Skip to main content

Fighting the Election

There is a sharp difference between fighting the election as a candidate- as I did last time- and merely campaigning, or even observing. The process of being a candidate is all absorbing- and requires considerable concentration. The process of campaigning is a much less demanding role- though it too can be exhausting, as long hours and often repetitive jobs, like envelope stuffing, take their toll.

I wonder, though, whether as a candidate I might not have noticed the extraordinary turn that the 2010 election seems to be taking. The battle remains tight. The result of this election remains genuinely unclear.

From the perspective of the Liberal Democrats, however, this election is already shaping up to be one of the best results that I have ever known. Reports from across the country suggest that the party is gaining ground in seats that it is challenging in, and holding off the competition in seats where it is being challenged. The party has gained some momentum in the latest polls: and the outlook is good for a result which will be higher than that of 2005.

The expenses scandal has highlighted the Liberal Democrat case for wholesale constitutional reform. This is going down well on the doorsteps- with the clear recognition that the Lib Dems record on expenses is dramatically better than either Labour or the Conservatives. Even more powerfully there is the recognition that Vince Cable has called the economy right from the very start of the economic crisis- and that George Osborne has not. I have had several comments that suggest that the voters actively want a hung Parliament- with the comment in a pub- I paraphrase- "with that Nick Clegg and his thirty women, it might even be a "well-hung" Parliament".

The start of the campaign has got off to the predictable cat fight of Labour and the Conservatives, but somehow their heart doesn't seem to be in it: the action seems to be elsewhere. There is growing understanding that the result depends on how well the Liberal Democrats do, and where they do it. All the signs are good, so far, that the party is attracting positive support and good momentum.

Back to the grind of the campaign.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Liberal Democrats v Conservatives: the battle in the blogosphere

It is probably fair to say that the advent of Nick Clegg, the new leader of the Liberal Democrats, has not been greeted with unalloyed joy by our Conservative opponents. Indeed, it would hardly be wrong to say that the past few weeks has seen some "pretty robust" debate between Conservative and Liberal Democrat bloggers. Even the Queen Mum of blogging, the generally genial Iain Dale seems to have been featuring as many stories as he can to try to show Liberal Democrats in as poor a light as possible. Neither, to be fair, has the traffic been all one way: I have "fisked' Mr. Cameron's rather half-baked proposals on health, and attacked several of the Conservative positions that have emerged from the fog of their policy making process. Most Liberal Democrats have attacked the Conservatives probably with more vigour even than the distrusted, discredited Labour government. So what lies behind this sharper debate, this emerging war in the blogosphere? Partly- in my ...
20 comments
Read more

Concert and Blues

Tallinn is full tonight... Big concerts on at the Song field The Weeknd and Bonnie Tyler (!). The place is buzzing and some sixty thousand concert goers have booked every bed for thirty miles around Tallinn. It should be a busy high summer, but it isn´t. Tourism is down sharply overall. Only 70 cruise ships calling this season, versus over 300 before Ukraine. Since no one goes to St Pete, demand has fallen, and of course people think that Estonia is not safe. We are tired. The economy is still under big pressure, and the fall of tourism is a significant part of that. The credit rating for Estonia has been downgraded as the government struggles with spending. The summer has been a little gloomy, and soon the long and slow autumn will drift into the dark of the year. Yesterday I met with more refugees: the usual horrible stories, the usual tears. I try to make myself immune, but I can´t. These people are wounded in spirit, carrying their grief in a terrible cradling. I try to project hop...
Post a Comment
Read more

Are the Liberal Democrats Libertarian?

A few days ago Cicero met with one of the better known figures in the Libertarian Alliance, Brian Mickelthwait . Brian writes for various blogs that I enjoy reading- including Samizdata . Ahead of our meeting Brain expressed "scepticism" about the Libertarian credentials of the Liberal Democrats: "My charge was that when you meet a Liberal Democrat you never know what he will believe. The one who talks to you is likely to say what you want to hear. But the others will simultaneously be telling other people with quite different views what they want to hear. So don't vote for these lying creeps." Political parties- all of them- are coalitions of people who quite often disagree with each other. Apparently we are not supposed to "air our dirty linen in public", but actually one of the reasons that the Liberal Democrats appealed to me was that they were prepared to talk about issues and policies amongst themselves in public. The eclipse of the Liberal Party...
18 comments
Read more