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...

• 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

He makes clear he will never stand as a LibDem MP and clearly hated the whole experience of running for office. 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.

Paddick Needs to Discover a Sense of Humour

I don't know how many of you caught the London mayoral debate on the BBC Politics Show this lunchtime but again it was a pretty unedifying spectale, but slightly better than the Newsnight equivalent. Accuse me of being biased if you like (and I know I can rely some of you to do just that!) but I felt that Boris shaded it. At the end he called Ken Livingstone 'stale' and I think that's exactly how the Mayor came across - no now policies, no new ideas. Boris was clearly up for it, while the Mayor seemed to be going through the motions. Jon Sopel tried to goad Boris with some selective quotes but Boris sailed through the jibes rather majesterially.

But perhaps what came out of it most was the total eclipse of Brian Paddick. I have always had a lot of respect for him, but his campaign hasn't caught fire. I think his performance in this debate showed why. He badly needs to discover a sense of humour. If you are fighting two people who are masters of the the oneliner you need to play them at their won game and use humour as part of your political armoury. He particualrly needed some sort of funny line when he repeatedly refused to say who his second preference would go to. In the end he ended up hinting that it would go to the Greens. Not good enough. If the LibDems are in favour of a proportional system, the electorate deserves to know who a candidate's second preference would go to. It tells you something about them. Brian Paddick failed this test and throughout the interview appeared a sideshow to the main focus of Boris v Ken.

Red Ken Runs Scared

Frit.

LibDems Go Negative in Mayoral Campaign

"I want a new politics, a people's politics...a message of optimism, energy and ambition."
Nick Clegg

The London Mayoral campaign is only one week old and the LibDems have already gone negative. This evening they have launched two attack ads - a fairly soft one on Ken and more hard hitting one on Boris. I guess it shows who they fear most. Normally, they only go negative in the last ten days of a campaign.

Paddick Appoints US Internet Consulting Company

Mark Hanson's new PR/Media blog breaks the news that the Brian Paddick Mayoral campaign has appointed an American political consulting company to run its web operations. I think I am right in saying this is the first time a US consulting firm has been used in this manner in the UK, but I stand to be corrected. The company concerned is run by Democrat blogger Jerome Armstrong who is behind the MyDD blog (there's a joke there somewhere). He rose to fame, according to Mark Hanson, by playing a big part in the Howard Dean campaign in 2004. I spoke to Mark Pack, the LibDems Head of Innovations and he was duly fizzing with excitement about the appointment. If I were him, I would be too. However ... and you knew this was coming, didn't you?

I hadn't visited Brian Paddick's website until today and was rather underwhelmed with what I found. Go see for yourself. Paddick is a strong, potentially charismatic candidate. But his website is grey, weak and impersonal. It does nothing to promote Paddick as a unique personality. Ok, so you might argue, they have realised this and done something about it. True. But isn't it too late? There are only five weeks to go before polling day. Remember what Lynton Crosby once memorably said - you can't fatten a pig on market day.

But what does this development say about the future of internet campaigning? Well firstly it exposes the lack of any British political consulting firms specialising in internet politics. Yes, there are a few web design companies, but no one who will grab a campaign by the scruff of a keyboard. This is not surprising. We don't have either the number of campaigns or the budgets of American politics to finance expensive consultants. If you look at the website of US internet campaign consultants you can see literally dozens of campaigns they have worked on. That just couldn't happen here.

I think the appointment of Jerome Armstrong may be a little bit too late to have a huge impact on the Paddick campaign, but I suspect it will lead to many more such arrangements between UK political parties and US political internet consulting firms.