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.

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.

So the Tory Press has gone mental trying to break Nick Clegg today, and you can hardly blame them. What’s happening is a threat to the way those papers want things to work out – what’s at stake for them is access to the Government for scoops and exclusives and not having to change their editorial policy to pander to a new pro-Lib Dem readership. That’s the last thing they want. Alix Mortimer has a pretty good piece on this on what she believes to be the motives behind all this.

Truth is this barrage was always going to happen, and it happens to be happening today, as it happens. The journalists working on the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph are working around the clock to find something – anything – that’ll damage Clegg permanently… or, you know, just for a couple of weeks. That’s all that’s needed. That’s what a Free Press does. They’re supposed to do this, for better or worse. The only Nick Clegg that’s any use to anyone is one that can survive smears, innuendo and outright assaults from the British Press. If he can’t then any Government of his wouldn’t last 5 minutes and we all know it.

But while all this is going on, Labour’s campaign is, just for tonight Matthew, playing the role of the traditional Lib Dem campaign… you know, that ‘other’ party that’s also campaigning that no-one really cares about. The Mail and the Telegraph can’t even be arsed trying to smear Brown as he’s no longer any sort of threat to them. The ‘narrative’ of this election, that it’s a fight to the death between the Liberals and the Tories, has already claimed its first casualty in the cross-fire: The battle for Labour has become trying to get any kind of attention at all.

Even the Tories seem to be struggling to stamp their message on the day’s agenda. They surely can’t regard a Clegg story dominating the BBC News website as any kind of ‘success’ or helpful, surely?

Are the Tories really about to “lurch right” at the last minute? Assuming the poster is for real, that is. Considering the quality and message it could be something only ever intended to be seen by readers of Conservative Home, to cheer them up. I really hope that’s the case. I really, really do.

First of all, let’s consider the message itself: “Let’s cut benefits for those who refuse work.” This policy is not shocking. Labour’s own manifesto says:

We will end for good the concept of a life on benefit by offering all those unemployed for more than two years work they must accept

The only real difference here is that the Tories have the guts to be specific about what “must accept” might mean. What about Labour? Removal of benefits altogether? Prison? Labour camps? At this point it’s anyone’s guess. Labour won’t be making a poster about their policy, either.

But it does provoke an obvious question: Is David Cameron still in charge of the Conservative Party’s message? Whether the four years of ‘decontamination’ has really worked remains to be seen, but this new message couldn’t be more explicit in saying, “No more Mr Nice Guy.”

Has the crisis in the polls and the firm, sharp, swift kick in the nuts that the electorate appears determined to inflict on both him and Brown caused what always happens to leaders when the troops become disillusioned and demoralised: They lose control. The troops mutiny and rivals begin to flex their muscles. Someone, somewhere, is in desperate need to bolster the Tory core vote and they’re getting their way. If Cameron’s behind this it’s a humiliating retreat into comfortable Tory territory and a pre-emptive admission that the last four years have been a mistake. Alternatively it looks like Cameron’s lost control of the message, or possibly worse that no-one at Tory HQ understands just how badly this sort of message plays with non-Core Tories. With apologies to my Tory friends, this doesn’t look good.

What’s tragic about this whole affair is that if Labour had said the same thing (and, you know, they have) they don’t endure the label of The Nasty Party. That’s because no-one seriously believes that Labour are in politics to punish the poorest people in society for their failures – whereas, true or not, people do actually believe that about the Conservatives. The decontamination strategy was supposed to change people’s minds about what the motives behind Tory policies are. The measure of its success would be their ability to get away with messages like this. But surely testing the credibility of the decontaminated brand is something you do during the second term, not before the General Election?

Time to get the popcorn out and wait and see.

UPDATE: Just to make it absolutely clear, I don’t have a problem with the policy. I actually admire any party that has the guts to tackle welfare reform. My point, in a nutshell, is that the Tories want to win, and that means appealing to more than just natural Conservatives. It means appealing to more people than they’ve ever appealed to before… this seems counterproductive.

The last few days I’ve been realising how a popular Lib Dem party is bloody difficult to attack. When they’re unpopular its the easiest thing in the world – simply ignore them or laugh at them and they go away. Sadly the stakes are high enough that the powers that be need to move to stage 3 of the Gandhi 4 Step Programme, and that means ‘fight’.. but is it that simple?

“The Lib Dems will flounder when people look at their policies”

Doubt it. Confirmation bias suggests that the self-selecting audience of people who go looking for actual policies will want to like what they see. There’s enough sweet stuff in there to make most people feel happy about their choice. 10k income tax threshold? It’s a winner.

“Yeah but, Europe… what about Europe?”

And who’s going to bring that one up? The Tories? Doubt it – just a few days on a big Europe and/or Immigration bender will be enough to undo the last 4 years of Decontamination, leaving Cameron in the same trap that caught the legs of Hague, Duncan-Smith and Howard. He’s simply not that stupid and will be hoping that someone like UKIP – or Labour – does the dirty work. Or, perhaps, in the next Leaders’ debate the subject will come up and Clegg will be ‘exposed’ that way.

But, be warned – Clegg is compelling on Europe and shows courage in his willingness to stick to his guns against populist sentiment. When I got the chance to interview him face to face his argument was that yes the EU is messed up and needs radical reform, but pointed out that without the EU, Europe would be a continent of highly protectionist nation states far worse than they already are.  In their manifesto the first EU policy is “breaking down trade barriers” and that I can approve of. In fact, in wanting reform of subsidies and limits on what the EU spends money on, the Lib Dems are surprisingly conservative here.

I think he needs to go a lot further with his criticism and be specific about the bits he does and doesn’t like, but frankly the idea of greater European co-operation on climate change and banking regulation leaves me cold… well, more than that, I actively despise that sort of policy. The fact that they’re offering an in/out referendum seems enough to mute a lot of fear.

“The Lib Dems won’t survive the onslaught of negativity that’ll be coming their way”

It’s already started – YouGoV/Murdoch are engaging in pretty nasty push polling (h/t Alix Mortimer). Of course, if this story escapes from the blogosphere, the idea that The Establishment are terribly threatened by the Lib Dems and will do anything to hurt them will become a ‘thing’, reinforcing Clegg’s narrative of the Lib Dems being an insurgency of normal people against the powers that be…  and future negative campaigning will serve no purpose other than to harden attitudes in favour of the Lib Dems, making the situation worse for the Big Two. It’s not clear who, exactly, can make successful attacks.

“Nick Clegg isn’t really British, is he?”

I always wondered if and when Clegg’s not quite 100% pure British heritage would become an issue, and concluded that not even the British tabloids were that repulsive… but you never know. Clegg’s mother is Dutch and his father is half Russian, making him, I suppose, genetically Lib Dem. But then, Barack Obama’s middle name was Hussain and he’s Black and that wasn’t a massive problem for him.

“A vote for the Lib Dems will mean a Tory Government”

Is that a threat?

“A vote for the Lib Dems will mean a Labour Government”

I’m confused.

“A vote for the Lib Dems will mean a hung parliament”

I’m really confused.

“Yeah but they can’t win though”

What, technically? I think you’ll find they can.

“Oh, piss off. You know what I meant. They won’t win.”

So?

“But it’d be a wasted vote!”

And? That’s illegal now, is it? Let people vote how they want.

“But The Tories Will Get In!”

We’ve covered this already.

“But.. but.. Brown!”

Don’t worry. He agrees with Nick.