On December 18th 2009, Iain Dale wrote a blogpost promoting the removal of Kerry McCarthy MP at the next general election. To achieve this he encouraged his billions of readers to donate to her Tory rival in Bristol East, Adeela Shafi. The campaign took off moderately well, particularly on Twitter with the #KerryOut hashtag, and has raised £1,300 for the Tory PPC.
Sadly, there does seem to be a distinct nastiness towards this campaign. I am no fan of Kerry McCarthy, but she seems to me to be just another insignificant Labour backbencher. Other than her prolific Twitter use, I can't see why she deserves to be singled out more than any other Labour drone. I asked this question directly to Iain Dale on Twitter. His reply was that this is not a singling out campaign; each week for the next 12 weeks he will be picking a Labour MP that in his eyes ought to be kicked out.
Well, more than 2 weeks have now passed, and none of Iain's subsequent 89 blogposts are anything to do with ousting any other Labour MPs.
So it turns out Iain Dale did single out Kerry McCarthy. So I repeat my question: why her?
There may be a good explanation, but I am yet to hear it, and he seems coy about providing it. Conspiracy theories welcomed in the comments.
2 comments:
Well, if I were Dale I would aim for Kerry too. New Labour have made her the poster girl for the new media war and the Tory's are better at the new media war. Therefore their campaigning is going to be directed at her.
Also Kerry has made personal, ill-thought out remarks on twitter and is a disgrace of an MP. If you're going to have a public face, that face had better be squeaky clean. But that's just my two pence. It'll be interesting to see how this campaign pans out...
The truth is that Dale was upset because Kerry criticised his magazine and following a twitter exchange blocked him. Dale's behaviour seems like that of a spurned teenager rather than a serious politician.
Kerry is my MP and is excellent in the constituency and her hard work locally will ensure that this campaign fails.
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