I guess this makes me a Proper Lib Dem Blogger now. My début in the Golden Dozen features me not once, but twice. Horatio will be breaking his chains again...

* blush *

I suppose this means I ought to tone down the invective, right? Become more acceptable and measured, and less angry and sweary?

...

Nah. Not going to happen.

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In other news of Lib Demmery, our very own Martha Kearney, alixmortimer, makes an interesting point about the current fortunes of the party:

It strikes me that we’re in a sort of puberty stage of political parties (no, really, stay with me). We’re too big and successful now to be regarded as the plucky little underdog, and attract the grumpy protest vote. That role now belongs to the Greens. People don’t see us as anti-establishment any more, purely by dint of our size and vote share, and the fact that they’ve decided to see our leader as an establishment leader who doesn’t “live up” to establishment standards, rather than the oddball anti-establishment leader he actually is, good teeth and an enthusiasm for hiking and tennis notwithstanding. Our size and popularity attracts the other parties’ fear, hence all the ludicrous unfairness and name-calling on the Beeb and throughout the media.

But, while we’re now definitely in the secondary school playground, we’re not strong enough to challenge the big boys, who bully us in the apparent hope that we’ll dwindle and lose heart. We’re in a peculiarly hellish sort of limbo, neither one thing or the other. Presumably the only thing to do when confronted with a set of results like this is to stick with it, not let the bastards grind us down and keep applying the clearasil. No, I have no idea how that translates into an actual strategy, wot am I, Lawd Rennard?

I can't speak for anyone else, but Clearasil always made my spots worse...

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In other other news: is it that all people who voted for Boris are stupid, or that all people who are complaining about people who voted for Boris are stupid? I don't know, but I think that shouting you're stupid at each other is a pretty stupid thing to do. All it does is make everybody dig their heels in for being attacked, and further entrench division. Obviously I lean towards Mitch's position rather than Doctor Vee's, but perhaps both of them are not as constructive as they might be: this I have discovered by the fact that matgb and I have had our first proper argument over this, because he most definitely sides with Doctor Vee, and I think Doctor Vee is being a patronising, overbearing twat. YAY for domestic harmony!

Anyway, Boris is mayor. It's a fact. And, you know, bumblebees DO stay up in the air, so maybe he'll pull something amazing out of his arse and it won't be all that bad. He's only the glorified head of London transport, after all. But anyway, going over the whys and wherefores won't change it, nor will it make it more acceptable to people who don't like it. Lets' think about what we need to do now, eh? Like maybe learning from the mistakes we made in the campaigning arena...