Douglas Carswell

Save the campaign to save the Royal Mail?

I've a bit of a soft spot for postal workers. They cheerfully deliver letters whatever the weather. They work hard, putting in long shifts and sometimes anti-social hours.

In some parts of my Essex constituency, postmen and women help keep an eye out for older folk, and even help with occasional errands.

So when I started to get lots of postcards objecting to government proposals to privatise Royal Mail, I took it very seriously.

I looked into it what was being proposed in detail. I pondered what the minister had to say, and listened carefully to those who objected. After thinking long and hard, I responded to each postcard explaining why I thought that in fact the government approach was right.

The service does need a large injection of new investment – and the Government simply does not have the money to do it. Whoever does have that kind of money is most likely going to want a stake in Royal Mail in return.

But it is what happened next that concerns me.

At first, some constituents got in touch, wanting to know why I had written to them about the Royal Mail. Perhaps, I wondered, they had simply forgotten? Curious.

Then a local carer for adults with learning difficulties got in touch. She thought it a cheek that I had written to people in her care, and when I explained, was adamant that no one in her care had written to their MP. Curiouser.

Then I got a letter from a widow, clearly upset, wanting to know why I had written to her husband, who had been dead for several months.

Someone might have been filling in postcards purporting to be from local residents, and sending them to their MP.

Was it just a one off? Or one person acting rogue? Perhaps. But here's the thing; not one of the 351 postcards I've had to date has a stamp on it.

Normally, if 351 local people were to write to me, but not use a stamp, their postcards wouldn't get through unless I coughed up for the unpaid postage. Not this time. Somehow these unstamped postcards are getting into the mail system without the normal rules being applied.

Could the people filling them in also be arranging for them to be delivered without stamps? I do not know.

What I do know is that it would be extraordinarily counter-productive if that was the case. Sending MPs bogus postcards, claiming to be from local people, will only upset local people. At the same time, it devalues the campaign.

It also shows extraordinary poor judgment about how to campaign in the internet era, where authenticity is everything – and where MPs sent bogus postcards can highlight the fact on blogs like this.

This article first appeared on the Telegraph, where Douglas writes regularly.

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