“Cooking up” Lib Dem campaigns and the marvels of modern technology

By Max Freedman / @MaxieFreedman

On Monday, out of nowhere, a major Liberal Democrat campaign was launched in Kingston. With the startling allegation that the excellent A&E and Maternity Departments at Kingston Hospital where I was born were at risk from “secret Labour proposals“, they elevated local concern and by Wednesday evening had almost 4,000 members of their “Save Kingston Hospital” Facebook Group. It now stands at over 6,700.

Astute Lib Dem followers will remember the claims that Christie Hospital was to close – which helped John Leech to win Manchester Withington in 2005. That hospital is still standing.

The Kingston campaign launch seemed so slick, right down to having Nick Clegg make a web video outside the hospital, that many were surprised that they seemed to have turned this around so quickly. Other surprised people were Healthcare for South West London, who stated that there are no proposals to shut our hospital units, and the hospital’s chairman, who said that closures were “inconceivable”.

It has now been revealed that this campaign was a scare story smear “cooked up at [the] kitchen table“ of a prominent local Lib Dem strategist Dan Falchikov, who was amazingly caught on camera boasting of this in front of the political journalist and assistant editor of the Daily Mirror, Kevin Maguire.

On a train to Waterloo yesterday, Mr Maguire sent a number of tweets to reveal that “Train bloke boasting the hospital scare story cooked up at his kitchen table. Very proud of Facebook following“. He was able to take a picture of the man, which he also posted on Twitter, and was rewarded when his followers were able to identify him.

This amazing expose should lead to scepticism of slick populist Lib Dem campaigns that emerge conveniently just before an election, and also remind us that the wonders of social network technology makes us all citizen journalists – even professional journalists!

The Liberal Democrats have yet to apologise for this cynical attempt at fearmongering, but in the meantime Mr Maguire’s final tweet is a lesson that we should all follow: “stop SHOUTING on trains“.