It took Laura Kuenssberg 52 minutes to get round to talking about the Lib Dem success on her show this morning. And the fact that we got more councillors than the Conservatives for the first time in 28 years got the most perfunctory of mentions.
To add insult to injury, there were 3 Conservatives and 2 Labour people in the studio and nothing at all from us.
And it wasn’t from lack of effort on our part, given that Tim Farron was, rightly, complaining on Twitter:
Errrr…
Why are you interviewing 2 people from the party that came 3rd and no one from the party that beat them and came 2nd? Odd.
I would certainly rather have heard from one of us rather than Suella Braverman. It’s quite astounding that the hot take she takes from this election is that Sunak hasn’t been right wing enough. We’ve had years of culture war crap instead of fixing the NHS and cleaning up our rivers and investing in our councils and the country has fairly resoundingly said that it is not loving it.
The Guardian’s Pippa Crerar was the only person really to recognise Lib Dem success on Kuenssberg and she said on Twitter:
Another big moment of locals is that Lib Dems beat Tories to second place on seats won, for first time since 1996. Their revival in South West continues (securing control of Dorset for first time) while chances of a ‘Portillo moment’ with eg Jeremy Hunt or Michael Gove grow.
I am certain that we will be using direct mail and leaflet space effectively to tell people in our key seats for the General Election that we came second, but it is a shame that the media gives more credence to the dreadful Reform, who won 4 councillors than they did to us who won more than 100 times that.
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings
Follow @LibDemVoice on Twitter
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
Danny Chambers calls for penguins to be moved from "dark and cramped basement"
Failed State: why our government is broken and how to fix it
Unease grows within Labour ranks
Digital Skills Training for people over 65
David Rogers
Nonconformistradical
Mark
Jennie
Robin AG Bennett
29 Comments
The Beeb have been uncritically parroting Labour’s line for some time. R4 routinely has Labour people on and does not take them to task.
Yes Caron:
1. The BBC is biased and not in our favour
2. Yesterday Sky News which is more objective fell into the same mantra. I was so annoyed and at lunchtime emailed them complaining, Hey Ho at 4pm their web site highlighted prominently that “Lib Dems 2nd more seats than the Cons”
So moral is moaning to ourselves is a waste, get onto them,
Yesterday I was annoyed about this. I emailed both the BBC and Sky News complaining.
Nothing from the BBC but 3 hours later the Sky website headlined Lib Dems more seat than the Tories.
The BBC is biased, they favour Labour and the Greens, I know we are not supposed to say this but they are. Sky News is much more objective and challenging.
B. B. C.= British Bias Conspiracy?
I mentioned exactly this, poor media coverage on the stragglers thread. It seems to have been ignored. It’s not only on TV either but also radio stations like LBC, Times radio etc where the Lib Dems were given far less airtime than the Greens and Reform. The media team need to put it all to rights.
The BBC have form on this. I still feel angry about the way Fiona Bruce mocked Jo Swinson on her leaders’ Question Time programme by pointing out to Jo that her responses were being received in sullen silence by the audience – silent because the BBC had deliberately excluded all but a handful of LibDem supporters and packed the show with Tories and Labour members.
Fiona B was a Tory councillor and it shows.
I’ve just watched the Kuenssberg programme and even the way that it was structured was designed to diminish our performance. They mentioned very briefly that we got more seats than the Tories, but did they also mention that we won more councils? And they certainly didn’t say that this was the first time for almost 30 years that this had happened.
Part of the problem is that now they don’t know how to deal with three parties other than Labour and the Tories. They don’t feel that they can have someone from all three. They aren’t sure whether they can choose just one and if they do, they often pick the Greens because they’re seen as something new. They don’t say that we did better than the Greens in the local elections and that in the London mayoral election we beat them for the first time since 2008. When they’re not sure what to do they exclude us totally and just have Labour and Tory people.
Another difficulty is with programmes like Question Time and Politics Live, where they often have both a Conservative MP and a former Conservative advisor, with us being relegated to once in every six or seven programmes, if we’re lucky.
We need to complain loudly and clearly to the BBC every time there is a clear bias against us.
@Anthony Acton. Are you sure that Fiona Bruce was a Tory councillor?
Hi David – in Warrington I believe.
Hi again David – sorry, I think I got that wrong. Apologies.
@Antony Acton
Please do your homework.
That is Fiona Bruce politician, NOT the TV presenter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiona_Bruce_(politician)#Political_career
And Fiona Bruce TV presenter’s husband is the one with alleged links to the tories. However see https://www.bbc.co.uk/contact/complaint/fbimpartiality
One thing wholly lacking from our coverage of event on Thursday is any information about the string of council by-elections on May 2nd. LDV, ALDC and Mark Pack’s blog are wholly silent. Were the results so terrible that they needed to be hidden? Or is this a simple oversight that will now be rectified?
Not entirely unexpected. The BBC described the Lib Dem and Green results as “modest”, while Reform UK managed a “mixed result” of two councillors (half that of their left wing populist chums in the WPB).
A bit more policy substance, a few more solutions instead of moans, a bit more charisma, a bit more interest in places outside the leafy Home Counties (5% in Manchester and West Yorkshire Mayorals !!), a few less stunts with folk dressed in naff dinosaur costumes……. All might help.
I’ve never gone in for idea that the BBC has a baked-in bias to the left or right, but – and this is just my observation, I’d like to be wrong – they have a slight tendency toward the government of the day, and something of a penchant for drama. As the lib dems haven’t offered much of either since early coalition days, putting Braverman vs Scully or McFadden vs (in absentia) Galloway is presumed to be better box office. I’m appalled at the prominence Braverman has been given (that applies to you too, Guardian) – she’s not even the formal voice of the rebels. I’m waiting for a journalist of stature to ask a Conservative MP why they appear to have such visceral hatred for some of the most marginalised people in the world. That would be good critical journalism and good box office.
We have had this over the years and have only achieved progress by taking action and kicking up a fuss. Even threatening legal proceedings. There is no point moaning. The hierarchy of the party needs to be calling for top level talks and talking to the regulators and threatening legal proceedings, otherwise we Can be totally excluded.
Well commented, Mr Raw!
In local elections our candidates have something to talk and persuade about.
In national elections, do we have enough stand out policies with snappy slogans with which our candidates can talk and persuade?
Perhaps not all voters are into minutiae and complex sentences?
David Raw – a pity that you dilute the force of your comments by references to the ‘leafy Home Counties’.
Yes, there has been an unacceptable failure to encourage the large gaps between areas where we are stronger, there has been a naïve approach to the Greens, but hopefully our gains are going to be a tad wider flung than you imply.
Of course, it would be nice if we had a John Pardoe to liven things up,
BBC at it again this morning.
Just a cursory reference to Lib Dem gains but the commentator then says and highlights the words “Good” gains for the Greens.
Complaining to the BBC is more difficult than with Sky so even complaints often do not seem to get through.
It’s easy to complain to the BBC, although it’s more difficult to find their complaints page than it used to be. But here’s the URL.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/contact/complaints/make-a-complaint/#/Complaint
I agree with Jack. Rather than conspiracy the reasons for our poor media coverage are mainly more mundane. Journalists will have their own political biases, but the are driven by trying to find a bit of drama, with a bit of path of least resistance.
Showdowns between two main parties are easier to cover, and nuance is both boring and hard work. And we need to make ourselves more interesting.
We also have to accept that experienced political commentators know full well that our vote share at a general election won’t match that of local elections, and many of them are only interested in what it means for the national picture – ie a general election.
It’s a similar problem at general elections where the coverage of the election campaign is really coverage of polling and how well each party is expected to do, and maybe discussion of coalitions.
Holyrood elections are particularly bad because the UK media assumes no-one is interested in the many things Holyrood has powers over, such as health, education, the environment or transport. But because those things have limited impact on people (journalists) outside of Scotland, they keep pushing the debate back to whether or not there’s to be another independence referendum.
These things are annoying, and it’s right to complain constructively, but it’s better to understand why it happens rather than assuming everything is a conspiracy against us.
Fiona, you are very nice about all this.
But if it isn’t bias then it’s incompetence – allied to having an easy life. Why should the little dears make life a little more complicated for themselves!
I’m not saying it’s acceptable – I’m just trying to be objective about it, and we need to have a more realistic understanding of why the media behaves the way it does if we are to successfully challenge it.
You might say it’s incompetence, but it depends what you are trying to achieve. You assume they are wanting to give a very fair, detailed and balance version of events. But what they are trying to achieve is viewer/listener/reader engagement.
Bad news sells. Drama sells. We all like to think we are above all of that, and perhaps most journalists would like to be above it, but keeping things simple, and dramatic is what keeps viewers. Or at least that’s the received wisdom.
Ironically, railing against the MSM and political bias is also a good way to get retweets and headlines. Tweets complaining about the BBC not covering x, y or z get more engagement than the stories the BBC already did on x, y and z.
We can demand move coverage, but we also need to frame our messages in ways that are media friendly. And focus on getting 3rd party at Westminster status back.
The 3 dinosaurs got coverage but made us look more than a little in the same irrelevant class as Screaming Lord Sutch or Buckethead. The serious point (whatever it was?) didn’t cut across.
Well said Caron!
@Chris Lewcock:
The clip’s message is, the LDs are celebrating, because they did well against Tory dinosaurs.
You might think that we don’t need to say that, but actually given how difficult it is for LDs to get any coverage at all, we DO need stunts like that.
At 85 I haven’t the wits and the energy to keep up with much day by day, as the electoral tempo and temperature start rising; and that is indeed encouraging.
But may I urge every Lib Dem to survey what may be discernible beyond what is surely by now the ‘current’ General Election. It will be followed no later, I trust, than 2029. And by then the main issue will surely be — won’t it? — how best the UK may emulate our neighbours throughout the world, and install PR. And in turn PR will transform everything, bringing with it an affordable and transformative NATIONAL INCOME DIVIDEND (aka “UBI”).
(We could copy the motto of our friends the French, while retaining, I hope, the Union Jack!)
In my experience, almost everyone thinks that the BBC is biased against their own views. Most Labour activists believe (quite sincerely) that the BBC is biased towards the Tories. Most Tory activists believe (equally sincerely) that the BBC is biased towards Labour. And to judge from this thread, at least some LibDem activists believe… Ah well!
While it might be satisfying to blame things on bias, it seems to me that by far the most constructive thing to do is to try to work out what we can do to secure better coverage in the future – which does mean attempting to understand what journalists and editors are looking for (whether biased or not). I think Fiona’s comments in this regard are very sensible.
It would be fun to work out RefUK’s position in terms of council representation. My own borough has two residents’ groups with more councillors and one with the same number.