"any kind of debate between the parties has been drowned out by the usual LibDem
Sturm und Drang"
That's his words not mine. Sounds like the words of a sore loser to me. Following on the SSCUP candidate in Glenrothes complaining that the parteis started to campaign too early, though after John McDougall was buried and the media had started to ramp up the by election process. I've had enough of people who don't engage in a particualr way complaining about others who do in a different way maybe but within the rules.
hat tip to Jonathan Wallace.
4 comments:
Hi Stephen.
Hardly the words of a sore loser, as I posted on polling day itself.
That the LibDems held the seat in what is a rock-solid ward for them was hardly a surprise. Neither were the sudden eruption of Focuses as polling day approached, endlessly regurgitating the same material (the point of my post).
Still, the good news is that despite a massive effort by Darlington LibDems, their share of the vote actually dipped, whilst Labour was the only party to increase its share!
Best wishes,
Nick.
Thanks for stopping by Nick.
Having just finished with the Glenrothes campaign I saw the same leaflet rehashed for every region of the constituency the weekend before the election with the area's name followed by the word special on it. This was the work of the Labour campaign team.
Of course with 5 days to go it was nearly impossible to tell every constituent just how unspecial their 'special' edition of the Fifer actually was. Only one word was changed on the lot of them, the name of the village, or area of Glenrothes itself that they lived it.
Nick Wallis fails to mention tywo things:
1. The small drop in the Lib Dem vote is entirely accounted for by the entry into the field of a former Lib Dem standing as an Independent. So a four way fight in May 2007 became a five-way fight yesterday, with the new entry an ex-Lib Dem.
In those circumstances, you would expect the Lib Dems in particular to lose some votes to the independent.
2. Far from being rock solid, North Road was represented by two Lib Dems and one Labour Councillor from 2003 to 2007. That Labour's vote is now less than half that of the Lib Dems is due to the tireless service the residents of the ward receive from their local Focus team.
As a non-partisan I'm inclined to agree with Stephen and, as I said in my blog piece on Glenrothes, these kind of things seem to be regarded as some kind of political virility contest between the parties.
And, frankly, such complaints are largely partisan in nature - if the boot was on the other foot I doubt if Cllr Wallis would be complaining.
I also made the point that a flurry of campaigning is likely to underline the view of many voters that they only ever hear from politicians at election time, thus in many cases alienates rather than attracts votes.
Maybe that's another reason why the LibDems lost votes ;-)
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