Which brings me to my other point: if you imagine that by fighting clean rather than fighting dirty we will somehow avoid mud being chucked at us, then you’ve sort of missed the point. I could point to a famous figure who was an exact victim of that, but all you people who come out in a rash whenever you see the ‘R’ word would get very upset.

BTW, all you people who do come out in a rash at the ‘R’ word, come and find me at the next party conference. I would be very pleased to have a conversation with you.

Rob White is an ambitious career-orientated eco-socialist, but his PR leaves something significant to be desired – and so does his speaking ability.

The Green Party’s Park Ward campaign was concieved and run as a protest against the drift and failure of Reading’s Labour administration over the past few years, by positioning himself as a TruLabour left-winger and pushing the line “85 votes to go” over ANY real policy – because he presented himself as the closest thing to a positive choice did not make him one!

The question now rises how long he can keep the protests up now that RBC has turned NOC for the next two years. We shall judge whether this half-serious candidate believes in community politics by seeing whether he has got any staying power – maybe it will prove a lucky escape for the unfortunate residents.

There is a clear example of this from the recent local elections. A candidate from the Green Party (Rob White) only missed out of kicking out the Labour candidate for Park Ward in Reading by 20 votes. Rob is someone who is passionate, committed and appears to do what he believes to be right not just to get elected. This is so different IMHO from the sitting Labour group in the ward. A few years ago their regular leaflets about what they were doing in the local community seemed to show commitment to ‘doing the right thing’. Recently however, it all seems to be about presenting themselves in the best possible light and kicking their opponents. It’s a subtle but telling difference that us humble voters pick up on.

People didn’t vote for Rob because he’s a Green. It does NOT signify that the Green Party as an organization is close to a breakthrough in the ward. People voted for Rob as a positive choice – someone who appears driven, positive and committed. Rob has been standing for election for many years and growing his support each time. He should be in next time and is a great example of how cynicism can be overcome at a local level.

(And before the comments come in, I have no link to the Green Party or Rob whatsoever. Just a straightforward non-aligned voter with enough interest to browse political blogs from time to time.)

However, I am slightly disturbed by the direct relation to religion.

I am religious myself. However I do not think one has to be religious in order to be ethnical and have high standards and integrity.

Don’t you agree?

Cynicism often fulfils the positive function of providing a balancing check on fervent belief so I can’t be too negative about that either.

I’ve always found that the distaste and generalised distrust of politicians stems from the public response to political failure as it impacts (or doesn’t impact positively) on our lives. So I’d prefer to campaign for more (personal and social) responsibility by educating people about the benefit that participation has and the satisfaction it provides when success arrives.

We need to point out that the level of failure correlates identically will the level of illiberalism in official policy.

Politics isn’t about having an easy life but making a better life.

Joe , I think you are on the money there. IMHO the rise of cynicism and BNP / UKIP is partly down to peoples perception of a lack of power over their future – Then seeking to blame immigrants/foreigners/Europe for global troubles – Like food, petrol prices , jobs moving abroad.

Europe does have a democratic deficit but the real power is the WTO and its goals. Unfortunately when the euro elections come to the boil (next year?) this will be the elephant in the room.

The fallout from ever increasing growth Vs finite resources and climate chaos will be even more cynical people and real pain to our voters and third world deaths.
Time for some honesty about the choices of the world from all politicians.

sorry for rambling – its been a long day!

In this instance I’m not calling all this “dirty tactics” though the lies obviously are and these include exaggeration, taking credit for others’ work, wonky bar charts, misrepresenting survey data (e.g. “81% of 7500 residents think X” – translation, about 20 people think something not entirely unadjacent to X), saying you’ve reported things you haven’t etc.

The old trick of not commiting anything edgy to writing and flip flopping on doorsteps is a speciality. All parties do this to an extent but it is taken to extremes – IMO – by Lib Dems.

The poster’s view is the LD negativity and misery are corrosive and I agree.

Sometimes such campaigns do work – as do other approaches – and I do admire the campaigning skills of some key Lib Dems in our region. But I feel they are often employed to get elected and pull the wool rather than to assist residents. Which means those skills can be in the service of a game, a franchise, hubris and wages.

And there are some for whom dirty tactics are a bye word and they should in my view be exposed for this.

In terms of what is negative and nasty I think the recent Edward Timpson thread on here provided a concrete example of what is too far. In football it is called ‘playing the man not the ball’ something that is only permissible when there is something about that man that directly does bear on suitibility for office.

Politics is at it’s best when it is connecting to people and inspiring them with ideas about how their own lives can be changed not just by their own action but by what the state and government can do for them.

But this leaves us with a problem – it is much easier to imagine and advocate designed solutions than organic ones. Organic solutions are less political anyway. So politicians – and business leaders for that matter – have this focus on designed solutions, and can therefore lack perspective.

Worse, those who don’t care about a problem will talk up unspecified organic solutions as an excuse for doing nothing.

So it is hard to show your values without promoting interventions – leading to the current problems of the micromanagement/target culture of public services and legislation for headline-grabbing purposes. When this doesn’t do any good, cynicism is understandable.

We – all parties – have candidates with shopping lists of policies instead of something to believe in. Votematch played up to this in the Mayoral election. What kind of buses do I want? The kind that I can get on and they go somewhere. Bah.

And we – all parties – seem to believe in a world where government can generally fix the big problems that we face. We might not explicitly promise to fix them, but we talk positively about it, for all the right reasons, and then we are surprised when people think that politicians never deliver.

These are good reasons for apathy and you have to dig deep in politics to get past them. Most people have better things to do.

There are of course those examples where people use extremely dodgy statistics on their bar charts. That certainly is cynical, but does it lead to cynicism? Doubtful.

What is a bigger factor in my view is the commodification of politics. That is, to reduce voting for parties down to a range of specific benefits to the individual. For example, we’ll save you £X in tax, we’ll give you £Y in benefits, we’ll build/block Z road. All parties do this to an extent, but Labour’s cynical approach to tax has shown the limits of it. Brown’s decision to scrap the 10p rate does indeed benefit the majority of voters, but it was so transparently unfair to the minority of badly paid workers it blew up in their face.

Caseworking is another example of this, and here the Lib Dems are most guilty. We have turned MPs into super-councillors sorting out local problems and councillors into an amalgam of social worker and ombudsman. We send out the message that it doesn’t matter what your councillor/MP believes in, it is whether they are “hardworking” or not.

That’s one of the reasons why we get screwed in PR elections. It leads to burnout. And it encourages the view that you only need to bother with politics if you have a complaint or a problem that needs resolving.

I’ll tell you; if I was a cynical opportunist in my neck of the woods (and all parties have them!) I wouldn’t be a Lib Dem.

The Tories and Labour love nothing more than to shout that we can’t win, and the media happily repeat it parrot-like and so I’d love to see any MP or councillor win where at least part of his/her campaign wasn’t given over to showing that a vote for him/her is not wasted (even if not by bar chart).

Now, I think there are some dodgy bar charts and I don’t think they should be used. But you can put whatever you want on your leaflets as long as it’s clearly marked and not misleading.

On the subject of misleading literature – for example, our Conservative MP recently put round a leaflet on mock House of Commons paper (ie says “House of Commons” at the top, but it’s not) with a supposed “report” of his activities and included the claim that he did not call for his own salary to be almost doubled *before Parliament*.
Oh no, he didn’t say it in the chamber, but he *did* argue for an increase before the Senior Salaries Review Body and in a press interview immediately afterwords said he thought MPs should earn nearly double what they did. The implication in his leaflet is that the reports of his views on MPs’ salaries were lies. Now that’s misleading.