I read an article in the Daily Telegraph yesterday about how Labour has decided to target Sheffield Hallam next May. It has all the hallmarks of a story put out to fill space on the basis of little actual content. Some “senior Labour figures” had told the Telegraph that behind closed doors Hallam is being seriously pursued. The Labour Party itself officially denied the rumour, of course. Then there was some malarkey about some Downing Street sources saying the Prime Minister thinks that Labour want to get rid of Clegg to make another Lib-Con deal less likely. I don’t know about you, but if I wanted to know what was going inside of Labour campaign headquarters, the first person I’d ask would be David Cameron.
The story is given a veneer of respectability, however, due to a Tom Watson quote. “This seat is winnable for Labour,” he says before unloading the usual de rigueur bile the Deputy Prime Minister’s way. Watson must have known giving the Telegraph this quote for a shit stirring, space filling article with little basis in reality was a mistake; but a Labourite just can’t resist the chance to fling some dung at Goldstein.
So are Labour really targeting Clegg’s seat? Don’t be daft, of course they’re not. Labour have enough problems as is trying to hold their Scotland seats all of a sudden; pouring resource into a seat just so the Tories can have it would be demented. I do like the idea of Labour wanting to defenestrate Clegg on the basis that it would make another Tory-Lib coalition less likely. Yes, we Lib Dems are just wandering, socialist children in the wild, led astray by the evil Clegg. If only he could be de-seated by a Tory with the aid of the Labour Party, we could wander back into the light. The reason we don’t just vote Labour anyhow, the best minds that science has to offer have yet to unravel as a mystery.
In conclusion, it is a bit like something Thomas Jefferson once said about Jesus Christ: “Is it more likely that the laws of biology should be changed from all known nature – or that a Palestinian woman should tell a fib?” As we celebrate the event alluded to in the 3rd president of the United States’ quote, is it more likely that the Labour Party are behaving like complete morons, drawing resource away from winnable seats and into a former Tory safe constituency captured by the Lib Dems years back, all out of an exagerrated sense of Clegg hatred combined with the most wrongheaded understanding of the Liberal Democrat Party imaginable – or that the Telegraph had some space to fill and Tom Watson simply could not help himself. I’ll let you be the judge. Happy Christmas.
If that final question is a serious one, I think it’s quite likely the labour party are behaving like morons etc.
Long may the Labour Party continue to act as morons. They have about as much chance of unseating Clegg as the proverbial camel has of passing through the eye of a needle. Still if it keeps them from campaigning elsewhere, so much the better.