Monday, January 30, 2006

Gloves come off

I really wish this sort of commentary in this mornings Guardian would stop.

The gloves came off in the Liberal Democrat leadership race yesterday as Chris Huhne suggested that his rival Simon Hughes was no longer a serious contender after coverage of his personal life.

I did see a really good piece on another Blog yesterday with regard to Chris Huhne

http://essexmoonlight.blogspot.com/2006/01/friends-thoughts-on-huhne.html

This piece really got me thinking about his possible strengths as we go forward - still worried about his lack of experience though. And I wish the candidates and the media would get away from commenting on each other and we could see more about what they propose to do, how they propose to lead the party and in what direction.

Tag Lib Dems

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Tony - I think you need to distinguish between what Chris actually said on the Jonathan Dimbleby programme and the spin the Guardian (and other papers) have put around what he actually said.

In response to a question Chris said that the bookies and journalists now had him as the second favorite.

He deliberatly played down Simon Hughes' problems.

The Guardian, and a couple of other papers, have linked the issues together, to make it look like the contest is turning negative.

Tony Ferguson said...

I couldn't agree more with those sentiments which was why at the beginning I referred to wanting this sort of commentary to stop. It is difficult to tell where the responsibilties for all this lie but my guess is mostly with the media. However, the candidates do have a role to play in declining to answer any such question and insisting that they are they to push their own credentials for leading the party

Anonymous said...

I cannot agree that Huhne played down Hughes problems: he played them up. Fundamentally he is correct. Because of the sex scandal, Hughes has dropped to third place.