Saturday, March 09, 2013
Putting the media into perspective #ldconf
I am not at the Liberal Democrats Federal Conference in Brighton. I find that two spring conferences puts a strain on my time and in any case the Welsh Conference is far more important. It is also the case that after 32 years of attending Federal party conference I am bit bored with them. I am sure that I will recover my interest by the time that Glasgow comes around in September.
Despite all that I was tempted to make the effort if only to vote against the latest lunacy from the Lembit Opik camp. As the Daily Mail reported a month ago Lembit and his cronies tabled a constitutional amendment that would have meant that a leadership contest could be triggered by a vote of no confidence in the Leader passed by a two-thirds majority at a spring or autumn conference.
The Daily Mail and other papers of course made a big thing of this attempt to unseat Nick Clegg. At a time when all the media was gleefully seizing on anything and everything so as to undermine the Liberal Democrats in the run-up to the Eastleigh by-election, this was catnip to them.
Of course some of the other stories had more substance to them and posed serious questions for the leadership to answer, though in many instances the way that they were overplayed could be scarcely justified. This attempt by Lembit and company to secure their 15 minutes in the sun however, was never really a goer and in no way justified the space the Daily Mail and the rest of the media devoted to it.
As a good example of journalists overplaying their hand it is worth noting that when the constitutoinal amendment came before conference this morning it not only failed to secure a two thirds majority, in fact it attracted less than ten votes. Not so much a coup as a damp squib. I bet the Daily Mail does not report it like that though.
Despite all that I was tempted to make the effort if only to vote against the latest lunacy from the Lembit Opik camp. As the Daily Mail reported a month ago Lembit and his cronies tabled a constitutional amendment that would have meant that a leadership contest could be triggered by a vote of no confidence in the Leader passed by a two-thirds majority at a spring or autumn conference.
The Daily Mail and other papers of course made a big thing of this attempt to unseat Nick Clegg. At a time when all the media was gleefully seizing on anything and everything so as to undermine the Liberal Democrats in the run-up to the Eastleigh by-election, this was catnip to them.
Of course some of the other stories had more substance to them and posed serious questions for the leadership to answer, though in many instances the way that they were overplayed could be scarcely justified. This attempt by Lembit and company to secure their 15 minutes in the sun however, was never really a goer and in no way justified the space the Daily Mail and the rest of the media devoted to it.
As a good example of journalists overplaying their hand it is worth noting that when the constitutoinal amendment came before conference this morning it not only failed to secure a two thirds majority, in fact it attracted less than ten votes. Not so much a coup as a damp squib. I bet the Daily Mail does not report it like that though.
