BBC comment on policy copying but fail to notice LibDem policies!

Perhaps Liberal Democrats are getting used to the BBC ignoring 23% of those who voted in 2005 and defaulting to two-party coverage in their analysis.

In yet another example, Nick Robinson comments in his piece, Battle of Ideas, how the Chancellor has copied Tory policies, without a mention of the Lib Dems.

How very strange, considering that it was the Lib Dems who, over a year ago, adopted a policy to replace Air Passenger Duty with one based on the aircraft emissions, hence ensuring that empty and low occupancy planes pay for their emissions.

How can someone call them self the Political Editor, when he appears to not know the policies of all three main parties. Perhaps he also failed to notice that the Lib Dems gained more than 16 seats at the last election, having won an equal number of seats for the Tories - taking votes off Labour where the Tories failed to increase their vote.


Nick,

You seem to have missed a rather notable fact, perhaps in the now common goal of getting stuff out quick rather than getting thorough journalism out.

It is not just the Tories, whose policies have been plagiarised. It has been Liberal Democrat policy for over a year to "tax pollution, not people". Replacing the Air Passenger Duty with a tax on the plane has now been copied, first by the Tories, and now by their successors.

I do find it quite strange that as political editor, you didn't comment on just how "old hat" the APD change is... such that Easyjet have been running adverts calling for the change.

Perhaps you might at some point find time to look at how a policy like this comes to be copied. I'd say that it's because it was from a party that still involves it's grass roots in policy making, and has the sense to debate these things at conference...