I've just read another excellent blogpost from Dan Hannan or Dan the Hannan as Andrew Neil would probably call him. It concerns the treatment of UKIP byt the beeb in the Norwich North by-election. All the coverage from them concentrated on four parties, Tories, Labour, Libdems and the Greens. Now at the most recent electoral test, the euro and locals UKIP finished ahead of the greens in the norwich north wards. And yesterday they finished ahead of them again and only 800 votes shy of the libdems. What would the UKIP result had been had they been afforded the coverage of the greens. They compounded this by showing a bar graph of the result which showed the 3 main parties and the greens vote percentages but ignored UKIP completely.I'm not a UKIP supporter but feel they deserve a fair shake of the stick. They are clearly a strong political force now and are definitely the largest party outside the big three and at their current trajectory will inevitably win a seat in parliament in the future. And that's what the BBC hate. People have been quick to accuse them of bias before but they are making it possible for anyone sane to defend their stance. The real balance of politics will end up like this in future. You will have two parties of the left (Libdem and Labour) and two on the right (Conservative and UKIP) dominating the political agenda for the forseeable future. At the moment the state funded media monopoly is tring to live in some socialist utopian fantasy, (well, apart from Jeremy Clarkson.
The beeb needs to get it's act together or it will be signing it's own death warrant.
How about the LPUK? We are a valid party too
ReplyDeleteYes, but until the libertarians get themselves into a similar position of strength as UKIP there is no way they will get the coverage from any media outlet. They need to raise their profile substantially themselves first. Aside from bloggers and political geeks (of which I include myself) I doubt the general public are aware of the party. Unfortunately, your target vote is largely dominated by conservative and UKIP candidates. But on the bright side after the next election the country will certainly see more libertarianism than you have in a decade, it won't be as much as you hoped for but it'll be moving in the right direction.
ReplyDeleteNB. This blog is libertarian-friendly. Posts will not be moderated, unless you really piss me off!
You can be libertarian and still vote Tory.
ReplyDeleteBut you can't if you vote Labour, the party of state spying, massive databases, ID cards, corruption of children and all-round abuse of civil liberties. I'm afraid it seems to me that the whole idea of a "Libertarian Party", while apparently decent in theory, in practical terms just doesn't work. Its focus is too narrow (how, for example, can a Libertarian Party have a policy on defence without causing some sort of internal contradiction or changing what I presume to be the whole idea of the organisation: to live and let live).
It might be disappointing to hear, but I'm afraid it will never be any more than a very vocal, refreshingly articulate, great British pressure group, made-up of well-meaning, generally dead-right, highly intelligent people. But the only thing a vote for them or UKIP or the Greens or any other fringe party will do is help keep Labour in power. No matter what might be desirable (the destruction of the corrupt major parties, a new political system, a new parliament - whatever) - that is the reality and I'm not prepared to let it happen right now by helping to split the opposition vote.
So, bottom line, I think the Libertarian Party, in its current form, is a bit of a nuisance. (And its members could be, dare I say it, a little naive?)