It’s fairly quiet today, and I assume that you’re all still on page 273 of the Leveson report. Me, I’m waiting for it to come out on Kindle, preferably with clams…
However, we’ve got an early response to Leveson, just to give you an opportunity to vent, applaud, or even kibitz (in the nicest way), as well as a Danish perspective on press regulation, and doubtless there’ll be more during the day.
Otherwise, take a break, and drop in from time to time today for everything from rural policy to Europe, from energy policy to an invitation to travel.
Oh yes, and watch out for our picture fairy, whose imaginative use of artwork livens up all of our posts here at Liberal Democrat Voice…
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Can Davey survive as leader?
A Week in Politics #9
The Joy of Six 1589
Chloe
Anthony Acton
Nigel Jones
Katharine Pindar
Tim L
7 Comments
Hi Mark Hope I am not being too unkind here, but it strikes me that for members anyway, today is a real low point, with two lost deposits in Byelections, including the eighth position in Rotherham. OK we beat the Tories in Middlesbrough into 3rd behind UKIP, but if we were to make a boast about that we would be rightly accused of ignoring the big message from these recent elections.
Tim,
I write this before I turn in and, I must admit, had completely forgotten about the by-elections.
I ought to put that right, I suppose…
@Tim13
The ‘big message’ from these recent Parliamentary elections is that safe Labour seats are remaining safe Labour seats and that Lib Dems are very unpopular at the moment in areas which don’t like the Conservatives or areas where Lib Dems weren’t especially popular to begin with. However, in areas where we are popular and a good local track record we are winning elections – look at the recent raft of council by-election gains on ALDC: https://www.aldc.org/elections/by-elections/all
THANK YOU to everyone who turned out to campaign for the Lib Dem candidates, both in the recent Parliamentary and in local council by-elections.
No need to put on the black cap about the by-elections, in my opinion.
Rotherham is not Bootle, we are not the SDP, the EngDems are not the Raving Loonys. It’s a shock to see us that low but in such a bizarre by-election, with such a squeeze amongst minority parties, someone was going to suffer. It was us. But “LibDems do badly in Rotherham” is not a shocking development.
We held up as well as could be expected in Croydon given the high profile candidates in Jasper and McKenzie.
Middlesbrough seemed to be an odd result in many respects (Peace Party, who they?), so again there’s that to take into account.
I don’t think it’s “desolation”, as much as a ruling party having a stick poked in the back.
The big message from Rotherham and Middlesbrough is “Labour safe seats are still Labour safe seats”.
I didn’t want to say anything before the election, but – really, what was the point? Labour have held that seat by a huge margin since the 1920s. They can put up candidates who flagrantly steal from the nation and the electorate still loves them. We all knew that the result would look like this regardless of what anybody did.
@ Liam “the EngDems are not the Raving Loony”
Indeed they are not; they are not even funny
Dear All.
Who’d have thought that a gentle introduction to the day, complete with a picture of Liberal Democrat Voice’s attack sea otter (in line with our courtesy policy, we don’t have an attack dog), would attract this much comment.
However, coverage of last night’s by-elections is now up, so feel free to opine there!