1) Consistency is not really her strong point, Bookdrunk said yesterday when Unity blogged the amendments Tory MPs are proposing to the HFE Bill. There’s Mr Edward Leigh supporting amendments to reduc the limit to 12, 14 or 16 weeks and there’s Nadine Dorries supporting reducing the limit to 20 weeks and 16 weeks! Is she not conviced by her own arguments?

But you see, that isn’t her ultimate agenda and neither is it of these other mysogynist MPs.
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1) On March 19th Nadine Dorries MP published a blog-post titled The Hand of Hope, which featured this image of a small hand apparently coming out of a uterus. She said:

When the operation was over, baby Samuel, at 21 weeks gestation, put his hand through the incision in the uterus and grabbed hold of the surgeon’s finger, a gesture which was apparently met with a huge amount of emotion in the operating theatre. Dr Bruner said that it was the most emotional moment of his life and that for a moment he was just frozen, totally immobile.

Except, it was a hoax and Dr Bruner himself had said so. This was pointed out on several blogs including LC and Dorries wrote another post defending her actions with the view that the photographer, a born-again Christian, should be believed over the surgeon (who she had earlier quoted herself).

The Hand of Hope also makes an appearance on the pictures and video section of her new campaign. In other words, a member of parliament is actually perpetuating a hoax that has been debunked several times.

In many ways, this sums up her entire campaign.
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A week ago Nadine Dorries launched the 20 weeks Campaign through the Daily Mail, which wrote up this glowing story and dedicated its editorial comment strip to supporting it. The 20 Weeks website has Nadine Dorries MP’s picture on every page and she has promoted it relentlessly through her blog. So we can reasonably assume it is her campaign.

But who is behind this campaign? Is it just Ms Dorries? The website doesn’t say. On the Q&A page however it does have this question: Is this a religious campaign?. Answer: “No. There are people of all faiths and of no faith who support this campaign.”

But that’s about it. Shouldn’t we be told who is running a campaign fronted by a Conservative MP?
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Today on Liberal Conspiracy we have a treat for you. This week we officially launch our campaign: Coalition For Choice, to support the HFE Bill and develop an online advocacy group in favour of extending abortion rights over the longer term.

See the website for more about our aims.

To mark this launch we have a week of Nadine Dorries MP on Liberal Conspiracy! We will illustrate how this Conservative MP:
- has consistently misrepresented the arguments around abortion;
- is fronting campaigns by Christian groups without declaring so;
- is promoting hoaxes on her websites;
- has frequently and wrongly smeared reputable journalists and scientists;
- hides her true long-term intentions on the issue of abortion
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I guess should have mentioned and emphasised this little-known-fact earlier. But for a little while I had some respect for Andrew Gilligan’s journalism. Once he went way over the top and sold his soul to the Evening Standard’s vendetta against Ken Livingstone, that evaporated.

First, a bit of background.
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This piece of news is too delicious not to write about. Bruce Anderson says Boris is a libertarian. And yet the Sun says London’s new mayor is planning to ban consuming alcohol on the tube.

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I try and be an optimist, so here goes…

1) Closeness of the race says to me that right-wing newspapers have little impact. Despite the combined endorsement of The Sun, Daily Mail, Telegraph, Times and Evening Boris, there was only 6% between them. I wish we had better exit polling in this country because I bet most voted for Boris on the basis of change, not al-Qaradawi or Lee Jasper of Hugo Chavez.

2) He started off from the traditional right Spectator crowd and gradually changed his mind on nearly everything. The Congestion Charge will remain; he’s also opposed to the Third runway; he backed off on repealing the smoking ban; embraced London’s multiculturalism; said he was proud of his Muslim heritage (compared to what he used to say); said he supported amnesty for long-term illegal migrants; is unlikely to try his new fangled and super-expensive bus programme.
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01:52am Boris said:

On a more serious note, Johnson said: “I do not for one moment believe that this election shows that London has been transformed overnight into a Conservative city.”

But he said he thought the result did show that the Conservatives could be “trusted with the greatest, most cosmopolitan and generous-hearted city” in the world.

He got the first bit right. He still needs to prove the second part.
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I’m with Nathaniel - frankly I couldn’t muster up much enthusiasm to care for how many seats Labour lost or the Tories won or whether the Libdems had a great night. But what the hell was the BBC coverage about?

I realise that people are increasingly becoming apathetic to politics. But that’s most likely because our politicians are not very interesting and our democratic institutions aren’t all that democratic.

Surely its NOT because we’re dumb idiots who have trouble paying attention or understanding how percentages move up or down. Jesus, I felt deeply patronised last night, especially by the idiot who dreamed up those pathetic graphics that Jeremy Vine had to refer to every five minutes.
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LIBERAL CONSPIRACY CALLS FOR KEN LIVINGSTONE
… on the basis a wide range of conversations we’ve had throughout the day with people in the field and with senior insiders… and my mates from the pub.
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2am I’m signing off from the live-blogging for now. It’s become boring and the only graphics the BBC can muster up is the tired Gordon Brown ‘From Stalin to Mr Bean’ one… besides, I have an article to file. I might continue in the comments though.
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Trying to create a bit of mischief today, the Daily Mail says the Fabian Society “savages” Gordon Brown by calling him ‘neurotic’ and saying voters have ‘written him off’.

Sunder is saying that about the Labour party rather than Gordon Brown, but the spin is to be expected from Daily Mail. Is the relationship between Dacre and Brown has cooled? Either way, applied to the Labour party this prognosis is patently obvious. The article says:
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What do you call a libertarian blogger who is adamant that people should follow the rule of law but ends up in court for drink-driving? Tsk tsk. And we had such high hopes for you Paul Staines. via MoT

So David Cameron admits that he hasn’t exactly kept to his promise of “ending Punch and Judy politics”. Well there’s a surprise. The king of sarcasm, Justin McKeating, nails it:

David Cameron has admitted he has not managed to keep his pledge to “end Punch and Judy politics” - blaming the fact that calling the Prime Minister a cycloptic psychopath has proved a better strategy.

“I will absolutely hold up my hand…this is a promise I couldn’t be bothered to deliver,” the Tory leader said.

“Look, what would you do? You can spend all day formulating policy and listening to the petty concerns of voters. But when your spin doctors tell you that portraying the Prime Minister as a hapless, lonely weirdo is an easier way to win the general election, you jolly well need to sit up and listen.”

He said prime minister’s question time was “an adversarial system” adding: “Of course we don’t have a policy worth a candle. When standing up and making thinly veiled innuendoes about the Prime Minister’s sanity has proved a sure-fire way to get ahead in the the opinions polls, who needs them?

“I do accept that I take a rubbish approach. It is rubbish. I don’t make any apology for that.”

Writing in the Daily Mail, Peter Oborne, perhaps the only reason to read that paper, said this last week:

There is always a herd instinct in British politics and David Cameron has confidently placed himself at the head of an ugly, baying mob. Like all mobs, Cameron’s brutish band of brothers has little interest in decency or decorum.
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Just like the Tory leader today, Tony Blair very rarely attacked his opponents on matters of policy. Instead, like Cameron, he concentrated on personal issues. Blair portrayed John Major as weak, dithering and the victim of events. Cameron does exactly the same to Gordon Brown today.

Admittedly, I’m not a fan of this silly politics either and anyone who’s surprised Cameron went back on his promise should really go back to the comments section of Guido Fawkes and stay there.

But are attack ads so bad? The Libdems unveiled two attack ads this week, with Boris and Ken in their sights, and both have been universally panned by commenters on Libdemvoice. Ok, they’re not funny but I don’t see a problem with attack ads.

Aren’t they the future, given that there are no broadcasting rules on YouTube and the Libdems can release as many as they want without worrying about Ofcom? Who wouldn’t be seduced?

Will the British public really be repelled by it all? Or is it more that we wish the public would not be seduced but as soon as its proven they work (like in the USA), then everyone will jump on the bandwagon?

I’ve never seen so many videos against a candidate for a British election. If there’s one thing the Mayor elections has shown, its that there are plenty of creative Boris-stoppers out there.

Of course I couldn’t limit this list only to ten. If there’s any important ones you think I’ve missed out, let us know in the comments. This list also includes the Kate Nash ‘dickhead remix’ that was taken off YouTube!
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As you would have noticed already, the colour scheme has changed further over the last week. For that you can thank Jennie’s “pus and blood scheme” comment which, if a bit stark, was quite apt I thought. I realise the Libcon look and feel is still a bit inconsistent and I’m working on that. Suggestions always welcome.

I should have announced this earlier but… I’m pleased to announced that Alix Mortimer, Mat Bowles and Laurie Penny have joined as regular contributors. There’s more changes to the LC contributors coming, but I’m currently in the process of launching our next campaign (more tomorrow hopefully) so am busy with that.

Lastly, (and this is for the computer geeks only) I’ve enabled WP-Cache for this blog because the front page layout makes more database queries than a normal blog would. My only problem is that the ‘Recent Comments’ tab on the right doesn’t update when cacheing is enabled. Anyone know how I can still keep that dynamic?

Now that it has backed down over the 10p tax band, we need the government to lose over the 42 days legislation too. Labour loyalists might balk at this but not only would it be good for our democracy, but its an incredibly bad piece of legislation.

On Monday Jackie Ashley faithfully asked loyalists to hold their nose:

For after the 10p vote will be plenty more possible crises, not least the vote over the 42-day detention proposal. On both, I am 100% against the official government view and, with every instinct, on the side of the Labour rebels. But disaster is looming and the real parliamentarians have carefully to weigh in the balance what they now do, and ask how much likelier it will make a Tory landslide a year hence.

This sort of thinking is appalling. It is the road of good intentions to hell.
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The polls have now closed and counting has begun for the state of Pennsylvania in tonight’s stand-off between Clinton and Obama.
Update: Clinton wins by around 10% of the vote, but it won’t be enough to make the delegate count.

MSNBC are saying that the pledged delegate count for Hillary is basically over. She didn’t take enough of a lead in Pennsylvania.
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Yesterday marked the 40th anniversary of Enoch Powell’s ‘rivers of blood’ diatribe, and any resulting debate on immigration cannot pass without hyperbole and hand-wringing that gets us nowhere.

No surprise that the right-wing dinosaur Simon Heffer was found squealing that accusations of racism levelled at that great chap were “a deliberate lie”, despite the fact he was specifically warning that allowing non-white people into this country would destroy it. There’s a more reasoned piece here on centre-right but to no surprise the commenters have shouted him down as a closet-communist.

Right-wingers aside, we’re also plagued by a whole section of nutbags who call themselves libertarians except when it comes to the free movement of people between countries. Irrelevant they may be in the wider population, they are annoyingly over-represented on blogs though.

Problematically, there is already too much conflation in this issue between immigrants and 2nd/3rd generation Britons. This isn’t made helpful when the media start scaremongering either. This weekend Trevor Phillips made a speech that was blown up into a “cold war” by the Sunday Times when the actual text of his speech is far more measured.

I think the problem with immigration is partly that the liberal-left doesn’t have a narrative on the issue. As Phillips rightly says, Enoch Powell made immigration controls into such a tabboo that no one excplicitly wanted to talk about it even if they tried their best to implement them.
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Who said the London Mayor election was boring? I’ve seen more material YouTube material than I can post every day. Anyway. Some Ken supporter has made this video, which I think is actually quite good, even if Ken wouldn’t run it himself.

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The party political broadcast from the Greens aired last night. I have to say - well done on them for taking a different and innovative approach. I quite liked it, though it sort of gives you a headache the second time. Here it is…

Also worth a mention is this Fantasy Mayor game published by the New Statesman. via jim jay.