Friday, October 01, 2004

Unimpressive

I'm watching the US presidential debate at the moment. If this is the best John Kerry can do then he is in big trouble. Deeply unimpressive. Rather like our result in the Hartlepool by-election.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yes Iain a deeply unimpressive result in Hartlepool.

I have tried to summarise what I think are the Conservatives main problems over on UK Future, I would be interested in your views, being a prospective candidate.

Regarding the Presidential debate, I still believe Bush will probably just scrape victory. While he may not have performed quite as well as usual last night, you are right to say that Kerry does not inspire enough people to make the change.

James Malcolm, UK Future.

Anonymous said...

I think you should have another word with David Davis re: party leadership.

Anonymous said...

John Kerry was appauling? Most people said he was good- won the debate and stopped the election from being over. Even if it was appauling, it was 10 times better than your result in Hartlepool. This is the 4th time now that we have had a tory cabinet member tell the TV Channels that 'this isn't a Tory seat'. What is? It is white, fearing of crime and anti social behaviour, euro sceptic. I'm sure there will be some interesting discussions at the conference- I hope you keep us updated!

Iain Dale said...

John Kerry was appauling? Most people said he was good- won the debate and stopped the election from being over. Even if it was appauling, it was 10 times better than your result in Hartlepool. This is the 4th time now that we have had a tory cabinet member tell the TV Channels that 'this isn't a Tory seat'. What is? It is white, fearing of crime and anti social behaviour, euro sceptic. I'm sure there will be some interesting discussions at the conference- I hope you keep us updated!

I only saw the first 45 minutes (fell asleep and woke up at 6.30am with the TV still blaring out!) but from what I saw Kerry came off second best. OK, I wasn't that impressed by Bush either, but at least he showed some passion. I think you can surmise my reaction to the Hartlepool result from my comment above. Not sure who you are talking about who said it isn't a Tory seat, but it isn't! I think we had it for 5 years in the 1950s. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't be making headway here. I remember in the 1970s we did win byelections in seats like this. The LibDems are brilliant at convincing people in byelections that they are the only ones who can beat the incumbent. We need to learn from that. I'll ignore your remarks about "white, eurosceptic" as I'm SURE they were meant tongue in cheek :)