7 Comments

• Ian Lewsey 28th Jan '21 - 6:40pm

  I have been a Liberal/Liberal Democrat member for 46 years (since I was 16) and I am a former LibDem councillor. This is a terrible PPB as it lacks inspiration and pace.
  Poor Ed has no charismaand we are languishing in the polls at 5%. We have lost our way and the LibDems under Ed are boring, boring, boring.
  This PPB looks like it was made 20 years ago and those responsible must be sacked. I am 62 and even I can see it is outdated, uninspiring and a complete waste of money.
  Come on folks GET MODERN!

• Ian Lewsey 28th Jan '21 - 6:41pm

  I have been a Liberal/Liberal Democrat member for 46 years (since I was 16) and I am a former LibDem councillor.
  This is a terrible PPB as it lacks inspiration and pace. Poor Ed has no charismaand we are languishing in the polls at 5%. We have lost our way and the LibDems under Ed are boring, boring, boring.
  This PPB looks like it was made 20 years ago and those responsible must be sacked. I am 62 and even I can see it is outdated, uninspiring and a complete waste of money.
  Come on folks GET MODERN!

• tpfkar 28th Jan '21 - 11:40pm

  50 shades of beige.

  That is a really drab broadcast. Surely we have something to say? Inquiry into COVID? Brexit damage? Education inequalities from missing school? Help for the excluded? Civil liberties concerns over lockdowns?
  Actual policies on carers? UBI?

  I found the Scottish one with Willie Rennie much more powerful.

• Katharine Pindar 29th Jan '21 - 1:04am

  I liked the broadcast. I think Ed is right to have picked up on the amount of caring and compassion that has been brought out in the country by the Pandemic. I have now written to him suggesting that for us Lib Dems to help in building a fairer, more caring society in the long term, it will be good for us to work out a Beveridge-2 Plan and seek the renewal of the Social Contract that existed in the post-war world of the 1950s but has disappeared long since.

• Alexander 29th Jan '21 - 2:45am

  Ed is not a particularly comfortable public speaker, let alone a charismatic one, so why he keeps being coached to deliver speeches in this way I really don’t know. He manages to make something that’s deeply personal to him sound scripted. Let him speak like a normal human being from the heart, as he does when not on camera and occasionally in interviews. Both he and the party will be all the better for it.

  It’s a sort of nice but instantly forgettable party political broadcast, in much the same vein as every other one we’ve done for the last couple of years. I don’t want to just criticise those responsible for putting it together – but, I’d like us to try something different next time around.

• Andy Daer 29th Jan '21 - 6:51am

  I agree with those who feel we have been a bit absent from the national radar of late, but I don’t see this broadcast in the negative way some have. Ed’s appeal is that he is a genuinely nice man whose political convictions mirror his character, and that is always going to set him apart from those more ravenous for power.
  Opposing the present government doesn’t require the vituperative demeanour adopted with such spectacular lack of success by Jeremy Corbyn, and when Ed criticised Johnson he seemed almost compassionate; Johnson is, after all, a man with no political convictions, who thought he’d landed his dream job and found himself in charge of a nightmare.
  Covid has claimed many more tragic victims than Johnson’s inflated ego, and there will be personal scars for many families, but we will emerge from it. The most important lesson it is teaching us is the importance of dealing with inequality, and we are a party with radical views about tackling the wealth gap. We will need to promote our agenda when the time is right, but that time is not now.
  Having the right man at the helm is important, and the qualities we saw displayed in our broadcast were exactly right for a party which wants to improve the lot of those who feel they are getting a raw deal. It was people who felt forgotten and ignored by the rich who allowed the Leave campaign to prosper in 2016; there will be many more of them after Covid.

• John Bicknell 29th Jan '21 - 10:55am

  The message of the PPB seemed to be ‘we’re on your side.’ But to whom was that directed? The entire nation? It’s impossible to be on everyone’s side, and, if so, who are on the other side? The following night there was one from the Green Party, which at least highlighted some people who are standing for election this year, and mentioned a few policies. In contrast, the impression given by the LibDems was that they are a bunch of vaguely nice people, but who lack any clear plans to put that into practice.