The Lib Dems Dirty Secret (part the first)

As I write this, there are two public schoolboys carving up politcal power in Westminster. Eton and Westminster (and St Pauls, but we won't mention the oik), and Oxbridge combine, as so often in the past, to tell us what is best for them, and therefore what is best for us. So much for the "new politcs".....

And so far so ancien regime. But, as Nick Clegg struts his hour upon the stage, his party harbours a dirty secret that the press, for some reason, has ignored and kept the lid on. That secret is that the Liberal Democrats, the kingmakers and believers in "fair" politics, are not really a national party at all: in some areas they hardly exist as an "on the ground" organisation.

In evidence I give my own experience: the Lib Dem candidate in our constituency did not attend the count. Strange enough in itself, you might say, for a party that boasted of having 100 seats and maybe even being the biggest party in Parliament, for the candidate not to turn up at the count. But it's worse than that, much worse: the Lib Dem candidate did not appear in the constituency at all during the campaign. Not once. And no leaflets or statements were sent out by the Lib Dems, to my knowledge. I received none, and I know of no-one who did.

Even more shockingly, this is not the first time this has happened at Westminster and Scottish elections. The Liberal Democrats have put up a "ghost" candidate on at least two recent occassions in this seat. Far from being "fair", I believe that this shows a distressing contempt for the voters and the political process.

So as Nick Clegg dictates the terms of the next UK government, flexing his political muscles and flashing his six-pack, he conceals the the weakness of his organisation to deliver any agreement that he might make with the Tories. Nick's dirty little secret is that his party is not all it seems.