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Biting the hand

I see Iain Dale dropped by Brighton last night. Perhaps another manifestation of our fairness or being the nice party, or something...

Iain has been making a living as the guru of the blogosphere, and despite being a losing Tory candidate last time, does occasionally manage one or two graceful comments about opinions not his own.

He has improved his blogging franchise still further with his Guide to Political Blogging in the UK . It is a personal- and idiosyncratic- selection of the top Lib Dem, Conservative, Labour and non aligned blogs. I see that this blog achieved the dizzy heights of being in the top twenty Lib Dem blogs, but this still places it outside the top 100 blogs overall.

Iain attended a fringe meeting last night- I would link to his blog of it, but to be honest it doesn't show him a particularly good light. While I don't expect him to engage with Liberal arguments, it would be nice if he could bring himself to do more than simply mock his political opponents.

I see Labour wouldn't even let him in to their conference- which speaks volumes about their control freakery.

The trouble with the Tories is that they find it so hard to rise above a pretty low level of debate with Liberal Democrats: "you won't get elected anyway, so what's the point?". They have no answer when we do beat them- and they can get petulant, disbelieving and bitter when the electorate does turn them out- though to be fair Iain is more... rueful.

However, if "sarcasm is the lowest form of wit", then mockery must be the lowest form of politics. Our opponents want people to believe that Liberalism can't win, that there is no real hope for change. As we know, when people think that the Liberal Democrats can win, they take them seriously and that is very dangerous to other parties, even under the current distorted electoral system.

Next year I suggest that not only do we invite him back, we put him on a platform and force him to debate his opposition to a Liberal Britain. After all it does seem that he is perfectly in favour of a Little Britain- since David Cameron is turning into Emily Howard- the unconvincing (political) transvestite.

See- no more lame than most of the jokes that we had from Iain (or round the arena, if I am honest).

Comments

I think you're being extremely unfair to Iain. Most centre-right bloggers like to debate with Liberal Democrats. But it's much more fun mocking you.
Iain Dale said…
"Iain attended a fringe meeting last night- I would link to his blog of it, but to be honest it doesn't show him in a particularly good light. While I don't expect him to engage with Liberal arguments, it would be nice if he could bring himself to do more than simply mock his political opponents."

Cicero, with respect, what rubbish. Read my post again. I was live blogging the event and reported what I heard and commented accordingly. I've just re-read it myself and I really don't know what your problem is!
Were you at the meeting? I can't see there's anything you could really take issue with in my report of it.
Cicero said…
Iain- I re-read it too, and it is less dodgy second time around- not being thin skinned- perhaps it is because I guess what you were thinking ;-)

I think I saw it as mocking because the reported speech seems to lead to the "complacency rules OK" comment, and of course I don't think we are complacent. In fact I think you'll agree we are very aware of the possible threat from you guys.
Anonymous said…
" since David Cameron is turning into Emily Howard- the unconvincing (political) transvestite."

If you're going to do a post calling for a higher level of debate and branding political mockery a low form of wit. Then perhaps you should reconsider remarks like that.
Cicero said…
RK- perhaps the irony was a little subtle, but of course, ironically is how I intended it to be taken...

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