I find your position far more interesting than the slavish supporters… perhaps because I’m in a similar situation (I lean towards Clegg, but am still critical of him and there’s some things about Chris I like as well).

I’d fully expect you to state what you like and don’t like about the candidates, even if you were supporting one of them, and that, especially at this stage is vital. Whoever is elected I want to know their flaws as well as their attributes.

James’s post actually does cover a lot of the problems I have with Clegg - too much rhetoric which actually if you look at it closely doesn’t go anywhere. What I want to see is someone who shows a real confidence with ALL the main policy issues, and shows that he isn’t afraid to look beyond the obvious, and I don’t see that with Clegg. A lot of what I’m seeing from him seems to be stuff which is shallow feel-good rhetoric for us, with a nod to the right-wing press which has helped get him some support there, but I don’t feel it’s going to win us much support outside people who are already committed to us. In some ways it’s a lot like David Cameron in reverse - good presentation hiding a rather shallow grasp, feel-good stuff for his party, and in his case, a nod to the liberal media to get the support there.

What I actually want to see is someone who’s a good deal less the conventional politician than Clegg. I would like to see someone who really goes outside the comfort zone, and utters a few shocking truths about the real problems our society and our world are facing, and about how there aren’t any easy solutions to them, but how closing our minds and saying “politics is bad and boring” isn’t an option if we want to see those problems solved. I want to see someone who can say something to the people who slam the door in my face when I’m canvassing with a shout of “no thanks, we’re not interested”. I just don’t see that in Clegg, and ok I don’t see enough of it in Huhne either.

Notwithstanding that certain people (Alison Goldsworthy for one) think I’m Chair of In-The-Closet-For-Chris. I’m still undecided (much less than I was though). I’m more like Chair of Lib Dems for Indecision.

Erm, because I don’t believe in a society where everyone gets their “just deserts” either. Have I really not made it clear how much I dislike the concept of meritocracy yet?

(ignoring all the other comments)

I find it pretty awful that we live in a society that demands statistics-free speech. Stats are the only way of measuring things on such a grand scale as a nation, and to not use them at all shows one to be either possessed by an ideology so greatly one doesn’t care about its consequences, or, that one doesn’t understand them. Neither bode well for the leader of a major political party, surely?

And I do wonder whether you are really doing Chris any favours with this substance-free vitriol.

Joe: I admit that I was being a little provocative yesterday. I blame it on the large quantities of Hoegaarten that people were buying me the night before. The people buying me these were split evenly between Clegg and Huhne.

I think I understand where you are coming from a bit better now. I may have interpreted critiquing the campaign as critiquing the man - I’m afraid I may have even done you the disservice of assuming that doing the former was a veiled way of doing the latter. But if your intention is merely to keep our candidates and their campaigns honest, then you are doing a bang up job and please do continue!

Delving into the detail, I think that many of the areas where the party is “too comfortable” are actually related to its self-image and the image it presents to the public, rather than actual policy.

A good example is the most recent revamp of our tax policy, and particularly the 16p standard rate on income tax. I felt at the time (and still feel) that our language was too timid; we should have come crashing through people’s TV screens shouting “TAX CUT! WE WANT A TAX CUT!”

(For those who would say that it’s not a real tax cut - the Tories’ inheritance tax cut wasn’t really a tax cut either, but it worked because it *was* a tax cut for the people who matter to the Tories…)

The policy is an excellent one and would genuinely help a lot of people who should really be voting for us. But the result of our presentation is that hardly anyone knows we want the lowest income tax burden of any of the three main parties - a real shame.