Daily Archives: 21 October 2007

Celebs vs Cerebral

21 October 2007politics and lifeChris-Huhne, leadership-contest, liberal-democrats, media, nick-cleggJames Graham

Candidate A has an article in the Telegraph today bigging up his social justice credentials. Candidate B has an article in the Observer today bigging up his celebrity friends and that he’ll be meeting Halle Berry this week.

Candidate A is definitely giving the activists, including me, what they want. But Candidate B seems to be doing a much better job at communicating with broader public.

It seems to me that if Candidate B is to avoid being dismissed as a bit of fluff, he has got to start offering the membership a bit of meat. But if Candidate A is to look credible, he has got to demonstrate he can widen his appeal.

The druggie versus the hoodie

21 October 2007politics and lifeChris-Huhne, drugs, leadership-contest, liberal-democrats, media, panics, the-timesJames Graham

What’s worse? Huhne’s LSD-associated past, or Clegg’s past encounter with peyote?

Seriously for a minute, is that Times article on Huhne accurate? According to it, Huhne’s name is on the article. But according to the copy which I pilfered from that nice Mr Fawkes (February 2006, by the way), no name appears anywhere on the article, probably because if anyone admitted to writing the article they’d have been kicked out of university.

Can anyone see Huhne’s name on this page? I’ll happily issue a correction if I’ve missed it. But I suspect that Guido would have made rather more of it at the time if that was the case. I notice that the Times chooses its words carefully such as stating that his byline was “attached” and has not published the article on its site as proof. Why would that be?