8 Comments

• Steve Way 13th Apr '12 - 1:00pm

  After this site ran a piece about Labour focusing on national issues it is good to see the focus is on local ones….

  A question, how can a vote in the local elections affect income tax and pension rates ? And how insulting to the brilliant contributions Lib Dem Councillor’s make to communities up and down the country. They deserved a mention….

• Caracatus 13th Apr '12 - 1:59pm

  I think that this misses the point – and sets the wrong tone. The tax cut may be good, but it doesn’t hugely resonate with people who rightly or wrongly are concerned about – rising fuel prices, cuts to housing benefit, council tax benefit, frozen pay, higher tuition fees and changes to non-state pensions.

  It is depressing to see the broadcast down to barely a minute – presumably because someone thinks people won’t pay attention for longer.

  The regional “manifestos” on the national website were I presume were not created by local councillors or parties and seem mostly to be a list of Government spending.

  It is about the level of localism one has come to expect from Eric Pickles – but it still shocks when the Lib Dems do it.

• Daniel Henry 13th Apr '12 - 2:01pm

  Touché Steve!
  I had to give a Labour friend a grovelling apology for criticising Labour when it turned out we did the exact same thing!

  It opens an interesting question though. How could we use a national party political broadcast to push local issues?

  Some channels do regional broadcasts for news – perhaps we could do regional political broadcasts where we push local work and campaigns?

• jason 13th Apr '12 - 2:20pm

  Caron,
  Wouldn’t a better title have been, “LibDem’s not-so-very-local election broadcast shows how unimportant local decision-making is to Nick Clegg’s party”?

• Stuart Mitchell 13th Apr '12 - 5:59pm

  For a start, the message is obviously (chooses words carefully) factually incorrect – the government’s own budget figures show that people in all income groups are paying far MORE tax, not £550 less.

  But worse than that: whatever happened to the Lib Dem party of old, which used to berate the other parties for making base appeals to voters’ wallets? The Lib Dem party of 2005, which boasted proudly that it was the only party honest enough to tell voters that it would increase their taxes? This broadcast has only one message, the same message we’ve been hearing now from Lib Dems for months: “Vote for us and we’ll give you some money.”

• Sam Phripp 14th Apr '12 - 8:19am

  This just seems a bit dense to me. Who do we actually pay to do this tosh?
  Neither this or the mayoral one are much cop – but at least we can see with the mayoral one what they’re trying to do.
  We’re making the exact same mistake we made in 2011. What were the main points that needed to be made in local elections? That no LD council was closing a library or a sure start centre. What were the main messages in the election broadcast? We’re cutting your tax and bumping up your pension. I don’t have an issue with either of those things, but whacking on about them at the wrong time is incredibly unhelpful for local candidates. The only broadcast I’ve seen that does what ours should have was the tories. What’s the better they’ll do well again regardless.

• Alex 14th Apr '12 - 10:16am

  I agree with Sam Phripp and others; this is a stupid election broadcast. I know that voters tend to vote on national issues in local elections, but I don’t think the Lib Dems should be encouraging this attitude. Our campaign should focus almost exclusively on what Lib Dems have done in *local* government. Moreover, if people mention national politics on the doorstep, we should point out that this is a local election, and steer the conversation to local politics.

• Paul Reynolds 14th Apr '12 - 11:21am

  No doubt the broadcast will help – it’s a positive message. One cannot help wondering if a more direct approach would have been more effective at elevating the number of votes for us – that is, reasons why you should vote for Lib Dem councillors and Lib Dem administrations in LOCAL government. There is a good story to tell, and Lib Dem run authorities do a patently better job that councils run by other parties. To be blunt it look a bit ‘Kim Il Sung’ – the party HQ using the local election opportunity to push the key national message and fill it with shots of the dear leader. The old adage about persuasion is ‘YOU, Us, me’, in order of priority. This political broadcast looks a bit ‘ME, Us, you’ does it not ? Many do, unfortunately.