Emily Thornberry, Labour MP for Islington South, has been on Newsnight repeatedly claiming there is nothing new in The Guardian’s support for the Liberal Democrats and that it’s just a repeat of what the paper said in 2005.
So perhaps you can help her by seeing if you can work out the difference?
The Guardian, 2005: “Voters should use their heads and hearts to re-elect Labour with an increased Liberal Democrat presence.”
The Guardian, 2010: “If the Guardian had a vote in the 2010 general election it would be cast enthusiastically for the Liberal Democrats.”
Re-elect Labour? Vote Liberal Democrat? It’s all so similar don’t you know…
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You are not a cinema review so stop acting like one!
“The pragmatic caveat concerns the danger that, under the existing electoral system, switching to the Liberal Democrats in Labour-Conservative marginal constituencies might let in an anti-reform Tory party. So, voters who share this principled enthusiasm for securing the largest possible number of Liberal Democrat MPs next Thursday must, in many constituencies, weigh the tactical option of supporting Labour to prevent a Conservative win.”
If this is a cinematic review I must have been reading the wrong papers…
I think she actually has started to believe her own lies, that’s the really disturbing thing. It’s all a bit Alice in Wonderland. Oh heck, a cinematic reference, best get back to my burrow…
You know there’ll be a lot of tears before bedtime on May 6th, am I not right Mark Curry?
Is Emily still saying `it’s between Conservative and Labour` in Islington chortle
Every time I have seen Emily Thornberry on TV I have always wondered how on earth she got selected, let alone elected.
Of course the switch from being a Lab-Lib paper to being a Lib-Lab one which thinks the LibDems have had the best campaign and deserve enthusiastic principled support this time is a shift in position. Its a good prize for the LibDems which I am sure LibDemVoice will celebrate.
http://www.nextleft.org/2010/04/guardian-swing-lab-lib-paper-now-lib.html
On the other hand, in arguing today that it regards itself as a a “newspaper that is proudly rooted in the liberal as well as the labour tradition” and that its hope for the post-election outcome is that “”the cause of reform is overwhelmingly more likely to be achieved by a Lib Dem partnership of principle with Labour than by a Lib Dem marriage of convenience with a Tory party” one can also spot the similarities as well as the differences with a 2005 editorial which quoted from and reaffirmed its 1997 argument that “without embarrassment or apology that we, the Liberal Democrats and the Labour party are companions on the journey down the same broad river of progressive politics” adding that “In 2005, though we have all been tumbled about by some rapids, that remains true. The modern progressive consensus of which Gordon Brown speaks will be the work not of one party alone, but of two”.
The nature of its enthusiasm for the LibDems in 2010 does not resile from that.
By my reckoning (caveat: relying on British Political Facts and other accounts, and don’t have the full editorials), this is the ninth of ten elections since 1974 in which the Guardian has advocated more votes and seats for the LibDems and predecessor parties – it may not have done so in 1987 – but only the third or fourth of the ten where its first preference was broadly Liberal. I think the Guardian has advocated Labour in some form in seven of those elections (if we count 2010 as partly pro-Labour on tactical voting), since it endorsed the Alliance in 1983, hoping for a centre-right coalition with the Tories, a hung Parliament in Feb 1974 and the Liberals in Oct 1974, while being Lab-Lib in 1979 and from 1992-2005.
Today’s nuanced critique of the strengths and weaknesses of the three parties in 2010 makes several persuasive points from a broad liberal-left perspective. Its account of the Tories is good, and many Labour supporters will agree with a good deal of the detail of the account of Labour’s weaknesses on civil liberties, political reform and Europe, but the underacknowledged strength of its record and its stronger and unmatched commitment to reducing poverty.
Sounds like she is pitching for jobs after the election………………………. as a fiction writer/story teller! Good luck with the job huntng!
Some should also help Michael White, who’s just explained that the deciding point for the switch was Iraq… yet the Graun still supported Labour in ’05.