned, refreshed. As I told the former script-writer from ‘Sarf’ London, the adults were back in charge.

Region, camped out in Kingswood for the by-election, wanted us to send our troops to help in Stroud, but, as one, this idea was rejected. We knew Stroud and with the national mood buoyant, we knew they would be fine. The blinding desire to remove the FoD incumbent was all-consuming.I breezed into the Kingswood Office, ‘The Forest of Dean is back, and we are going to WIN.’ It had to be a confidence they would remember.

That was Step One. Step Two, canvassing from January onwards, and Step Three, a few publicity stunts to get us noticed in the constituency once more, were shot down by my own side. Foolishly, I thought. There would be no convincing of Region and therefore no significant visits from the national hierarchy.In the end it didn’t matter. We won, but are now one of the closest of marginals. Kier, Angela, Rachel and others will have us pencilled in their Campaign Diaries for 2029. In 2024, nada.

Thank goodness for the dozens of volunteers who came out of the wainscoting, delivered tens of thousands of leaflets and re-discovered canvassing, who saved my bacon on that pledge and coincidentally became my friends. Thank goodness, too, for a superb organiser who orchestrated the win, but she would not thank me for naming her here.

We were helped nationally, seen locally, by a visceral disgust of the failing and flailing Tory Party. This is really quite interesting in the light of an equal national desire to return to the politics of respect. This will be the subject of a future article: how do you respect someone who seems to share none of the core values that you believe make you human?The Greens, starting at the top with Chris McFarling, are good people, beautiful people, but they had been over-dosing on the Lib Dem playbook.

First find a local council with stale local parties and inject some youth and some vigour. That gives you an activist base. Then make the false claim that only you can beat the big bad Tories. They were poised to shave thousands off the Labour vote until two things went badly wrong for them.

Firstly, how horrified they must have been when Labour re-appeared, phoenix-like, with our own activists everywhere. Secondly, the Greens designated not one but two target seats within driving distance. Carla Denyer simply had to win Bristol Central and used excessive resourses to do it, with North Herefordshire also draining Green activists from the Forest of Dean.

McFarling was squeezed, by his own Party. My own small part was repeatedly to remind readers of this august publication how poorly they had fared here in the past. But what of the Tories, where were they? I campaigned across the Forest without seeing a single blue poster! They showed up on polling day, far more than live a comfortable existence in the Tewkesbury hinterland. T

hey are thought to have a formidable telephone tree system. Reform did what Reform was expected to do. It is said that, during the recount, Mark Harper shed a little tear, a human side that he has suppressed in public almost pathologically throughout his long reign.

So here we are, with the relatively unknown District Councillor, Matt Bishop, finding his way around the Palace of Westminster, savouring the King’s Speech and setting up a Constituency Office, and doing all with a quiet competence. What difference does it make to the national picture? Possibly none at all. And to the good burghers of the Forest of Dean? Well, that is yet to be seen. I hope to have some hand in it myself. For the sake of the planet, we must now be not just the Labour Party, but a Green Party as well.In my next article, I will look to the future.