Letter to the Irish News

Mark Mulholland's letter (August 6th) is a piece of satire befitting of Swift himself. In a flurry of media excitement we have learnt recently of the opening of a Fianna Fail office in Northern Ireland. Perhaps the party is betting that given the eye-watering corruption and economic mismanagement on the other side of the border it has no chance of getting elected anywhere else.

I am glad to see Mr. Mulholland believes that a party founded in 1926 with its roots in a civil conflict almost a century old can offer an alternative to 'old politics'. However, the North has had decades of disastrous misgovernment under the Orange State, Direct Rule and, now, under the DUP/SF junta so I fail to see what difference the addition of a further right-wing populist party will make to the proceedings.

Given that my experience with Ogra FF thus far has been empty desks at Freshers' Fayres I too look forward to Fianna Fail's progression into electoral politics here, if only to see the party electorally obliterated on both sides of the border.

Yours,

The Big Society Vanguard

The Guardian carried a story recently on the Big Society, noting that:

Some of the local partners in the "vanguard communities" that David Cameron said will lead his "big society" revolution were uncertain about what being in the vanguard will involve.

Local areas are unsure exactly what they are required to do, with a spokesman for Liverpool city council saying, "We don't know how it's going to work. We have been given no information about this." Comrade Cameron has clearly failed to educate his cadres in the principles of revolutionary Cameronism; this requires long hours spent at Womens' Institute meetings rigorously debating the problems of the Big Society over tea, and perhaps even cake. Until Comrade Cameron is prepared to do this his cadres will succumb to the most retrograde opportunism and all their volunteering will be misdirected towards 'economistic' goals.

To remedy this problem, Eric Ilyich Pickles, the chairman of the Conservative International who is tasked with carrying out the successful Big Society Revolution, has authored a pamphlet entitled, "What We Have To Do" in which he writes:

"We have said that there could not have been Big Society consciousness among the volunteers. It would have to be brought to them from without. The history of all countries shows that the volunteers, exclusively by their own effort, are able to develop only a certain degree of organisational consciousness ie. the consciousness to organise bake-sales, coffee mornings and attend PTA meetings. The theory of the Big Society, however, grew out of the philosophic, historical, and economic theories elaborated by educated representatives of the propertied classes, by intellectuals. By their social status the founders of modern scientific Cameronism, Cameron and Letwin, themselves belonged to the bourgeois intelligentsia. In the very same way, in Britain, the theoretical doctrine of Big Society arose altogether independently of the spontaneous growth of the volunteer movement; it arose as a natural and inevitable outcome of the development of thought among the revolutionary Tory intelligentsia...

...We are passing from the sphere of history to the sphere of the present and, partly, of the future. But we firmly believe that this will lead to the consolidation of militant Cameronism, that the Big Society will emerge from the crisis in the full flower of manhood, that the opportunist rearguard will be “replaced” by the genuine vanguard of the most revolutionary exponents of volunteering ."

Comrade Pickles has the right idea. Towards the formation of a revolutionary vanguard party! Onwards to the Big Society!

New Group Blog!

I have launched a new group blog with socialistedd from Grinning In Your Paradise and Anne Archist from Hippie Critical. It is called The Great Unrest after the wave of militancy preceding the First World War and the focus will be slightly different from this blog so I still hope to update Roe Valley Socialist regularly. Check it out, I hope you enjoy it!

The Spanish Civil War and the Battle of the Books

74 years ago fascist generals attempted to seize power in Spain. The workers demanded weapons to vanquish the fascist threat. The government of the Spanish Republic at first refused; fatally prevaricating whilst the army made gains from the north, through Vallodolid towards Madrid, and from the south, via Cadiz, Seville and Cordoba. By the autumn, the rebel territories were contiguous, forming a sinister frontier around the western outskirts of the Spanish capital. This was to remain the case until the final fall of Madrid in 1939, not before the rest of the country succumbed slowly but surely to fascist control.

I have written at length about the Spanish Civil War in an article published by the Cambridge Undergraduate History Journal, providing a short marxisant account of the failure of Spanish democracy in the inter-war period and then going on to analyse the debate which has raged ever since the summer of 1936 about the nature of the Spanish struggle and the question of revolution in Spain during the course of the Civil War. I will not go in to the details here but you can read the article for yourself and make up your own mind.

The literature on this topic is of a bewildering size and not even a specialist could hope to cover more than a fraction of it. Furthermore, much of it is necessarily very political and, just like for any revolutionary event, you can tell a lot about an historian's politics from his or her interpretation of it. For anyone just starting out, I would recommend a readable overview such as 'The Spanish Civil War: Reaction, Revolution and Revenge' by Paul Preston- a well-respected British historian, sympathetic to the Republic and the moderate wing of the PSOE. However, for anyone with a working knowledge of the basic events and interpretations, I thought I would list a few slightly lesser-known books that I found to be particularly useful and enjoyable.

P. Broué and E. Témime, 'The Revolution and Civil War in Spain.'

This, to my mind, is a very under-rated book. Broué is a French Trotskyist historian and member of the International Communist Party and successor organisations. It is particularly useful in providing an account and, most importantly, an analysis of the revolutionary potential of the Spanish Civil War, which was neglected in the more conventional accounts by liberal and conservative historians such as Hugh Thomas. Thomas's work, 'The Spanish Civil War', however, is still worth a read for the voluminous amount of detail it contains. A less comprehensive and more polemical interpretation of the Spanish Revolution is provided by the American Trotskyist, Felix Morrow, in his 'Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Spain', written in 1938.

V. Alba and S. Schwartz, 'Spanish Marxism Versus Soviet Communism: A History of the P.O.U.M in the Spanish Civil War.'

'Spanish Marxism Versus Soviet Communism' is, so far as I am aware, the first work published in English to provide a history of the Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista (POUM). It is a condensed paperback of Victor Alba's multi-volume work in Spanish which provides a much-needed critical analysis of the party's emergence, development and ultimately unsuccessful struggle against Stalinism. The POUM was formed from the merger of Andrés Nin's Communist Left of Spain and Joaquín Maurín's Workers and Peasants' Bloc. As one would expect, any group emerging from a Trotskyist party and Right Oppositionist (Bukharanist) group had some ideological issues and, indeed, contemporary Trotskyists were heavily critical of its orientations during the conflict- especially its entry into the the Popular Front. For a sympathetic eye-witness account, George Orwell's 'Homage to Catalonia' is a masterpiece although it inevitably and understandably lacks a wide perspective. For a more critical analysis of the POUM, Leon Trotsky's own political writings on the Spanish Civil War, published recently as 'The Spanish Revolution (1931-39).'

Al Richardson, 'The Spanish Civil War: The View from the Left.'

This is a fascinating little collection, republished in 2007 by the Merlin Press, which contains a lot of interesting primary source material from contemporary writers. It presents an anti-Stalinist revolutionary socialist perspective through a selection of letters, polemics and articles, many of which had not been published anywhere before. One interesting article compares the Spanish Revolution to the German Revolution of 1918 and provides an account of why the revolution failed in Spain (a theme later touched upon by Broué).

Ronald Fraser, 'Blood of Spain: Oral History of the Spanish Civil War.'

Ronald Fraser's book is unique in being a comprehensive oral history of the Spanish conflict. It brings together a wide variety of participants, from peasant militiamen and senior members of the Spanish Communist Party (PCE), to ordinary Spaniards who were not members of any political organisation. Reading Fraser is the closest many of us will come to hearing the voices of those who lived through the Civil War and for this it is invaluable as an authentic chronicle of a variety of contemporary perspectives.

The Budget: Lies, damned lies, and statistics

Now that the Budget has had time to sink in, the grandiose claims by George Osborne that spendings cuts and fairness have been reconciled have turned to dust; the bleats about concessions by the pathetic Liberal Democrats have dissolved in a solvent of dishonesty; and the true reality of the most regressive budget in generations has become clear. The treacherous Liberals may honestly believe that we live in a pluralistic democracy in which political power can be shared equally (the assumption behind Vince Cable's remarkable comparison of bankers and trade unionists) but Tuesday has demonstrated otherwise. This is nothing short of class war by the rich against the poor.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) yesterday went through the Budget, separating out those elements already announced by the previous government from the announcements made by George Osborne on Tuesday. Their conclusion is that:

"Osborne and Clegg have been keen to describe yesterday's measures as progressive in the sense that the rich will feel more pain than the poor. That is a debatable claim. The budget looks less progressive – indeed somewhat regressive – when you take out the effect of measures that were inherited from the previous government, when you look further into the future than 2012-13, and when you include some other measures that the Treasury has chosen not to model."

One of the major omissions from the government measurements on the impact of this Budget is the 25% cuts pencilled in for some departments. As a rule, the poorest in society are more reliant on certain key public services so they will be disproportionately impacted. Moreover, with a larger proportion of their income comprising of benefits such as housing benefit, Osborne's cuts will fall hardest on the poorest. Not content with this, the Chancellor today added:

"If, over the coming couple of months, we can find further savings in the welfare budget, then we can bring that 25% number down. In the end that is the trade-off, not just between departments, but also between the very large welfare bill and the departmental expenditure bill."

Tellingly, tables on the distributional impact of this Budget end in 2012-13; before £8bn of further welfare cuts are planned. Top class spin and an admission of the inequitable impact of planned spending cuts. Added to this, of course, is the rise in VAT- the most regressive tax of all- to 20%. Moreover, apparently a rise in National Insurance contributions by employers is a 'tax on jobs' but a rise for employees is different .

Perhaps the most fanciful, and not to say disgraceful, claim was that by Vince Cable who had the sheer nerve to suggest the Liberal Democrats had safeguarded some 'fairness measures.' This evening mentioned the rise in child tax credits in particular. He forgot to add that as Osborne gave with one hand, he took immeasurably more with the other. Along with a freeze in child benefit, housing benefit is to be capped, and housing charities have said that this could tip tens of thousands of people into homelessness. Landlords will be forced (not that many of them need much forcing) to increase rent to make up the difference, and many families already in the breadline will face eviction.

This will especially be the case in London as the low-income people will be forced out of the city. As Dianne Abbott has said, only 1 in 8 people claiming housing benefit are unemployed; it is low-income working people who will be destroyed by this policy. Campbell Robb, chief executive of the homelessness charity Shelter, said some people claiming housing benefit would lose up to 40% of their total rent: "People will be forced out of one form of accommodation, but there is nowhere for them to go to. We expect to see debt and evictions rise as a result of this."

Cable last night on Question Time argued that he changed his mind on the necessity of cuts because of the sovereign debt situation, the severity of which was most starkly demonstrated by Greece, and Osborne has argued that the figures were 'worse than we thought.' However, Anatole Kaletsky writes in the Times that:

"tax receipts in 2009-10 proved better than expected, £476 billion, compared with estimates of £469 billion in the March Budget and £457 billion in 2009. With public spending also running below previous expectations and tax revenues continuing to surprise, the OBR should project an improvement in this year’s deficit of at least £10 billion."

The situation, in other words, is slowly improving- not getting worse as Osborne has alleged.

On the subject of sovereign debt, moreover, the UK debt is qualitatively different from Greece's. The average debt maturity of Greek government debt is 8 years, for Portugal it is 6 years and for Ireland it is a mere 5; the average for the UK is 14 years, one of the longest in the industrialised world. In other words, most of the debt UK's debt will not mature for at least a decade. Indeed, the Greek crisis reached a new level of severity on 27 April 2010 when the Standards & Poor's rating agency downgraded Greece's short-term debt to 'junk' status; a few weeks later, after the election, demand increased for UK gilts which were seen as beacons of stability in comparison to the dangerous rapids of the Eurozone. Finally, according to the FT:

"foreign investors only hold 30 per cent of the £800bn in outstanding gilts, much lower than eurozone countries. More than 80 per cent of Irish debt is held externally. In Greece and Portugal it is 75 per cent and 72 per cent respectively. This means the UK market is not subject to the more capricious nature of overseas buyers that are more likely to take flight in the event of negative news flow or poor economic data."

The comparison should not be with Greece, whose debt crisis is infinitely more serious than our own, or indeed with Canada on whose model the Tories and Lib Dems allege to be working; Canada when carrying out its deficit reduction plan in the 1990s had a steadily growing economy and not one with growth rates within the margin of error. The most accurate comparison is not with these countries but with Japan, who attempted to cut a budget deficit caused by a banking collapse too quickly and brought into being two 'lost decades' of waste and stagnation from which the country are only just recovering.

A key point in closing is that the IFS has said that the cuts planned by Osborne will tackle 110% of the structural deficit which is much more than is necessary to reduce the deficit to levels that would satisfy the gilt markets. One is led to the obvious conclusion that Osborne and the Tories wanted to cut the state anyway, a priori, and are seizing on the flimsiest of evidence to support their designs. What is more, very few, if any, of these measures were included in the Tory manifesto; indeed, the Tories campaigned against 'Gordon's VAT bombshell' and the Liberal Democrats warned of a similar 'Tory VAT bombshell' of the sort they have colluded in dropping on the heads of the poor. What has been inflicted on the UK is a coup d'etat of cuts that no one explicitly voted for; and the voters of England should share most of the blame for being the only constituency part of the United Kingdom to give majority support to the Tories

As the right-wing of the Lib Dems has elided into the liberal wing of the Tories, Clegg has transmogrified into Cameron, their polished Oxbridge accents harmonising in concord, singing the same baleful tune of pain and austerity like silver-tongued charlatans. They deserve the fate of the republicans of 1848 in France who 'did not succumb; they passed out of existence. Their history has come to an end forever, and, both inside and outside the Assembly, they figure in the following period only as memories...'

Why Ferguson Should Be No Longer Read: an historical perspective on the politics of History

First of all, I must apologise for the dearth of activity on this blog over the last number of weeks. Unfortunately, examinations and post-examination frivolities have absorbed me physically, mentally and temporally. Now that I have recovered somewhat I realise that several things have happened recently which really deserve some critical attention.

Not least in this regard is the decision by Michael Gove, the Secretary of State for Education, to allow the neoconservative historian Niall Ferguson to exercise influence over the content of the history curriculum in the United Kingdom. This decision has been satirised rather brilliantly by Grinning In Your Paradise and I am aware of plans by Priyamvada Gopal to provide some sort of academic response to Ferguson's plans once the curriculum is formally unveiled. (I hope to interview Priya next week for Irish Left Review so watch this space). I thought, therefore, that I would provide some thoughts about this issue in particular and on the more general question of the political potential of history.

The writing of history, and the reception of historical works, reveals quite a lot about the values of a given society. I have written before about the often explicit political character of historians' interpretations of the French Revolution and this applies not only to the twentieth century but to the period in which the Revolution was still happening, and to the nineteenth century as well. In 1898, an article appeared in France called Why Michelet Is No Longer Read, arguing that the famous historian Jules Michelet's passion for the Revolution was no longer in vogue. Indeed, revolution itself at this stage, to which, as Edmund Wilson points out, the bourgeoisie owed their position, meant not the La Marseillaise and le tricolore but l'Internationale and the Paris Commune of 1871. Throughout the nineteenth century, and most certainly by 1848, on which the dialectics of revolution hinged like a see-saw, the bourgeoisie in France and Germany had negated its revolutionary potential upon partially achieving its objectives. Revolution in this context was revolution against the bourgeoisie and against property; the bourgeoisie were no longer the Abbé Sieyes of 1789, exhorting his compatriots against the idleness of the aristocracy but the Sieyes of 1799, looking towards a strong executive to defend against 'anarchy'.

Indeed, it is difficult to overstate the searing impact of the Paris Commune on the consciousness of the French bourgeoisie; even Anatole France, supporter of Zola in the Dreyfus Affair and who was to have his whole catalogue of works placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum of the Catholic Church wrote of the communard prisoners in Versaille as "riffraff... hideous, as you may suppose." Gustave Le Bon expressed bourgeois anxiety about democracy in his 1894 work, The Psychology of Peoples, and the event was reflected in James Ensor's 1888 painting L'Entrée du Christ a Bruxelles, where the viewer can make out a red banner, hoisted above a frightening crowd, bearing the phrase, 'vive la sociale.'

It is not only the writing of history but the very idea of a historical perspective that jars with the self-absorbed harmony of a contented class. Hegel, whose dialectic conception of History as the progression of the Weltgeist (or world spirit) towards the realisation of absolute reason in the Universal Stand, informed the radical politics of the Left-Hegelians and, most famously, of Marx and Engels. Nevertheless, in Hegel's own time, given the patronage bestowed upon him by the Prussian State of Friedrich Wilhelm III, his ideas transmogrified into a legitimation of Prussian absolutism as the ideologists of the State argued that Prussia had indeed reached the absolute pinnacle of History. This sounds very familiar to anyone acquainted with Francis Fukuyama's The End of History and the Last Man which infamously argued that the fall of Stalinism meant the perpetuity of liberal democracy as the highest form of human political organisation.

History, therefore, tends to 'end' at the most convenient of destinations as far as these ideologues are concerned. A true historical perspective, however, is at once anathema to this position. It was Bertolt Brecht who said, "Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are," and this encapsulates the restlessness of history, and the potential transience of all social, political and economic relations. Margaret Thatcher's insistence that 'There is No Alternative' is the echo of successive bourgeois ideologues who, in order to normalise the status quo, insist on its 'natural' qualities and the impossibility of its transformation. "The laws of commerce," said Burke, "are the Laws of Nature, and therefore the laws of God." As Marx commented caustically in the Poverty of Philosophy, "Thus, there has been history, but there is no longer any."

This was quite literally the case during the late-nineteenth century debate over methods (Methodenstreit) between the German Historical School of Gustav von Schmoller and the Austrian School led by Carl Menger who sought to abstract economics from the substance of history. Menger wrote in 1883 that, "The theoretical and historical sciences of economy, accordingly, do exhibit a fundamental difference, and only the complete failure to recognize the true nature of these sciences can produce this confusion of these with each other, or occasion the opinion that they can replace each other mutually." As Simon Clarke has written, however, Menger "can make economics a natural science because it naturalises the economic relations of capitalist society."

So what, then, of Gove's plans for the history curriculum? Gove, as is well known, is an ideological neoconservative like Ferguson. We should not be surprised, therefore, that he waxed lyrical about Edmund Burke at the 2008 Conservative Party Conference. He also serves on the advisory board for the magazine Standpoint, owned by the Social Affairs Unit, itself a think tank linked to the neoliberal Institute for Economic Affairs which had a decisive impact on the ideas of Keith Joseph and Margaret Thatcher. Moreover, he is aligned with the Peterhouse-based Henry Jackson Society which gives liberal-left cover for imperialism in the Middle East and whose militant liberalism (quite literally militant) stems from a negative reaction to the knowledge that Fukuyama was not, in fact, right to precociously welcome the End of History.

In 2008, Gove wrote an article praising Ferguson's work on the First World War, and mourned the loss of the pre-War Belle Époque in which it "was possible to travel, and trade, freely across a Europe run, mostly, in a tolerant and liberal fashion." He continues: "The ramshackle empires of the first decade of the last century may have offended nationalists and utopians of every stripe but they were delivering increased material prosperity and greater personal freedom at a steady rate." This is a typically Euro-centric attitude in which the crimes of the 'ramshackle empires' are totally ignored; nowhere is it mentioned that the 'material prosperity' to which Gove refers (bear in mind this was the Edwardian era where the gap between rich and poor was perhaps never so wide in British history) came at the expense of the exploited toilers of the British Empire. Membership of 'Club Empire' was so exclusive and beneficial that, out of sheer benevolence, the British employed the first documented use of a concentration camp in the Boer War not two decades beforehand to subdue the Boers. Let us not mention the Amritsar Massacre of 1919 either, lest it spoil Gove's dangerous imperalist daydream with the troublesome sound of relentless rifle-fire and the screams of tens of thousand Punjabi men, women and children.

Even on the European continent in this period, the 'Liberal parliamentarism' to which Gove refers was a corrupt imitation of democracy. In Italy, a violent and crooked elite perpetuated its own rule through clientelism and Trasformismo; Germany's executive was still drawn from the exclusive caste of Junkers; the Spanish government crushed a revolt in Barcelona against colonialism using the army during 1909's 'Tragic Week'; Britain, too, had not yet introduced universal suffrage; and Russia was still in the grip of Tsarist autocracy. Only when viewed from the perspective of the political classes and finance-capital can this period be seen as a positive model; from the perspective of the 'ragged-trousered philanthropists' of Robert Tressell, the Dublin proletariat during the 1913 Lockout or the oppressed masses of the colonial territories, life was grim. It is this elitist and imperialist perspective that we can hope for from Ferguson, a man who derided the national liberation struggles in India and other former colonies as being irrelevant to the fall of the British Empire, and who thinks America should begin acting more like the empire it is coming to represent.

The resurrection of Empire as a positive development in world history is clearly linked to the current age of imperialism for which Gove and Ferguson are prominent cheerleaders. There is a link between Armritsar and Fallujah, but in the neoconversative narrative both were aberrations from a largely peaceful norm. I will withhold further fire until the curriculum itself is announced but as we all know, the writing and teaching of history is an inherently political exercise so the appointment of such an ideological dogmatist as Ferguson by the similarly right-wing Gove is an unwelcome turn. In the battle against bourgeois hegemony the ideas of Niall Ferguson need to be contested before they can ossify into 'common sense'. This should be a chance to turn the debate around and put these ideas on trial; to challenge the ideological state apparatus and its particular political conception of history. It is a chance we cannot miss.

UUP BBQ. Not amended at all, honest...

From Facebook, here is the invitation to Billy Armstrong MLA's annual BBQ:

"Come along to this year's big UUP BBQ - everyone who has attended other years has raved about the great night's crack! Including Party Leader (identity to be confirmed), Lords (we could be getting another one soon!), MLAs and Cllrs from right across NI! Sadly no MPs this year. We've had up to 200 guests in other years and this year we're aiming bigger again! The menu is usually impressive: steaks, pork, chicken, salads as well as Reg Empey's head included in the price of your Ticket - 15 Pounds. Also, Basil McCrea and David McNarry are bringing their extra-sharp steak knives to help serve up!"

Statement from the Central Committee

Roe Valley Socialist has received a statement from the Central Committee of the Social Democratic and Labour Party:

“Following his capitulation and admission of Right Deviationism and membership of the Fitt-Devlinite Left Opposition during a meeting with party leader Comrade Ritchie this morning, the party whip has been removed from Comrade O’Loan MLA until his Trial at a future date, to be determined by the party leader.

Comrade O'Loan has been accused and has admitted to the murder Comrade Kirov, the attempted assassination of Comrade Lenin, the destruction of tractors and assorted farm machinery in North Antrim Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, the sabotage of mines in Cushendun, making secret deals with foreign powers and Sinn Féin, and derailing trains in Ballintoy.

Further, in the interests of achieving Party Organisation, the Central Committee has devised a Five Month Plan, to be fulfilled by local cadres through Stakhanovite efforts in four months. Party branch chairs will be rewarded the Order of Durkan at the next Party Congress for outstanding organisational achievement."

ENDS

Party Leader Margaret Ritchie, signing Decrees at her desk in the Kremlin

Disclaimer: I fully agree with the action taken by the party leader, this is just for fun and not intended to seriously imply the decision was Stalinist or unwarranted.

Parliamentary Bonapartism

Last week, Nick Clegg announced the "biggest shake-up of our democracy" in 178 years- since the Reform Act of 1832 which extended the franchise from aristocrats to, er, the propertied bourgeoisie, ignoring universal suffrage introduced by the Representation of the People Act 1928. Looking at the new Cabinet, one may be forgiven for thinking Clegg in fact meant that British democracy has returned to 1832; the Aristocrats Party has at least 2 seats, the City of London Party has at least 4 and the Millionaire Party sweeps the board with a massive 18 [Note: there is significant overlap between members of the Aristocrats, the City of London and the Millionaire Parties].

More significant still is the fact that two parties- Labour and the Liberal Democrats- ran on election manifestos explicitly rejecting cuts in 2010 and received 52% of the vote; the only party supporting immediate cuts was the Tories who received only 36%. Yet, today the Con-Dem Coalition will announce £6bn of cuts, the Liberal Democrats having changed their party line as quickly as the Comintern of the 1930s. With Vince Cable isolated, the terrible twosome of blue-blooded George Gideon Oliver Osborne (set to become the 18th Baron of Ballintaylor) and former investment banker, David Laws, will be free to wield the axe. Ironically, Cable's own relatively small department, Business, Innovation and Skills, is having to cut a massive £1 billion, including from universities and medical research!

To cement their coalition, the parties have taken a number of extraordinary steps. Firstly, they have proposed the violation of Parliamentary sovereignty by the introduction of a 55% 'super-majority' which would maintain the Tories' grip on power even if the Liberal Democrats were to leave the coalition. Why doesn't Cameron go even further and declare himself Emperor? I'm sure he feels deep down that he is entitled to it. Secondly, under the guise of a boundary review, they want to redraw the constituency boundaries in a manner which is almost certainly going to reduce the number of Labour seats. Thirdly, within the Tory Party, David Cameron has secured the neutralisation of the 1922 Committee of backbench MPs by allowing the payroll vote of ministers, junior ministers and Parliamentary Private Secretaries to influence proceedings.

On a side note, Nick Clegg has welcomed the public to suggest Bills for repeal. Given that despite his ostensible love of liberty, his historic announcements say nothing at all on the right to strike which is being significantly curtailed in the UK through the use of the judiciary, I would propose he replaces the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 with the TUC's 2006 Trade Union Freedom Bill!

The House of Lords: Join Online

Before the General Election, the Conservative Party nominated two of the prominent businessman who supported their National Insurance policy for a peerage. One, Sir Anthony Bamford, chairman of JCB, has given the Tories more than £1m over the past five years and the other, Simon Wolfson from the retailer Next, has given nearly a quarter of a million as well as working with George Osborne on Tory economic policy.

Lord Oakeshott, the Lib Dem Treasury spokesman, said at the time that:

"This is too close for comfort. The ink is hardly dry on the letter riding to the rescue of George Osborne over his national insurance plans. It looks like they may be paid off even before polling day. It confirms the letter about NICs was a Tory front, and we are still living with big money politics."

Now that the Lib Dems have conceded that employer National Insurance contributions will not be raised (employee contributions will go up, of course), let us see how vocal they will be in their opposition now.

Perhaps given the usefulness of having friendly businessmen in the second chamber, the Tories appear to have simplified their nomination process: