The Scoop

Lembit Opik limps out of Mayoral race

Adam Bienkov | Friday 2 September, 2011 13:50

Lembit Opik has limped out of the race to be London Mayor, blaming a “remarkable degree of antagonism” towards his campaign in the blogosphere.

Writing in the Evening Standard, Lembit claims that:

Ever since I was first enticed into entering the fray as a potential candidate, I’ve experienced a remarkable degree of antagonism and aggression from certain Lib Dems. Most of it has occurred in the strange and self-styled environment of the ‘blogosphere’ – a parallel universe where some people who’ve never been elected to public office feel qualified to pronounce on those who have. When one meets these people for real, their courage on the internet seems to desert them, replaced by excuses and a quick exit at the first opportunity.

Last year I appeared on a panel alongside Lembit. He spent much of the discussion complaining about the evil British press and after the talk (and a brief signature session with three young women who seemed to appear from nowhere) I got chatting to him.

Lembit was very friendly but got rather annoyed when we started talking about bloggers, which he apparently despises with even more vengeance than he does journalists.

He reserved most of his ire for the Lib Dem activist website http://www.libdemvoice.org and Lib Dem blogger James Graham, who like most members of his party, seem to feel likewise about Lembit.

After losing two Lib Dem presidential campaigns, I’m a Celebrity Get me Out of Here and one of the safest Lib Dem seats in the country, most Lib Dems like their leader have decided that the joke has got old.

And rather than try to prove otherwise, Lembit’s campaign instead spent their time making impossible promises, comedy videos, and arguments with bloggers who dared to call them out.

Despite all this, Lembit was banking on winning the selection because of his far greater name recognition than the other candidates.

In one respect he was right. As Boris and Ken have proved Mayoral politics does depend to a large extent on celebrity.

But in order to win elections, celebrity candidates also need to be credible and popular.

Unfortunately for Lembit, he was neither.

And is that fact rather than the work of any evil blogger that has led to today’s announcement.

Update The final results of the Lib Dem selection are now in. Lembit came in fourth out of four candidates:

Brian Paddick 1,289

Mike Tuffrey 1,232

Brian Haley 316

Lembit Opik 252

Ouch.

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