In future, prison grasses who commit perjury for favours will be protected by anonymity. It will not be possible to confront them with their criminal records.

Show trials like the ABC trial of the 1970s will become a routine occurrence. Anyone remember Colonel Hugh Johnston (oops, that’s contempt of court) who, standing behind a screen, explained to the jury how possessing photographs of the Post Office Tower amounted to a dangerous threat to national security? It took Paul Foot, one of the greatest journalists who has ever lived, to stick his neck out and name the guy.

Thanks to the collusion of Brown, Cameron and Clegg, we can say goodbye to open justice.

The real problem for the Greens (aside from some loopy views) is that if they are right and the other parties have nothing to offer on the environment, then they might as well pack up and go home. The idea that winning in Norwich or Brighton will transform anything is darft. The Lib Dems should know, they’ve spent years trying to take on the main parties.

Rather than knocking the Lib Dems the greens might to better to work for common aims like electoral reform – if they can work with Ken, it must be possible.

Well I broadly agree, in that I’m not sure this result shows anything about how we are doing in Brighton, Norwich, and so on. Those results will be decided by the hard work that our candidates and their teams are doing in those areas, not by whether we get 1,700 or 2,500 votes in Haltemprice.

And I can say mission accomplished because I set out two criteria for success and we achieved them both. Perhaps our media coverage wasn’t that which the Lib Dems would expect in a constituency where they wanted to come second, but in comparison to normal coverage of Green candidates in by-elections it was very respectable.

Matt

How can you sat that beating the English Democrats by just 44 votes is mission accomplished. Despite the spin of top Greens like Rupert Read this result as showing they are on course in their actual target seats seems hard to justify.

Mission accomplished would have been 10-20% the vote not the dismal 7%.

The lesson is that in future we actually run against candidates with whom we disagree.

This by-election was nothing to do with civil liberty and more to do with splits in the Tory party.

That of course is the crux of the issue. I think there is a strong tendency in the party to associate campaigning with elections. They’re not the same thing and we need to do far more to campaign on important issues to win hearts and minds outside of elections.

I don’t agree with your triangulation point, though – whats DD’s support for 28 days rather than 42 days if not triangulation?

I just find it weird to try and get my head around the idea of a non-campaign campaign. It is not something we have much experience of – running a campaign without a candidate.

[And that applies at any level from Parish Councils or local authorities to shadow home secretaries !]

“…and setting out clearly the Lib Dem stance on civil liberties – which is a good deal more liberal, consistent and united than that offered by Mr Davis’s party”

Yes, but what exactly is the Lib Dem stance on civil liberties?

Satellite surveillance of motor vehicles? (transport working group)
Marshal law for under 16s? (Julia Goldsworthy)
Conscription? (Mark Oaten)
Capital and corporal punishment? (Cyril Smith)

Ok, it’s a bit unfair of me to shove in Cyril Smith, who was always an outsider with little influence, and whose opinions tended not to be shared by many of his colleagues.

But Goldsworthy is a different kettle of fish. Goldsworthy holds a Shadow Cabinet portfolio and is believed to be very close to Nick Clegg. The fact that she advocates fascism is an absolute scandal and needs to be stamped on firmly and swiftly.

Nick should sack her, just as Ted Heath sacked Enoch Powell after his notorious Midlands Hotel speech in 1968.

Marshal law and youth hating have nothing to do with Liberal Democracy. We need to make that clear.

PS: What a pathetic result for the “robot radical” Green Party, which failed to pick up more than a handful of progressive votes.

A rather odd view, given your own assessment only yesterday that:

(1) “Mr Davis will be hoping that at least half the electorate will go to the polls. … [but] Given the lack of credible opposition to Mr Davis, he can probably argue that anything over 40% is respectable.”

(2) “… he will hope and expect to get at least 70% of the vote at this by-election. Anything below that will be embarrassing …”

Admittedly with 72% of the vote he narrowly avoided fulfilling your “embarrassment” criterion, but obviously the 35% turnout falls far short of your “respectability” criterion, let alone the 50% you think he was hoping for.

So the turnout wasn’t respectable, and Davis’s vote was 2 points above embarrassing, but the combined effect is “a commanding personal mandate”.

Did you write that bit before the result was announced, by any chance?

If someone from a totally different point of view to mine supports civil liberties, I regard that as a good thing, as it shows that the LD leadership were right to say that it is basically not a partisan issue.

I for one am congratulating him on his victory.