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I’m doing a bit of a thread on how people cover the Lib Dems which is also related to Question Time audiences, so apologies for this in advance.
Firstly, I like that QT format, getting audience selection balanced right is incredibly tough, and people should stop being so sensitive about politicians being asked tough questions.
It does seem there were very few Lib Dems in the audience last night, I’m not going to moan about that - like I said this is selection is tough and the BBC get dinged whatever they do.
But there were lots of pundits last night using the audience reaction to Jo Swinson as some kind of test even though she was selling her policies to an audience made up overwhelmingly of hostile supporters of other parties.
Too often people writing or pontificating about smaller parties don’t take the time to think about the different nature of campaigning for those parties and the structural challenges they face.
When The Independent Group formed we briefly had a moment when we saw what it’s like when people used to being in a big party try their hand at this (not good). But now we’re back to people who worked in bigger parties casually explaining how they would do it.
There are advantages to this as well, the Lib Dems have probably avoided scrutiny on some things Lab/Tories couldn’t for example. But it’s different.
Talking about the audience reaction and extrapolating conclusions about, say, whether the revoke policy works without considering that the audience is overwhelmingly hostile from the off seems glib to me.
Maybe revoke is wrong, maybe Jo didn’t perform well (I thought she was pretty good but I’m obviously biased) these are all fair opinions. But maybe judge that view on polls etc rather than whether hostile activists ask tough questions.
(There’s also interesting stuff about how a balanced Tory/Lab audience seems to come across worse for Tories and how the whole thing works well for the SNP, but this is long enough).
