Shoulda Woulda Coulda

In the aftermath of the Bristol local elections, it's all too easy to dwell on what might have been. Losing out to Labour in Southville by six votes hurt. Even coming second to the Lib Dems in Ashley, objectively a good result, felt a little bit like a defeat. Once you're in the fight, you want to win. And it's frustating to know what good councillors our candidates in Southville and Ashley, Tess Green and Daniella Radice, would have been.

So it's hard not to have a few regrets.

Could we have done more to keep our campaign under wraps? Perhaps we should have printed our leaflets in invisible ink, visible only to our core voters when exposed to the fumes from their compost bins?

Should we have taken a more aggressive approach to campaigning? What if Charlie Bolton have seized the opportunity of a chance canvassing meeting with David Milliband and challenged him to an impromtu slow bicycle race? That would have shown who's really comfortable with sustainable transport.

Maybe we could have played it just a little dirtier? If we had clandestinely replaced the LibDem office coffee with organic Barleycup, might they have missed their 4am alarm calls on election day, and failed to deliver that crucial 'good morning' leaflet?

What about our media profile? Would Green Elvis, a stalwart of previous election campaigns, have made the difference between success and failure?

We'll never know. But as Beverly Knight perceptively put it, 'shoulda woulda coulda are the last words of a fool'. Now, our Bev might not be the first person a disillusioned Green turns to for inspiration. Some might see Jello Biafra, Dead Kennedy's frontman, and former US Green Party presidential candidate, as a better choice. But frankly, for all the wisdom in the lines 'you'll work harder with a gun in your back, for a bowl of rice a day', I don't think it's going to go down that well with our leafleting team.