First rule of wooing voters: don't pick fights with them

I wonder if the Civic Party leaders have considered engaging a political strategist to help them connect with the party's support base, rather than do things that are more likely to alienate it.

The party ought to be the natural home of the socially responsible middle class. The well educated, the professionals, instinctively democratic, relatively comfortably off, but with an awareness of and concern for those less well off; the party for people with a keen sense of right and wrong but who are rational and moderate.

The first doubtful move was, of course, setting sail with the League of Social Democrats on the voyage to nowhere - the referendum that was not. It was a schoolboy gesture and wiser counsel should have prevailed. Of course, the party's constituency dutifully turned out to vote, but there were better ways of spending scarce family time on a Sunday.

The second episode to leave a slight feeling of unease is the judicial review on the environmental impact assessment for the bridge to Macau and Zhuhai. Was a little old lady really looking for legal assistance or did an alert party activist find a convenient hook upon which to hang a political coat? Was there not a less disruptive way - a more professional way - to clarify the issue?

And who is going to suffer most from the delay to this and other projects? It's all very well for a few loyalist workmen from the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong to march in protest, but the impact will also be felt by engineers and other professionals, in other words, core Civic Party targets.

Also bubbling to the surface is a strident attack on private sporting clubs, with the Civic Party if not actually leading the assault certainly shouting the odds.

There have been calls for the facilities to be opened up to non-members for extended periods, with few if any restrictions and all free of charge. And the whole debate is taking place on the fringes of genuine concern about the growing gap between the very rich and the very poor and some quite shameless behaviour by certain property tycoons.