General Election 2015: How has life on the Lib Dem campaign trail changed over the years?

It was 1992. Paddy Ashdown was in the party’s driving seat. And Oliver Wright was the political ingenue by his side - now he's back on campaign trail with the party

Ready for battle: Oliver Wright (back right) listens to Nick Clegg (James Gourley)

“Does anybody want to see the disco lights,” asks the man from the Lib Dems.

Taking ambiguous grunts as a positive response, the switch is flicked and the lighting in the bus changes from the current slightly sickly Lib Dem orange, to neon blue, to bright green, then sex-shop red and then back to orange. I am already feeling ill from typing while driving through the Midlands countryside, and this really isn’t helping.

It is eight o’clock at night and we are still 50 miles from London. But this counts for “normal” in the strange world of the Campaign Battle Bus: where journalists, party leaders, spin doctors and Special Branch officers with guns, spend long days cooped up cheek by jowl in a brightly painted luxury coach travelling to marginal constituencies across the country.

Oddly, it is a world that I have seen from both sides – albeit with a gap of 20 years in between. In 1991-92, when I was 19, I did a few months’ work experience for the then Liberal Democrat leader Paddy Ashdown, and was asked to come back to help out during the following year’s General Election campaign.

I’ve got your back, Paddy: Oliver Wright (circled) on the campaign trail with the Liberal Democrat leader in March 1992

I was the Lib Dem tour gofer – who held the umbrella over Ashdown when it rained, bought the sandwiches for the travelling press pack and tried to make sure no-one got left behind in Bognor Regis. It was a manic, fascinating glimpse into a world which I had never experienced – made even stranger by going home every night to see my day played out on News at Ten. By polling day, I knew I wanted to be a journalist.

Joining the Lib Dems on their election tour this time round – and meeting Joe Edwards, my successor as gofer – it was fascinating to see how much (and how little) has changed about this ritualised form of campaigning since the last time I stepped on a battle bus.

The biggest difference is the size of the crowds. In 1992, in most of the constituencies we visited, the local party could be guaranteed to have drummed up a substantial number of local supporters waving placards and cheering at every destination.

Nick Clegg speaks to Lib Dem activists at the office of the party's parliamentary candidate for Southwark and Old Bermondsey, Simon Hughes, on Tuesday (Getty) (PA)

As soon as we arrived we would be swamped by the faithful and the merely curious. There were endless chaotic walkabouts in town centres. We even had an antiquated walkie-talkie system – so whoever happened to be closest to Ashdown in the crowd could relay messages and ensure we got him out in time to move on to our next destination.

By contrast, Clegg’s visits this time round appear small scale and sterile. The day I joined the campaign we can only have encountered, at most, a couple of dozen Lib Dem activists and probably even fewer real voters.

Part of this is security – the terrorist threat is now greater. But I can’t help but feel there is also just less interest in politics and politicians than there once was. The parties don’t have the same level of on-the-ground support and it is easier to organise closed events where the lack of vocal supporters doesn’t matter.

Another change is the hollowing out of the number of journalists on the bus. When I was working for Ashdown in 1992, every national newspaper (apart from The Sun) had a reporter on the bus every day of the campaign. The man from The Mirror had the dubious honour of not getting a single word in his paper throughout.

His job was to wait and hope that Ashdown would fall over, get egged, or face some kind of unexpected scandal. Sadly for him, it didn’t happen and all he wrote during the election was a “campaign song” for the other journalists set to the hymn “All My Hope on God is Founded’.

On the road again: Joe Edwards is the Liberal Democrats’ current battle bus intern (James Gourley)

This time, several newspapers are not bothering to sending reporters to cover the Lib Dem bus. Only three nationals have stumped up the £10,000 to cover every day of the campaign while others will dip in and out for an extortionate £750 a pop. This campaign may be open – but it’s very much cash for access.

The other change, of course, is technology. This Lib Dem bus has on-board wi-fi, at least six TVs screening 24-hour news programmes, and a high quality link for Clegg to do radio phone-ins on the move. It is beyond weird to sit on the bus as it speeds along watching a TV correspondent doing a live interview – which with a second’s delay appears on a TV screen behind their head.

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When I was on the bus in 1992, the most correspondents had was a brick-like mobile phone. Some didn’t even have that and had to find phone boxes to file their copy. What hasn’t changed is the inherent tension between journalists, politicians and aides. The politicos are looking for good photo ops and soundbites; the hacks are looking for embarrassing photos and gaffes. Yet, for the sake of sanity, everyone has to pretend to get along.

In 1992 the Lib Dems were petrified that a newspaper might make further allegations of affairs against Ashdown following the “Paddy Pantsdown” Sun front page. A lot of time was spent trying to game-plan what to do should that happen to avoid the leader being door-stepped by the travelling press before the party had had time to assess the claims.

On a far more moderate scale now, the Lib Dems quietly cancelled a scheduled visit to a hospital after discovering there was a big yellow sign in the entrance (that Clegg was due to walk through) warning that there was norovirus.

But Joe, at least, looks like he’s enjoying himself. The 23-year-old intern has the same job at this election that I did in 1992.

He too started off doing work experience with the Lib Dems and was asked to come along to be the same kind of gofer to Clegg as I was to Ashdown. He, too, was making sure that none of us got left behind at a service station we stopped at on the M40 – and, to be honest, he was buying a better kind of sandwiches.

The question is: by 7 May will he want to be a politician or a journalist?

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