\u201cIn that scenario, as a candidate, you just have to fight, meet as many people as you can, talk to as many people as you possibly can. In my perspective, just be really positive, [and say] \u2018this is what the council is doing, if you\u2019re happy with it, absolutely carry on voting for them. If you want change, this is what I would do differently.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
He, like many of his Lib Dem rivals, is using his local edge to try to combat rampant despondency about the national state of play.<\/p>\n
Cynicism toward politics is \u201ca big barrier for everyone voting for anyone,\u201d Cope acknowledges.<\/p>\n
But he adds: \u201cIt\u2019s why I feel like I have a bit of an advantage in my campaign. I\u2019ve been around quite a long time. I live in my area, and I\u2019ve kind of been involved in all the different projects. So when I come up against that cynicism, I can go, \u2018I managed to get a bridge at Walton station. I managed to get disabled access. That\u2019s a very tangible thing that we can point to \u2026 you can cut through that cynicism.’\u201d<\/p>\n
The coffee, in an area where both Conservative and Lib Dem placards are on display, gets interrupted twice: once by a lolopping golden retriever and once by a lady who \u2014 in a surprisingly polite tone \u2014 points to Cope\u2019s campaign literature and says: \u201cYou are not welcome here.\u201d Neither expands on the interruptions.<\/p>\n
Andrew McDonald contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIn that scenario, as a candidate, you just have to fight, meet as many people as you can,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26169,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1351,10251,1506,421,1360,173,1224,11672,432,11673,95,4980,165,593,73,5,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-26168","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"tag-asylum","9":"tag-bridges","10":"tag-cost-of-living","11":"tag-debt","12":"tag-elections","13":"tag-england","14":"tag-hospitals","15":"tag-michael-gove","16":"tag-migration","17":"tag-national-politics","18":"tag-nigel-farage","19":"tag-refugees","20":"tag-roads","21":"tag-services","22":"tag-tax","23":"tag-uk","24":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116496913140261450","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26168\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}