Sunday, September 19, 2010

Why Labour does not appeal to Liberal Democrats

Nick Cohen has a good article in today's Observer (I learn over the web from my New York hotel bedroom) about the case of Paul Chambers:
Because of a joke, he has a criminal record and lost two jobs. The CPS is ruining his life – for no reason.
(Sunny Hundal on Liberal Conspiracy suggests that the rhetoric of journalists like Cohen has helped engender an atmosphere where it is possible for the state to get away with things like this, but we'll let that pass for now.)

Cohen concludes that:
I don't care what the polls say or how unpopular the coalition becomes – Labour must change the settled view of the majority of Britons that it is the party of politically correct jobsworths or it will never win another election.
I believe that is right. I also believe it shows how that David Miliband's pledge to win over 10,000 Liberal Democrats as Labour members by Christmas is unlikely to be fulfilled.

2 comments:

Nich Starling said...

Sunny Hundal is the worst type of Labour apologist. He was so quick to rejoin Labour in what appeared a very orchestrated way, Gordon Brown was barely out of Downing Street !

dreamingspire said...

In government Labour has also been the party whose leaders cannot count or get their servants to count. For more on our military's problem with numbers, suggest listen to Sir Richard Dannatt who this weekend was the interviewee in BBC World Service's The Interview. You can get the recording at http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/2009/03/000000_interview.shtml