If the answer is Lembit Opik ...

Its a much used phrase, but as a party we would have to ask ourselves if Lembit Opik is the answer, what is the question ?

If the question is who should be our London Mayoral candidate then the answer cannot be Lembit Opik.

It is important for any politician to be more famous for their work as a politician than their outside of work activities. As Iain Dale points out in THIS article, Boris Johnson has just about managed to do this. Whilst Boris has a shady private life and seems to find it difficult to remain faithful to his wife, he is more famous as a politician. He makes the headlines for the occasional gaffe, but they are political gaffes in the main.

Compare this to Lembit.

Lembit Opik was selected before the 1997 General Election for the relatively safe seat of Montgomeryshire with a reputation as a fearsome campaigner, a vibrant and sharp debater, and was seen as a future star within the party. But over the course of the next 13 years, he became a pantomime character, drawn, almost magnetically attracted to various celebrity partners, seemingly willing to appear in any old Z list celebrity TV show, in short, most Lib Dems I knew winced with embarrassment every time he appeared on TV.

And what of Lembit's parliamentary seat ?

Since ditching his weathergirl girlfriend, getting engaged to and then splitting from a Cheeky Girl, getting pictured in with various other models, appearing regularly on Ant and Dec with various other minor celebs who we'd long thought had left out screens for good, a majority of over 7000 votes was destroyed with the Tories winning by over a thousand votes.

This was one of the biggest turnaround in votes from Lib Dems to Tories in the whole country in 2010. Given that this result was massively different from other constituencies, it says that the main factor why people didn't vote Lib Dem was because of Lembit.

As I say, if Lembit Opik is the answer, the question is probably "Which Lib Dem MP appears to have spent too much time trying to be a a celebrity and being on TV whilst seeing his majority go up in smoke ?"

Is there any Z list celebrity TV challenge that Lembit Opik won't do ?

Every time they announce a new celebrity challenge TV show my heart sinks knowing there is a good chance Lembit Opik will whore himself by appearing in the show. Thankfully he didn't appear in "I'm a Celebrity", but appearances on various TV shows from Celebrity Apprentice (which was a good show but left me feeling Lembit came out of it very badly) to Celebrity Mr and Mrs, and others along the way, as a Lib Dem, make my heart sink.

Lembit apparently feels he is unappreciated in the Lib Dems by the members as a whole and feels that some bloggers fail to give him credit for things he has done.

So should I give him credit for appearing in the latest celebrity feature "Team Ant versus Team Dec" on "Ant and Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway" ?

No, of course not. When he ought to be knocking on doors in his constituency, when he ought to be doing the work his is paid to do, instead he is appearing on a ITV1.

Credit where credit is due Lembit. Now go and do something I can give you credit for.

Ros Scott's election - Good news for the party

I have to say as a non voter in the Lib Dem presidential elections (I was not sent a ballot paper), the result of the election is a good thing for the Lib Dems.

If Lembit had won, what would have been achieved ? More publicity for Lembit, but not another star name for the party. No, with the election of Ros, we get a brand new name for the party, another important visitor for target seats to get publicity from during elections, and for most activists, we get a president who is someone like us. Someone who knocks on doors on grotty rainy days when the cameras are not around, I know, I've door knocked with Ros in North Norfolk on more than one occasion and she is as good at it as anyone.

The result too is also very positive for the party. It tells any one of us that you don't have to be an MP to get elected to such a high position and it also tells us that one of the old adages about publicity is not true.

We are always told "all publicity is good publicity", I think in Lembit's case this has been shown not to be the case.

The Lembit problem

I listened today to Nick Clegg being interviewed on Radio Five Live at lunchtime and was really rather depressed at the amount of time he had to speak about Lembit Opik.

Now I know it was probably only two or three minutes, but this was a few minutes wasted when instead of taling about policies, the good things the Lib Dems are doing in local government or even reminding peopled how awful the government is, Nick has to answer questions about Lembit Opik's obsession with headlines and his celebrity lifelstyle.

It would be easy to blame the interviewer, but she made a good point when highlighting that Lemibit is not afraid to sell a story, pose for cameras or appear on TV, and with the good stories, he has to take the bad. But what does it say about Lembit Opik that he is best known as a "serial celebrity shagger", as tabloids might put it, rather than as a serious politician.

Poor old Nick Clegg sounded genuinely exasperated, offered sympathy to Lembit, but indicated that a period out of the headlines would serve Lembit very well.

For Lembit Opik's sake and for Nick Clegg and the party's sakes, lets hope that is what we get.

Lembit now more than likely to stand as Lib Dem London mayoral candidate

According to this report on the BBC, Lembit Opik now seems very likely to stand as Lib Dem candidate to be London mayor.

Using phrases like "I think I might go and have a chat with the boss to see what's going on. The momentum seems to be developing a life of its own."

and

"Me, Boris and Ken would be a splendid contest. It would get a lot of interest and get the public voting,"

Shows that it is more likely to happen than not.

We just better all hope that he does not get his girlfriend to do the campaign song !

Update - And now he says he won't stand after all.

Lembit's played a blinder !

I've let it be known before that I am not in the Lembit Opik fan club. I have generally found him to stand up for very little and be more about his own publicity that about the Lib Dems.

That said, Lembit has really effectively relaunched his political career after the "Cheeky Girl" headlines tonight with his excellent performance on Question Time.

Lots of applause, really effective and passionate speaking on key subjects, bringing up links to Lib Dem policy and taking on both the government and the Tories. To be fair, Priti Patel was atrocious. Her constant "I don't know" and rather odd raising of the tone of her voice like some Australian soap star really did make her seem lightweight.

But well done Lembit, you played a blinder !

Even more disturbing picture of Lembit

Yesterday Liberal England posted the picture below.



Even more disturbing is the "menage a trois" that the full picture showed. The question is does Lembit insist that Stephen Pound wears the leotard or does Stephen Pound insist that Lembit wears the mac ?


Credit goes to The Guardian for both pictures.

Even when Lembit Opik does the right thing, people assume the worst !

It's funny how it becomes important news on the BBC to report that an MP has taken up an issue and dealt with it appropriately.

So why was it that when I read the story that I expected the worst ?

The fact that the BBC is reporting this HERE seems a little odd when it is quite clear that he passed the matter on to the appropriate local MP, as he should have done, and when discussing it with the minister, he stated he knew the person in a personal capacity, as he should have done.

I guess the problem is that people now always assume the very worst of MP's, so it is just a little bit sad that when Lembit appears to have acted appropriately, the BBC has written this story as if he has a not.

So what has Lembit Opik done?

I gather, from reading other people's blogs, that Lembit Opik has split with Sian Lloyd, the ITV weather girl (I always thought she looked a bit odd, but that's my personal preference), and is now dating one of the "Cheeky Girls".

I'm not quite sure what Lembit has done so wrong. At least Lembit split up from Sian before they got married, unlike certain Tory MP's who have been exposed recently to be either having affairs whilst their wives undergo cancer treatment or running off and leaving their wives for their male interior designer.

It is a shame that Sian got hurt in this whole episode, but she must have have done well from telling her story to the papers. I just hope for Lembit's sake that he is going out with the more attractive (less scary) Cheeky Girl (the one who usually stands on the left).