Before I relaunched my faltering blogging career with the imaginatively titled ‘The Charlotte Gore Blog’, I had another blog with the title, “Do What You’re Told: Don’t Vote Lib Dem” which was based on the idea that if you want to get through to people who might be naturally occuring potential Lib Dem voters, you have to remember what such people might be like in real life and pitch your message accordingly. I fancied myself as an amateur spin doctor or communications strategist of some kind… laughable, in hindsight, but it kept me busy.

Anyway, I started the blog by posting something along these lines…

Happily my days of playing amateur spin doctor are long since over, but I can’t help but notice that “Do what you’re told: Don’t vote Lib Dem” is starting to become a bit of a ‘thing’, at least on Twitter.  Stephen Fry (@stephenfry) didn’t help:

Frankly I’m tempted to vote Lib Dem now. If we let the Telegraph and Mail win, well, freedom and Britain die.

My friend Stuart Sharpe complained earlier,

I actually quite object to the assumption that a vote for anyone other than the Lib Dems is ‘doing what the media says’.

The inherent “Fuck You!” to the system of voting Lib Dem appears to be the dominant message, and the more the Big Two and the Newspapers try to say, “Don’t vote lib dem!!” the more this cycle of stubborn resistance is reinforced.

But, see, isn’t the idea of voting for a party just because you’re told not to as bad as being told how to vote, really? Isn’t it equally irrational?

My feeling is that it’s not the message but an emerging sense of an ‘identity’ for Lib Dem voters: They see themselves as free thinking, fair minded, socially liberal and fun loving. They’re willing to try new things and listen to new ideas. They’re not interested in partisan politics or the “Punch and Judy Show” of Westminster, and have no particular attachment to any sort of vested interests or lobbyists.

It’s not an identity based on class, which is why it’s not quite as easy to define as the identities for Labour voters or Conservative voters, but it’s an identity nonetheless. And tools like Facebook groups and Twitter appear to give that identity something to cling onto that’s not geographical.

It’s not that this message is “working” and that people really are going to vote Lib Dem to tell Murdoch where to stick it – it’s just that this kind of message attracts the attention of those kind of people that the Lib Dem need if they’re going to grow.

Identity politics may generally have broken down over the last 50 years, and it may be an absolutely terrible way to decide who to vote for, but I can’t help but feel the success of the Lib Dems in this election might be is down to this, not policy.

Is this a disturbing new front on the digital divide? Lucky BBC HD viewers of Doctor Who were blissfully unaware of an on-screen trail for “Over the Rainbow” that popped up on the screens of the peasantry watching on BBC One.

Likewise, the last leader’s debate on Sky News was the same – the Sky News HD version (launched that day especially for the occasion) contained minimal onscreen graphics and no adverts while peasants watching on BBC News or Sky News Normal found themselves plagued by tickers and other distractions.

Suddenly people have a new reason to get HD: It’s altogether more civilised, for now. They’re going to hound you until you submit, you know? Get used to crappy drawings of Graham Norton.

For the record? That cliffhanger was pretty rubbish even without the trailer appearing over the top. Trust me, that distraction did Moffat a favour – it made you think you’d missed something good. Cliffhangers like this suck, they’re lazy writing and they leave you without a satisfactory conclusion to the episode. He’s literally just chopped a double length episode in half, a la the Matrix Sequels.

Moffat should take a tip from the writers of Lost on this one – they’re masters at suspenseful endings that make you tune in again and again and combining that with an episode structure that has a satisfying beginning, middle and end too. If it’d been Lost, they’d have escaped from the caves, been relieved and only at the very end would they have discovered some hint that their troubles are far from over. Perhaps the problem here is the conflict between the traditional Doctor Who cliffhanger versus what actually makes good viewing. But hey, at least I actually care now, which is points for Moffat at least.

It seems Nick Clegg has, at last, been a bit more specific about what he means when he says, in the event of a hung parliament, the party with the “Biggest Mandate” has the first dibs on trying to form a Government.

You’d think such questions would be straightforward, but no: Did he mean seats or votes? ‘Votes’ would suggest the Conservatives, ‘Seats’ would suggest Labour.

So finally we have the answer, and what a Lib Dem-esque answer it is, too: “Biggest mandate” means highest votes AND seats.

What this means is that if Labour comes third in the popular vote, but wins the most seats, that won’t count. This is good news, I think, and could rule out a Liberal Labour coalition unless Labour are somehow able to show even the smallest hint of returning to the ferocious and relentless election winning machine of old.

It doesn’t seem likely. There’s really not that long to go now (you’ll be relieved to hear), and Labour seems to have literally abandoned all hope. Yesterday’s frankly cringeworthy Elvis stunt (their Elvis impersonator sang, “A little less conversation, A little more action please” without any hint of irony) may prove to be surprisingly apt:

Labour, it seems, is going to die sat on a toilet with its pants round its ankles, blowing a blood vessel trying to poo out a stubborn, rock like turd that’s been lodged up their colon for the last few years: Gordon Brown.

Few believe, despite significant photographic evidence to the contrary, that you can fit cats with lasers. Dismayed and disappointed with this lack of faith, I took my camcorder and shot footage of one of the local cats that I fitted with a laser several years ago. Sadly being able to zap mice and birds means she’s a little pudgy these days.

This is, I swear, raw footage straight from the camcorder.

Who won the debate? Simple, find out here! I’ve devised a very clever system to guarantee the correct answer for everyone.

Labour supporter? Click here.

Tory supporter? Click here.

Lib Dem supporter? Click here.

BNP supporter? Sorry, no buttons for Nazis, I’m afraid.

Right, that’s that sorted.