Fourth: FULL COMMUNISM

Nick Clegg is looking increasingly like a terrified 11-yr-old fresh from a posh prep school, dumped into an inner city comprehensive still wearing his uniform, expecting an imminent kicking.

I think they tried full communism in Russia. Was a bit rubbish.

Aye, Lib Dems need to get a spine, get rid of that worthless chump and start standing up to the bloody Tories! Abstaining from the H*nt vote was just pathetic. Tories still hate them so they might as well have voted against him!

Okay, so what’s happening here is that you’re using figures – a third of current Lib Dem voters are unhappy with Clegg as leader (but still intend to vote Lib Dem), a third of current Lib Dem supporters oppose the coalition – which are nothing new as a LibDemVoice poll of Lib Dem members showed exactly the same thing last week. So what Kellner is basically doing is repeating something that Lib Dems themselves have made public – so to claim that this is somehow different to what Lib Dems have been telling themselves misses the obvious point that Lib Dems have themselves said exactly the same thing. Or, to put it another way, the claim is obviously bullshit.

Secondly, the 6% figure is somewhat irrelevant as you seem to be ignoring the fact that you’ve already identified that some of those who don’t support the coalition (e.g. 3-4% of voters) are planning on voting Lib Dem anyway. So this doesn’t represent anything new in the numbers other than phrasing it in such a way as to try and make it look that Lib Dem support is down to 6% when it’s not.

Thirdly, the point that the majority of 2010 Lib Dem voters want a labour led government is pretty irrelevant as you’re including people who have defected from the Lib Dems. A more useful figure would be the number of current Lib Dem supporters who want a Labour led government – so again you’re using irrelevant figures to try and make Lib Dem support look lower than it is.

All in all, one of the shoddiest pieces of journalism I’ve seen on Liberal Conspiracy for a very long time. I don’t object to articles talking about the poor state of the Lib Dems, or discussing how the situation might be worse or better than people think, but if you’re going to run one then at least have the integrity to run one which actually gives readers useful information rather than spouting meaningless bullshit.

The one interesting part of the article was the bit about boundary changes – but much more useful would have been an actual look at polling and council election results to come up with some sort of guide as to how big an effect the changes will have rather than stating the bleeding obvious in that, duh, the incumbency effect will be weakened.

P.S. A link to the original Kellner article would be useful if you’re going to quote from it. Come on Sunny, linking to sources is a part of blogging so basic that everyone knows it.

Once upon a time I would have said that there is no way the boundary changes will be going through, even the lib dems wouldnt be that craven in the face of their own annihilation. But now I realise there is literally nothing they wont acquiese to.

Labour didn’t win the election. Labour overspent by billions, most of it on illegal wars, identity cards and surveillance systems. Labour got voted out.

And yet the Labour left is busy constructing a myth that somehow it’s the Libdems fault that after a decade of the nastiest government we’ve ever had (napalming wedding parties is so caring), people hated Labour.

You lost. Get over it.

@6
Except you didnt link the poll on Lib Dem Voice which you quoted….

“Thirdly, the point that the majority of 2010 Lib Dem voters want a labour led government is pretty irrelevant as you’re including people who have defected from the Lib Dems. ”

No it isn’t. I’d say it was a useful piece of information that the lib dems are going to have to account for when they sit down to plot the strategy of how to win back support.

The last thing I want is for a return to 2 party politics in westminster – we need more parties winning seats not fewer. So lib dems figuring out how to increase their vote is a good thing – but sadly you seem to be in denial at the scale of the challenge you face. A bit like how the senior members of your party ignored your campaigns on ATOS really……

Idiot at 8. If you are a tory then you failed to win an out right majority against the hated Labour party. Even with a global recession, and most of the press supporting your party. Oh and loads of money from a handful of rich scumbags.

If you are a Lib Dem, you got the benefit of many pissed off labour voters, who believed in your words, pledges and manifesto.. They did not expect the Lib Dems to dump everything they had campaigned on and jump into bed with the far right. They very much did not expect you to start privatizing the NHS. As it was not even in the coalition agreement. This is a govt of liars, con men, shisters, and psychopaths.

The only interesting thing about the Lie Dems is they have proved that Turkeys do vote for Christmas.

5days ago there was a Mori poll giving Clegg 26% approval, not bad for the 3rd party I would have said.

Ask yourself – which major party has run up massive debts ?
Which party has prominent members calling for a major faction to be expelled ?

George Potter: All in all, one of the shoddiest pieces of journalism I’ve seen on Liberal Conspiracy for a very long time.

You kinda say this about every post on LC about the Libdems, so the claim has lost its power.

Look, it’s a piece of analysis by Peter Kellner, and none of it is factually untrue. I’ve done a straight reporting job on it without adding anything. If you don’t like it – take it up with him instead of whining here.

Lastly, I took it from an email sent to me, so no link. But will add it now to make you happy.

@9

The difference being that I’m not actually writing an article.

@13

Having read the actual Kellner article it’s actually a lot more balanced than the extracts you’ve published. So it’s not really a straight reporting job on it by you as you a) failed to link to your source and b) quote selectively from it without clearly showing which parts are by Kellner and which parts are your paraphrasing.

It’s nonsense to say that I make that criticism about every article about the Lib Dems on Liberal Conspiracy because I quite clearly haven’t. For example, here’s this article on UKIP being ahead of the Lib Dems more often than not in one particular month – and, as you can see, I did not comment on that article critically, or comment on it at all in fact despite having read it at the time:

http://liberalconspiracy.org/2012/05/24/ukip-higher-than-libdems-over-may/

Or, for another Lib Dem negative article which I read and didn’t criticise, see this one:

http://liberalconspiracy.org/2012/06/08/libdems-advertise-unpaid-internships-despite-clegg-pledge/

You see, where Liberal Conspiracy does accurate and balanced reporting of polls (even though I personally think their are flaws with YouGov’s methodology) and other facts then I’ve got no objection. Nor do I object or dismiss as “shoddy” the frequent opinion pieces you run which are negative about Lib Dems. What I have consistently objected to are the kind of ludicrous claims that you frequently make without any substance.

For example, when you spent about a week spouting off on twitter that the equal marriage consultation was a sham, that the Lib Dems had given up on equal marriage and that it would never get passed (“about to be kicked into the long grass” to quote you) – without even bothering to link to the consultation in your article to encoruage pro equal marriage people to respond. As I, and several other people pointed out at the time, what you were saying was nonsense and that there was no evidence behind what you were saying. Subsequently, surprise, surprise, you were proved wrong. Not that you bothered to hold your hands up and admit it mind you.

Or there’s this kind of article where you report a fairly meaningless bit of Lib Dem procedure under the headline “Libdems approve the obliteration of the NHS”:

http://liberalconspiracy.org/2012/06/08/libdems-advertise-unpaid-internships-despite-clegg-pledge/

Now, aside from the fact that no one who knows anything at all about the bill (and that includes the shadow cabinet) would be idiotic enough to claim that the NHS reforms equal the destruction of the NHS (and I say that despite disagreeing vehemently with the reforms), there’s also the small matter of a typically grossly misleading headline by Liberal Conspiracy which bears little or no relation to the article at all.

That’s the kind of thing I criticise. Shoddy, misleading articles which take the perfectly natural and healthy tendency towards political opinion and then stretch it and push it so far that it becomes so biased as to be worthy of the Daily Express. It’s not pleasant reading articles like that because it’s impossible, whatever your political viewpoint, to get any useful information or analysis out of them.

If I want to read completely biased Lib Dem or Tory bashing then I’ll read Sally’s comments. Until then, I’d very much prefer it if you’d return somewhat to the more balanced and accurate articles that originally drew me to reading Liberal Conspiracy.

Look, you’re a member of the Labour party and you have your political opinions and that seeps through into the articles you write and the kind of things you write about and that’s fine. But I genuinely think you’re spoiling a very good blog by being so ridiculously over the top and partisan. If I’d written some of the articles and made some of the claims you have recently on my own blog then I’d be hanging my head in shame right now.

Is a little journalistic integrity really that much to ask?

If the Lib Dems did kill the boundary changes, the other parties could quite rightly call it one more example of them putting their own interests before national ones. By international standards, Britain has far too many MPs for its population – 600 would be an improvement on 650, but it’s still too many. A party which claims to favour political reform and oppose government waste should support shrinking the size of the House.

Yes, it would mean even fewer Lib Dems getting elected, but they’re headed for annihilation anyway – they may as well do something right while they can. (And personally, speaking as one of those ex-supporters who voted for them in 2010, nothing would make me happier than seeing them fail to win a single seat in 2015.)

14 George what did you think of your beloved Lie Dems abstaining on the Hunt vote?

It was pitiful. And Clegg had a 3 line whip for it as well. So much for men of principles.

@14

You know, it’s very wearisome that you keep using terms like Lie Dems. Haha, we get it, it’s a pun because Lib Dems are liars. Ha ha ha.

Seriously, it’s playground level of humour and it’s just tiresome to read.

But, to answer your question, I’m fairly happy with the abstention. I think voting against Hunt would have been the best thing to do but that would have caused lots of problems in the coalition and jeopardised our chances of getting our policies through.

So abstaining and refusing to defend Hunt was probably the best option as I’d much rather we get meaningful changes through, such as Lords reform, than waste political capital on relatively inconsequential political point scoring.

Whoops – that should have read @16 rather than @14.

” than waste political capital on relatively inconsequential political point scoring.”

I’d agree with this – and abstention made the point anyway. But I do think its vital that you ensure the leveson reccommendations go through – if the murdoch tories block that (gove etc) then that would be grounds to break the coalition.

@15. Alasdair

Yes, by comparison with most other countries, we have too many elected representitive at the top. However, this is in large part due to the fact that we havwe fewer elected representitives overall, and those below Parliament have fewer powers and less independence. Consequently MPs end up as glorified social workers. If you are going to reduce Parliamentary representation, you should also increase local representation and increase bothe the numbers and powers of such locaal bodies. Otherwise all you are doing is increasing the power of the centre. Note that there are no proposals to decrease the number of Ministers, so the smaller House of Commons will be more Governmemnt dominated.

Further, the requirement for equality of size will mean more regular boundary changes, leading to less locally accountable figures as anything up to a third of the electorate changes every time, and more dependance on the central Party, as that influence is needed tio get what will often effectively be a new seat every couple of elections.

@19 planetshift

“I’d agree with this – and abstention made the point anyway.”

No… it’s just another example of LibDem weakness I’m afraid. Voting against would have been a much stronger message, might actually have have achieved something, and would also have been good for the rump that is the current party.

It would probably have done them some good to have the carpet biters on the Tory right frothing at them, and may even have persuaded some voters that the touching (if misguided) belief that they were making a difference had some substance.

In truth, the scant crumbs of comfort have to be sucked up wherever the LD’s see them…. they don’t amount to much after all. If we can’t even expect them to take a stand on a no-brianer like voting against in the Hunt case, what hope is there of them voting down more vital train wrecks like NHS reform, spending £500M on Trident replacement etc, etc…?

@17: “” than waste political capital on relatively inconsequential political point scoring.”

I have huge respect for your willingness to stand up for sick and disabled people, George Potter, but on this I think you are wrong. When in opposition, your party made all kinds of noise about cleaning up politics and not standing for any kind of sleaze or corruption at all.

You had (another) chance to stand with the public and say “this man, accused of corruption, should be investigated.” But you didn’t. Your party sat on the fence, probably to keep the Tories happy and the coalition going smoothly.

When in opposition, you never said “we’ll stand up for corruption if..”. There were no “ifs or buts”. You and other LibDems have admitted that they would have preferred taking a stand against alleged corruption, but could not because you were in coalition.

This is incredibly weak and shows that principles are things to be thrown away for political convenience. Just like the other two parties. So you’ll never be able to campaign on cleaning up parliament with a straight face again.

Mind you, there’s not much at all you can campaign on with the straight face any more. And I’m someone who voted for your party since 2001. Never again, though..