This morning, in a spectacular own goal, the Dail Fail published a story criticizing Nick Clegg and accusing him of a “Nazi slur on UK“. The so called slur occurred in this article in The Gruniad in 2002, where he calls for people to stop being so unpleasant to Germans about a war which ended more than 60 years ago: the man has a point! It was just one in a raft of anti-Nick Clegg articles in the right-wing press over the last 24 hours in what is very obviously a somewhat desperate move from the Tories and their pocket journos.
In response, the Twitterverse went mad with the hashtag #nickcleggsfault. A wonderful array of satirical tweets pointing out the ludicrous nature of all the stories. At the time of writing, the hashtag is topping the global trending topics and it’s a lovely demonstration of the power of social networking to turn old style politics and journalism on it’s head. I’m loving it.
Here are some of my favourites:
@SurplusGamer: Nick Clegg cheated in the last TV debate by unfairly using ‘facts’ and ‘better arguments.’#nickcleggsfault
@ModelWorx Big Macs never looking like their pictures #nickcleggsfault
@edyong209 These are all #nickcleggsfault http://bit.ly/ckolME
@philpeace: ‘I’m Nick Clegg and Windows Vista was my idea’ #nickcleggsfault
I doubt the Lib Dems could have asked for better publicity this morning. Nor, I imagine, is this panning out the way the opposition hoped and expected.
As a life long (I know that’s only 2 previous elections, but still) Lib Dem voter, the public response to them this year has been wonderful to see. As a scientist, there really is only one party to vote for; they are the only ones who actually base their policies on evidence! I hope it lasts all the way to the polling stations…
I still can’t help but think that the only people being reached out to are those who would already vote Lib Dem, and the readers of the papers doing the smearing won’t notice a thing…
A fair point DWH, but there are plenty of people out there who really *ought* to vote Lib Dem, but never do – hopefully this will demonstrate that there is a strong, active Lib Dem constituency out here, who vote for them because they believe in their policies, rather than because they don’t want the other guys in.
I really don’t think so. Some 49% of people say they would like to vote Lib Dem but think no-one else will and so they vote tactically against the party they like least. That is a terrifying indictment on our democracy. I suspect the Leadership debates have given Nick Clegg much needed exposure and that may well be all he needed.
I worry that those voters will well go back to their old ways when they get to the booths, but I think these are the people that the Lib Dems have picked up over the last 10 days. Us stalwart supporters are simply too few in number to represent the sort of reaction I’m seeing across the internet and in the polls.
The numbers required for a hung parliament make it look exceedingly likely; Labour need loose only 24 seats while, to avoid one, the Conservatives need to gain 116. That’s a wide margin and a hung parliament would hand the Lib Dems a lot of power.
I also get the feeling that Nick Clegg has his “mandate to govern” in his back pocket. If we end up with more Lib Dem votes than either of the other two and fewer Lib Dem seats Nick Clegg is going to ride a wave of anger to serious political reform; after that, a second election to resolve the hung parliament could deliver a radically new government.
There is a real excitement about this election and there has been a huge boost in the number of people registering to vote. I find it very hard to believe that all those people who have been so disaffected over the last 10 years would have made that effort just to go and vote for one of the main two parties.
I’m anxious, because you never can tell with elections, but I am very excited.
Incidentally, Stephen Fry came out as considering voting Lib Dem on Twitter during the debate, the only way we could have had a better celebrity endorsement would have been if Barack Obama had come out in favour!
Ooh ooh I’ve just seen the relevant http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/sun-censored-poll-that-showed-support-for-lib-dems-1951940.html