Cllr Craig Smith represents the Coalville North Division on Leicestershire County Council.
We won. Not only did we buck the national swing to Reform but we put a significant dampener on their celebrations. I’ve been re-elected to Coalville North, a seat that, even in good times, is a tough win. In doing so, we stopped Reform from gaining overall control of Leicestershire County Council and became the only Conservative victory in North West Leicestershire.
Some context: four years ago, I was a complete newcomer to politics.
I won this seat from the Labour Group Leader, who had held it for twelve years. When I was selected, the then-chairman told me I didn’t have a hope in hell, this was a Labour stronghold “since the dawn of time” but he said it would be a good experience. I didn’t know much about political campaigning, but I had marketed my own business for nearly two decades, so I set about marketing myself as the product. In the 2021 elections, I overturned Labour’s majority, winning 43 per cent of the vote to their 33.9 per cent.
It helped that the party was riding high on the Boris/COVID bounce; we returned all 8 Conservative candidates, an unprecedented result locally.
In 2024, I stood as the Parliamentary candidate for North West Leicestershire. It was a tough national campaign. Many people with far more experience than me believe that ours was one of the best-run campaigns in the country. I’m incredibly proud to have led it, supported by a brilliant team of volunteers and activists. We ran under the banner of #OneOfOurOwn, which resonated deeply with the electorate. Our literature and social media, both of which I designed, thanks to my background as a graphic designer, were on point. We came within 2 per cent of winning, despite a strong Reform presence and the disruptive candidacy of Andrew Bridgen. Without those two factors, I have no doubt we’d have taken the seat. By contrast, our neighbour in South Derbyshire, a seat that has historically mirrored ours, lost by 4,000 votes, even with the advantage of incumbency.
When I was reselected for the County Council, I knew I had to campaign differently. The party hadn’t recovered from the General Election, and the public, understandably, still wanted to punish anyone wearing a blue rosette. As the former Parliamentary candidate, I had a massive target on my back. Labour and Reform both came at me with everything they had.
But I had three major advantages:
- Incumbency – A strong track record of local delivery, backed up by four years of proactive service.
- Profile – The General Election had raised my visibility. My face had been everywhere for a year, and I hadn’t stopped campaigning since.
- Social Media – I’ve made a point of posting every day for the past four years, keeping residents informed of what I’m doing and delivering.
In my younger years, I competed at the top level in sport. I learned that success doesn’t just depend on talent, it depends on the team around you. A great coach can extract that extra one or two per cent that makes the difference.
Political campaigning is no different.
So I went looking for someone to help, someone to act as a virtual campaign manager: a second set of eyes, a sounding board, someone to keep me focused. At the 2024 party conference, I met Matthew Goodwin-Freeman, who had just launched his new firm GetElected.uk. I was invited to the launch and ended up sitting next to Bob Blackman CBE MP, whose campaign Matthew had just run. And despite the exit polls predicting his defeat, he won and his majority increased – the only Conservative MP to get over 50 per cent of the vote! That got my attention.
Matthew and his team talked about campaigning differently, leaving no stone unturned, looking for those marginal gains. I knew immediately we were on the same wavelength, creative, maverick, with an eye on the next generation of voters. Together, we built a campaign that was hyper-local, relentlessly focused, and rooted in real-world engagement. Matthew would set me targets and send me out to go hit them, holding my feet to the fire and making sure the campaign stuck to track. This election became a referendum, all around “Craig’s track record” having been a good County Councillor the last four years.
And it worked. Against the odds, we held Coalville North, 41.3 per cent to Reform’s 35.5 per cent. Not only that, we denied Reform the keys to a County Hall majority, becoming a solitary Blue Bastion in the middle of a Turquoise Tsunami.
This victory wasn’t just a personal win. It showed that with the right message, the right team, and relentless hard work, Conservatives can win again, even when the national tide is against us. That’s what we need to do. It’s been almost a year since Matthew bucked the trend at the General Election and now, he’s done it again with me. If we listen to those who win, we can change this tide. The public may not be ready to forgive the party just yet, but if we reconnect locally and campaign with authenticity and purpose, there’s a way back.
What we did in Coalville North wasn’t magic, it was a method.
And it’s a method the party needs to listen to and replicate nationally.
The electorate has changed, it’s getting younger, a generation influenced and persuaded by Tik Tok not the News at Ten. They’re no longer persuaded by pinstripe suits, polished lines, and rosettes handed out at the last minute. They want authenticity. They want relevance. Most of all, they want edutainment, to be informed and inspired while feeling connected and entertained. The days of dry leaflets and scripted soundbites are over. If we want to win again, we must meet voters where they are, speak in a language they understand, and become what they want to hear.
That doesn’t mean abandoning our principles, it means communicating them in a way that cuts through. This is the future of campaigning. It worked here, and it can work across the country.
