Down And Dirty With The Party Of Protest

MONDAY, APRIL 26, 2010

http://burningourmoney.blogspot.com/

Down And Dirty With The Party Of Protest

Preparing an LD election leaflet

Tyler's feet are complaining bitterly about their weekend pounding the pavements. 

The opposition here in the leafy glades are the Lib Dems, and they are mounting their usual ferociously unprincipled campaign. Their big pitch is that the Tory candidate is a professional politician who is only fighting this seat because he's failed to get in elsewhere. They have distributed thousands of fake local newspapers headlining this point, and explaining how their own candidate is a local councillor and ex-Mayor, 110% committed to local shops for local people.

No mention of the fact that the Tory is one of our own County Councillors, lives only a few miles outside the constituency, has already pledged to move his family into the constituency if elected. Or that far from being a career politician, he's actually had a very successful career in business. Or that their candidate fought and lost another constituency in 2005, and may very well have applied for a stack of LD nominations elsewhere. Or that... well, frankly, she doesn't look up to the job.

Still, the LDs haven't yet sunk to the depths they plumbed in the nextdoor constituency in 2005. There they set up a website devoted to slagging off the Tory candidate in the vilest personal terms (see here).

What's that? Ahhh, diddums?

Yes, fair enough. This is an election, not some sacred act of democratic accountability. 

But what does stick in the throat is the preposterous LD line that they are somehow above the Punch and Judy fray, and that they offer a non-political alternative to the tired old discredited parties.

Peter Oborne's article yesterday gives a good overview of how the LDs actually operate, including several examples of the fake communications they routinely send out. 

And lest anyone think it's simply a case of a few over-enthusiastic local zealots doing things of which Clegg and St Vince know nothing, we have these jaw-dropping quotes from their official manual for LD councillors Effective Opposition:

"Be wicked, act shamelessly, stir endlessly...

Positive campaigning will NOT be enough to win control of the council... effective opposition accentuates the negative...

...you can secure support from voters who normally vote Tory by being effectively anti-Labour and similarly in a Tory area secure Labour votes by being anti-Tory.

Oppose all service cuts ... No cut is going to be popular and why court the unpopularity that goes with the responsibility of power?"

Why indeed?

Although if, say, you were living in a country with a huge fiscal problem, needing to make unprecedented spending cuts, you might slightly wonder why the LDs should be allowed anywhere near the controls.