Despite the desperate efforts of Labour to claim if people vote LibDem they will get Cameron or the Conservatives’ desperate efforts to claim that if you vote LibDem you will get Brown – this time actually if you vote Liberal Democrat – you will get Liberal Democrats.
And that’s why the old parties are in a spin. They don’t know how to deal with a new politics – only that old unfair, scaremongering, discredited type of politics.
You can tell from the roar of anger by old parties at the Liberal Democrats daring to do well – and their outrage that people liked what they saw and what they heard in the Leader debates (when we finally had an even playing field to lay out our stall) that they don’t like a fair fight. They’re not used to it.
Until now everything from the political system to the media coverage to the amount the old parties have to spend on elections has been all in their favour.
We still don’t have the same level of funding – and the political system hasn’t changed (I’m sure people scratch their heads when they see the graphs constantly in the media that show us top or second on percentage of the vote – but when projected into parliamentary seats getting only about a third as many seats as either of the other two) – but this time we had an equal media platform in the Leader debates. And what a difference that has made.
Out in the streets it is absolutely amazing. I was at a community event in Stroud Green ward on Saturday where local people set out little stalls in front of their houses selling plants, old books and so on – and as I walked around everyone was smiling and wanting to talk about politics and how exciting it was – and yes – voting for us! People ran across the street to talk to me.
In one street in another ward, Crouch End, there is a little hand made diamond poster on a stick in a front garden, handwritten and coloured in: ‘Liberal Democrat and in small writing – Liberal Democrats winning here’ crayoned in our colours. I knocked on the door and met the little girl who had made the sign. She had watched the first debate with her mother and wanted to make a Liberal Democrat stake board for her front garden.
I think there is just such a feeling of relief and hope – that the old order is breaking down – and change is at last really possible.
Lynne Featherstone 
If you and your readers want to see just how much Mandelspin misjudged the way things would go, I’ve just posted a rather amusing video clip that originally appeared on YouTube nine months ago at http://bit.ly/b97EkO
I am a Hornsey & Wood Green constituent. I am a natural Tory, but voted for you last time. I told people that I voted for you because the Lib Dems were the only party with a vaguely sensible policy on civil liberties. The truth, however, was that I loathed the Labour party viscerally and that Gordon Brown (who I figured would become PM eventually) struck me as unfit to run the country.
My views on Labour have since changed. Gordon Brown truly is as awful as predicted. It was in part his incompetence that got the economy into trouble. I know it is fashionable to talk about “greedy bankers” causing the economic collapse with their overblown pay packets and reckless attitude to risk, but Gordon Brown was doing exactly the same thing with the public finances by borrowing too much and relying on cheap credit to sustain a boom. But Gordon did respond in a sensible way to the banking crisis when it came. He was right to bail the banks out and his method of doing so did set the model for other economies. I trust him to express a sensible judgement on crises that involve a deep breath and a big decision.
You guys have just got more nutty. Your “soak the rich” agenda is a legacy of the 1970s. It is deranged to think that you are going to find loads of money by “clamping down on tax avoidance”. And your policy on immigration is lunatic: telling economic migrants that they are free to come so long as they live in a particular part of the UK is unenforceable.
I accept that the Convervatives cannot win in Hornsey & Wood Green, but since I would prefer even to have a Labour government than you, I will be voting for the Conservatives this time. Who knows, I might even vote tactically for Labour to keep you out.
Sorry and everything. For what it’s worth, you seem to have been a pretty competent constituency MP. But your party are nutters.
I wish you every success and fully intend to vote for you. My biggest wish is for a change to the the electoral system.
The public by enlarge have lost all faith in westminster politics. It needs to be changed and i see the LD party as the best vehicle for change.
If the electorate vote for different parties then this should be reflected in the composition of MPS and political decision making.