It’s not that you’re not critical of Labour ever, know you are at times. It’s that LC’s line on the expenses issue has been exceptionally poor, and I was hoping that a blog with so much influence amongst the Labour grassroots wouldn’t have given Brown such an easy ride over this issue. Hazel Blears is hardly the worst and she’s an extremely easy and convenient scapegoat, and going huge on the Tories (‘Broken Party’ indeed) is letting Brown off the hook for his own party’s behaviour and his own utter lack of contrition.

Well, just to take one example, here’s a quote from the article which you seem to think is just like the Labour Party line on Hazel Blears:

“In an earlier thread commenter redpesto suggested we need an Italian style ‘clean hands’ campaign. I agree. And for a start we need heads to roll on all sides of the political spectrum to show that this behaviour cannot be batted away with ease. Starting with Hazel Blears and James Purnell – both of whom should be fully investigated by the HMRC for avoiding Capital Gains Tax. What other recommendations would you suggest for such a campaign?”

Or the previous article, which begins:

“You know what really makes me mad about the MP expenses scandal? It’s not so much the ludicrous claims – for bathplugs, ugly ceilings, scratched sinks etc – as the attitude from many MPs that this was all OK because they weren’t being paid enough in the first place.

I am enraged by this excuse.”

“Regardless, it’s what you consider to be the ‘Top Stories’ that shows where your focus is.”

Really? I (genuinely) think the top stories bit is less important than the articles for showing where the editorial focus is. But in any case, how is highlighting bad news about Labour’s record in government which might otherwise have been buried by the expenses stories an example of ‘Tory-bashing’? (for a number of people on the liberal-left, me included, the news that inequality has been rising since 2005 is absolutely appalling and makes me far angrier with the government than even the worst of the MPs’ expenses).

Glad you like the ConservativeHome coverage, but surely it would be boring if all websites covered news from the same angle?

Don, where are the attacks on ministers? Where are the stories of grassroots outrage? Where’s the calls for sackings? Where’s the acceptance that both parties are just as bad as each other? ConservativeHome has been fantastic reading over the weekend because of exactly that attitude – instead of going after Labour they’re putting pressure on the Tories to clean up. Liberal Conspiracy has barely even tried, and that’s the point I’m making.

Liberal Conspiracy has spent more time questioning the Telegraph’s motives (a line of enquiry that’s been curiously absent from more recent stories) than considering what Labour MPs have been doing. Regardless, it’s what you consider to be the ‘Top Stories’ that shows where your focus is. If you didn’t consider them to be your focus, they wouldn’t be Top Stories. From that, it seems your focus is on Tory bashing, not on doing anything to help clean up politics.

This is the site which during the time period you refer to published articles such as: “Gordon Brown’s definitely finished now…”, “Time for Hazel Blears to go”, “Labour plummets; polls says publish all expenses”, and “We should welcome the expenses scandal” (illustrated with a picture of Gordon Brown) ?

How do any of those, or your example of an article about how Labour is failing to tackle inequality, help bash the Tories? Just curious.