A new politics? Lewisham Liberal Democrats

"Don't let anyone tell you that the only choice is the old politics", Nick Clegg, April 2010

Over recent weeks, I've been watching the leaflets fall through the door. Labour do a nice line in photos of Hilly Fields; every single thing that Steve Bullock has done has apparently been because of the Greens (rumour has it that the mayoral knight can't tie his own shoelaces without Darren Johnson having "campaigned hard" for it first); and if there are Tory leaflets, well, they must be too big for my letter box.

All the usual electoral fare. But, as we all know, what is different this time round is the rise of the Lib Dems. Sweeping all before them they promise change, honesty and a fresh, new politics.

So, why is their election material in Lewisham so negative - and their arguments resting on dodgy ground? Tamora Langley, the Lib Dem parliamentary candidate, berates Labour for having done nothing on violent crime. This is nothing more than low grade populism. Reported violent crime may have increased, but it's a big jump from there to saying that violent crime is up. As the British Crime Survey demonstrates, there are enough grey areas to make it almost impossible to say "violent crime is going up. Indeed, the Tories got caught out when they tried just this.

But Tam Langley ignores these nuances to make a blatant and sweeping partisan point that is helpful to no one and nothing but Liberal Democrat election prospects. As further evidence of her opportunism, she puts the blame on Labour. Last time I looked the Mayor of London was responsible for the Metropolitan Police, and if memory serves me correctly, he's a Tory.

Still, don't let something as inconvenient as the facts get in the way of a populist rant. This is an election after all, although I thought the Liberals were offering a "new politics".

It's also very hard to take their claims to be a new broom seriously when they draw so many of their candidates from the Westminster Village. Indeed, Ms Langley is a lobbyist with Weber Shandwick.

Now, some of my best friends are lobbyists, and it would be childish to write off Tam Langley simply because of her job. However, I'm afraid she makes that very easy for us to do when we see that she is blogging about her campaign for . . . er, lobbyists Weber Shandwick.

If the Liberals really want to offer us a new politics then they should stop publicly using their campaign experiences for the benefit of the private lobbyist companies who employ them.

Stop it. You're embarrassing yourselves.

Now, I'm not so dull witted that I cannot see the relevance of the US elections to us. Certainly, I'd be concerned if the British media decided that they weren't worth bothering with, but I am getting fed up with the fourth estate's treatment of them as if they were happening here and that they themselves are somehow a part of it.

The West Wing wet dream that is the presidential primaries is something that our most prominent journalists are losing all sense of perspective over, or indeed shame. There they are, mainly from Channel 4 News and BBC Newsnight, standing in the Iowa snow or some nameless midwest town, trying to be the equal of the oh-so exciting DC set they so desperately want to be a part of.

As Lionel Shriver has written, it's "embarrassing". So why do they bother?

Yes, it is important, and of course they are seduced by the romance of US politics, but there is something else. For the metropolitan media elite someone else's politics is, like the proles, always much more attractive than your own.

I can accept this prejudice - that's just life in the UK in the 2000s. It's the lack of embarrassment and self awareness that gets me. The US election coverage is making me cringe. When US networks only toss a cursory glance in the direction of our own polls, it's all a bit unseemly to be fawning over them in the very, very early stages of theirs. Like county cricket matches, I'm sure as hell interested in the final outcome, but I'm not sure I want to sit through the whole contest.


AND IN OTHER NEWS . . . Bristol lost. We're out of the Cup. Time to focus on the league.