Continuing in the little-known twenty four hours later school of live-blogging, we come to the moment on Saturday morning when I unglue my eyelids just in time to hear Brian Paddick deliver his London setpiece.
He is as impressive as ever, and plays on his background in just the right way – “I’m not a politician. I don’t know much about talk, but I do know a lot about delivery”. His main hitpoints are crime, housing and transport, and increasingly his speeches use his life experience as a personal sidelight on all of them, not just crime. I am immensely pleased about this, because I had begun to fear that all our publicity is over-focussing on crime, which is, er, understandable, but it’s also something that is put across without difficulty every time a picture of him in uniform gets into the papers.
It would be a shame if such a proper all-round liberal talent was misread as a one-trick pony, although, as Liberal Review says, at least it’s perfectly obvious that he’s got a trick, which already puts him one-up on the opposition. I like the practicality and the focus on delivery not talk, but I could do with a little more along the lines of “Briiiiiiiaaaaan! You da man! Yeeeeeeeeaaaaahhh!” which by a staggering coincidence is fairly much what I end up saying to him some hours later in the bar of the Crowne Plaza Hotel, fuelled by a heady cocktail of free wine and public congratulation.
Coming soon, another liberal all-star, Our Vince, but in the meantime I have just realised that you, poor deprived homebody, are still ignorant of the very existence of the mighty SUPERLAMBANANA!
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