- The Libdems gave him virtually no campaign support or funding
- Nick Clegg as being constantly 'miffed' or petulent
- His frustration at the LibDems inability to get any press coverage
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Disillusioned Paddick Reveals LibDem Campaign Chaos
If you don't do anything else today, read THIS extract in the Mail on Sunday from Brian Paddick's mayoral campaign diary. It's safe to say he won't ever stand for the LibDems again. He reveals...
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68 comments:
But if he had won, would he have been so quick to stab his erstwhile colleagues in the back?
Typical bitchy behaviour from a failed Lib Dem.
a fascinating insight into the current lib dem turmoil and why they are a spent force in the current resurgent tory, political climate.
Not a fan of Paddick, but I have to say that this is an amusing read. There's a lot more energy in his writing than there seemed to be in the man. But then maybe so many things going wrong probably got to him after a while.
I'm not surprised to hear that Clegg is a rather sulky little figure. I have often thought he behaves like he has small man syndrome; as though he needs to pick a fight over everything.
And it rather summed up the result when he went for a Boris burger and not his own ;)
He's clearly so disillusioned with the Lib Dems he was out campaigning for them in Crewe yesterday.
He's got a good sense of humour, something I never realised he had. A pity he didn't use it in his campaign.
Shame on the LibDems though, they let an absolute rookie onto the streets of London with little or no help.
If you don't do anything else today, read THIS extract in the Mail on Sunday from Brian Paddick's mayoral campaign diary.
No. Read this
Absolutely effing outrageous.
Same old story I'm afraid - and I speak as someone who voted for them last time round as I couldn't bring myself to give my support to anyone who'd backed the adventure in Iraq.
They couldn't even decide on their strategy for power following the Welsh Assembly elections.
To paraphrase Anne Robinson..
"What are they for ? And why are they always so pleased with themselves ?"
Surprised about Clegg though - I'd have thought he was the best of a bad bunch - with the possible sole exception of Vince Cable...
Is this just a smokescreen to accepting a job under Boris?
I would have had far more respect for the man, and I believe so would others, if he had spoken out during the campaign. He may well have got more 'sympathy' votes as well as showing the people he was his own man!
I have never accepted that he was regarded as a' coppers copper' and I think it shows the shallowness of the individual.
I hope Boris does have a job for him, he would make a extremely smart head of security.
Not surprised about LibDems ineptitude. They were the recipients of protest votes mostly from deluded Labour supporters in the North. In the South all they had to do until now is to blame the Tories for everything including the weather. This has been their approach from 'Paddy the pants down' to '30+ females Clegg' without any sensible policies. This approach is fast unravelling and Clegg hence has a very limited shelf life as the leader.
I have seen LibDems in action in
Islington in my borough, and could have given my advice for free to Paddick before his foolish foray into the mayoral world.
Ace article !! That guy has a career in the media of some description - I am sure there is a book to be written filling out what he has written in that article there...
"We're in the middle of the "Cleggover" storm, after Nick Clegg said he'd had up to 30 lovers. Am asked how many I've slept with. "A lot fewer women than Nick," I say."
Worth the price of the paper alone..
typical plod, a thick bully who thinks the rest of the world should say how high when he says jump. PCSO to Commissioner, I'm afraid they are all the same.
Paddick should have realised that if none of the LibDem professional politicians wanted to run for mayor then it wasn't going to be much fun.
He also realised that professional politicians aren't really much cop ('scuse the pun), and compared with some of the individuals he would have met as a policeman, some of them are seriously unimpressive, more obviously when seen close up.
I can't understand why the LibDem's aren't looking harder at Clegg and asking him why it seems Labour voters are switching straight to the Conservatives and ignoring him.
If Brown gets any kind of bounce in the next year or so it'll pretty wipe them out. Oh what to wish for?
Not sure who his press officer was working for?
Wasn't exactly a dab hand himself to sell the story to the most illiberal national newspaper...
Have you seen what Chris Paul has said about this? It is bizarre. He really isn't very fond of you Iain.
I prefer the bit in the interview were Paddick makes clear that Ken Livingstone was in the habit of turning up half-pissed and then having a few more on the stump for good measure...
I lost all (remaining) respect for Paddick when he acted very immature during a BBC interview because he lost the Mayoral race.
The Liberal Democrats are not a major force in British politics, the party only does well when there is no credible opposition (General election 2005).
Tories are now respectable and electable meaning Liberal voting share drops.
Read the final November entry. Right there, you can see the reason why the Lib Dems failed to make any progress at the elections and why Paddick did so badly.
The Lib Dems and Labour now believe their own propaganda about the Tories being a bunch of toffs. Paddick clearly thinks that by throwing a few of his own toff credentials about, he can pick up Tory support. Nothing about policies whatsoever.
Good on the Evening Standard journalist who refused to let Paddick's pathetic answer go unchallenged.
Iain, I agree with rush-is-right. Have you read the article in the Indy about the army? It is an absolute scandal and should be sufficient to bring down the government.
Brown has created a benefits-based client state that encourages people to do nothing in return for hand-outs, while putting our armed forces into the most dangerous places on earth, poorly equipped and now we learn, so underpaid they cannot afford to eat. In most countries in the world this would cause a coup.
And to think team Cameron wanted this Trot voting man to be their candidate.
I also agree with the other posters here that the most important news is, for once, in the Indy and anybody who ignores that really is in an advanced state of Westminster bubble delusion.
"Brown has created a benefits-based client state that encourages people to do nothing in return for hand-outs"
So it's got nothing to do with Thatcher, who shifted state spending from productive industry to more and more admin staff and the paying out of benefits to the welfare dependents whose numbers increased dramatically on her watch. Not to mention the surge in single parenthood and divorce that occured under Thatcher.
No, she is sacred, we must ignore such basic facts.
No, she is sacred, we must ignore such basic facts.
Clot she took over a country with the dead unburied, stagflation ,the unions running the country and so called "productive industry” actually operating as a loss making means of wealth redistribution. The painful fall-out was caused by the inaction of successive regimes committed to managing failure since the war and lead to a temporary increase in the states role . This is about as basic as it is worth going
Still you carry on, times are tough and we could do with a few clowns about the place.
PS Paddick like most of the Liberal party is really a socialist. That many of their voters are not is one of the reasons for their pitiful showing. I always love the way Liberals think of themselves as the frontiersmen of new thinking but actually follow the caravan like a pointless stray dog . Clegg is herding silly cats . Of course he looks petulant
cath said at 1.24pm..now that shows an open mind does it not!
Obviously caught speeding or just loutish behaviour.
Calm down dear!
Doesn't sound like he was very impressed about the integrity of the Tories or the Labour, either: "March 1st Join Boris in Sidcup on a march against the closure of the A&E. A Labour supporter erects a placard in front of my face and then, after Boris speaks, his organisers steal the megaphone so I cannot address the crowd. Politics is a dirty business."
All I got from reading these extracts is how money and press interest make the difference. The media wanted this to be a Boris and Ken fight, and so it was, even though Paddick was clearly more qualified to do the job than Boris (I mean what *exactly* has he done, ever?).
Labour and the Tories always massively outspend the Lib Dems and yet they don't see how much this contributes to their relative success - they really do think that there are only two ways of thinking - Tory or Labour. Amusing given the miniscule differences between the parties (and what policies exactly do the Conservatives have anyway?)
Hmmm - perhaps we don't need to be so concerned about the Henley by-election.
Who is the press officer he couldn't tame?
I thought it was only Boris who was supposed to drop gaffes.
Now we hear Brian P. make these daft remarks, and Ken dropped a few what with the remark that beating New Labour was the best win of his career and also the Olympic "con" clanger.
Strikes me Boris was the only one who DIDN'T drop a clanger and lately his statesmanlike demeanour rivals Churchill's. A more dignified age is about to begin.....
@ strapworld
No I just know three good friends all of whom have accepted cautions, and hence have criminal records for crimes they did not commit just in order to get out of police custody and bullying and home to their families. Two of the three have endured years of harrassment from one force. I also have personal experience of them getting involved in a domestic abuse incident with my former partner years ago where, in fairness their intentions were sound but they had not the wit or intelligence to work out that they should follow my instincts, thereby they made the whole situation much more dangerous than it needed to be. But of course, you patronisingly assume that anyone who hates the police must be a Clarksonite or a lout. There honestly is more to life than cops and robbers you know. I thought Paddick's lack of decency in his speech on election night spoke volumes about the man; he has no redeeming features whatsoever.
"as I couldn't bring myself to give my support to anyone who'd backed the adventure in Iraq." --- who gives a monkeys about Iraq?
Whats so special about that? By all means do not give your vote to the party that bungled the invasion of Iraq - and which is asking the army to do too much with too little in Afghanistan, but if you want to punish them why vote for a party which will keep them in power if they gain enough seats.
The conservatives had nothing to do with the Iraq war, they voted for it based on the evidence of the PM given in parliament and had no say in how it should be progressed.
Voting for any other party than conservative will keep labour in power. Your logic is mystifying.
"I can't understand why the LibDem's aren't looking harder at Clegg " -- because over half of them voted him in! If they are so dopey, what more do you expect?
"So it's got nothing to do with Thatcher" -- Correct you idiot. Labour have been in power nearly 11 years, before that we had 7 years of John Major.
Paddick, like most politicians, looks to dumping the blame at everyones door but his own.
What he does not face up to is that people in London have no interest in what he and the LibDims offer and stand for. End of story.
Cath!
Do you know the prisons are full of innocent people!
Every person I arrested bang to rights maintained he or she was innocent! strange that.
Grown up people accepting a caution for something they did not do? Come off it.
As for a domestic incident. The law does not allow for police to arrest someone because someone believes they will/may assault (or worse) someone!
As for your remarks on Paddick. I agree entirely.
I just dislike people that make sweeping statements saying because of one personal incident that ALL coppers are bastards.
Calm down girl.
anon@6:21 - "... even though Paddick was clearly more qualified to do the job than Boris (I mean what *exactly* has he done, ever?)."
To be exact, he was an Eton scholar, is an MP and was Editor of a very influential and respected political magazine. And he is fluent in a number of classical languages (not that you would ever begin to understand the relevance of such a skill).
What "exactly" have you done anon ?
I got bored half way through it. I read enough to have confirmed my opinion that he was a petulant (note the spelling) shrieker.
There are a lot of comments on this blog about how the LibDems are a spent force and how they are dying out, etc.
Um, I am sorry to break this to you, chaps (well, not that sorry), but we (the LDs) came second in the national vote share for only the second time ever. We gained more councillors and more councils. We are now in control of Sheffield, Newcastle, Hull, Liverpool... remind me which big northern cities the Tories control.
In the South, we took control of St Albans as well as beating off the Tories in our parliamentary seats - Cheltenham, Colchester, Oxford, Cambridge, Eastleigh.
>It's a shame, as he seems to me to be a fundamentally good man - even if he did inexplicably give his second preference vote to the Trots.
I don't see how the second half of the sentence can be correlated with the first ('a fundamentally good man'). And it's perfectly explicable; he's a stupid tit.
Frustrated at the lack of press coverage? I think Paddick and the LibDems did remarkably well for a party that ended up with under 10% in the mayoral vote. Certainly as far as the TV was concerned, he got equal billing with the the two main parties - and in my view, that was more than the vote share justifies!
Furthermore, I'm afraid I find it hard to have much sympathy with him. When Boris was being magnanimous in victory, and even Red Ken was losing very graciously, I was very disappointed that Paddick didn't return then kind words Boris offered him.
Iain, I read your blog piece, then read the diary and the two do not compare. You have spun this ridiculously.
Regarding rush-is-right's comment at 12.57: I hope you (Iain) will follow it up. Lots of us are deeply distressed about the way our servicemen and women are treated. I hope that the conservative party will take this up as a campaigning issue. Sorry to go off-topic, but I care far more about this than about some soppy limp dim's hissy fit.
He'll probably land a job at the BBC - he fits their profile.
Isn't he the bloke who banned police dogs from Brixton?
Too PC.
it shows (a) he has loyalty, (b) he has poor judgement, (c) he was out of his depth (d) he wasn't even able to inspire other party members and (e) he would have been a disaster had he won!
Quite an interesting article. I think it demonstrates pretty clearly that the LibDems: 1, made a serious mistake getting rid of Charlie: 2, Clegg is a useless, egotistical and without self confidence.
Wotever, Brian Paddick had the same moan about his former employers, the Metropolitan Police.
To top it off, he speaks about himself in the 3rd person.
Utter tool.
I enjoyed his comment about the Lib Dem member who kept telling him he was voting for Livingstone at the time when Brian was seeking the Lib Dem nomination.
stuart@8:45
You're repeating Cleggover's miss-speech about Liverpool. You lost it to NOC.
I'm a recovering LibDem and I remember how the self-delusion works.
@ Strapworld
Your response is a load of assumption, in fact you rather got the wrong end of the stick - I know I was vague and I'll not going into detail because it would be hugely dull and irrelevant to Iain's blog; I accept that I have made a generalisation about Plod but you too very much seem to see things as black and white. And its a very very long time since anyone called me "girl". Guess its a power thing.
As an aside I wonder if you would react in the same way if I had written "all teachers are lefty tyrants" or "all LibDems are sandle-wearing camel shaggers"?
I think he nailed it when he said that coppers had to be somewhat 'wooden' when giving evidence in court, to be taken seriously - and this approach is not going to get you anywhere up against the Bozzmeister..
Funnily enough I was bloggin about this story earlier on...
http://mkv.sassylad.co.uk/blog.php
why didn't the Lems put more funds in?
All that TV coverage for free.. they should have made an effort.
Less than 10% is a real disaster however its spun.
An introduction to the classical languages, lesson 1, politically-irregular verbs:
I am reasonable
You are stupid
He, she, or it was a patsy
We are going to Wembley
You(pl.) are going to get your
f****ing heads kicked-in
They should've known better.
amo, amas, amant...
Thank you for that link rush-is-right
Colonel Clive Fairweather: Former SAS deputy commander: "I really do think the Army is heading for the rocks and I don't say this lightly"
Far more important than the lib-dems who are just conservatives who don't want to be Conservatives.
Front line soldiers going hungry, for goodness sake.
As Kris said, Paddick is simply exhibiting the same behaviour he exhibited during his last decade in the Mete Police. At least there, he could blame others and the threat of some form of legal action for discrimination would then hang in the air and he would get promoted out of the way. Welcome to the real world Bwian, well I say the real world as he has a massive pension to live on quite nicely. His other vote also shows what a juvenile, sulky brat he really is. He was no loss to the Met, in fact there's a dozen or so more they could lose too.
Mr Paddick has been photo-opping in Crewe to support the Lib-Dem by-election campaign up there, so he can't be that cheesed off with politics.
The man amazes me. If the Libbies were so bad- why go through the charade of standing for 'em & saying copious amounts of LD bull*hit throughout the looooonnng campaign? I think MOST of us have been in one other political party before coming to our senses and settling where we are now (in my case it was seeing straight through 'the Bliar' during the David Kelly tragedy): he could have went 'independent' after all...
strapworld said...
"Grown up people accepting a caution for something they did not do? Come off it."
I was given a caution by police liars. They did not ask me if I would accept it, they merely told me they were giving me a caution.
I know people who accepted a criminal conviction, not just a caution, because it is simply too much trouble to argue against a bunch of police liars.
Until the police are subject to a proper Internal Affairs dept that actually prosecutes police wrong doing the sane thing is to assume that all the police have a lot to hide.
When the police are not killing themselves or murdering their wifes they train their children to be bullies at school.
Wouldn't the Crewe photo-ops have been arranged while he was still a candidate? He couldn't really refuse could he>
Sturat:
"In the South, we took control of St Albans..."
I'm form London but used to live there.
You won one ward with 4, yes 4 votes, of a Council you notionally controlled since you lost it in 07.
In 06 you won it and then Ming the Ueeless came mincing all over St Albans saying how it showed Lib Dems were on the comeback - and then lost it a year later.
You'll loose it again in 09!
More generally, this is an example of how the Lib Dems clutch at straws!
Send Clegg back to Robinson coll. for a refresher course on Politics, he needs it. He could rejoin CUCA and see how it is done.
Anon @ 10.29
Well put. I'm also pretty sure that they already controlled Liverpool, and won that back by getting an independent on their side. And in Shefield, I think that was one seat as well that swung it over. Yet listening to Clegg, you'd think they had every single councillor.
"You'll loose it again in 09!"
Not likely since there are no elections for St.Albans next year and instead just for the County!
Anon at 10.29am: "clutching at straws" could be defining victory in two northern councils (Bury and North Tyneside - a 1 and 2 seat majority respectively) as some kind of northern Tory resurgence.
Let's take a look at Conservative representation in the big northern cities, shall we:
In Sheffield (LibDem-controlled), the Tories have none of the 84 seats.
In Newcastle (LibDem-controlled), the Tories have none of the 78 seats.
In Liverpool (LibDem-controlled), the Tories have none of the 90 seats.
In Hull (also LibDem-controlled), the Tories have three of the 59 seats... you've at least got some seats on that one, congratulations!
Yes, as a LibDem, I am really quaking in my boots at the Tory surge sweeping the country.
Anon at 10.02am - Brian Paddick was in Crewe at the weekend, not whilst he was still a candidate.
At May 11, 2008 5:56 PM , Anonymous said...
Doesn't sound like he was very impressed about the integrity of the Tories or the Labour, either: "March 1st Join Boris in Sidcup on a march against the closure of the A&E. A Labour supporter erects a placard in front of my face and then, after Boris speaks, his organisers steal the megaphone so I cannot address the crowd. Politics is a dirty business."
Only Brian is wrong. The person stealing the megaphoen was a petulant Tory cabinet member upset that the Lib Dems dared to take part in the march agains the A&E closure.
http://duncanborrowman.blogspot.com/2008/05/erratum-brian-paddicks-diary.html
stuart said...
"Anon at 10.02am - Brian Paddick was in Crewe at the weekend, not whilst he was still a candidate."
Anon 10.20's point was that at the time he was invited he would have still been a mayoral candidate.
Boris wanting the campaign, not job, and Ken wanting the job, not the campaign, seemed very apt. Sir Elton paying for a political strategist was interesting.
Anon at 5.14pm, this is Brian Paddick's status update on his facebook page yesterday, "Brian was campaigning in Crewe on Saturday - who said I was giving up politics?!".
Sure, he may have accepted an invitation whilst the London mayoral candidate and felt duty bound to honour it, but he didn't need to tell us all that he was there.
I just think that the 'LibDems are over' line that you guys are trying to spin is a load of nonsense. After 1st May, we have more councillors and more councils.
stuart - great to see that Paddick's comments are getting plenty of media coverage over at the censorious Lib Dem Voice site...
Bloody Hell, are they STILL censoring comments at LDV?! Must go and have a look/laugh!
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