A good day for Chris Huhne, Lib Dem shadow secretary of state for the environment. First, for earning acres of positive coverage for the new Lib Dem proposals to ‘get serious about rail’ by doubling investment – see here (The Guardian), here (Daily Express), here (BBC Online) and here (ePolitix).
And, secondly, for besting his Tory counterpart, Peter Ainsworth (who he?), in Iain Dale’s latest ‘media tarts’ list during July – some indication of which opposition party is perceived by journalists to be more credible on environmental issues in a month when floods were dominating the headlines.
4 Comments
I think that the original T-shirt bore the text “Huhne’s your daddy”. 😉
Note the Dale table has Grant Shapps getting 80 media mentions (presumably a number on the by-election trail) – didn’t do him a lot of good did it!!
I think we also have to ask ourselves how Good the publicity we get is, compared to that of the Tories. This may sound platitudinous, but while we may be restricted in column inches, we are probably getting more favourable mentions than most of the Tory frontbench at the moment.
Peter Ainsworth is one of the least unpleasant Tories. In the early 1990s he introduced the Hedgerow Protection Bill, much to the annoyance of big landowners and cereal producers. Yes, one Tory at one point in time did one thing praiseworthy.