Tony Blair was quoted this week as warning against Labour moving to the left in the aftermath of last year’s general election.  He claims that left-right boundaries are breaking down and the public “won’t buy [big change] from someone who they regard as ideologically motivated.”

Maybe Mr Blair doesn’t spend as much time on the streets as other Labour activists.  If he did he would surely be aware that the reason the public’s interest and engagement in politics is so poor is that they see the three major parties as being “all the same”.

I think one of our key problems is that many voters have not abandoned Labour for the other parties, they have simply stopped voting because they feel there is not a party out there that represents them.  It is precisely our lack of a clear ideology that has created this sense of apathy amongst people who were and should be Labour voters.  I don’t think chasing Conservative and Lib Dem voters will ever win us an election; appealing to all the ex-Labour voters who don’t turn out on polling day anymore might just do it.

I don’t offer a detailed solution here – I need more time to think about that – but for me it is clear that we need to decide who and what we stand for rather than trying to be all things to all people.

And a final point.  I think Ed Miliband is the person to lead us. Like it or not, we elected him, we should get behind him and we should stop bickering amongst ourselves.  I think the childish behaviour we see from some senior politicians is the one thing that annoys voters more than our lack of ideology.

Having only been an active party member for a little over six months, having been quickly ‘promoted’ to chair of a small but lively CLP and having never stood as a candidate in an election before, it was always going to be a stressful few weeks.

So how did it go? Better than could possibly have been expected.  In a town where we had not won a seat on any council for more than ten years we got a Labour councillor on both Aylesbury Vale District Council and Aylesbury Town Council.

I will admit to being surprised by it.  I had always had the Oakfield ward of Aylesbury as our best chance – we had a well-known local candidate and put a lot of effort in to the area – and while I knew the Southcourt ward should be a good Labour area I also knew we were up against two very strong sitting Lib Dem councillors.  Even reports that the Lib Dems were worried abour the ward were met by me with a great deal of cynicism.  It wasn’t until the verification on Friday morning that I realised how close it would be.  As I got more excited and optimistic I received increasingly cynical and patronising responses from my Labour colleagues but at the end of a tense afternoon we were all euphoric when Michael Beall was elected.  Of course he didn’t get close to the Aylesbury political force that is Lib Dem Freda Roberts but he beat their other candidate by 30 votes and I was only another 14 behind that.

There was more good news the following morning as Michael won a seat on Aylesbury Town Council, this time tied on votes with a Lib Dem candidate and just 5 votes clear of the sitting councillor in third place.  On this occasion I had to settle for being 70 votes short of contention.

So how did we do it? How did we get from 67 votes in a 2010 by-election to seats on two councils?

There is no doubt that our leafleting campaign helped.  We distributed a leaflet in late March and followed it up with a four-page newspaper-style leaflet in April.  While the other parties’ material screamed ‘vote for us’, we managed to strike a careful balance between criticism and positive policy.  We struck out at the Tory council’s spending and showed the ineffectiveness of the Lib Dems in opposition but we also made clear what we would do – and we were realistic about it.  We knew we weren’t going to take control of the council so our pledges reflected that.

It’s also fair to assume that standing in a Lib Dem stronghold we benefitted from the poor public perception of Nick Clegg and his party.

But to me, what really made the difference was the enthusiasm and commitment of local activists.  We are a small CLP and active members are barely into double figures but we distributed 11,500 leaflets, we got out and canvassed and, crucially in my opinion, in our 4 target wards we had a presence at every polling station on Thursday.  That means every undecided voter who wasn’t sure whether to take us seriously saw a red rosette and realised we were a viable option.

What can we improve next time?

It was disappointing not to get a candidate standing in every ward.  Despite our best efforts only 12 people were prepared to stand and we had to take the decision to focus on target wards – a decision which paid off but I still believe we should try and offer everyone a chance to vote Labour.  Hopefully this years success will encourage more lapsed activists to re-emerge making the 12 candidates we need for total coverage in the county council elections of May 2013 much more achievable.

We could also have canvassed more.  It can be a soul-destroying task and many of the most enthusiastic activists hate doing it but there is little to match it in terms of creating visibility to voters.  It is essential to remember that every person who refuses to give you information, who says they never vote Labour, who says they don’t know, even the rare ones who are rude and offensive, is another person who may now think again about Labour just because you made the effort to make yourselves known.

So what’s the plan for the future? I’m afraid that’s for another time (and confidential in any case).

Am I disappointed I wasn’t elected? Of course I am.  We do this because we care about our communities and we put a huge amount of effort in because it’s important to us (and that applies across all parties – I get furious with people who suggest anyone would go into local politics for their own interests) so we’re bound to be disappointed when we don’t get elected and that means there has to be a little bit of time for self pity.  Then we have to pick ourselves up and move on to the next challenge.

Finally, was it a success? Resoundingly.