Spinster of This Parish

British Spin has ceased blogging and will in future drop his pearls of wisdom before the swinish multitude via email. Drop him a line at britishspin@hotmail.com. (And enjoy the spam, Spinster).

Wisdom it is, too - here, on the hard time the Lib Dems have been getting in recent byelections.

The Liberal Democrats have long been regarded as effective local campaigners. What has generally of less interest is that in many cases the Liberal Democrats have been successful by edging right up to the line of the truth and happily tip-toeing along it.

I could say more, but let’s just say that Liberal Democrat campaigns can have a creative relationship with the facts. “Local” candidates who are no such thing, Hospital and school closures that aren’t proposed attacked . Promises of action on graffiti, crime and local issues that contradict parliamentary votes.

This is fair enough. It’s called politics. After all, in an election campaign you need to get attention. You need to cause trouble, You need to stir things up. Sometimes you have to focus attention on issues in a provocative way.

It’s just that Liberal Democrats and other observers should not be surprised when their opponents call them on it. If you’re going to call yourself a local campaigner, how can you get upset about being branded an outsider? If you campaign for tough action on crime, don’t be surprised when your votes against tough laws are highlighted.

I noted the contradiction between LD local and national positions a while back in relation to asylum.

Nationally the LDs have always been liberal and caring on race and asylum - that 'great chieftain of the pudding race' Charles Kennedy gathered buckets of Brownie points by accusing William Hague of encouraging racist attacks every time Hague opened his mouth on asylum.

Yet when an asylum camp was proposed in the next county to me, who led the campaign against it ? That's right, the caring Lib Dems. And very professionally they did it too, getting 1,500 marchers, all local, on the streets of a town with a population of 6,000. Of course they weren't objecting to the asylum seekers themselves - oh no. The camp was in the wrong place, there weren't facilities, the Refugee Council disapproved - anything other than the plain unvarnished truth that locals, many of whom were themselves 'incomers' fleeing Birmingham, didn't want 750 young Afghan and Albanian men hanging on the streets of their pretty Georgian town. You can debate whether the objectors were 'racist' - the point is the Lib Dems were happy to lead them.

And for those who like to see the LDs getting slapped - Guacamoleville is a must-read.