ie Labour have already lost.

Oh dear.

I suspect the effect will be to decrease voting accross the board more than it will effect any one party. The perception is that they are all wallowing in filth.

Still, with a record low turnout at the next election the case for electoral reform will be stronger.

@cjcjc: no, that would only work if the betting markets already thought Labour were going to lose *all* their seats. if you want to make that bet then I’d happily take it, at any odds…

No surprises here, Smeargate was an important story but it was unlikely to have much effect on voting intention. I suspect the whole episode will simply have reinforced public cynicism towards politics.

I agree that, sadly, we’re all too used to corrupt politicians and disgraceful behaviour from those behind the scenes. The general reaction has been more of a shrug of the shoulders than a burning rage sweeping through the nation.

The w/es other big story, Labour’s continued mis-management of immigration, will have a greater effect.

A rather cryptic post. Are we to understand from this that this site has been seeking over the past few days to muddy the waters and drag up old Tory sleaze on purpose after all? Because at the time, writers were protesting that they weren’t trying to exculpate Labour but the whole Westminster Village system needed tearing down, and it wasn’t useful to just lay into Labour.

And a scant day later we’ve got some fairly obvious anti-Tory glee. Doesn’t look good.

What’s wrong with anti-Tory glee Alix? Or will you be only satisfied if Libcon spends all its time attacking Labour?

“What’s wrong with anti-Tory glee Alix?”

Can you not see how appalling it makes you look in this instance? I think basically LFAT is right and most of the population just don’t care, they are just that little bit more turned off. But for those few thousand that do care, this post makes it look as if LibCon is basically saying “Ner-ner-ner, we got away with the Draper/McBride fall-out”.

We’ll see what the polling evidence says over the next few weeks – though of course we have the budget impact to come too.

Certainly the LC “line” seems to have been a cross between “boring / nothing to see here” and “Tories just as bad”, combined with not a little shooting of the messenger.

I think the reason why Liberal Conspiracy bloggers have written mainly about the hypocrisy of Tories and their cynical gesturing over this is (although all have condemned Draper and McBride too) is that Draper & McBride managed to destroy themselves pretty efficiently – it’s pretty much an open-and-shut case & there’s not much anyone can add to it.

this post makes it look as if LibCon is basically saying “Ner-ner-ner, we got away with the Draper/McBride fall-out”.

Really? Does it? Perhaps the link might have been posted with the intention of saying – people around the country don’t care, here is the evidence, so perhaps the MSM should also fucking move on and talk about something substantial?

I’d love to see official posts on LC where anyone has actually excused Draper/McBride. I think the fact that I stated openly that Draper was poison that it might have been an indication on where I stood on the issue. But you know, I guess it was a bit ambiguous.

cjcjc – I’m really pleased to see that you’ve moved on your from your broken record of saying Where’s the liberal in the liberal conspiracy to now saying – omg, you bastard lefties, how dare you attack rightwingers for their hypocrisy, you’re just trying to destroy the political culture. – You sound so…. convincing.

‘oh dear’ indeed

http://politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2009/04/14/spread-punters-move-against-labour/

Better luck next time