Monday, October 29, 2007

A wider choice, please

Nominations in the Lib Dem leadership contest close on Wednesday, and it seems 99.9pc certain that the party will have a straight choice between Nick Clegg and Chris Huhne. The distinctions between the two candidates have sharpened over the weekend with Huhne coming out against Trident and Clegg making clear his support for the independent nuclear deterrent. Twenty years on from the infamous Steel-Owen wrangle over defence which wrecked the Liberal-SDP's chances in the 1987 election, it seems the differences within the party over this issue are as strong as ever.

Meanwhile, readers of this blog have been making clear their own view that they would have appreciated a wider choice in this leadership election, as indeed I would. My two polls show Huhne narrowly ahead of Clegg in a head-to-head contest, but well behind Charles Kennedy and Julia Goldsworthy in a notional poll involving all the candidates who previously ruled themselves out.

To say how you would cast your vote between Clegg and Huhne, click HERE. To choose between Vincent Cable, Clegg, Ed Davey, Goldsworthy, Simon Hughes, Huhne, Kennedy, Susan Kramer, David Laws and Steve Webb, click HERE. And if you think I'm paying far too much attention to the Lib Dem contest, please say so in the comments!

free web site hit counter

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

what do you care,isn't it pretty irrelevant without PR.

seems they've been trying to find differences to makie it a contest worth having.

Anonymous said...

Hopefully a distinctive political programme can be developed by the Lib Dems to distinguish them from the "tweedledee tweedledum" policies of Labour and Conservative.

It seems could come down to 'I'm very English, vote Conservative' and I'm Scottish, but ever to English friendly, vote Labour'