Liberal Vision

A General Election fought on fear

It is clear that many in the Labour Party, and some Liberal Democrats, believe that the Conservative waged a fear campaign during the General Election. Putting to one side the accuracy of this view, and whether one should have been scared of a SNP supported Labour government, something has been missing from the discussion.

Fear was used in the General Election campaign and it was used by the Labour Party. Ed Miliband repeatedly told the voters that they had days to save the NHS. Coming from the party that introduced more private suppliers to the public service this is perverse at best and downright misleading at worse. The fear tactic didn’t work and we still have a National Health Service. No doubt when the Tories leave office we still will.

Tags: fear, general election

IT’S THE UNIONS WOT WON IT

The news channels today are full of speculation about who will be the next leader of the Labour party. It’s a bit of shame that the trade unions won’t get quite the same sway this time around.

After all, had the Unions not defied the will of Labour MPs and the Labour party membership in the last leadership election in 2010, (both groups showing a strong preference for Ed’s brother to lead the party) we could well have seen David Miliband lead the party over the last 5 years – and a Labour Prime Minister sitting down to breakfast in Number 10 today. So the nation’s thanks must go out to every Trade Union that backed Red Ed.

Sadly this time around the Labour Leadership election system will be different. The voting system has been changed (though yet to be implemented) moving to a “one member one vote” system (assuming it actually get’s implemented).  Will that lead to a more sane choice of Labour leader? Well with trade union darling (and health secretary at the time of the Mid Staffs excess deaths scandal) Andy Burnham the current front runner, and millionaire Champagne socialist Chuka Umunna (who views working class people as “trash“) apparently hot on his heals  – ermm maybe not.

Tags: Andy Burnham, Chuka Umunna, David Miliband, Ed Miliband, Labour leadership, Trade unions, Yvette Copper

Ed Miliband’s Latest Immigration Pledge

Ed Miliband today called for immigrants lacking proficiency in English to be barred from certain public sector jobs. The Labour leader said, “if we are going to build One Nation, our goal should be that everyone in Britain should know how to speak English.”

My first reaction to his speech wasn’t to question Labour’s record on immigration or analyse any key policy changes but rather to recall former Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott’s sustained assault on the English language:

“We are now taking proper, putting the amount of resources and investment to move what we call extreme conditions which must now regard as normal.”

“I undressed 450 students yesterday with Ed Miliband and Eddie Izzard and I did 300 last night.”

“The green belt is a Labour achievement, and we mean to build on it.”

Luckily for the people of Humberside during the PCC elections, they managed to stop the indigenous Lord Prescott attaining a “publicly- funded, public-facing job” via the ballot box.

Tags: Ed Miliband, John Prescott

Lib Dem Ad Campaign: Amateur Hour

We are joining the ranks of Lib demmers looking at the new ads being run by party HQ and saying er, No.

The most recent ad looks, as Digital Politco puts it, like “someone photoshopped it when they were bored for 5 minutes”.

We really thought we heard Nick tell us last week that were the party of the centre ground. Yet here we are, but a few days later, shouting a leftwing banker bashing message for all we are worth. We are not even sure that it is that easy to recognise Ed Miliband beneath that powered wig hat and ears. (And we are sure he reminds us of some character from a BBC period drama but can’t quite put our finger on it.)

And though you might think us picky we are not even sure you can count a poodle (if that is indeed what it is supposed to be) as a lapdog, surely it has to be a minature poodle to be a lapdog? All in all  a pretty lame effort.

It also curiously, seems to have little to do with the ad van running around Labour conference right now (photo from Liberal England blog spot). Well Ok , its bashing Labour, its from the Lib Dems and it has the fairertax website url on it.. but really does that constitute a coordinated campaign?

Its best been described by a former LV blogger with a flare for hitting the nail on the head :

“It’s a Focus leaflet graphic on a billboard, with no clear or memorable message, targeting a group unlikely to switch to the Liberal Democrats and saying nothing of any interest to other groups, with the possible exception of tax geeks who like bar charts” .

(We are also not entirely sure that the numbers  are correct – though we hope we can at least rely on Campaigns to get that bit right , so we bow to their expertise on this one.)

So what is going on? Last week at conference Jeremy Browne articulated what many of us who have worked in marketing or communications have been saying for a while – we should not define ourselves by the Conservatives or Labour, but define ourselves in our own terms. – as liberals Sadly that message seems not to have reached whoever is in charge of our media strategy.

We are not entirely convinced that an ad van, presumably targeting the (most hardened of) Labour activists attending conference is necessarily a good spend of our cash. Unless of course it is a cunning plan to excite conference attendees to push Labour further to the left in bid to squeeze out a bit of space in that fabled “centre ground”.

Either way with precious little money to spend, the party needs to get much better at these “attack” ads or, better still, abandon ya boo politics, pull our finger out and get the growth going. When we see some real green shoots we will have something to shout about, until then we are probably best saying nothing – especially if this is the best we can come up with. Unfortunately in the interests of “fairness” we have a nasty feeling that we might just see something equally cringe-making ad “sticking it to the Tories” at Conservative conference next week. More humiliation. Oh joy.

Tags: ad van, Ed Miliband, Labour, Labour conference, lapdog, Lib Dem posters

Am I wrong to laugh at Labour’s woes?

Yes probably. But I could not help but hoot when Ed Miliband went off air for a while during his speech… Trust Labour with the economy ?.. You can’t even trust them to get their “once a year- showcase to nation”  broadcast right. Oh dear…

There is a mischeavous part of me that wonders if his “advisors” did not pull the plug on him..

Then came the sad indictment of the whole Labour party conference…Rather than spend hours with woeful Labourites arguing (still) that Ed Balls should not have apologised for Labour mistakes – or analysis and reactions to their glorious leaders speech- both BBC News Channel and Sky News decided that showing hours of live footage from Michael Jackson’s doctors trial was more interesting!

Hmmm..  Apparently… coverage of deadpan attorney in a dry courtroom addressing question of whether doctor killed pop star or not much more interesting than coverage of dull Labourites in dull conference hall addressing question of whether leader had killed party or not.

I seem to recall a certain Labour phrase about it being a good day to bury bad news. But NO! They surely didn’t deliberately schedule their hapless leaders speech to end just before the trial was due to go live… just in case?

Then again….

Tags: Ed Miliband, Labour, speech