But the voters don't get a vote...
17.02.06
at 12:56
at 12:56
tagged with:
...in this leadership contest anyway. Barrie Wood in Progressive Politics: Our Voters Want Simon for Leader ! suggests that Chris Huhne is "grey in every sense of the word" that the Tory membership probably realised that whilst they might want Davis, their heads told them to vote for the electable one and so on.
Needless to say I disagree. Just look at this leadership election itself - people seem to have gone and sought out the "outsider", the "unknown", Chris Huhne, to find out what he has to say so they could make up their minds about him. And in that he has come across well. The others, the familiar faces, Simon and Ming, they think they already know what they stand for and what they're going to say.
If we are to carve out a new political-economic landscape and present innovative ideas to the public, we don't want people switching off because the know and recognise Simon or Ming and think they know what they're going to say. We need someone who can take the new challenging ideas and put them in words for everyone to understand. And we want people to think "oh, he's new, what has he got to say".
On both fronts, Chris has it. With the others, "Mandy Rice-Davis Applies".
If we constantly decide where our party is going by trying to second guess the wider electorate, no wonder there's poverty of ideological discourse in UK politics. Are we to select our leader via a focus group of pebbledashed mondeo owners from the dead centre of the UK somewhere?
Trackback URL for this post:
http://www.jockcoats.org.uk/trackback/277
Comments
Beware of assuming that what Cameron has achieved is all down to his becoming leader and a certain amount of default publicity that comes with that. Sure, that's partly true. But at the same time, Cameron is a talented communicator. Huhne isn't, however brilliant he is on content. I can't help but feel that what would actually be best for liberalism would be for Huhne's good ideas to be put into party policy, and perhaps for him to replace Vince Cable, since he's made such a claim for himself as an economist. Meanwhile, a leader who is better at putting across the message can communicate those ideas to the public. It's not for nothing that they're the faces the public remember.
But not in this one, thank goodness. If we're only here to try to select what they will like the best and not what's best for liberalism and the future of Britain, we might as well go home now.
comment
On 17.02.06 at 15:33 Anonymous (not verified) said:
If those voters wanted to affect the outcome of the Lib Dem leadership election, they could have joined the party. As they didn't, that must be interpreted as they don't care who leads the party.
I don't see why any member should vote against his or her own favourite just because of some poll, which doesn't even tell us how much these voters know about the candidates, or how important it is to them to get their favourite elected.
Ming and Simon will both be relatively new faces to the electorate, and will bring something new to the party. I tend to share the greyness" doibt about Huhne.
We activists believe we know what Ming is going to say. Being good-natured folk, many of you believe the best about the relatively unkown Huhne (we don't know what he would have done in 1988 - which we hold against Simon, or during the Project because he wasn't there at the time). I am not at all sure that this is either fair or wise, as I have attempted to explain here.
It must be significant that the MPs and MEPs - who know most about him - are not jumping on the bandwagon."
comment
On 17.02.06 at 16:41 Anonymous (not verified) said:
We don't really know what the voters want.
The polling evidence suggests that whether you ask all voters or just Lib Dem ones 'Don't Know' beats each of the three contenders.
Of those with a preference Hughes narrowly wins the Lib Dem voters and Campbell wins amongst all voters. The most impressive vote is actually for Huhne who has gone up from 2% three weeks ago to 10% now.
Howver as all they are really going on at this stage is name recognition, and the levels of support for all three are low, there is little point in worrying about it.
The reality is that whichever of the three wins they will then have three years to build up their profile and will be immensely better nown than they are now.
(Just as happened with Paddy and Charles in fact!)
Articles with similar tags
-
Millibland's bog...
(17-Mar-06)
-
Rites of passage under threat
(12-Jul-06)
-
That pesky "left wing tax"
(24-Sep-06)
-
Jock's Oxford Manifesto: 2. The Challenges facing Oxford
(30-Jan-06)
-
Tax or trade redux: Chris Huhne responds
(13-Nov-06)
-
Heroin: what kills?
(09-Feb-06)
-
Land tax versus land release.
(13-Nov-06)
-
Intrusive taxmen
(26-Oct-06)
-
Ming to visit GITMO
(11-Jun-06)
-
See - a little Liberal largesse does go a long way
(11-Jul-06)
Add comment
comment
Actually Jock the voters get several million vote at the next election.