Thursday, January 26, 2012

An interesting world when Lib Dem policy launch is the lead new story

Despite carelessly leaving my blackberry switched on overnight, the email to Lib Dems from Vince Cable at 6.19am didn't wake me. So an hour later when I was awake, I was even more awake after reading Vince's message. So, Nick Clegg was calling for an earlier implementation of the Lib Dem policy of raising the tax threshold to £10,000. Excellent stuff.

What was of most interest however was watching the BBC News 24 throughout the morning. Nick's tax call was for most of the time the lead story. Go back just a couple of years and the possibility of getting a positive story about Lib Dem policy as the lead news story was, at best, very slim. My experience of the media on policy was that the press would only take an interest in it if there was a possibility of a row at conference. Evan Harris would have his time in the tv limelight as he sought to be friendly to the leadership by moving a hostile amendment. Conference would debate the issue and then back it (unamended) by a healthy majority. And at that point, the media would lose interest and the policy would never appear again in the news.

Well, how things have changed. And my faith in the media has been partially restored with some great coverage today that highlighted that the policy of cutting income tax for those on low and middle incomes being pursued by the Coalition comes from the Lib Dems.

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