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About Me
- Rob Nolan
- Councillor for Boscawen Ward in the City of Truro, Cornwall. Likes Skinners beer, pasties and jogging. Not always at the same time. Working to make Truro a more child friendly City.
8 comments:
What, the official opposition?
Hmm it strikes me that Guido Fawkes comments are not entirely favourable to Clegg. In any case his comparison of Huhne to IDS is claptrap.
If I wanted a good reason to vote for Clegg I'd take a look at Charlotte Gore's thoughtful blog that she wrote today instead.
If Guido doesn't like him he MUST be good.
IDS wasn't this effective at getting media coverage.
Rob, Anyone persuaded to vote Clegg on the basis of Guido's analysis would need to out of their mind surely. Note Guido's conclusion: he fancies Clegg because he thinks he might prove the weaker campaigner. Doh!
All I would say is read the last section of Guido's comments:
"Guido thinks it would be strategically better for the Tories to have Clegg as a leader, despite the fears that he will compete for Cameron's votes. The most likely outcome of a general election is still a hung parliament. Clegg will be more amenable to a deal with the Tories. Guido is also beginning to wonder if Clegg might actually be a weaker campaigner than Huhne."
and listen to yesterday's Today programme:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/
Hey you don't have to be called Rob,or have the first inititial R, to leave a comment here, but it helps, obviously.
Again, we have this idea that there is some "left-wing activist base" in the Liberal Democrats. This has been a theme throughout the campaign with commentators claiming that Huhne is trying to appeal to it. But just who are these people in this "activist base"? Does anyone here know them? If the LibDem blogosphere represents some sort of activity, I certainly don't see much evidence of it here.
Nor do I particularly recognise it from any of the local Liberal Democrat associations I know. The party has a sort of left and right, yes, but I don't notice that those who are more active tend to be more to the left.
What we are seeing here is just sloppiness in which people who haven't a clue are trying to force the Liberal Democrats into the pattern of the 1980s Labour Party. Back then and in that party you could talk of an "activist base" in terms of people who were active in the party's structure, trying to push in left-wing candidates and left-wing policies. They could have the luxury of devoting much of their time to activity within the party stuff because they believed the Labour votes would always come rolling in from people who "always voted "Labour".
The Liberal Democrats aren't like that. If anything, we're rather poor on intra-party policy discussion, and nominations for public elections tend to be more a matter of twisting people's arms to stand than activists competing against each other for candidature.
People who are Liberal Democrat activists in the form of devoting a lot of their time to the party tend to spend it delivering, canvassing, and doing council casework, not on factional battles within the party. They know that Liberal Democrat votes have to be won by activity oriented towards the public, and are thus the very opposite in approach to the old Labour Party activist who Guido and other sloppy commentators are thinking of here.
So, if anything, the Liberal Democrat activist base is going to be on the look-out for what they think from their experience will work on the streets, and not for any particular policy position.
Rob, If it helps to have a full house, I have to admit that I am a Rob, too, and sometimes post as Robin Young (depending which password I can successfully remember). I admit to having been a Huhne supporter from the outset (and last time too), but I really have become more and more anxious about the result. I have been dismayed by several of Nick Clegg's appearances, and I just don't think he will measure up to the job. The official Huhne team line is "choice of two excellent candidates", but personally I feel there is only one.
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