Warning: Contains spoilers. Mostly inflicted by the BBC when they spoiled this well-loved classic.

Don’t you just hate it when people slag something off before they’ve even seen it? I was guilty of that on Friday, when Steven Moffat popped into the Newsnight studio to talk about his reworking of Sherlock Holmes – chirpily trailed by Gavin Esler as “a bit modern, a bit gay”. Hmm. So I thought I’d better actually watch the thing last night. And now, after 90 minutes of my life I’ll never get back, I can honestly say: I hated it.

This was Sherlock Holmes for Doctor Who fans, as it would have been done had Conan Doyle lived in our time. Who wants smog and gaslight and rickets when you can have blogs and texting and nicotine patches? (Seriously – you’re replacing cocaine with nicotine patches?)

Fortunately for the BBC, everyone else loved it – judging by the unreserved, gushing praise on Twitter. And not just from the kids who don’t know any better – from those familiar with the original text and earlier adaptations too: “Better than Jeremy Brett!” “More faithful to Conan Doyle than Basil Rathbone!” Really? I despair. But I know I’m in a minority of one on this one. OK, maybe a few more than one. My friend Anna knows a thing or two about Holmes, having written TimeOut’s “CSI: London” trail, which takes readers on a tour of his haunts. Her response to my Facebook post hit the nail on the head for me:

The genius of the original Sherlock Holmes was that he used techniques that nobody else could imagine. Yesterday he used techniques that Derren Brown, police psychologists, forensic scientists and anyone vaguely web-savvy could have used. It makes no sense why the police would employ him.
ANNA FAHERTY

The whole confusing mess of a plot makes no sense when we have forensics. A Study in Pink was very loosely adapted from A Study in Scarlet. It had some similarities and a lot of deviations from the original. So why keep in the scene where Holmes bashes a corpse with a stick to see if it bruises? In a pre-forensic Victorian era, that would have been a useful insight. But the research is in on that one now… A good one to keep was Watson returning from war in Afghanistan, an obvious modern parallel – even if the Radio Times review listed it as one of the potential objectionable modernisms.

Some viewers will recoil from the very idea of BBC1 updating Conan Doyle’s characters to modern London, with texting (lots of texting) and police tape and GPS and a Dr Watson who fought in Afghanistan.
RADIO TIMES REVIEW, 25 July 2010

There is a lot of texting. It’s even overlaid on the screen – a televisual device I’d quite like, if only it wasn’t Holmes doing it. It’s not quite “Simples, Watson, LOL SH x” – but it’s not far off.

I get the appeal of an explainable superpower – high-powered perception. It’s what makes Cracker such fun. And it is explained very well, through a combination of CSI style visuals and yet more overlaid text to illustrate Holmes’s thought processes. But in 2010, by Victorian standards, everyone is a superhero. Who needs Holmes’s high-powered perception and encyclopaedic knowledge when you have the Internet?

Our Thoroughly Modern Holmes does also use the Internet. He has his own website, and Watson’s journal, of course, becomes a blog. He also relies on a smart phone. But these tools are bluntly used, and only remind us of his redundancy. Deducing that the victim arrived from Cardiff based on a damp coat and a weather app seems a leap. And if his perception is so high-powered, why did most people on Twitter guess that the taxi driver did it before he did?

I can’t see Sherlock Holmes as a timeless character. The stories require their Victorian setting to make sense. This modern reworking seems as nonsensical as Dickens characters brandishing their iPhones in a Yates’s Wine Lodge. Why not have Oliver Twist escape from Yarl’s Wood and fall in with a gang of hoodies? Make Mr Micawber a victim of the credit crunch, having been sold a sub-prime mortgage? Have Miss Havisham delete her Facebook account for good after Internet dating goes awry? Or – as suggested by @cjjmccray – why not have a picture uploaded to Flickr slowly aging while the subject, @DorianGray doesn’t age at all? How very modern that would be.

An enjoyable romp, maybe. But this mashup of Cracker and Doctor Who for the Lily Allen generation left me as cold as the corpse Holmes was beating up. I’ll stick with Jeremy Brett, thank you.

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• Sherlock makes Sunday night TV sexy (guardian.co.uk)
• Sherlock Holmes returns – but this time it’s the 21st century (telegraph.co.uk)
• Sherlock Holmes: Why mess with the fabulous Baker Street boys? (independent.co.uk)
• Sherlock, BBC One, review (telegraph.co.uk)
• “It was very superficial, my dear Watson, I assure you” (cmock127.blogspot.com)

Yes, I thought perhaps I needed just one more blog… This is the one for my book, Get Up to Speed with Online Marketing, and will have plenty of how-to stuff about all the different social media marketing tools I talk about in the book. Hope you find it useful!

www.getuptospeed.biz

It’s nice to see that the art of ventriloquism isn’t dead. Even if you can see George Osborne’s lips move. No, really: you can actually see him mouthing along with Nick Clegg’s controversial ‘illegal war’ jibe at Prime Minister’s Questions this week. Here’s a link to the place in the tape where Nick Clegg accuses Labour of the illegal invasion of Iraq, just before Claire Perry pops up in her orange jumpsuit, presumably to make a protest about Guantanamo Bay. But catch it while you can – these iPlayer links only stay fresh for a few days.

While Callmedave was tugging his forelock in the White House, describing the UK as the junior partner in World War II with the US in 1940 (er – didn’t the Americans enter the war in 1941, after the Battle of Britain? Is history not on the curriculum at Eton, Dave?), George Osborne appeared to be pulling the strings as Clegg faced Jack Straw across the dispatch box.

Maybe he, one day – perhaps we’ll have to wait for his memoirs – could account for his role in the most disastrous decision of all, which is the illegal invasion of Iraq.
NICK CLEGG, Deputy Prime Minister

Why would George Osborne be mouthing along with that sentence? Clearly Clegg mis-spoke here. Yet Osborne’s subvocalization suggests that this was a pre-prepared response, not a slip. But was it Clegg’s pre-prepared jibe that Osborne saw in advance? Or did Osborne feed him the line?

In Clegg’s defence, he was only caught out by telling the truth: you and I know that the war in Iraq was illegal. Eliza Manningham-Buller, the former head of MI5, knows it, and gave evidence to that effect earlier in the week to the Chilcot Inquiry. It is Clegg’s long-held belief that the war was illegal, and his party was the only one to oppose it from the outset. But Clegg was speaking for the Government on Wednesday, not for himself or his party. And it is the Government’s position to wait for the outcome of Chilcot before making such pronoucements.

The odd thing is why Osborne, who strongly defended the decision to go to war, is not only rejoicing in the jibe, but seems to know the line in advance. He has the smug, self-satisfied look of a school bully who has tricked the new boy into saying something rude to the teacher. But surely the Tories wouldn’t put their new Lib Dem partners in such awkward, undermining positions for their own amusement?

Then again, maybe Osborne’s right arm is a false one, like Rod Hull’s. Gottle of geer, anyone?

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• Watch: The moment Osborne entrapped Clegg over Iraq? (liberalconspiracy.org)
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• Britain’s Clegg says Iraq invasion was “illegal” (reuters.com)
• Has Nick Clegg helped the case for a war crimes tribunal? (newstatesman.com)

I feel very let down by David Laws. Not because he claimed rent – but because he seemed to think he was living in the 1950s. We’ve lost one of the most talented politicians from the fledgling Coalition, from a job at the Treasury that seemed made for him, and at a time when we need the brightest brains of Britain to solve a devastating financial crisis. And all because he didn’t want people to know that he’s gay. I thought we’d made more progress than that.

Equality depends on public figures saying: “Yes, I’m gay – so what?” A Lib Dem MP, of all people, should surely lead by example – isn’t it the second gayest party in the world after Sydney Mardi Gras? Lib Dem principles of liberty, individual freedom and equality argue for a world in which people are free to be themselves without fear of persecution. Instead of being the change he wants to see in the world, Mr Laws seems to have been living in a bygone age of constant fear of exposure. Now that his “shameful secret” has been exposed, perhaps he will realise that no one is interested or cares.

I don’t buy the Brokeback Mountain argument that “it’s nobody’s business but ours.” Public figures can’t expect a private life in today’s media culture of rolling news and social media status incontinence. More importantly, we simply don’t have equality until gay people don’t feel the need to behave like this. It’s hard to imagine a straight couple going to such extreme lengths to hide a 10-year relationship even from friends and family.

The fact that Laws claimed rent for living in his partner’s flat seems less of an offence than, say, Jacqui Smith claiming for not living in a cupboard-under-the-stairs at her sister’s house, and was not aimed at making a profit. Nevertheless, it has been against the rules since 2006. His confusion over the word ‘partner’ seems disingenuous, but reflects the strange double-think that must have been going on in his head. If he’d just been open about his relationship, a joint mortgage would have been perfectly allowable under the system.  This seems to be what he means by using his expenses arrangement to protect his privacy. But isn’t he a millionaire? Couldn’t he afford his own rent if a secret life was so important to him? Perhaps it is time to consider means-tested Parliamentary allowances.

It all seems such an unnecessary waste.

The one positive aspect to this story is that it reveals how far society has moved on – even if not all its members have. The days when coming out of the closet also meant coming out of the Cabinet are fortunately long gone. Now the scandal is that you would even bother to try to cover up your sexuality – and do it at tax payers’ expense – when no one would raise an eyebrow if you were open about it. That’s a world Liberals have campaigned for for decades. Now that it’s finally here, it is disappointing to see a Lib Dem MP living in such unnecessary shadows. Once this little drama calms down, I hope he can enjoy life in the open and, as David Cameron suggests, have a chance to serve in the Government again.

Five days after the election, blue smoke emerged from the chimneys of Cowley Street. Nick Clegg and David Cameron are finally in bed together – though hopefully not in that B&B Chris Grayling still seems to be hiding out in. Indeed, their appearance in the Downing Street rose garden this afternoon made me think I’d tuned into a civil partnership ceremony, and we’d done the most progressive thing of all: voted a gay couple into Number Ten.

I’ve had very mixed feelings about this. Yet I have come around to the idea. And seeing Vince Cable drive off in Peter Mandelson’s Jag this afternoon to (hopefully) heap a Pulp Fiction style vengance on the bankers was the clincher. But it is not about Ministerial positions – it is about policy, and the democratic process. This is what people voted for, and it is the best chance for a century to get Liberal policies implemented.

I was initially more in favour of the ‘rainbow alliance’ of the so-called Progressive Coalition mooted by Gordon Brown, Alex Salmond and others. The policy overlap between the centre-left social democratic parties seemed to make more sense. But there were too many obstacles. It didn’t add up. Lib-Lab still wasn’t a majority, and keeping this Uncle Tom Cobbley and All alliance together seemed unlikely. And the idea of keeping the party that won 97 seats out of power by propping up the one that lost 91 seats seemed undemocratic. Yes, there were precedents – the Tories tried this before in Wales – but they failed. Finally, Labour had their chance at talks with the Lib Dems, but just weren’t up for it. If the amount of Labour vitriol on Twitter today is anything to go by, they are simply too tribal for coalition politics. (Honestly – you’d think I’d voted BNP.)

The electorate also had incumbency fatigue, and wanted a Hopey Changey leader. In the event, they got two. You may not agree with them, or with the type of change on offer. But the ballots have been cast.

I’m still Lib Dem, and have no sympathy for Tory policy. I was relieved they were denied a majority, despite an unpopular 13-year old Labour government, Ashcroft’s millions and a feral rightwing press. But everyone else was denied the opportunity to form a government on their own too.

I was, however, impressed by the professionalism of the negotiations, and the Tory willingness to compromise. Cameron’s sense of entitlement quickly evaporated once he grasped the reality of the situation. Nick Clegg’s principled policy-based negotiations were true to his words before the election: that the party with the most seats and largest share of the votes should have the first opportunity to form a government.

Of course we haven’t got everything we wanted. Neither have the Tories. But their right wing has been clipped by the Coalition, and they won’t be able to run the blue in tooth and claw regime they wanted to. I hope the Lib Dems will be the conscience of the Tories, who have dropped their more bonkers policies of the £3 marriage bribe and tax breaks for millionaires. The Lib Dem policy of no income tax on the first £10,000 is on the agenda. Political reform includes fixed term parliaments and an elected House of Lords – policies Labour flirted with but backed away from. Voting reform doesn’t go as far as Lib Dems would like, but goes further than Conservatives would like, and should be ‘just right’ for Labour, since it is the Alternative Vote system in their manifesto.

We are now going to form a new government. More importantly than anything else, we are going to form a new kind of government. I hope this is the start of a new kind of politics I have always believed in. Diverse, plural, where politicians with different points of view find a way to work together to provide the good government for the sake of the whole country.
NICK CLEGG, Deputy Prime Minister, 11 May 2010

Lib Dems and Tories will still campaign against each other in by-elections, including one in two weeks’ time. This is a coalition, not a merger. Each party has distinctive policies – but a willingness to work together for the common good. If you live in Scotland or Wales – or another European country – you’re used to this. Your local council may also be used to these coalitions. But it is a culture shock for Westminster, particularly for the English, used to large majorities and immediate handovers of power, bouncing between Labour and Conservative for generations.

So, this is the New Politics. Do you like it? The public got exactly what it said it wanted – a hung parliament. And this is the outcome.

The politicians may have wanted a huge-majority mandate, but the voters certainly didn’t. I don’t believe huge majorities make for good government. They make governments power-crazed, hoard power to the executive, and, say, take the country into an illegal war on the whim of one person and a dodgy dossier. The last decade has seen a disgraceful power shift from Parliament to a single party with little accountability. Thursday’s verdict has given power back to Parliament.

Gordon Brown said in 2007 he wanted to form a government of all the talents – something that didn’t really happen, despite him offering Northern Ireland to Paddy Ashdown (who refused). This Lib-Con Coalition includes Lib Dems at all levels of government: Nick Clegg as Deputy Prime Minister, David Laws as Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Chris Huhne as Environment Secretary, the sainted Vince Cable as Business Secretary – around 20 Lib Dems in government in total, represented in every Ministry. It’s not perfect – there are still real policy differences, on Europe, Trident, immigration and more. But, overall, this power-sharing government seems what most people voted for. And better to have influence in government than be powerless onlookers.

The shrill tribalism displayed by some of the political Twitterati and commentariat this week has made the yah-boo Westminster politics the public despises look like a support group. Even now, commentators on the left and the right are themselves getting with the new collegiate zeitgeist and uniting against a new common hate figure: Nick Clegg. Well, grow up. There’s a new binary in town: not left/right, nor authoritarian/liberal, but tribal/collaborative. Even as John Prescott walked all over Jon Snow’s attempt last night to give weight to the historic transition of power as he voiced-over the Jaguar Palace Shuffle, with his point-scoring against Liberals, the sun was setting not only over Westminster and New Labour, but over an old political power duopoly. A duopoly that both Labour and the Conservatives had wished to preserve yet neither had achieved. Welcome to the Coalition. It’s what you voted for, what you deserve – and I, for one, welcome it.

Are you going to an election night party? Have you secured one of those elusive invitations to the BBC Boat Party? No? Fear not, the real action is, of course, taking place on Twitter. All you need is a bag of Twiglets, a crate of Blue Nun, a Dimbleby on the telly, and fast and furious Twitterfingers.

Be sure to use the hashtag #electionparty to follow the party action, #ge2010 for all your election-related tweets, and the official constituency hashtags for the results as they come in.

We’ll be spinning some discs via blip.fm, playing party games, and eating pineapple and cheese on sticks. Well, it’s likely to be the first hung parliament since 1974, so Abigail’s Party food is firmly on the menu.

You can download an election night party pack from the BBC. And here are some additional party game suggestions:

Severely Hungover Parliament

Whenever a candidate wins a seat, take a sip (/glass/bottle) of the relevant drink:

• Labour = red wine (or Red Bull to stay awake until the final count, which could be days away)
• Conservative = Blue Nun
• Lib Dem = Limoncello (or Grand Marnier – I know you have some left over from xmas)
• Green = Absinthe
• SNP/Plaid Cymru = Whisky
• UKIP = Gin
• BNP = Stella or Watneys Red Barrel (a pint of wife-beaters, or something unsavoury from the 70s)
• Sinn Fein = Guinness
• SDLP = red wine (see Labour)
• UUP = Blue Nun (see Conservative)
• DUP = Martini and something non-alcoholic for your much younger friend
• Independent = Home brew (unless Suzanne Moore wins a seat, in which case champagne)
• Lord Ashcroft = Belkin (Belizean beer). Oh, wait – he’s unelected…

Election Night Bingo

You can use the BBC bingo cards if you like, or have a go with these. Tick off the words and phrases as you hear them uttered from the studio. If playing with friends, take a different bingo card each. First person to clear their card and shout ‘House!’ wins a phantom mortgage:

Pin the Swing on the Jeremy

Find a picture of Jeremy Vine. Pin a swingometer on him while blindfolded. Nearest one to the actual swing on the night (adjusted for boundary changes and three-way marginals) wins. Since we’re in hung parliament territory, you may optionally choose a picture of Jeremy Thorpe. Literally minutes of fun.

Musical Parliamentary Seats

To the musical backdrop of D:Ream’s Things Can Only Get Better, run around the House of Commons until the music stops. Then start negotiating for a cabinet post, a policy precondition, or try to form a minority government. Don’t forget to consult your Parliamentary Party, Federal Executive, ballot your members and invoke the Southport Convention. Continue until October.

Pass the Buck

Blame the recession on the Labour government. Blame the collapse in the Labour vote on Tony Blair. Blame the decline in manufacturing on the previous Tory government. Blame the Arab-Israeli situation on the previous Liberal government. Blame voter apathy on the Expenses Scandal.  Blame a hung parliament on the voters. Blame it on the sunshine. Blame it on the moonlight. Blame it on the boogie. But don’t bother to vote, take any responsibility or get involved yourself.

Tory players: slash and burn the public sector, put on a blindfold, then pass the buck to an imaginary army of volunteers. Call it the “Big Society”.

The Bigot Society

The most outlandish, bigoted statement of the night, from any politician, wins. Also open to voters, especially if you live in Rochdale.

***

I’m sure I’ve missed off some essential Election Night party games. Do add your suggestions below. And see you on Twitter tonight!

Is Bigotgate still in the news? How very Wednesday afternoon. While the rolling news channels went into meltdown over what Twitterers called #bigotgate (Gordon Brown caught ‘off mic’ describing a bigoted woman as ‘a bigoted woman’), no one is talking about the bigotry at the heart of the Tory party. Why is this? Do we just expect it from them? Or is it perceived as worse to call someone a bigot than to be a bigot? Or indeed to fill your shadow cabinet with them?

I know the Politico-Media Establishment has decided that Gillian Duffy is a model of liberal tolerance – but isn’t there something just a little bit Daily Mail about asking: “Where are all these Eastern Europeans flocking from?” (Eastern Europe, darling – the clue is in the question). Eastern Europeans have been offended by this, and many are uncomfortable with the tacit political consensus that immigrants are an unwelcome section of society. Only ordinary punters seem to be asking, on debate shows such as BBC Question Time, “Do you know how many immigrants are voters?”, “How would the NHS function without immigrants?” and “Why are we locking up children in detention centres?”

I actually quite like Gordon Brown when he’s unguarded and unspun by the Forces of Mandy. He didn’t ‘misunderstand’ Mrs Duffy, and I preferred his authentic, human reaction in private to his forced rictus-grinning apology in public. But then my estimation of John Prescott went up when he punched a voter in 2001, so mine may be a minority view. Still, you should never cross a woman from Rochdale. That’s a rookie error in anyone’s book.

Bigotgate has attracted ridicule across the pond, from Jon Stewart, who mocked the tameness of British political scandals on his Daily Show. But the real bigotry scandal in British politics, the one that deserves the ‘gate’ sufix, yet the one that is least discussed, is the homophobia rife in the Tory party. Chris Grayling may have fired the starting gun, but it has continued throughout the campaign. Over the last few weeks:

• Chris Grayling, the shadow Home Secretary, said that Christian B&B owners should be allowed to discriminate against gay guests
• Julian Lewis, the shadow Defence Minister, said he was against equalizing the age of consent to 16 for gay people
• Philip Lardner, Tory PPC for Ayrshire North and Arran, described gay people as ‘not normal’ on his website
• Philippa Stroud, Tory PPC for Sutton and Cheam, is reported in today’s Observer as having founded a church that tried to ‘cure’ gay people by driving out their ‘demons’ through prayer.

I could go on and on – just Google Tory gay row for the latest. Lardner is the only one of these people to be suspended – and it is too late for him to be replaced on the ballot paper.

Stroud’s attitude sounds more like religious nutcasery than social justice to me. Yet through her leadership of the Centre for Social Justice she is credited with shaping many of the Conservative Party’s social policies, and having a major influence on David Cameron’s beliefs about the family. Maybe she helped shape his mad £3 marriage bribe idea?

She has denied believing that homosexuality is an illness – something not actually alleged in the Observer piece – but has not denied that she believes it is demonic posession, or that she subjected a teenage girl called “Abi” to a bizarre Oranges are Not the Only Fruit style exorcism.

If Mrs Stroud has been praying to rid Britain of its homosexuality, she clearly hasn’t been praying hard enough. It would be highly regrettable if someone who continued to hold these views held any significant office in government.
BEN SUMMERSKILL, Stonewall

Let’s not forget that when the Tories were last in power these views were mainstream and wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow. Governments set an example when it comes to social attitudes, and have the opportunity to enforce equality with legislation – as Labour have done, and as the Liberal Democrats would have done.

The Tories say their social attitudes have changed too, now they are vote-winners – but the views of their key frontbenchers and parliamentary candidates, and their very odd marriage bribe policy, suggests otherwise. They are hardly clawing back the gay vote they say they want. No wonder Robert Mugabe has declared his support for them.

Related articles

• Gordon Brown calls voter ‘bigoted’ in open mic gaffe (telegraph.co.uk, 28 Apr 10)
• Labour call to sack Tory Julian Lewis over gay remarks (bbc.co.uk, 23 Apr 10)
• Tory gay support drops 30 points as Liberal Democrats surge (guardian.co.uk, 26 Apr 10)
• Tory candidate Philip Lardner suspended for gay comment (bbc.co.uk, 27 Apr 10)
• My anger at Gillian Duffy and all the people who didn’t stand up to her (guardian.co.uk, 29 Apr 10)
• Rising Tory star Philippa Stroud ran prayer sessions to ‘cure’ gay people (guardian.co.uk, 02 May 10)
• Bigots and nutters | Mind your language (guardian.co.uk)

The miserablist chant “but they’re all the same” is often mistaken for voter apathy. It is no wonder that the electorate think that all politicians are the same when the media routinely feed us the false dilemma of two political parties. Well, welcome to Britain: a three-party democracy.

It is astonishing what happens when the media are forced to give balanced coverage of all three parties – something that only happens during an election campaign. It is like the Dr Who style perception filter normally obscuring the Lib Dems is suddenly lifted. People see them, hear their policies, and like them. The stakes have been ramped up much higher this time, with the UK’s first ever Leader Debates – something other countries have done routinely for years. It is something our never-elected Prime Minister Gordon Brown only agreed to out of desperation. He had nothing to lose. It resulted in some jaw-dropping upsets in the voting intention polls immediately after the first debate - with the BPIX/Mail on Sunday poll putting the Lib Dems in the lead for the first time in 104 years, on 32 points, ahead of the Tories on 31 and Labour on 28. This uplift in Lib Dems support has continued through the second debate last week, with all three parties neck and neck with only 11 days to the election.

Lib Dems 32% (+12), Con 31% (-7), Lab 28% (-3)
BPIX/Mail on Sunday poll, 18 Apr 10

No wonder many Labour and Conservative supporters have been outraged at the ‘unfairness’ of giving the ’sideshow’ that is the Liberal Democrats an equal platform in the TV debates (still think we’re a sideshow, boys?) No wonder the Tory spinmasters have been briefing the rightwing press on how to smear Clegg. And it is exactly this politics-as-usual sense of entitlement of the two largest parties that the electorate object to. The Lib Dem Labservative campaign brilliantly taps into this desire for a change from the old politics. And the look of bewildered exasperation on David Cameron’s face as the new boy gets all the attention he should be getting is there for all to see.

Look what happens when you let people see a few Lib Dem ideas, backed up with the only costed manifesto, delivered with honesty, authenticity – and a little exasperation that “we’ve been saying this for years”. Popularity ratings following the first Leaders Debate established Nick Clegg as the clear winner, with some polls as high as 61%. The day after the first debate, a YouGov poll of voting intentions put the Lib Dems at 30%, ahead of Labour’s 28%, with the Conservatives on 33%. The equivalent poll on Friday put the Tories in the lead on 34%, with Labour and the Lib Dems on 29%.

Margaret Thatcher famously refused television debates because she believed politics should be about policy, not personality. I agree. And the Lib Dems have more detailed and costed policies than the other two put together. If you agree with them, vote for them.

Yet the Liberal Democrats have always suffered from the “wasted vote” argument – that there’s no point in voting Lib Dem even though you want to because “they’ll never win”. This has always mystified me. First of all, I think you should vote with your conscience for the party whose policies you like best. Second of all, if everyone who wanted to vote Lib Dem actually voted Lib Dem, they might just win.

On Tuesday, a YouGov poll of voting intentions if the Lib Dems had a reasonable chance of winning put them at 49% with the Tories on 25% and Labour on 19%. Well, guess what: if half the electorate DOES vote for Clegg, he WOULD have a reasonable chance of becoming Prime Minister.

Just under half the country (49%) would vote for the Liberal Democrats if they were seen to have a reasonable chance of winning. Only 25% would vote for the Conservative party in these circumstances; a comparatively meagre 19% would vote for Labour.
PATRICK NEWTON, YouGov

Everyone likes a winner, and nothing succeeds like success. Clegg’s performance on at the Leaders Debates, followed by success in the polls, might just overcome this last hurdle of resistance. I’m sure I’m not alone in wishing for a game changing election upset to rival what happened in the US in 2008. Westminster politics seems so dull by comparison. Nick Clegg may not be Obama. But I think what galvanised people around the Obama campaign wasn’t just a charismatic leader (we had one of those – he turned out to be a war criminal), it was the slow-burning momentum-gathering grass roots groundswell of people who were fed up with years of being taken for granted and taken for fools. People who realised they could have change if they voted for it.

This is an unusual election year. We have a combination of the first televised debate, outrage over the expenses scandal, dismay at banker bonuses, fatigue with the incumbent Labour government, financial collapse and a desire to teach the elite a lesson. As Andrew Rawnsley said on This Week recently: “The electorate want to blow a raspberry at the political establishment. In Nick Clegg, they have found their raspberry.”

I don’t think any one of these factors alone would result in what the David Steele Spitting Image puppet called “The Surge”. But they are proving a toxic combination for what many thought were the only two horses in the race. If people continue to get excited at the polls, get over their ‘wasted vote’ fears and realise that they can have a say in who the next government is – can we win it? Yes we can!

• Join the LIB DEM 49 CON 25 LAB 19 Facebook Group
• Join the Lib Dems

Related articles

• Nick Clegg impresses Britain’s most apathetic voters in first TV debate (guardian.co.uk)
• Nick Clegg nicks the top spot: Historic MoS poll puts Liberals in General Election lead for first time in 104 years (dailymail.co.uk)
• These Shameful Attacks on Clegg will Backfire (iaindale.blogspot.com)
• Liberal Democrats turn heat on George Osborne over Nick Clegg smears (guardian.co.uk)
• Suzanne Moore: Cleggbama and me – witnesses at the birth of this new Coalition of Hope (dailymail.co.uk)
• Pollwatch Day 20 #GE2010 – Lib Dems back at 30% (libdemvoice.org)

So the Tories have launched their new manifesto. Have they really changed? The centrepiece seems to be the old Conservative strategy of abandoning the public sector and expecting charities to pick up the pieces, dressed up as an “invitation to join the Government of Britain”. We all know there have to be public sector cuts. But expecting an army of volunteers to fill the breach while spending the savings, not on the deficit, but on tax cuts for the wealthy and ’supporting’ marriage is taking the piss, isn’t it?

But it is the traditional Tory attitudes to morality that I find least surprising. Despite 13 years of  trying to convince us they’ve changed, Grayling’s attitude to gay equality and Cameron’s to marriage is proof, if proof were needed, that the Jan Moir Tendency is still alive and well in the strange, lonely and troubling Tory party.

Has anyone seen Chris Grayling recently? Is he hiding out in a B&B somewhere for the duration of the election? Cookham, perhaps? For it is his reaction to the Cookham Case that first aroused our suspicion that the Tories are stuck in a 1980s time warp, scanning the Daily Mail for policy ideas. But David Cameron is no better, with his strange obsession with tax breaks for married couples. £3 a week to get married? Where do I sign?

For those unfamiliar with The Swiss Bed and Breakfast in Cookham, their website claims “a warm & friendly welcome awaits all guests”. Now, call me a stickler, but I think this could bear a little copyediting – since such a welcome is not afforded to gay guests. They are turned away with a vomiting W.I. disgust we thought confined to Little Britain, not Great Britain. Now, I have no desire to stay in a B&B – I can’t bear a warm welcome from John and Mary, and there’s nothing worse than a congenial host chatting to you over breakfast. Give me a cold, impersonal, corporate hotel any day. But anyone should have the right to stay in one if that is their lifestyle choice.

But it turns out that the man who wants to be our new Home Secretary in a few weeks thinks it’s OK to break the law – if it is to discriminate against gay people.

I personally always took the view that, if you look at the case of should a Christian hotel owner have the right to exclude a gay couple from a hotel, I took the view that if it’s a question of somebody who’s doing a B&B in their own home, that individual should have the right to decide who does and who doesn’t come into their own home.
CHRIS GRAYLING, SHADOW HOME SECRETARY

If the Tory party has really changed, this should be a sackable offence. But by maintaining his silence, David Cameron has proved what we all suspected: the party of Section 28 is still the Nasty Party. This is not about the conflicting human rights of gay people and religious fundamentalists. It is about discrimination and breaking the law. If you open your home as a B&B, it is no longer your private home: it is a business – a service offered to a paying public. The law is clear: no one can be refused goods an services on the grounds of sexuality. If you don’t want gay people in your house, there’s a very simple solution: don’t open a B&B.

I don’t think anyone, including the Tories, wants to go back to the days where there is a sign outside saying: ‘No gays, no blacks, no Irish’.
BEN SUMMERSKILL, STONEWALL

The founder of LGBTory, the Tory gay rights group, defected to Labour over the issue. Last weekend there was a Big Gay Flashmob outside Conservative Party HQ to protest. But they still don’t get it. Gay rights do not come naturally to the Conservative Party. Until 2005, David Cameron supported homophobic laws. His party in Europe has aligned itself with right-wing extremists including parties with deeply racist and homophobic policies. When asked about his party’s position on gay rights by a gay newspaper recently (surely a question he expected to come up?), he was so flustered he had to stop the filming so that he could gather his thoughts.

The Conservatives know what they should say, but it doesn’t come easily to them – they have to stop and think it through first, and then still get it wrong, like the Harry Enfield character who goes to pieces trying not to offend his gay son.

But this isn’t the only evidence that the Tories haven’t changed. Cameron’s strange, unfair and patronizing obsession with tax breaks for married couples is back on the agenda. He says he wants us to be “the most family-friendly country in Europe”. Well, not all families look like yours, Dave. Curiously, this morality tax appears to apply where one spouse is working and one isn’t. Is Cameron longing for those halcyon days when a woman’s place was in the home? The thinking behind it is as Victorian as Chris Grayling’s.  Never mind the deficit – let’s spend £550m on a ‘message’ that reinstates the stigma of divorce and makes children of unmarried or single parents feel second class. And if you’re careless enough to become widowed or divorced, you deserve to lose the cash. Why don’t we just go back to dumping fallen women in the Thames? J.K. Rowling brilliantly deconstructs the ridiculousness of the presumptions behind this policy in her article for The Times this week.

I accept that my friends and I might be atypical. Maybe you know people who would legally bind themselves to another human being, for life, for an extra £150 a year? Perhaps you were contemplating leaving a loveless or abusive marriage, but underwent a change of heart on hearing about a possible £150 tax break?
J.K. ROWLING, The Times

As Cameron is finally forced to declare his hand and show us his wafer-thin policies in the run up to the election, the marketing mask is slipping and it’s becoming clear that you can’t polish a Tory. Listen for the dog whistles: from immigration to gay rights to favouring married couples in the tax system, scratch the surface, and they’re still the same old Tories.

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The Piers Morgan interview with Gordon Brown was bad enough (go on, Piers: make him CRY!), yet bracketing the Prime Minister in such esteemed company as Gok Wan and Kym Marsh was nothing compared to Sunday’s prematurely scheduled ‘Winner’s Story’ hosted by Dermot O’Leary wannabe Sir Trevor Macdonald.

If you thought the post-Kelly, post-Ross-Brand BBC was a cowering, kow-towing State broadcaster, ITV1 made North Korean TV look as robust as Newsnight. In a reverential hour-long politics-free party political broadcast worthy of the media wing of a Brezhnev-era Politbureau, Sir Trev asked the man who would be PM such probing questions as: ‘Just how brilliant are you, Dave?’ Or so it seemed. ITV have clearly decided who they think the next Dear Leader will be.

What did we learn? That Dave likes cooking but makes a terrible mess? That he likes to watch Godfather films again and again and again? Leadership metaphors aside, this was as enlightening as his shock revelation to Alan Titchmarsh last week that he watches Neighbours. Not so much Frost-Nixon as Willoughby-Jedward. Will we get to see Brown’s best bits if he’s voted out of the live final in May?

Friends, family and supporters were brought on to praise Contestant Cameron like a video diary message from home as a special treat. SamCam complained that he doesn’t wash up as he goes – something we all look for in a Prime Minister. This is simultaneously too much information, and not enough. Show us yer policies, boys, and put away the pornographic parade of Leaders’ Wives.

It is all a massive distraction. By focusing our attention on the washing up as Cameron’s Worst Fault, we suddenly forget his other lesser, more trivial faults – such as voting for Section 28, supporting the war, or giving his wealthy friends tax cuts.

Why do we need the political WAGs singing their version of Mariah Carey’s ‘Hero’ in the media anyway? To court the crucial female vote? The good-wife-and-mother discourse is as 1970s as Tory policy, and competing for the title of Most Surrendered Wife off-putting and out of step. Perhaps it is instead to reassure male voters that our incipient PM – whoever he might be – is a red-blooded man with a good woman behind him? A normal blokey bloke like the rest of us chaps. Equally patronising, equally dated. And if I hear ‘hard-working families’ just one more time… Or is it to humanize the clunking Brown and Odo-alike Cameron with some tedious domesticity?

But if the gender politics is locked in the past, the celebrities are coming out of the Saturday Kitchen. Blair’s Cool Britannia courting of celebrity by association worked. Mainstream media have given up holding politicians to account, and instead gawp in awestruck wonder like they’ve just won a golden ticket to the Westminster Village. Even when politicians let us down we like them to have cartoonish, monstrous, one-dimensional vices: Bully Brown, Sir Peter Duckhouse, Lord Cashcroft. Personality trumps policy. And more fool the politicians and their spin doctors for allowing it. Can you imagine Thatcher going on the Wogan show in the 1980s for some light-hearted banter about joining the mile high club, intercut with footage of Dennis complaining about her hoovering? It reduces our leaders to the level of gossip about Kerry Catona in the pages of Heat Magazine.

Voter apathy may be at an all-time high, but there has to be a better way to engage people than reducing politics to light entertainment. It suggests there is no difference between the parties except personality. There is. But how can voters know that without communicating policies? Are voters really too dim to understand such grown-up conversation? Yes, put politicians on daytime TV. But maybe use it as an opportunity to tell voters what you would do if elected, apart from washing up and watching Neighbours? Don’t you have a country to run?

Perhaps the electorate just want to see them suffer, like some sort of ‘I’m a Politician, Get Me Out of Here!’ Channel 4 already did that, of course, with ‘Tower Block of Commons’, sending MPs somewhere far scarier than the Australian jungle: their own constituencies.

And where is Nick Clegg in all this? Sensibly keeping a low profile? Busy with some actual policy announcements at the Lib Dem Spring Conference? Or preparing for his in-depth interview with Ant and Dec, or the bear from Bo’Selecta?

Simon Cowell’s idea for a political reality TV show sounded like a bad joke – but it doesn’t seem so unlikely. Well, so be it. Why not go the whole Douglas Hogg, and make them run around a moat jumping over foam obstacles? Or bring back Stuart Hall. No, not the cultural commentator: the one from It’s a Knockout. Dress the leaders as penguins and make them beat the crap out of each other on a revolving platform while the lovely Miss Witney, Miss Kirkcaldy and Miss Sheffield keep score. This is what they want!

It might not solve the problems of our country being mired in economic collapse and an Orwellian state of permanent war. But, hey. It’s very entertaining.

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