Yeller Bellied Lib Dems
A little more from me this week on the hypocrisy of the Liberal Democrats. I should point out that I have nothing in particular against the party. Policy-wise, they are better than Labour and the Tories. Not least in their long-running campaign for Proportional Representation, something which is absolutely essential to make Britain’s political system truly democratic. It is ironic, then, that of all the parties, they should make the most use of those annoying little bar charts in their election leaflets that tell us that they are the only party that can win in the constituency and that all the others should quit while they’re behind. Democracy, in its ideal form – and PR is about as close as we can reasonably hope to get to democracy in its ideal form – should be about voting for what you believe in and who you think is best placed to run the country, not who is most likely to win. While Nick Clegg spent the election campaign telling the nation we need PR so that the people who don’t vote for the winning candidate in their constituency don’t see their votes going to waste, around the country his party was exploiting the fear of wasted votes to convince people it’s not worth voting for anyone else. Tut tut Cleggy. Have the courage of your convictions.
Reader Comments
I’m of the belief that the Lib Dems failed to make a significant breakthrough exactly because of the negative, petty and dumbed down campaigning by local candidates. For example, here in Durham the Lib candidate should definitely have taken the seat, with the incumbent Labour MP proving to be stuck to the whip and the Tories fielding a twenty year old. But her campaigning was awful, all about how the Tories couldn’t win and the incumbent was implicated in certain expenses issues that simply weren’t true. In fact her proportion of the vote went down a little. Not surprising, since judging by her manifesto she had about as much political vision as a mouse.