Boris/Local Elections/Crewe

I know it was all a long time ago now and I hate to remind you all but I wasn’t overly optimistic after the results.  I thought the local election results were okay but for both Crewe and London the squeeze took hold and we seemed almost resigned to the fact afterwards.

As for Boris, well, he has nicely shown his true colours in the first couple of months in power.  More rules and policies to hit the poor.  He shows as stupidity the idea that conservatism and liberalism go together.  He has also shown that the modern Tory is just as authoritarian as anyone in the Labour party.  I hope this will all come back to bite the Tories in the arse come 2010 but I won’t hold my breath.

Double-D and Double-H

First off, Nick made the right decision.  I can’t quite fathom why people think he didn’t. The only way for him to have possibly done better was to be psychic and get someone to resign first.  By staying out of the fight we got to have our say against 42 days and without looking like the crank that Davis did.  Fine, we don’t command the pulpit on civil liberties but this little debacle has thrown into light DD’s other less liberal positions with which we can go after him when he returns to the backbenches.  Plus it adds a little to the inner turmoil of the Tory party that is just aching to boil over as the scent of victory draws ever nearer.  The worst thing we could have done was stand, it would have leant weight to one of our opponents most promising attacks against us - that we are simply opportunistic, political scavengers waiting for some bloated carcass of politician to hove into view.

Ros4Prez

I have nothing against Lembit and am happy to have a Hello! celebrity in our midst but think the position would be better taken by someone with perhaps a smaller profile who can get on with the hard slog associated with being president and doing all the general party things, allowing the MPs to get on with furthering our cause in the wider sphere.  Plus she and Mark now live in the splendid surroundings of Suffolk, where all the best people come from.

Henley

Certainly not great, but not absolutely awful either.  Time to look at our overall campaigning technique though.  We have made a lot of our invincible by-election team but in these days of a Tory resurgence we will have to look for other avenues in to voters minds.

One thing though, I have to disagree with John at Liberal Revolution. I thought that the website wasn’t good, neither modern nor stylish, and although a lot of information was contained, it was simply too busy, best exemplified by the fact they couldn’t find anywhere to put the youtube video, so made it tiny and put it over a banner.  John Howell’s website wasn’t great but the main page was a lot simpler allowing the information on it to be taken in quickly (although at 1400 the day after they haven’t updated their website with the fact that they, er, won).

Brown’s woes

Wow, where to start.  The big man has taken a battering in the last couple of months, but he soldiers on as only a dour Scot can.  But I don’t understand why he continues to come out with more and more moronic ideas?  Surely it’s obvious that you shouldn’t lock people up for 42 days?   If your administration keeps losing people’s data, why do you think they would then trust you with being the sole repository for their identities?  If your party is the supposed champion of the people, why try to take more and more money from the poorest?

Even though Labour has dived in the polls I don’t think its beyond saving.  Less than a year ago Brown was riding high.  Who’s to say what will happen in the next two years to change to political scene before the next general election?  What it would take though I do not know, and I don’t think GB does either.

Cameron’s woes

Samantha may already be wondering what colour carpets to have in the No. 10 flat but I bet while she sits there looking at swatches, Dave is beside her wondering how long he can keep his group of parliamentary odd-bods all pointing in the same direction, or if he does make it into the black door, how long he will stay there before the knife comes down swiftly between his shoulderblades. The loons on the back benches and in the constituency parties are staying with him for now as he is a winner, but with no real substance behind his not very good style, he will trip up.

The cliche is that oppositions don’t win elections, governments lose them and I don’t think that will be any truer than in the general election of 2010.    

Nick’s woes

The polls ain’t good, but have they ever been?  Caught in the middle between the increasingly crazed Labour party and the resurgent Cons we really have to begin fighting our way out of the sandwich.  Importantly, we have to regain our own story.  At the moment we are taken over by the ‘protest vote’ story and the ‘opportunistic’ story, the latter not helped by Nick’s decision on the Lisbon referendum. 

I think the direction of the party is good, more in keeping with the original liberalism of the party.  This emphasis on putting individuals back in charge of their own lives is good, as it is the way the general consensus is going, with people more and more despondent with the burgeoning state.  I think we have to be willing to make tough decisions, such as proposing tough taxes, and also make radical decisions, such as proposing LVT or drug legalisation.

Most importantly though, we have to push away from the mainstream politics of the big two.  Currently we are seen as the poor man’s version of both, whereas moving away from them to a more radical standpoint would get us noticed above normal politics.  We need to admit that we don’t have the answer to all life’s ills, that the answers lie with individuals and small communities rather than anyone 50,100, 200 miles away in London.  This was nicely illustrated by Nick in a recent speech on education.

So, the country is moving away from Labour, as their ideas of social democracy move ever closer to pure socialism.  However, the country shows no real passion for the compassionate conservatism of the current right.  As with all good Englishmen, they really just want to be left alone.  Appealing to this nature of the country is the key to winning, IMHO.

“In a speech at Policy Exchange yesterday, Nick Clegg said:

When Labour came to power in 1997, the Government took three hundred billion pounds a year in tax. This year the Government will take nearly double that. They take one thousand seven hundred million pounds of our money every single day of the year. That’s more than £18,000 a second.

Indeed – and isn’t that a great way to put it? The whole speech is pretty interesting actually, as it marks a definite departure from the tax and spend, social democrat stance of the party – which characterized its last two general election campaigns – and a shift towards old-fashioned liberalism. Clegg says he wants to break the consensus on ever-higher spending and claims he ” would not be interested in spending a single penny of people’s money unless I knew it was going to give a greater benefit than leaving it in their pockets”. Which is excellent.

But while I don’t doubt Clegg’s conviction – it’s always been clear that he is much more free market than most Lib Dem activists – I suspect this speech is more the result of a political realization than an economic one. The Lib Dems know that most of their key election battles in 2010 are going to be against the Conservatives, and are positioning themselves accordingly.

In either case, this is good news for British politics. When the Lib Dems position themselves on the left, it drags the centre of political gravity in that direction, pulling the terms of debate with it. Hopefully the Lib Dems’ explicit embrace of freer markets, lower taxes and greater decentralization will have the opposite effect.”

The last paragraph is telling.  It suggests that we have the power to set the narrative with whichever way we swing.  Not entirely sure this is true but it should show that we should always look to set our own agenda and then let the other two parties follow.

“Introducing News Spectrum ! It is a visualization of the words used for two topics in the latest results from Google News. One topic is coloured blue, the other red, and the associated words are coloured and positioned based on how highly they are associated with the two topics. Click on any word to see the related Google News results.” - Neoformix

So, Jeff Clark at Neoformix suggested using it to find the associations between two news topics, Seamus McCauley inventively tried two news sources. I thought I would try two people who are in the news:

Hmmm. Interesting. You can see that the word “Leader” is one of the biggest words so it is the one most associated with Clegg and Cameron, but it is also way over to the right, suggesting that the word is associated with Nick oh so much more than Cameron. Not surprising, Cameron is not so much a leader, as the person at the front of a baying mob. Also “Brown” is a high-rated word but skewed more towards Cameron, perhaps suggesting that Cameron is referenced in relation to Brown rather than a person in his own right. Sounds about right.

As you would expect the words “Liberal” and “Democrat” are nicely in Clegg’s half as if the algorithm knows that Cameron’s liberalism is a sham. Also nice to see “Crewe” and “Nantwich” in the Lib Dem half. Although surprisingly “Nuneaton” isn’t in Cameron’s bit. “Burma” is associated with Nick while “Myanmar” is associated with Dave - so we are on the side of democracy and the people, while Dave sucks up to the military junta.

My favourite though is tucked away in the top-right corner on Nick’s side - “Samantha”.

Hmmm, time to get worried Dave when even you wife is associated more with the opposition.

Could she be one of the 30?

That’s a sex machine to all the chicks?

(Clegg!)

You’re damn right

Peter Clarke (PA to Keith Joseph) says this:

“I think you could say that the young Keith Joseph was not unlike the young David Cameron, that they both thought, in a rather naive way, that the state, organised by gentlemen, could be benign force and it was only the experience of living in Mr Heath’s cabinet both as housing minister and then as social security secretary that inoculated him against this. He saw that the state was capable of immense catastrophes and immense cruelties”

This naivety still spreads like a cancer through the halls of Westminster, and doesn’t only afflict the statist left and the authoritarian right, I think it can be on our own benches too.

But still,  this sums up nicely how I think of the tories and DC and the differences between the beliefs that they hold and the true liberalism that they pretend to espouse but never champion.  They still want big government, they just want it to be their big government. They think that if they were in charge everything would be hunky-dory.  It doesn’t work like that.  Even with all the best will in the world, governments will balls up.  It’s in their DNA.  To be truly liberal you have to give back as much power to individuals and enable them to make their own choices. And they don’t truly believe in devolving power back to individuals and communities - they just want it for themselves and to make sure they don’t have it.

You are better than the state - I really believe this is a position we should be grabbing by the balls.

Having wanted the job for so long, Brown seems unable to grasp the idea that he is now the PM and that at PRIME MINISTER’S QUESTIONS he is the one doing the answering.

I feel genuinely ashamed of PMQ’s.  I know people always say it is just a theatrical show but there should be at least some meat in the debate, not just GB’s slimy fat.  In his two weeks Clegg has bought up genuine issues that matter to people and, I for one, would actually like to know what the PM is doing about them. But all Brown does is play games.  This is a good example of why people think politics is shit. 

I hope Clegg just keeps up the same line of questioning, slowly building up confidence and the plaudits of more and more commentators, and though them, voters.

“We hope that the Liberal Democrats under Mr Clegg will join us in putting pressure on the government to devolve power to local authorities, communities and individuals; in our opposition to ID cards; and in our commitment to social justice and environmental progress. We hope that together we can create a new progressive alliance to decentralise British politics.” Caroline Spelman (Con Chairman)

Localism, Opposition to ID cards, Social Justice and Environmental Progress - Hmm, I wonder where they got those ideas from?

All Lib Dem policies that the Tories have hijacked. So perhaps Nick’s reply should be:

“We are glad that YOU have chosen to join US in putting pressure on the government”

and then tell her where she can shove her alliance.

Woohoo!

Well, I pretty chuffed as he was my man from the start. I really do have high hopes for the party now and am glad to be a part of it. Let’s start to get out there and communicate with the electorate and tell them why the Lib Dems are the party of the future.

Good luck Nick!!

Congratulations and commiserations to Chris for a well fought campaign.

Hopefully now we can get back to being a united party against the Tories and Labour.

>> The Mighty Who? <<

Clegg needs populism lesson from Cable

Last Sunday, the Tower Arts Centre in Winchester hosted a Lib Dem Leadeship campaign debate between Chris Huhne and Nick Clegg.

Martin Tod: “Hi Nick. Welcome to the Tower Arts Centre. The changing room, if you need it, is just down there, as used by the Mighty Boosh.”

Nick Clegg: “The Mighty Who?”

Ahh, poor Nick, I suppose he has had a lot on his mind recently and may have missed the new series currently on BBC3 Thursdays @ 10.30pm.

Well done to Martin Tod though for being down with the kids.