And the award for most desperate headline goes to…

By Stephen Tall | Wed 6th May 2009 - 2:25 pm

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

John 6th May '09 - 3:06pm

Kevin Maguire is just a Labour stooge
Paul Walter 6th May '09 - 4:02pm

Kevin Maguire gives partisan numpties a bad name.
Chris Paul 6th May '09 - 11:22pm

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.
mark 7th May '09 - 12:14am

A Chris Paul comment in an article about partisan reporting. my my.