Saturday, January 27, 2007

Does Ming owe his position to the man jailed yesterday - should it have been Simon?

Does Ming owe his position to the man jailed yesterday? An interesting article from Political Betting. As someone who is and was and always will be deeply disappointed that Simon Hughes didn't win, this confirms what many suspected. But I have to console myself with some of the funny memories from working on his campaign. Like the woman in Lembit's constituency who seemed rather confused when I asked her who she was voting for.........when it became tortuous I asked her "Are you a Lib Dem?" "No dear" said she, "I'm a Baptist!"

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Short answers to your 2-part question: no and no!

For a longer answer, I think "James" in the comments thread on politicalbetting.com has it spot on:

"A nice theory, but the Guardian survey if I remember correctly was of supporters not members. Hughes was always a long way behind amongst members. He had lost against Kennedy and was up against two strong opponents last year rather than just one. Additionally, he had even lost a fair amount of his old “activist” vote as his London mayoral run was widely perceived as unimpressive in pure campaigning terms.

Indeed, the revelations about Hughes private life generally illicited sympathy amongst members rather than losing him many votes."

Anonymous said...

Does Ming owe his position to the man jailed yesterday?

Of course not. Simon would have lost anyway - because of his politics, because of his disorganisation and because of his track record as party president.

Peter Pigeon said...

No and no here too!

I think he might have come second though.

To be honest, I think Simon has lost that spark he had that used to make him such a thrilling speaker. I thought his campaign started very well though.

Anonymous said...

Simon had disappointed as Party President and was (and probably still is?) far too disorganised.

He didn't have a prayer.