We were on 24 last May – 1% ahead of our standing at the previous General. In 2003-4 we were at 27% – 8% ahead.

Opinion polls are notoriously unreliable and often fluctuate within large margins of error, also likely to be influenced by inumerable, multifarious and infinitely variable factors.

Nevertheless polls are still an effective way to build a narrative and sell newspapers – for exactly the reason that they provide a sound-track to provoke a subject and set a bench-mark to measure reactions by…if you want to dance to that tune.

I don’t think talk of this or any ‘current crisis’ is more than a third-party should ever expect, as the onus will always be there to overturn the vested interest of favoritism that accompanies an assumed consensus – which is what the media is there to create.

It is our job to break the damaging and divisive assumptions and replace them with a vision of something more coherent and practical – ie good; better; best sense.

Yes, we aren’t there yet. Yes, we have more to do. Yes, we will continue. Yes we can do it.

Thanks for that.

My number came from BBC online.

They give local election LD shares as:
2003 = 30% england
2004 = not clear
2005 = not clear
2006 = 27% england
2007 = 26% result for england, not clear for scotland + wales

I don’t understand why there’s the difference.
Rallings and Thrasher seems much easier to use, shame they only run to 2004.

See here, page 52.

OK, 26% is not terrible, but we were up at 30% in 2003. That’s the level I believe we can achieve with a good national image (+ good local policy + campaigns).

Whilst I know that the overall share of the vote in 2007 was 1% down on 2006 (and we lost seats), our share of the vote at both of these was record-breaking for our party – 27% and 26% respectively.

This is not to say I don’t think we could be doing better – we shouldn’t be complacent – but it’s certainly not as bad as some of the posters say here. Changing a leader alone doesn’t solve all the problems a party had. Look at the Tories. The press wanted to believe the Tories’ new narrative, which DC was skillfully weaving – but his party has scuppered him in recent months *because they’ve not changed at all*. And as the man who helped write the Tories last manifesto, it doesn’t run too deep in him either!

Wrong, Elizabeth Patterson, whoever you might be. I said no such thing. I referred to a stream of critics venting their spleens on Lib Dem Voice, not to anyone attacking the present leadership. A defining attribute of an intellectual giant (or an intellectual of normal stature) is the ability to read and analyse text correctly.

Elizabeth Patterson further wrote: “In our case the unnecessarily precipitous removal of Charles, our whips failure to check out Mark Oaten,”

So it’s OK to have a leader who gets drunk in public and is unable to explain party policy at a manifesto launch?

By what means could our whips have “checked out” Mark Oaten? Followed him into public lavatories and male brothels? Or searched his dustbins?

A great many points made, but can I ask people to focus on reality:

* The 2006 + 2007 local election results saw us losing vote share
* The results in Scotland were not great
* We are currently polling between 14% and 18%
* Campbell’s personal rating is appalling (polling shows only 6% rate him as best potential prime minister)
* Campbell has also got image problems which won’t go away
* There is no law of nature that will give us an automatic swing up as the election approaches.

That’s the bad news!

This is the good news: Even if the General Election is called for October WE STILL HAVE TIME TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

* Make sure we campaign on OUR issues of liberty, democracy, ethical foreign policy, environmental action, and social justice.
* Make sure we all use every Focus to campaign on real national Liberal issues, not lamp posts and pot holes.
* Don’t muddy the water by compromising on terror laws, or locally by supporting Nimbys or being populist.

And as far as Ming is concerned:
* Make sure Ming is ALWAYS seen with a right hand man (say Chris Huhne) and a left hand woman (say Julia Goldsworthy).

Finally: If Brown doesn’t call an October election then we CAN have a Nov leadership election.

Ming’s original mandate was won under very unusual circumstances and if his supporters think he’s that good then they should encourage him to call one, enter it and win it.

http://www.ipsos-mori.com/polls/trends/voting-allpub-trends.shtml

You can see that we were polling pretty much what we’re polling now – but by 2005 we’d turned that into a 22% share. Undoubtably we are a couple of percent lower in the polls than we were at the same time in the last “electoral cycle” but it’s no collapse.

It fits with the media’s narrative that we are collapsing, despite the fact that it’s not true, and so of course they’ll spin our poll-ratings that way. And of course they’ll pick up on negative comments about Ming’s leadership – it’s what they want to hear!

“I will not dance with you for three reasons. Firstly you are drunk, secondly they are currently playing the national anthems and thirdly I am the Archbishop of Lima!”

Drifting from the point I know but too good a story not to repeat :_)

No, he wasn’t.

There was George Brown (Lord George-Brown, as he became). For whom “Private Eye” coined the term “tired and emotional”. When Brown lost his seat in 1970, he delivered an almost incoherent valedictory ramble, all about “the democrats being democked”, whatever that means.

According to a wonderful “Private Eye” front cover, when Brown and Wilson visited De Gaulle, Brown said: “And you do the hokey cokey and you shake it all about.” Wilson chipped in: “Georges et un peut fatigué, votre majesté.” But Longconk still bellowed out: “NON!”

Towards the end of his life, Brown appeared on a TV chat show with Lord Longford. Brown decided to deride Celment Atlee as an overrated politician, to which Longford retorted: “Claptrap.” Brown snapped back: “The problem with you intellectuals is you’re always so bloody abusive! Can’t you be polite for a change?”

We just don’t make politicians like that any more.

No, I’ve always said he was crap.”

So you didn’t like Ming or CK, are you sure you’re really a Lib Dem?

Ming is a bit of a liability, CK was fantastic and that’s why we did so well with him, he wasn’t the drunkest politician in history but he was one of the better ones, people warmed to him and believed in him, Ming brought a lot of this on himself by stabbing him in the back.

Anyway, we’re stuck with Ming now and need to make the best of it.

People then were saying “the next election is going to be a disaster” and we know how right they were.

There’s little point in rising to the bait of being attacked in the Telegraph!

Well that is what it sounds like. How it is actually achieved is a complete mystery.

What they do is master their briefs and address the court ex tempore. Which is what Ming does.

Yeah, right.

Could you imagine [Kennedy] in No 10 running a government and working with world leaders?

No, I’ve always said he was crap.

People do perceive [Ming] to be a PM in waiting.

That is a) ridiculous, and b) irrelevant. Nobody is seriously suggesting that we are going to win the next election.

And this will shine through as the GE campaign unfolds.

Are you Lady Campbell by any chance?

Supposing we change the leader this Autumn. We replace Ming with Chris Huhne, Nick Clegg, David Laws, whomever. Then, in 6 months time, the opinion polls have stubbornly refused to budge. What do we do then?

My principal argument has nothing to do with polls, though they can be a bit worrying. It’s simply that Sir Ming is not up to the job, and it would therefore be an insult to the electorate to go into a general election with Ming as captain. Try to think of the voters occasionally.

I was looking at the differences between the Lib Dems and the Liberal Party and I must say that despite voting Lib Dem in the last few elections they don’t appeal to me in the same light the Liberal Party do.

Now where I live there is not a Liberal Party candidate but I really think that the Lib Dems need to go back and understand what it is to be a British Liberal!