Tag Archives: patrick wintour

Clegg: Lib Dems bring conscience and stability to a Coalition

As the Lib Dem manifesto is launched, with a headline of giving opportunity to kids, which is much more inspiring than the Tory extend right to buy in middle of housing crisis caused by right to buy and Labour waffle on deficit, Nick Clegg has been talking to the Guardian’s Patrick Wintour. His theme is that we know that the election is not going to give anyone an overall majority, and asks who people want to be walking into Downing Street with Cameron or Miliband.

the looming question in the next phase of this campaign is whether there is to be a coalition of grievance, or of conscience. The last thing the British economy needs is the instability and factionalism that those coalitions of grievance of right and left represents

He talks about UKIP and the SNP offering the “politics of grievance”. Though he uses the same theme of Labour being forced to dance to Alex Salmond’s tune, he stops short of the ridiculous things being said by the Tories on that. He also makes a very important part about the failures of the Labour Party:

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Guardian’s coverage of Liberal Democrat General Election campaign accentuates the negative

So what does the Guardian do to cheer itself up when a poll has shown Labour support is falling? Ah yes, they just write about how rubbish life is for the Liberal Democrats. Words like perilous, doom and resigned are peppered through the piece. I’m not suggesting that our prospects are the best they’ve ever been, but so much of what’s written about us is not so much “glass half empty” but “no liquid anywhere near the glass.”

I’d like to think that when Patrick Wintour and Nick Watt were doing their research for this, they were shown the vibrant Team 2015 operation, the busy and spirited things going on across the country in our key seats and that they just chose not to write about it because it doesn’t fit in with the pessimistic narrative. There are many things about the party’s campaigning that it can take a huge amount of pride in. There are bright and talented people in HQ who are doing the best they can with the material available to them. Did Wintour and Watt get to talk to the Austin Rathes and Steve Jollys of this world? I hope so.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , and | 54 Comments

“Where we work, we win” – will that Lib Dem maxim survive the 2015 test?

Chris RennardDon’t splutter on your Saturday morning cornflakes, but the Guardian has today published two intelligent articles on the Lib Dems and the strategy which the party is hoping will see us through to the other side of the 2015 election intact.

First, there’s Patrick Wintour‘s analysis — Liberal Democrats bank on ground war to hold on to seats — which uses as its springboard an analysis by Lord (Chris) Rennard, the party’s former chief executive and elections guru:

insists it should not be ground down by low national polls. “The

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Opinion: we can not allow ourselves to be used as scapegoats by the Tories

It was an amazing coincidence that Lady Warsi’s interview on BBC2’s Newsnight spoke so lamentably about the state of the coalition the evening before YouGov put the Tories 11 points behind Labour. The Conservative Party chairman without hesitation accused us of being immature and failing to accept collective responsibility within the coalition.

Patrick Wintour’s article in yesterday’s Guardian  highlights the despicable manner in which Lady Warsi, as a cabinet member showed no loyalty to her coalition partners by putting the boot in as soon as the going got tough and the Tories started struggling in the opinion polls.

The whole episode …

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Clegg’s verdict on Labour in opposition: “Collective bile is not a political strategy”

There’s an in-depth, wide-ranging and pretty frank interview with Nick Clegg in The Guardian today, in which he defends the coalition, assures those Lib Dem activists worried by the budget cuts that they are “not driven by some ideological zeal”, and attacks Labour for its failure to recognise that coalitions are here to stay: “Something very, very big is happening in politics.”

Here are some of the juiciest Clegg-bites:

On the coalition:

is not an aberration, but a natural consequence of what has been happening for years, which is a loosening of the old tribal ties between the old parties and

Posted in News | Also tagged and | 31 Comments

Liberal Democrat manifesto by numbers

The Liberal Democrat manifesto by numbers:

  • 9 different formats for the manifesto (hard copy, video, on screen, iPhone app etc.)
  • 6 photos of Nick Clegg
  • 5 pages of index
  • 4 pages of detailed costsing
  • 4 steps to a fairer Britain
  • 3 photos of Vince Cable
  • 0 mentions of chocolate
Posted in General Election and Party policy and internal matters | Also tagged , , , , and | 7 Comments
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