Richard Nicholl

The sun lit up the railway station in brilliant Liberal yellow, where a small huddle of activists from the Cambridge Student Liberal Democrats (CSLD) were waiting for their fellow activists. I went to meet them on the Liberal Youth National Action Weekend on Saturday, as dozens of young Liberal Democrats from across the country descended on Cambridge.

At first it was quite hard to tell where they were. I then spotted a flash of a yellow Lib Dem badge on a coat and went over to introduce myself. One activist, Chloe, suggests that they try to look more liberal: suggestions include wearing socks with sandals and engaging in same-sex kisses. Chloe herself is wearing a No More Page 3 t-shirt, as endorsed by the Liberal Democrat international development minister Lynne Featherstone (and modelled by Harriet Harman, deputy leader of the Labour Party).

The Liberals are in good spirits, and they have reason to be. The best news for them in months was the most recent Ashcroft poll in Cambridge, giving them, with 40 per cent, a nine-point lead over Labour. But as Ashcroft himself noted, it’s only a race once one mentions the name of the Liberal Democrat candidate, Julian Huppert: without his name on the ticket, Labour would be set to win by five points. Any candidate who can shift the polls by 14 points in his favour is undoubtedly formidable, drawing support from Labour, the Conservatives and the Green Party.

The personalisation of the Cambridge contest is something Nomi Farhi, the Chair of CSLD, freely admits. “Everyone just really loves Julian!” she says, to nods of approval from the student activists. “Even Labour activists secretly love Julian.” Apparently there is a new Huppert hashtag (#UpTheHupp) and another activist tells me that they’ve taken to calling him ‘J-Hupps’. I mention the other moniker he’s earned in Cambridge, “Huppert the muppet”, but they’re too busy singing Bob Marley’s classic ‘One Love’ to notice.

Richard Nicholl

So what about the others? “I kind of want to help out the Greens because they’re just so useless at campaigning,” says Callum Delhoy, the Liberal Democrat PPC for Daventry (incumbent: Chris Heaton-Harris (Con), who received 56.5 per cent of the vote in 2010). “They don’t get any data.” Delhoy is tall, broad and bearded, so I have to do a double-take when Nomi tells me he’s 18 and attends Hills Road Sixth Form. He is flanked by a lower-sixth activist called Dale, whose scarf is bigger than his head.

Suddenly, Nomi loses her patience standing around in front of the station after a train comes in bearing no activists. We set off to King’s College by taxi, where in the Chedwyck room she rallies the troops.

“LIBERALS!” she barks, and the room murmurs in attention. She outlines the plans for the day, every so often shooting me a glance as I buzz around taking photographs. We are to be divided into several canvassing groups, and for more detailed planning she passes over to Nicola, a local activist. “Let’s get Julian re-elected, guys!” cries Nomi, and she is met by an exhausted but enthusiastic cheer.

Richard Nicholl

Nicola insists that the assembled Liberal Democrats focus on the successes of the coalition government, with a particular emphasis on Julian Huppert’s occasional rebellions. Undeterred by the hint of paradox, she tells the yellow army to avoid negativity about other candidates, but reminds us to tell Labour voters that Labour is “crap on the NHS and crap on the economy”.

There is one other thing. “We’re losing the slateboard war to Labour,” she says reproachfully.

“Slateboards don’t vote!” one activist heckles, but he is quickly hushed as the outsiders are divided from locals and students, then paired up with each other to go out canvassing. One man, leaning against a pillar, mutters: “It’s like a really awkward school disco, isn’t it?” It is. Watching the two groups trade members and split off into little groups, it is all I can do to not start tapping out the rhythm to ‘Cotton-Eyed Joe’.

There is some confusion outside Queens’ College as we run into a large group of local party activists, accompanied by the man of the moment, Dr Julian Huppert. It is quite important, apparently, that Huppert is not seen to be exceeding the passenger capacity of his car. Eventually, though, car space is sorted, and I am dispatched to Cherry Hinton with Nomi, Chloe, two other activists and Lucy Nethsingha, the County Councillor for Newnham.

Richard Nicholl

We are in deep Labour territory. All four of the councillors for this area, at the City and County levels, are Labour. The Vote Labour signs sticking out of hedges and stuck to walls look like brightly-coloured sniper nests. Eventually, Lucy parks and peers at her clipboard as we extricate ourselves from her people-carrier.

We move slowly along Headington Close, with each activist taking one house at a time. Lucy mostly stands back, recording whether the people at Number 23 are occupied or whether Number 35 is a staunch UKIPer. One man, who undoes three or four locks before he opens the door, engaged Chloe in quiet but intense conversation for a few minutes.

“How was that?” I ask when she walks away, the door clicking shut behind her.

“Well, he’s not voting Labour,” she says hopefully. At the next house, we lose her for ten minutes to the occupier.

I ask Nomi if they often get long conversations on the doorstep. “Not really. But out here there’s a lot of elderly people. I sometimes think they just want someone to talk to,” she says sadly. “I think we’re providing a sort of public service. 

Does she ever lose her patience? “Not to their faces,” she says, smiling ruefully. “Sometimes they’ll close the door and I’ll turn away and just go ‘Grrr, how can this person be so…’” She waves her hands around.

Nicholl

Meanwhile, Chloe has got herself into another long conversation. I eavesdrop; the subject of tuition fees comes up. She later describes them as ‘soft Labour’, and then she stops. “I should have mentioned that Julian voted against tuition fees, shouldn’t I?” she says thoughtfully. I look at a leaflet in my pocket that proudly declares Huppert’s brave rebellion on tuition fees, and smile helpfully.

Perhaps it’s more of a problem than I think. Some people refuse a leaflet, either because they have too many or because they’re busy, usually with children. From an open window at one house, we can hear a baby gurgling. It’s a quiet cul-de-sac here, but an Ocado lorry rumbles by worryingly close.

“I suppose we’d better stop standing in the middle of the road,” Lucy says.

“Well, you know what Bevan said about people who stand in the middle of the road,” I reply.

She looks at me for a moment. “Sometimes they get to direct the traffic,” she says briskly.

That’s certainly the theme of the Liberal Democrat campaign this time around – to portray themselves as a moderating influence on the two extremes of Labour and Conservative. When Julian Huppert comes to address the party’s communal lunch in St Paul’s Church on Hills Road, just across from his campaign hub, the emphasis is on a moderate immigration policy, instead of “chasing the UKIP vote”, as Huppert puts it.

Huppert really is the man around whom this whole campaign is revolving, and even the atrocious national poll ratings for the Lib Dems don’t seem to be restraining their enthusiasm for their candidate.  As they smile for the camera with a shout of “Up the Hupp!”, there’s a round of applause and a cheer. Then they split and depart for another round of canvassing, the golden boy in tow. Whether it will last, however, remains to be seen.