Lets see more of Julia Neuberger

I don’t think I’ve ever seen Julia Neuberger speak before.  But after seeing her on Question Time tonight I wish we did.  She was punchy, she was outspoken, she was intelligent and she was articulate.  She also came across fairly statesmanlike, completely unlike either Douglas Alexander (who seemed out of his depth) or George Osborne. To be fair to George Osborne he did a better job than I expected and will have helped win over some of his critics.  Where it did go wrong for him though was when David Dimbleby asked him why he wouldn’t say the same as the Liberal Democrats.  It made us looks like big players. Both Adam Price (who I’ve always thought was impressive anyway) and Justin King, the CEO of Sainsbury’s, were very good too

What this programme also showed though was how the Liberal Democrat message on the economy, ID cards and a host of other issues is genuinely popular.  Yet, despite the best efforts of both Nick Clegg and Vince Cable (both of whom are on the media a fair amount) this message just isn’t getting through at the moment.  I still believe that we will get a ‘General Election bounce’ once people see more of the party, but we need to work harder in the short-term and find a way to hammer home our message.

If anyone did come out particularly badly though from this programme it was the EU’s rules on subsidies and VAT.

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