Saturday 17 November 2007

Question Time - Desperation and Depression

Posted by Chris:

There seems to be signs of a little bit of desperation creeping into the postings of some of the Lib Dem Bloggers for Chris Huhne following the appearance of both candidates on Question Time.

They are all rushing in to claim that Chris was the winner. How they can justify that is beyond me. What was obvious to me was that we have two outstanding candidates who came across extremely well in spite of the interruptions from David Dimbleby, which both handled satisfactorily. The programme was a rare opportunity to showcase the Liberal Democrats and viewers had a chance to see two stars of the Liberal Democrats future in action.

The only issue where there was a real difference of ideas was on Trident and for me Nick Clegg expressed the most common sense, whilst Chris appeared opportunistic and muddled.

The worst thing about the Question Time experience was the follow up programme on BBC News 24 afterwards. This is always a second rate anti-climax but it was made worse by the choice of guests. The first was Andrew Pierce, Assistant Editor of the Daily Telegraph who went completely over the top in his efforts to dis the Lib Dems. The second was Lib Dem, Olly Grender, who was far too nice to defend the party against the smears of Pierce.

I was thoroughly depressed by the end after reading all the irrelevant nonsense from Labour and Tory supporters that the BBC put out on the ticker.

1 comment:

Paul Walter said...

Hi Chris,

From LibDem Voice:

"Declared Clegg supporters saying Clegg won: 8
Declared Huhne supporters saying Clegg won: 0
Previously undeclared saying Clegg won: 0

Declared Huhne supporters saying Huhne won: 3
Declared Clegg supporters saying Huhne won: 3
Previously undeclared saying Huhne won: 5"

So, in fairness, contrary to your opening statement, only 3 Huhne supporters have said Huhne won. 3 Clegg supporters said he won and 5 previously undeclared said he won. Whereas, no undeclared or Huhne supporters said Nick won. Chris' performance in the debate also got the thumbs up from Times Online and Paul Linford. I would also note that the LibDem top blogger on Iain Dale's list for 2007, Jonathan Calder (who is undeclared), gave Chris a "win on points - just".