Kevin Maguire in the Mirror for this effort:
Lib Dem support for the Gurkhas will cost them seats
His rationale for this, erm, counter-intuitive view? Though crediting Nick Clegg’s campaigning on behalf of the Gurkhas as “principled”, Kevin then argues that his “cosying up in bed together [with David Cameron] will cost the Lib Dems seats”.
Hmmm. Quite apart from the idea that the Lib Dem leader could (even if he’d wanted to) refuse to stand on the same platform as his Tory counterpart as part of a non-partisan campaign, what’s the evidence for Kevin’s suggestion?
Well, on the one hand you have Kevin’s quite-genuine-not-made-up-at-all-to-validate-my-argument hearsay that “I heard a potential switcher asking what’s the point of voting Lib Dem only to find Clegg putting Cameron into No 10 in a hung Parliament?”
And on the other, you have PoliticsHome.com’s poll of 873 voters which finds that majorities of Labour, Tory, Lib Dem and non-aligned voters all feel positive ‘seeing or hearing about David Cameron’s Conservatives and Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats working together’.
4 Comments
Kevin Maguire is just a Labour stooge
Kevin Maguire gives partisan numpties a bad name.
However, Kevin Maguire may be right. The Lib-Con pact which seems to be emerging will not be attractive to many parts of your coalition of voters. And Cameron’s people e.g. Liam Fox have been very weak on the Gurkha issue. Talk of a few legs ups for the points-based immigration from Fox withing a couple of hours of PMQs. After Cam had made his rather silly “let ’em all in” remark.
A Chris Paul comment in an article about partisan reporting. my my.