Would the report been in the paper with someone else’s name i suspect not, we have never found it easy to get in the papers no matter what we have said or have you all forgotten that?

i will tell you this though i have spent time with Lembit and where ever you go with him People always want to talk and listen to him, and that goes for MP’s in other parties too. We have only a hand full of MP’s that can do that as well as him.

so what if he isn’t the standard MP, not so sure the public like standard MP’s anyway.

Yes i know he has made bad personal relationship judgement calls, He knows this, but he doesn’t do it on purpose you know. the real worry i guess is that by association it will damage the party.

Well do voters say i not voting Lib Dem because of him, Never heard that on the doorstep have you?

Of course some will be effected by the media attention but he is not that famous you know and I suspect we worry about it far more then voters do.

It is just a shame that Lembit’s comment was so clichéd and lame. Shared ownership housing is not an answer to affordability as by and large they are not affordable.

Quotes from Government minister, Local government network (ex-labour MP), House Builders Federation, Shelter and … oh yes Lembit Opik LIb Dem Housing Spokesman. Not a Tory in sight ……….

However, if the media is your target, your example is a poor one, as Lembit has hardly been a media-shy wallflower and has only brought this on himself.

Time for a chat with HQ methinks.

What they should have done is put this out as a financial story under the Vince Cable banner, then we would have got coverage for this and for Lembit’s antics as well.

Re: Torygraph – fair point.

It reads as though there is a shift back to Morning Post whiggishness there with an underlying scepticism for Camerons competence, so I’d give it the benefit of the doubt for the time being.

I think the point about the Blair attachment to the spice girls and oasis was that they represented a cultural shift and he wanted to use them to cement the ‘authenticity’ of his appeal with a ‘common touch’.

Lembit may court celebrity, but unceremoniously dumping a weather girl for a more glamourous and younger non-entity speaks volumes about his character. I fear for him in the sense that the publicity he recieves is more akin to tracking prey ahead of the pounce when he is exposed for whatever it will be, rather then for any real political appeal – the press obviously sniff a target, so he better not be hiding any guilty secrets for his and the party’s sake.

The odd thing is that the latter didn’t adversely influence the former, nor did my school governorship enhance my anorakdom.

So why not accept the possibility that:

a) a taste for the celebrity lifestyle
b) being an effective constuency MP
and c) being an effective spokesman on a portfolio;

are not mutually exclusive qualities ???

If there wasn’t a focus on him and the Cheeky Girl, I very much doubt the Treasury story would fill its place. Rather it would be replaced by something about Louise Redknapp being pregnant, and the Treasury story would remain buried.

As even the ‘quality’ papers become trashier by the day (particularly the Indie and Torygraph) it’s occurred to me that perhaps this will become the official function of the MSM (to be populist, unchallenging, commuter-rags – or in the case of the monopolising BBC website, a one-stop lunchtime trivia-scan) and anyone looking for any kind of specialist news or analysis will use smaller sites – and, yes, blogs.

Most of the electorate tend to think politicians are all lying weasels and scum bags, yet they’ll happily put faith in celebrities… look at the sheer volume of people who would vote in Big Brother, but not in a general election.

Criticising the first person to get any decent publicity for the party at all since Charlie Kennedy left (ie in the Have I got News for You and other TV stuff he did, before all the stuff right at the end)… well this is exactly the kind of mindsets that send us round in circles never achieving a great deal. If you want the electorate to really take you seriously, a bit of celebrity is not a bad thing.

Given the standard of press releases that I tend to see from LDHQ, I’m of the impression that noone else in the party is capable of courting serious press coverage… and yes, no publicity is a great thing if you want noone to know what you stand for and to always be a really nice, but never electable party (which is the current status quo)

When Labour came to power, they had photos with Spice Girls, the lot. And it worked. Yes, people were ready for change, but the manefesto of change + some celebrity thrown in, does seem to work. Obama, “we can change”: manefesto for change + celebritiy.

I think many people underestimate the impact of postmodernity on the contemporary mindset. Too many of us live in a political bubble, where we loose touch with how voters think. They might moan about Hello magazine, but they secretly would at the very least peek at the pages over somebody’s shoulder and be drawn in by the human interest (even the middle class voters, who pretend not to).

Until someone can find a better way of getting us bigger, better publicity… then I suggest you think about whether what you’re saying is actually constructive. If you can get us that level of publicity and more… then maybe we’ll be able to afford to criticise.