Electioneering

The half-unexpected departure of Chris Huhne from politics has led to a dramatic speeding up of events that might have been kept on the backburner until at least the European elections in 2014.  The Eastleigh by-elections has allowed former Australian prime minister, John Howard’s and London Mayor, Alexander Boris Johnson’s guru, Lynton Crosby to flex his muscles.  The hand of his malign influence is all over this contest.

To shore up the Tory vote - especially with such a disastrous candidate as Maria Huthings – against UKIP was to engineer the defection of UKIP’s only female MEP, Marta Andreasen, prompting rare Nigel Farage sympathy for the European Commission (her former place of work), concluding that she was impossible to work with others.  Marta Andreasen, that name of good English yeoman stock, was intended to disrupt UKIP’s push, but instead only had the effect of a day, before the issue has faded from the headlines.

What remains very much in the headlines, is the digging up of impropriety allegations of a former unknown member of the Liberal Democrats.  Lord (Chris) Rennard was apparently Chief Executive of the Lib Dems, though outside the Westminster bubble I doubt anyone was aware of him as they are his equally anonymous successor.  To be fair, Nick Clegg has exhibited his tendency towards calamity a bit too well this week, but after the alleged scandal broke last week, it threatened to become a 24 hour news item, like Andreasen and Crosby could not let that happen.

Frankly, why have these allegations only just come to light now, why is Rennard being treated as if has been found guilty (guilty until proven innocent is the authoritarian nature of the right-wing hacks) and who hacked into the email account of Clegg’s former chief of staff, spreading the crisis, even though hacking is illegal (the press and legality, ha!)?  The media, still scarred by not uncovering Jimmy Saville while the posthumously disgraced presenter was still alive, are like a dog with a bone on this one, even though the charge, while still serious, is not as grave and, it has to be repeated, so far unproven.  The right-wing press in particular are terrified of not winning Eastleigh and have blithe contempt for Coalition dynamics (preventing a Tory blue in tooth-and-claw minority government).  Crosby is far too clever to have any direct link to these developments and I’m sure has well-honed deniability, but both Andreasen and the expanding Rennard business are just beyond the realms of coincidence in the context of an important by-election.  Whether they will have any effect given UKIP’s surge and the Lib Dem candidate running on an essentially anti-Coalition message remains to be seen.  The dirty tricks of the Tories (and their press lackeys) are deserving of a bloody nose but sometimes nasty guys finish first.