Paul Waugh has written of how a forthcoming book about the 2010 election — The British General Election of 2010 by Dennis Kavanagh and Philip Cowley, published by Palgrave later this month — reveals that “Cleggmania” from the TV debates caused complacency in Lib Dem circles and may have cost the party seats.
And I have got hold of another amusing little extract from the book, too:
Whilst the extra media attention (and accompanying money) from Cleggmania was welcome, foreign correspondents travelling with the Lib Dem team demanded things in return. At one point, a Russian TV station contacted Clegg’s press secretary asking if they could be filmed taking a sample of his blood so that they could use the DNA to trace his Russian ancestry. There being relatively few Liberal Democrat voters in Russia, they were politely declined. Cowley Street also organised tours for Vince Cable and Paddy Ashdown, the latter focusing primarily on seats in the south-west. Cable’s tours had originally been intended to be more high profile, but with the post-debate attention now focusing almost exclusively on the leader, Cable would occasionally wonder out loud why there were so few journalists present.
Looks well worth a read.
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