Abuse, hysteria and LibDem desperation

Calm down, dears. Invoking Hitler’s propaganda chief, LibDem Chris Huhne accuses Tory Chairman Baroness Warsi of running a ‘Goebbels-like campaign’. Meanwhile, Paddy Ashdown declares he’s ‘fighting furious’.
(Hook, Introduction)

‘The personalisation of the No campaign is disgusting politics,’ he says – adding, without conscious irony, that Chancellor George Osborne’s strategy ‘stinks’.
(background information)

You’d think they were condemning the foulest of war crimes. But, no. This is the ludicrously intemperate language with which the LibDems seek to challenge the arguments against the obscure AV voting system, which they believe would give them more seats.

Elsewhere, Vince Cable speaks of widespread ‘revulsion’ against ‘offensive’ Tory policies – just days after accusing the Prime Minister of ‘inflaming extremism’ with his low-key (and probably empty) remarks about limiting immigration.

(specific information)

Coming from the party that promised us a ‘new kind of politics,’ isn’t there something deranged about the LibDems’ choice of vocabulary?
(reason 1, general)

If it smacks of desperation, no wonder. For the Yes to AV camp really does face serious questions about its conduct.

As the Chancellor argues, it is indeed questionable why the Electoral Reform Society, whose commercial arm may stand to gain from AV, should be allowed to bankroll the campaign.

And what is the supposedly apolitical Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust doing, handing over its entire income for last year to promote the AV cause?

Then there are the Yes campaign’s lies. They keep telling us AV guarantees that every MP will have the support of at least 50 per cent of voters. Not true.

(reason 2, specific)

They say it will do away with safe seats. No, it won’t. Mysteriously, they even claim it will mean MPs have to ‘work harder’ and fiddle their expenses less. (concession)
How do they work that one out?

Of course, the great truth they avoid mentioning is that they’re backing AV – dismissed even by Nick Clegg as a ‘miserable little compromise’ – simply because they hope it will be replaced by Italian-style proportional representation which would make the LibDems all but impossible to dislodge from power.

This is a fact that no amount of hysterical, utterly disproportionate personal abuse can conceal.

(response to concession and best reason)