Jo Swinson’s claims to be potential PM are just more fake news
In the same week the leader of the Liberal Democrats was forced to deny a fake news report that she fired stones at squirrels while calling them “pleb bunnies”, she also revealed an unequivocal willingness to fire nuclear weapons.
And Jo Swinson is meant to be the reasonable candidate, a self-styled candidate to be Prime Minister.
She is instead fast becoming the Marmite candidate of this election campaign.
Having been barred from the first televised leaders’ debate on the grounds, she then managed to make headlines following a post-match interview when she gave an affirmative, one-word answer when asked if she would press the big red nuke button while at the same time insisting she would not leave our children a “boiling planet”.
Setting aside the state of the world after a nuclear fall-out, the Lib Dems have pinned their hopes in this general election on two things: the popular appeal of Swinson and the simple message that she will revoke Article 50.
On both counts, they have miscalculaed and that is now being reflected in the polls.
When Swinson took over as leader in July, she was, despite her years as a junior minister in the Tory-led, austerity delivering, Lib-Dem coalition, a relative unknown. Indeed, in the leadership contest, she was presented as the “next generation politician”. A fresh face. A new start. Four months in and the more the public get to see of her, the less keen they are.
Women appear to have a particular aversion, with some suggesting she is a little school prefectlike while others, more seriously, suspect she is an extremist and a fake. Her claims that the Lib Dems would revoke
Article 50 have cast her as undemocratic.
This is a time for the Lib Dems to be the moderates, to build consensus, and to tell the truth, and while Swinson continues to peddle a future she cannot deliver, she will always be seen as fake.
And that is evident when even her most candid admission that she smoked cannabis at university and enjoyed it, simply sounds like something she would make up to impress, because few actually believe it to be true.
And there’s the serious point. Trust has become a real issue in this election and the renaming of the Conservative party’s press office Twitter account as “factcheckUK” – presenting itself as a credible fact-checking service while it pumped out party propaganda – for the duration of the TV debate is simply symptomatic of how lies have become normalised.
This is a seismic election. A battle for two futures – aside from viewers in Scotland
– and it is a contest pitched between two unpopular men offering two visions for the country that the public already suspect are based on falsehoods.
The question for the voters in Scotland is not so much who you trust to be your next prime minister – because we will get who we are given – but who it is you trust to get Scotland’s voice heard by whatever man is in No 10. And that’s no lie.