Monday, October 23, 2023

The News Agents, Peter Kyle and Labour's Mid Bedfordshire by-election campaign


You may have heard Peter Kyle, mastermind of the successful Labour campaign in Mid Bedfordshire, on The News Agents podcast the other day.

He told a moving story about how Labour had won by being respectful to the voters and never mentioning the Liberal Democrats in their campaigning. Whereas the Lib Dem campaign, among many other things, was "filth".

Yet this Labour leaflet from the by-election campaign is almost comical in the way it copies Lib Dem literature. There are the inevitable three things to remember and a bar chart.

Though I haven't seen a Lib Dem bar chart as dodgy as this one for years.

The News Agents is one of the podcasts I follow. Shedding the BBC straitjacket has made Emily Maitlis, Jon Sopel and Lewis Goodall happier and more interesting to listen to.

But it's a shame they allowed Kyle to put over such a one-eyed account of the by-election campaign without challenge.

For a good analysis of the by-election and its consequences from a Lib Dem point of view, read Matthew Pennell - that post is also in my latest Joy of Six selection of links.

h/t @TruthMattersToo on Twitter.

1 comment:

Phil Beesley said...

That leaflet is pretty awful. All of those arrows are confusing.

Deadful colours and the candidate looks like he is going to be sick any minute.