Lib Dem "Robo Calls" were doomed from the start

As soon as party officials in the Lib Dems revealed that auto dialers would be used to to make "robo calls" to 250,000 homes, it was clear the party knew it was breaking rules about what type of calls political party's make.

On the day of Nich Clegg's speech to conference the party was spinning the plan as a way to engage with voters, but at the same time requests by the information commissioner for full information about the Lib Dem scheme were, according to the BBC at the time, being ignored on the basis that nobody was available to give the necessary details to them. This, at the time, smacked of the party trying to delay the information commissioner in stopping the party making the calls, but also seemed to highlight that the party was in the wrong, and it knew it. If what the Lib Dems was doing was fine and dandy I am sure the party would have been all too willing to provide the information commissioner with the full info at the earliest opportunity.

So it was with little surprise that yesterday the party was told not do make calls of this sort again, but slightly more surprise that the Lib Dems would not appeal the decisions. After all the Lib Dems were saying two weeks ago that this sort of telephone call was fine and that the part was doing nothing wrong.

So what has the result been ? I would imagine, like me, thousands of people annoyed at receiving a robo-call, and even more now put off the Lib Dems by a whole day of negative publicity when it was proved the party was wrong.

And to think, somebody got paid to make the decision to make the calls in the first place.