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Mark Oaten: how could I be so right?

What. The. Hell? Seriously, why are the wheels on the Oaten bus coming off so quickly? While I’ve never had that much regard for Oaten himself, I have some regard for Opik as someone who understands both campaigning and communication. And I never dreamt that we would reach this stage with Oaten unable to claim…

Written by

James Graham

in

What. The. Hell?

Seriously, why are the wheels on the Oaten bus coming off so quickly? While I’ve never had that much regard for Oaten himself, I have some regard for Opik as someone who understands both campaigning and communication. And I never dreamt that we would reach this stage with Oaten unable to claim more than one actual supporter.

Indeed, his campaign is starting to sound distinctly Orwellian:

  • He claims to be the loyalty candidate, yet was the first to launch his campaign (in the Telegraph before Christmas);
  • He claims to be the unity candidate, yet only one MP actually supports him;
  • He claims to be the media-friendly candidate, yet his campaign has lunged from one PR disaster to the next;
  • He claims to be the 21st century candidate yet is the only one without a campaign website (oh, and I checked the other day and could find no evidence that anyone has been buying URLs along the lines of mark2win, mark4leader, oatentowin, oatenforleader or any other variations);
  • He claims to be the liberal candidate, yet admits to only having discovered liberalism four years ago (5 years after being elected as a Liberal Democrat MP) and more than any other candidate his actual commitment to liberalism is questioned, with serious examples cited.

Last week I said he had a moral duty to stand; he’s organised for it long enough. Now, it looks so bad that I would be inclined to release him from his moral obligation. But I genuinely don’t understand why it has gone so bad for him. Perhaps I bought the hype more than I thought I did. More to the point, perhaps he did too.

Comments

5 responses to “Mark Oaten: how could I be so right?”

  1. Yolly Avatar
    Yolly

    Is it possible that he’s not very good?

    Reply
  2. James Thompson Avatar
    James Thompson

    I’m actualy suprisingly inspired by Oaten. I’m really loving his ambition for the party. He still isnt my first preference though

    Reply
  3. Barrie Wood Avatar
    Barrie Wood

    He would have made a good candidate in the leadership race – The Tory one that is ! He had the advantage of being ‘talked up’ by the media too, at least the right wing elements of it. As I said in my blog, we have THREE excellent candidates to choose from !

    Reply
  4. Sam Avatar
    Sam

    James – it is easy to sound ambitious. The question is whether you have the first clue about how to get there. To be honest I am pretty sure Huhne has some good ideas, based on his record. Ming has a team around him who do. Hughes proved pretty comprehensively in the Mayoral campaign that he doesn’t. And Mark …

    Reply
  5. Angus J Huck Avatar
    Angus J Huck

    One can have some sympathy for Mark.

    As a non-lawyer, he took an incredible risk in accepting the home affairs brief. Any decent criminal or administrative lawyer could have eaten him for breakfast. But he has acquitted himself rather well, earning a fair amount of credit among the commentariat.

    But now he chooses to chuck it all away with this Quixotic leadership bid which is looking more and more of a joke by the day.

    What a silly man.

    He needs to take himself off to the New Forest for a couple of weeks and reinvent himself. Chuck the spin, buy a couple of decent suits, and learn the following mantra off by heart: “Every time I advocate a policy I must link it to a liberal democratic value.”

    So we oppose ID cards because we believe that people are autonomous beings, not the property of the state. The fact that they are expensive is a second-order consideration. Ear-tags are for cattle.

    And we oppose executive detention, not so much because it might alienate certain minority communities, but because locking people up without trial is wrong: it is the hallmark of totalitarianism.

    Reply

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