We’re guessing most Lib Dem Voice readers (the Lib Dem ones living in London, anyway) would choose to vote for the party’s mayoral candidate in the capital, Brian Paddick. And of course we hope he will win: he’s the only candidate who deserves to.
But even the most optimistic Lib Dem would recognise that Brian isn’t going to triumph on first preferences alone. Which begs the question, who would you place as your second preference in the race to be London mayor? After all, the Greens have opted for a bizarrely opportunistic shack-up with Gordon Brown’s Labour party, while the BNP have pledged to back Boris for second place.
The choice facing Lib Dems is one analysed today by Sunder Katwala, general secretary of the Fabian Society, who has published his letter to the Lib Dems’ eight London MPs in an article on The Guardian’s Comment Is Free website:
I know that one of the Liberal Democrats’ central arguments over many years for constitutional change and electoral reform is that this would encourage a pluralist politics and a grown-up political culture where parties can retain different beliefs and policies but cooperate where they have shared views and interests. So I think it would be natural to expect that you will want to use every opportunity afforded by the mayoral election to demonstrate the benefits of a pluralist approach to politics.
So, time to pop the question… Here are your five choices in our new poll:
* Ken Livingstone (Labour)
* Boris Johnson (Tory)
* Sian Berry (Green)
* AN Other candidate standing
* Will not use my second preference
And feel free to use the comments thread to justify your choice.
Result of last poll:
LDV asked: “Do you support the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill’s proposal to allow animal-human embryos for medical research?”
You said:
Yes: 249 (48%)
No: 256 (49%)
Don’t know: 17 (3%)
Total Votes: 522. Poll live: 24th March – 7th April, 2008
Either you lot are more socially conservative than we gave you credit for, or the poll was hijacked in some way. You decide.
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63 Comments
Congestion Charge, Affordable Housing, commitment to multi culturalism, civic leadership after 7/7. It has to be ken.
But then I don’t live in London and I’m told he improves the further away you live.
Interestingly when I was elected to Council in 2000 we had more Livingstone posters up in my ward than Labour ones. – In Leeds !
I’m not a Londoner, But it would have to be Boris I’m afraid. But that last poll was worrying.
See it all the time… some group hears about a poll online they disagree with and sabotages it.
Atheists/scientists/religious are equally capable of it.
My favourite was a poll on a creationist-loonies web-site that came out with the site members all vastly in favour of supporting evolution as the true explanation of complex life. Not surprisingly the site removed the poll as soon as they noticed what was happening. Hilarious though while it lasted.
It could just be that this is a step too far for many Liberal Democrats
I’d refuse to express a second preference. It would have been Green, but they threw my support away. Though they probably won’t be lying awake at night weeping over that.
Around 100 of the “no” votes were cast within a very short period of time.
There’s no reason to believe that they weren’t cast by numerous different people; it’s more likely that the poll whizzed around a particular group of people via email etc. But it does make the poll results very much a tale of three polls – before the 100, during the 100, and after the 100.
Ditto Asquith. Unless Boris does anything so unbearable between now and 1st May that I have to vote for Ken.
But the facts remain:
– If you really want to stop Ken, a first preferernce for Paddick is best!
and/or
– If you really can’t stand Boris, a first preference for Paddick is best!
because if Paddick is in the last two he beats either of them. That is what the second preferences mean.
It could just be that this is a step too far for many Liberal Democrats.
Is it a step too far for you Mary?
“None Of The Above” is in the lead! Disappointed to see Leavingsoon and Shagger doing so well. I wonder if the Greens would have fared better if they hadn’t aligned with Labour.
Yes – and by the way I’m talking about human-animal embryos, not Boris. It is one of those issues where you are not going to find unanimity within the party, however liberal we may be.
No, I understand that Mary. As Millennium said recently, “Taking nice, fluffy animal DNA and mixing it up with horrible humans . . . well, it could easily give you the creeps.”
“Either you lot are more socially conservative than we gave you credit for…”
Why assume that a no vote has anything to do with social conservatism rather than, for instance, animal welfare concerns?
Well that’s an interesting angle. But I haven’t heard any animal rights people go up in arms over the use of cow eggs. Have they?
Rather unsurprisingly cow eggs have to come from a cow. I doubt I’m the only vegan in the Lib Dems.
There’s probably even a few vegan Catholics.
The paper I was reading today was talking about green politicians now people on LDV are talking about cows laying eggs, I think it’s time I eased up on the acid tabs…
(and among a truly representative poll of my friends I can exclusively reveal that Lib Dems who live outside of London are horrified that liberals would not give their 2nd preference to Ken while Lib Dems who do live in London would be horrified if Livingstone’s brand of arrogant, clique-serving, tax guzzling actually existing socialism was rewarded with another term.)
“…you lot are more socially conservative than we gave you credit for…”
I am genuinely curious. I am a Conservative supporter, and actually support the bill. However I don’t see support or opposition as especially socially conservative. It can only rationally be decided on the scientific case. OK the irrational arguments probably are socially conservative, and go against the bill, but I can see the possibility of rational arguments against that would not be conservative.
Bleh. A little ball of goo that only exists for experimentation is worth more than lots of people whose lives might be saved… Just one more thing to add to the list of things that’s depressed me today.
As for the current poll… Well, I don’t live in London, but Vote Match matched me with Ken then Sian then Boris THEN Brian, so…
* shrug *
I realise you have qualified this poll in your text but the headline does shout out the impression that Brian Paddick will be eliminated and his second preferences will decide the election.
But anyway the basis of a 2nd preference would be about which of the two would better advance Liberal Democrat principles.
However that is then based on whether it is the candidate – more likely Livingstone – or the political situation – more likely Johnson as Labour are unpopular and it would hasten the break up of their vote for the Liberal Democrats to pick up. If the Liberal Democrats were seen as propping up Labour when they are so unpopular we would be seen as Labour-lite.
Besides there’s a by-election in Henley to savour.
I don’t think the LibDems should state any second-best second-preferences, let alone start a campaign for anyone else.
We want Paddick – if he won he won’t be subject to the coalition pressures which plagued us in Scotland.
In fact, I’m attracted by the confidence and optimism which says he is our first choice – compared to Livingstone, who was originally opposed by Labour, and Johnson was shovelled-in by the tory leadership as a celebrity candidate, rather than a serious choice.
“If the Liberal Democrats were seen as propping up Labour when they are so unpopular we would be seen as Labour-lite.”
And that’s what we should be standing against. How can anyone say, with a straight face, that Labour are liberal and support progressive values? Have people forgotten so quickly what happened before and after 1997?
Not a single vote for Boris then. this confirms my long held belief that the Liberal Socialist Party is not equidistant and must be viewed as a Brown vote at the GE.
This message has to be clearly made not only to wavering Conservatives but to wavering Lib Dems.
asquith (7 April at 8:08) refers to Boris as “Shagger”. Should we refer to Paddick as Buggerer?
I gave asquith the benefit of the doubt and assumed it was a reference to boris’ shaggy hair.
In which case we should refer to Brian as shorty, or stubble or something.
As a Londoner, my experience of Ken Livingstone is that he a slimy hypocritical poseur. I have never given him my first or second preference vote, and will not change that habit in this election.
Had New Labour decided to give us a better electoral system, Livingstone would have come ahead of Johnson in my later preferences. But if they see my vote lost to them because they couldn’t give us at least a decent electoral system, tough.
But if New Labour had a proper commitment to democracy, they wouldn’t have given us this elected dictator system anyway.
This whole election, with the way it’s being reduced to a personality contest between two unpleasant clowns (each wildly talking the other up, because each knows the best argument for him is to make out there’s only two candidates and eh other is the worse one) demonstrates just why this elected mayor system should never have been introduced.
In my experience, it’s a good test of political flakiness to see if someone supports the directly elected mayor system. Anyone who does is not to be trusted, and is some lazy hack who just jumps on the latest trendy bandwagon rather than thinking through issues closely. That applies to leading members of our party (hint – who wrote a Centre Forum paper advocating this system a while back?).
Not a single vote for Boris then.
You’re not very good with figures, are you Newmania? Boris is currently just winning the poll 49 to 47.
Laurence Boyce, I’ve had many a run-in with newmania and he’s really best ignored. He fears the Lib Dems, and tries to disparage them by saying they’re just the same as Labour over and over again, even though repeating it doesn’t make it true.
I think the fact that the debate has been reduced to a beauty contest between two larger-than-life personalities shows us what a terrible system we have for governing London.
If we had the old committee system, tedious though it was, we would be talking about policies, not what the candidates do in bed our how they style their hair. And the Tories might have found a serious candidate, not an egomaniacal Old Etonian mountebank.
Those Lib Dems who live in London (I don’t by a whisker) have a responsibility to use or not use their second preference vote wisely.
Livingstone does at least know how to govern London, Johnson doesn’t. Elect Livingstone, and you know who’s in charge, put Johnson in City Hall and you get a Bush style figurehead with real power in the hands of unaccountable manipulators.
Also, four years of Johnson is intolerable. The sound of his voice, his ugly mug on the box every night? Who would inflict that on the British people?
You’re not very good with figures, are you Newmania? Boris is currently just winning the poll 49 to 47.
Oh I missed that bit I was referring to the comments. Interesting, but that’s just a few people .The Party has to be judged on what it has said over the course of the Blair administration in which it was supportive from the left ,fought against Thatcherism and generally rung its hands at every bleeding heart easy issue going. Still does .
An equal split between an IRA supportive , terrorist sympathising hard left authoritarian corrupt class warrior that New Labour cannot stand and lies for breakfast , (and lovely Boris) puts you about where New Labour would be if they were allowed to choose .Labour-lite then QED
(You cannot be trusted and Lisbon set the seal on that very reasonable conclusion . If you ever really ditched socialism you would be Conservatives plus a few old ladies in a tizzy about animals. No reason for Partay at all.)
Asquith , It is the |Liberal Party who are running scared of their ‘shadow ‘record not us. You are Euro loons in a country that hates it , immigration enthusiasts when the country is sick of it and high tax big state bleeding hearts when the country has run out of money, soft on crime when crime is terrifying everyone . These are the positions the Liberal party has adopted over the years .Of course you want to sing a new song it sounds like the National Anthem played by a Punjabi folk group. Cats in pain and you are convincing only yourself.
PS
I wouldn’t call the occasional lesson I have been obliged to hand you a ‘run-in’ , unless you call a mighty beast of the jungle stamping on a Mosquito a “run-in”.
Yes, a beast in the jungle is just how I’d describe you.
Just because we think there is something to be said for the European Union and don’t subscribe to the usual Daily Hate Mail rubbish, doesn’t mean every single one of us belongs to the pro-EU-at-all-costs brigade.
I think it’s your mate Cameron who wouldn’t cut taxes: we would, especially on the lowest-paid workers. Additionally, once such policies as the pupil premium and generally improved education began to have a long-term effect, there’d be less need for the services of the state. In a liberal society, people wouldn’t simply be left to rot, and so there would be less welfare dependency. Which is in marked contrast with the 1980s, during which millions of people were put onto the dole. And if more social/affordable housing existed, it would actually save the state money because we’d no longer be paying Rachmanite landlords over the odds to house people.
And our man Paddick has a track record of cutting crime. The reactionary, authoritarian policies of the two conservative parties don’t work. A more sensible, nuanced approach would end up with far lower crime. Yes, we really would be tough on the causes of crime. We wouldn’t go punitive to please the Scum and the Daily Hell, we’d actually follow a strategy for cutting crime.
Drop the strawman arguments for once.
. . . puts you about where New Labour would be if they were allowed to choose. Labour-lite then.
Really? Then so be it. Because I lean to the right of the Lib Dems but, believe me, I certainly don’t want to be Conservative-lite. In fact I don’t want to be Conservative anything.
Boris still leading by 58 to 55.
Change the names a little and what newmania writes could equally come from a rabid Labour supporter – I guess it just goes to show how similar red and blue now are.
Quite right, Orangepan. Some people insist on seeing the world in black and white, socialist or conservative, with us or with the enemy. It’s their loss.
Boris will get my second vote. He may even get my first vote, just because he’s more likely to beat Ken than Paddick is. I can’t stand the thought of 4 more years of Ken, sorry.
I can’t stand the thought of 4 more years of Ken, sorry.
Nothing to be sorry about and what exactly is the problem with that nice man David Cameron or do you want Brown to go on forever?
I’m surprised that as many have picked green as have so far –
Do people not realise that the greens are basically hard left with a few nutty enviro-policies thrown in?
Or am i a member of a party that is more socialist leaning than I realised?
Ash,
4 more years in Ken’s grasp is only as scary as the prospect of 4 years under Boris – the former is a slimey squeezer, the latter a scruffy squasher.
A change will provide no respite, so don’t cut off your nose to spite your face – I’m sure you can resist the undoubted charm of both their appeals.
“Ash Says:
8th April 2008 at 1:15 pm
Boris will get my second vote. He may even get my first vote, just because he’s more likely to beat Ken than Paddick is. I can’t stand the thought of 4 more years of Ken, sorry.”
I think this comment makes it clear that we haven’tbeen doing nearly a good enough job of putting across the message about first and second preferences. I’ve spoken to a number of people on the doorstep who say that they like Brian but are worried about letting Ken in (sometimes Boris but mostly Ken in my area). Once I explain that they can put Brian first, and use their second preference to ensure their vote is counted against their least favourite candidate (amazing the extent to which the choice between the two is generally stated in terms of dislike of a particular candidate, not much positive sentiment to be found for either) they’ll usually happily say they’ll vote for brian.
We need to work out ways of getting this message across, particularly as most of the pres etc. are reporting the campaign virtually asif there are only two candidates standing.
Oranjepan – I’m torn between voting tactically to get rid of Ken and voting for the candidate I really want to support (Paddick) but I think on the day I’ll vote Paddick with Boris as my second choice.
What exactly is the problem with that nice man David Cameron?
Not a lot really; I quite like Cameron. But have you seen the rest of his party?
PainfullyLiberal – thanks for the explanation. You are right. As I said in my post above this (written before I read your comment), I’ll vote Paddick first choice with Boris as my second choice.
3:15- As usual, Laurence Boyce speaks the truth!
I don’t like David Cameron, but he does shine by comparison with the rest of the tories. That’s not much to commend him.
Ash,
the additional problem with BJ is that you won’t get him, you’ll get a bunch of invisible and unaccountable right-wing blow-hards known as ‘advisors’, who’ll dictate more than they’ll advise and listen as little as they can get away with. They’ll bypass the assembly and ignore the boroughs, but you can bet they’ll commune with the non-doms in the city.
KL has run a somewhat similar regime to his mayoralty’s discredit, but it is only now to his current electoral disadvantage because Lee Jasper&Co are getting trapped in a web of waste and criminality all of their own making.
Changing the name on the door doesn’t change a thing unless you actually change what goes on in the room.
That’s not quite true, orangepan. You flush the bog even though you know it is still only going to fill up again in future, don’t you?
Sure you do, virtually-live-in Tory, but you don’t want to be stuck in the queue behind a herd of constipated elephants.
If this was the next General Election would we keep in power an unpopular Labour government by allying with them yet again?
How would we now feel if the Paddick number two votes (approx 60 or 65% of them) effectively propped up Ken and his cronies?
For any hardened politico the answer is obvious.
Depends whether you are a gardener with a load of roses that need extra nutition 🙂
.. nutRition
…and there we were trying to get the stink out of public life when the resident tory says it’s nothing to worry about, everything is a bed of roses, just keep queuing!
It may be fodder for the press, but the public needs relief.
If this was the next General Election would we keep in power an unpopular Labour government by allying with them yet again?
How would we now feel if the Paddick number two votes (approx 60 or 65% of them) effectively propped up Ken and his cronies?
For any hardened politico the answer is obvious.
Yeah, perfectly obvious. You can’t give that fop-haired clown a leg up into the General Election.
It’s not just Paddick’s 2nd prefs that count.
Oranjepan – there are two outcomes I’d like in the mayoral elections. One is a win for Brian Paddick and the other is Livingstone out. I doubt the first will happen, but the second is a real possibility and I’ll vote for it. Livingstone is poison. I’d rather have a ‘clown’ in charge than a venomous snake.
Ash, if you allow your doubts to overcome you you’ll never be truly satisfied – either this time round or next or any time after that.
Just to reiterate, with judicious use of your first and second preferences, you can contribute towards both these outcomes.
Personally I honestly can’t decide who I dislike more out of Ken and Boris and I certainly haven’t heard any convincing arguments of why to give either my second preference, other than to keep the other one out. I guess I’ll decide for myself closer to the time but as long as people give Brian their first preference I don’t really care who gets their second (within obvious limits)
If I had a vote, I’d vote for a Henley by-election 😉
Plus it’s setting Boris up to be a national poster boy for Tory incompetence in a few years time…
Of course, some folks who have to actually LIVE in London for the next four years may see this differently! 😉
“I’m surprised that as many have picked green as have so far –
Do people not realise that the greens are basically hard left with a few nutty enviro-policies thrown in?”
Indeed. And it kind of looks like they don’t understand the voting system as well…Having said that I think the “Will not use my second preference” option is very dignified however I would be too much a pragmatist to do that.
Yes it’s all a bit of fun here but I think Brian’s line on 2nd prefs on the newsnight debates was excellent and should be followed at all times in the media by our leaders and spokespeople.
I missed newsnight… what was that line?
NL and Con are so absurdly bad in different ways it would be ludicrus for a prominent LD to state where their 2nd pref would be going.
That’s not verbatim but he certainly got the sentiment across (better than say, e.g., to pick a figure from random – Ming – ha ha)
From the other thread, this says it all about Ken:
In fact, of course, nationwide NL and Con are absurdly bad in very similiar ways but its harder to paint that picture in a Ken V Boris match up.
I liked the way Huhne handled this kind of question referencing the grand coalitions in Germany and Netherlands.
This election is about personalities, like it or not. Brian Paddick is by far the solidest, most competent and liberally inclined person on offer. K now repels me. B is adequately described by his initial. The rest are repellent or nonentities, bar Sian Berry who is less repellent than K or B, and not a nonentity. Therefore she is my second preference.
Diversity – Do you understand the voting system?