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The commentators                    05-01-15

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...on UK politics

Here's a lesson for all politicians. Stop patronising us, stop insulting our intelligence. Shut up, go away and keep your blatant lies and pathetic publicity stunts to yourselves. We don’t want to hear from any of you again until a couple of weeks before polling day. So until then, do us a favour: everybody back on the battle bus.
- Richard Littlejohn, Daily Mail

A fixed term of four years takes the temptation to trigger an election to his own advantage entirely out of the prime minister’s hands. It removes power from the executive, which should be welcomed by constitutional reformers, and gives a vote to Parliament, which is more democratic. If a government falls and the law requires parties in Parliament to try to form another from the MPs already there, what’s wrong with that?
- Philip Johnston, Daily Telegraph

No wonder so many people are so turned off by what now passes for politics in Britain. Election year 2015 has opened with the same suffocating claustrophobia of the past five years. Never mind that living standards for the majority continue to fall while the very rich get richer. Or that the recent much vaunted “growth” has been consumer, housing and debt driven.
- Peter Hain, Guardian

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An election should be a time for politicians to make a positive pitch and set out a vision for the country they want to create — but so far at least the cycle of negativity is only being reinforced by a bitter campaign. The mainstream parties need to raise their sights if they are to combat the flawed idealism of the smaller ones. Like the beggar with his hare, it is time for political leaders to start weaving fables as well as firing off facts.
- Rachael Sylvester, The Times

Negative campaigning works if it is measured and delivered more in sorrow than in anger. The subtle-but-true criticism of Mr Cameron is not that he is callous, but that he is slapdash and complacent. As for Mr Miliband, he has never made a tough policy decision: as energy secretary, Labour leadership hopeful and then as leader he has marinated in his own ideological certainties.
- Janan Ganesh, Financial Times

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Comment digest courtesy of
Editorial Intelligence

January 5 
UK politics

For EI daily digests from 2014
please click here

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