West of the Tamar, down Camborne way

January 9, 2011 at 9:11 pm (Kernow, Lib Dems, Tories)
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As regular readers will know, if there’s one thing I really can’t abide it’s scurrilous gossip. Also, I don’t have much taste for rural intrigue. So it’s something of a puzzle that I’ve taken to reading the excellent Cornish Zetetics blog.

The reason I bring this to your attention is that the admirable Zetetist has a strange and marvellous story to relate. As you’ll be aware, this week there is a by-election coming up in Oldham. This came about after Labour incumbent Phil Woolas squeaked home last May by 103 votes after a particularly nasty race-baiting campaign. However, it wasn’t the racism angle as such that caused a rarely-convened election court to unseat Woolas and bar him from public office. It was the court ruling that Woolas had made factually untrue statements about his Lib Dem opponent, something that is very illegal under electoral law.

Bear with me here. As I say, these election courts are very rare – the Woolas case was, I think, the first time in 99 years an MP had been thusly unseated – but apparently there could easily have been a second one down in Kernow. The Cornish situation revolves around the Camborne and Redruth constituency, and around two specific individuals.

This comely wench is Julia Goldsworthy, who until May was the Lib Dem incumbent for the seat, and the reason for a generation of spotty teenage boys watching Question Time. In a result even closer than that in Oldham East and Saddleworth, Julia was defeated by a mere 66 votes by this bloke:

This is Tory candidate George Eustice, who is an up-and-coming man and a prominent Friend of Dave. So, what was the issue here?

Last May, the Tories successfully broke the Lib Dem monopoly on parliamentary representation for Cornwall, the two parties taking three seats each and even professional Cornishmen Andrew George and Dan Rogerson seeing their majorities slashed. Mainly this was down to a Tory strategy of ruthlessly mining the second-home vote as a counter to the Lib Dems’ flirtation with Cornish particularism. But there were specific features in Camborne and Redruth.

In contests where the results were unexpectedly close in May, you can actually be quite specific about a lot of the reasons why. In Oxford, Evan Harris was defeated for a number of reasons but mainly because he wasn’t a very assiduous constituency MP, preferring to bask in the adulation of the skeptical hobby community in London. In Ashfield, my old friend Gloria de Piero barely scraped home in what should have been a safe Labour seat, thanks to a hyperactive Lib Dem opponent and popular revulsion at her predecessor Geoff “Buff” Hoon. The closest result of all, Michelle Gildernew’s four-vote victory in the Dreary Steeples, needs little explanation.

So what got young Julia into trouble? Possibly appearing on reality TV shows in skin-tight lycra didn’t help, but compared to the celebrity adventures of Lembit Öpik or George Galloway, she didn’t have too much to be embarrassed about. No, I think what did for Julia was her expenses. Some of these were quite interesting, notably her liking for shopping in Habitat, which may not have gone down well with the plebeian masses of Camborne and Redruth.

However, Zetetist reports that apparently the Eustice camp was putting it about that Julia had flipped her home. This was not the case – whatever about her other expenses, Julia was not a flipper. And it seems she was extremely annoyed by this, which could have made the difference in a contest this close. Word is that, following her narrow defeat, Ms Goldsworthy was incandescent with rage and lawyers were consulted.

So why have we heard nothing about this? I draw to your attention, merely as a matter of interest, that while this little spat was brewing down in Cornwall last May, Messrs Cameron and Clegg were hammering out a coalition agreement in Westminster. It would have been terribly inconvenient for them if, so early on in the coalition, Tories and Lib Dems had been tearing lumps out of each other in Cornwall. And either result would have been problematic for Dave and Nick.

Now, I am absolutely not claiming that there was an unadvertised provision in the coalition agreement for la Goldsworthy to be mollified. Not at all. Dave and Nick are honourable men, and I’m certain they would not resort to crude stroke politics, deploying their powers of patronage to solve a political problem. Nonetheless, it can’t have hurt that, purely by coincidence, Julia got a job at the Treasury as political advisor to Danny Alexander at a salary of £74,000 (some ten grand more than her basic salary as an MP) and subsequently was rather less incandescent with rage than she had been.

Isn’t it great when problems can resolve themselves in so convenient a manner, just by the random working out of coincidence? Isn’t life grandy and dandy?

8 Comments

Meet your new overlords

May 14, 2010 at 5:21 pm (Lib Dems, Tories)

Right, have we settled down? Have we got over the initial reaction to the Cleggeron civil partnership? I think we have, so it’s time to have a look at just what the ConDem government promises. From glancing at the text of the Pact of Blood, there are a number of themes that leap out. I suggest that the Lib Dems played a rather weak hand on their key policies – they haven’t got PR and probably won’t even get AV, which means they’d better hope to God this is a successful and popular coalition if they don’t want to be wiped out – but that both leaders have reason to be happy.

Firstly, let’s backpedal a bit. I always thought Clegg’s personal preference was for a deal with Cameron, but it was never entirely certain that he wouldn’t deal with Labour (especially if Brown vacated the stage) or that his party wouldn’t push him to. In TV interviews during the coalition talks, elder statesmen like Lords Steel and Pantsdown, not to mention ex-MPs Lembit Öpik and Evan Harris (the latter two getting some media gigs while between jobs, of course, although I did wonder where Julia Goldsworthy had got to) conspicuously left that option open. Now, the Lib Dem party line is that Labour wasn’t negotiating seriously, and that the whole thing was scuppered by cranky media appearances from the likes of John Reid and David Blunkett; but I don’t entirely buy that.

Here’s a really good analysis from Julie Hyland of the media shitstorm that followed Brown’s resignation as Labour leader – the key to making a Lib-Lab coalition a possibility. We had a concentrated 24-hour period of absolute fury, not only from the Murdoch and Rothermere media – Adam Boulton’s performance being particularly memorable – with the press banging on about how this was totally illegitimate, and even on the BBC dire warnings about how “the markets” – which is to say the spivs who created the economic crisis – wouldn’t tolerate Cameron not being put into Number 10. It’s clear that the Lib Dems buckled; also that Labour buckled in two different ways.

One way was the Labour leadership giving up the ghost in the negotiations; the other was the hostile response from various Scottish and northern Labour panjandrums on Newsnight. There were a lot of bad reasons for this: they don’t like PR (which would work against Labour in Scotland); they really hated the idea of working with the SNP; they didn’t like Gordon Brown. But the main reason as far as I could see – and remember, this was coming from the über-Blairite faction – was that the ConDem option would be much more efficient at imposing austerity and hammering the working class. Which kind of begs the question as to what exactly Reid and Blunkett are doing in the Labour Party.

But that’s in the past now. What are we looking at for the future?

Firstly, I’d like to repeat my wish that Britain had a genuine party system with a proper socialist party, a proper conservative party and a proper liberal party fighting it out on distinct manifestos, as opposed to a situation where the neocon scum – Blairites, Cameroons, Orange Bookers – control all three big parties. Let the neocons run on their own programme and see how well it fares against real alternatives, say I. But that, unfortunately, is not where we are.

Where we are is a situation where the Tories, in the most propitious of circumstances, still couldn’t get a majority government let alone the landslide they thought they could sleepwalk into not long ago, and where the Lib Dems, having just won support from the electorate on the basis of an essentially anti-Tory campaign, have allowed themselves to be joined at the hip to the Tories for the next five years. This suits both leaders down to the ground. It allows Cameron to nobble the Tory right, who’ve never liked him anyway, and it allows Clegg to nobble the Lib Dem left. Cameron has had to throw a few cabinet jobs the way of the right, but nothing much in the way of policy.

Neither leader dissents from the Friedmanite economic consensus that’s dominated British politics since Thatcher. There are some technical disagreements about how to deal with the crisis, but there’s no disagreement about bailing out piratical spivs and screwing the working class to make it happen. That is, from the left’s point of view, the most important point.

What’s equally important is that in terms of culture war politics, both leaders are basically liberal. This is why cultural conservatives like Tebbit, Heffer and Hitchens minor have never liked Cameron, a Macmillanite Whig by inclination, and why those on the left who have convinced themselves that the Tories are gagging to ban abortion and reintroduce Section 28 have got completely the wrong end of the stick. To anyone who’s actually followed the progress of Cameron and his inner circle of louche West London swells, the articles to that effect in the Grauniad op-ed pages or on Liberal Conspiracy have something of the air of surrealism.

The other point to be made is that this ties in nicely with the way the Lib Dems have been moving under Clegg. I referred in the last post to folks not paying attention – the prime example of that would be the coups against first Charlie Kennedy and then Menzies Campbell, and what these signified ideologically. The whole point of the Orange Book project was to dispense with the Kennedy project of left-of-centre liberalism and refashion the Lib Dems into something very much akin to Guido Westerwelle’s FDP in Germany. Clegg, in a very real way, is Westerwelle redux; and the egregious coalitionist bullshitting from the party’s leftist conscience Simon Hughes is an indication of how deep the collapse goes. One might expect no better of Clegg, a former lobbyist, but Hughes’ whole political shtick is based on him being Mr Liberal Principle.

So anyway, the Pact of Blood. What does it say?

  1. There’s going to be an emergency budget aimed at reducing the deficit by crucifying the public sector.
  2. There will be a comprehensive spending review, with an attack on public sector pensions flagged up, but the enormous white elephant that is Trident is sacrosanct. Suck on that, Liberal CNDers.
  3. Personal allowances will go up, which looks like a fiscal loosening directed to the benefit of low earners, but with VAT also going up the net effect will probably still be regressive.
  4. There’s some fairly vague talk about banking reform, but don’t bet on anything that would spook the red-braced spivs. The Bank of England will get back powers over banking regulation, and there won’t be any entry into the euro.
  5. The Tories have got their cap on non-EU immigration, and the Lib Dems haven’t got their earned amnesty. At least, there is a pledge to end detention of children for immigration purposes, which shows how low the system had sunk.
  6. Fixed-term parliaments, a referendum on AV – which may well be lost, especially if the Tories campaign against it – and a very dodgy proposal to make it harder for Parliament to vote a government out of office. There’s also the Cameron proposal for fewer constituencies of a standard size, which could very easily turn out to be another gerrymander. A committee on Lords reform, and some consideration of the devolved settlements. Also the right of citizens to recall MPs, which sounds great in theory, but just wait until Murdoch decides to target some particular MP for recall.
  7. Raising the retirement age and imposing tougher conditions on workfare.
  8. Gove’s “free schools” boondoggle is still in there. There is no mention of the Lib Dems’ crackpot policy of banning faith schools from selecting on grounds of, er, faith, so we may at least have seen that kicked into the long grass. Higher education funding is deferred to the publication of the Browne report, with the proviso that the Tories will get their way and if the Lib Dems disagree with the Tory response they’ll abstain.
  9. On the EU, the standard Tory position of working the EU system while making “sceptical” noises is retained.
  10. The civil liberties bit is what’s got libertarians excited, such is Labour’s atrocious record in this area. At the very least, the scrapping of ID cards and the National Identity Register are a good thing. Extending FOI provisions, restricting DNA databases and the spread of CCTV, libel reform, protection of trial by jury, defending the right to protest all sound pretty good, and this stuff was all in both the Tory and Lib Dem manifestos – it’s instructive that on this, Labour will be attacking the new government from the right. Note, however, that there are caveats there along the lines of “without good reason” – a government can always find a reason, like terrorists or paedophiles, to justify an authoritarian measure.
  11. Most of the environmental section is unexceptional, except to note that on the new construction of nuclear power plants, provision is made for the Lib Dems to speak against any such proposals and then abstain on any vote. This would seem to be a standard mechanism allowing Cameron to get his way, and Clegg to throw a bone to his activists without actually voting against things that his party opposes.

And, er, sin é. Cameron has his way on anything that’s important to him, it doesn’t look as if Clegg has got any of his party’s trademark policies, and the two parties are close enough anyway at leadership level to make it a comfortable mesh. Whether there are strains put on the deal by bolshy MPs or peers or activists we shall see – I’d be surprised if there weren’t – but this gerrymander that says you need a 55% negative vote for the government to lose the confidence of Parliament is presumably aimed at guarding against that.

And so we move on to a brief consideration of who’s going to be implementing all this. Apart from Cameron in the top job and Clegg as his fag, what does the cabinet look like?

Of course, the Tories get all the top jobs. The boy Gideon gets to be Chancellor, which should make us all jittery, and William Jefferson Hague gets the Foreign Office. Given Dave’s track record on foreign policy, this raises the appalling vista of Hague having to be the voice of reason. Meanwhile, Crocodile Shoes has gone to the politicians’ graveyard that is the Home Office. She should at least provide entertainment value. As Cristina Odone points out, neither the left nor the right like Theresa – the PC left despise her for having voted for retaining Section 28 a hundred years ago, notwithstanding her mea culpas since, and for being unsound on abortion, while the unreconstructed right deride her as the Tories’ answer to Harriet Harman. Whatever about that, since her recent predecessors at the Home Office include Mr Brightside and Wacky Jacqui, it’s not like the designer shoes she’ll have to step into are intimidatingly big.

That strange wee man Gove takes education, and will be introducing compulsory Dungeons & Dragons for the kids. At justice we have Fat Ken, presumably to add a bit of gravitas, where I’d really have liked to see the civil libertarian David Davis. For the leftist trainspotters out there, ex-Trotskyist Eric Pickles takes charge of local government. Eric pledges to empower local authorities, which would be a neat reversal of the Thatcherite power grab that did him so well in Bradford. Sayeeda Warsi, the living embodiment of Tracy Flick, is in there as Tory chairman. And Columbo Letwin, who Cameron esteems but doesn’t let out in public very often because of his disturbing propensity to tell the truth, is given a discreet job at the Cabinet Office.

The Lib Dems at cabinet level are very much of a piece, Orange Book neocons to a man. Nice, cuddly Uncle Vince gets the business portfolio, though he’ll have to recuse himself from any discussions of the oil industry. David Laws, former vice-president of JP Morgan, gets the number two slot at the Treasury – that’s right, an investment banker put into the Treasury. Chris Huhne at energy will be in charge of constructing those new nuclear power stations he’s opposed to. And Danny Alexander is the new proconsul for Scotland. Interesting that the job didn’t go to the Lib Dems’ Scottish leader, Alistair Carmichael, but then Carmichael has often made public his disagreements with Orange Book nostrums, so he doesn’t really fit in with the new orthodoxy.

There are a couple of appointments that have me worried. The extremely belligerent Doctor Fox taking defence, and promising to be the second coming of Al Haig, is one. Owen Paterson being made Norn Iron proconsul is to be expected, although his role in trying to broker a revived UUUC prior to the election surely puts a question mark over both his judgement and Dave’s. And I’m not sure about putting Cheryl Gillan in charge of Wales – she does have the advantage of actually being Welsh, so we’re not talking about a return to the John Redwood period, but appointing a Welsh Secretary whose constituency lies outside Wales looks suspiciously like a reversion to an old Thatcher/Major practice. The Tories and Lib Dems between them hold eleven seats in Wales – were none of those MPs considered up to the job?

And then there’s Iain Duncan Donuts, architect-in-chief of Cameron’s Dickensian “Big Society”, running the DWP where his task will be to out-evil James Purnell. This worries me, and it even worries me that Cameron has been talking a lot about “the common good”. Clifford Longley is very excited about this, tracing the roots of the phrase in Catholic social thought, but I seriously doubt if Cameron even knows what Social Catholicism is. The thing about IDS is that he used to be a hardline Thatcherite but says he’s changed his ideas and become concerned about the poor after reading the Catholic bishops’ social manifesto Taxation for the Common Good. Given the Old Labour proclivities of the Bishops’ Conference, and that the “Big Society” seems to owe more to Samuel Smiles than Leo XIII, I’m a little sceptical about this, and more than a little worried about this idea of farming out the functions of the welfare state to the voluntary sector. What’s even more worrying is the Lib Dems’ Steve Webb being IDS’ sidekick – to know why, read Webb’s contribution to the Orange Book, which managed to mix the worst aspects of Cameroonian “Broken Britain” rhetoric and New Labour pettifogging statism into one great melange of silly.

I would further point out that our devolved Department of Social Development doesn’t vary benefits but mirrors what’s decided in London. If I’m worried, Alex Attwood should be terrified, because there are a lot of benefit claimants in his constituency and he’ll have to implement whatever mad scheme comes down the line from DWP.

You know, it’s only a matter of time before people start saying, “Gordon Brown wasn’t that bad, was he?” And given how awful New Labour could be, that’s saying something.

31 Comments

Shit on toast

May 11, 2010 at 11:57 pm (Lib Dems)

Like I suppose most of you reading this, I’m feeling a bit depressed tonight. Awful as New Labour has been in many ways, the return of Tory government will do that to you. I’ll reflect on the Tories when I’m feeling a bit less dyspeptic. What I will say tonight is, I hope all those lefties who fell for Cleggmania and have spent the last three or four weeks boosting the Fib Dims are feeling a bit silly now. Because anyone who was paying attention could have seen this coming.

Yes, you know who you are. You let your enthusiasm run away with you. You wanted to believe we were still in 2005, with that nice antiwar Charlie Kennedy taking a stance to the left of Labour. You didn’t think the Orange Book was of any importance. You assumed they were a left-liberal party, even as they said they were a liberal party. You dismissed out of hand the suggestion that Nick Clegg was basically a dispositional Tory who couldn’t exist in the Tory Party purely because of its stance on Europe. You found that nice Vince Cable so reassuring, at least if you just listened to his soothing voice and didn’t pay too much attention to what he was saying. You were impressed by Evan Harris, with his groovy ideas about euthanasia and libel reform. And didn’t they look fresh and shiny and new?

It was so easy, wasn’t it, to see the Lib Dems as you wanted them. All you needed to know was that they weren’t the other two. If you were of a left-liberal disposition, it was so tempting to envision the Lib Dems as being like Labour only better – without the war and authoritarianism, without the dreadful Gordon Brown and all his grey placemen, without those boring trade unions – but new and hip and young, like Labour only without the disadvantages. And even as Cleggy signalled for anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear that he was going to go with the Tories, you could allow yourself – just for a few days – to dream of the progressive majority. Well, we all make errors of judgement. When you’re finished shouting at the TV, you should take a deep breath, put the kettle on and think things over.

Meanwhile, let’s just ponder something. What we can look forward to, and (though God knows I don’t credit the Labour leadership with any initiative) what might make things interesting, is the inevitable Lib Dem civil war. David Alton may be yesterday’s man, but he has been a sharp observer of Liberal politics for a very long time and his thoughts are worth pondering. On a more prosaic level, even if Clegg can keep his fractious MPs in line, he’s got his party activists to think about – and beyond them, the voters.

There’s a basic psephological point here. The Lib Dems benefit a lot from tactical voting, as we know. Since they failed to make the much-anticipated breakthrough against Labour in the northern cities, their MPs tend to sit for rural and suburban constituencies in the south. Their main rivals in those seats are the Tories; twice as many Lib Dem MPs have a Tory as their nearest challenger as a Labourite. They benefit rather a lot from squeezing Labour votes on the basis that they are the best-placed anti-Tory candidates. So, how easy will fighting elections on an anti-Tory basis be now? And that’s without considering Simon Hughes or Sarah Teather, who have held off Labour challenges on the basis of positioning themselves to Labour’s left. Hughes’ seat is safe, but I fear wee Sarah may be toast.

One thing about the maths. The Lib Dems hold 57 seats in the Commons. If we take majorities of less than 10% – which is to say seats that would be vulnerable on a 5% swing – as being marginal, that encompasses a full 27 of those 57, and some of those majorities are very small indeed. If pissed-off Lib Dem voters decamp to Labour or the Greens in any numbers – or if some choose to vote real Tory rather than ersatz Tory – then Cleggy had better hope that he gets PR as part of the deal. With PR, he could lose half his votes and come out ahead in terms of seats. Without PR, the Lib Dems could be Donald Ducked in a very serious way.

And oh yes, he’d better hope that law on fixed-term parliaments is rushed through quickly, for if I was Nick Clegg I wouldn’t want to be facing my voters any time soon.

46 Comments

A modest proposal

May 11, 2010 at 12:45 am (Lib Dems, New Labour, Paisleyism)

Well, with Brown exiting the stage, the talks on a Lib-Lab coalition are on as I write. And there’s one thing that’s annoying my brain in terms of the TV pundits and what they have to say about the arithmetic, and the prospect of a rainbow coalition.

First, the basic arithmetic. The winning post to get a bare majority in the Commons – taking into account the five abstentionist Sinn Féin MPs – is 323. Labour and the Lib Dems together have 315 – as the pundits point out, a little short, although more than the Tories can command on their own. Clearly the combo would require at least eight additional votes from somewhere.

Where could they pick up eight extra votes? To me, the answer has been obvious all along, but few people seem to have cottoned on to this. Where do you get eight votes? Easy.

You get them from the DUP.

At this point the bien-pensants go spare, at least those who have considered the issue. Because I find it highly amusing how British political correspondents don’t get the basics about this place. There was on Thursday night and Friday morning some talk on the teevee about how Cameron could count on the support of the “Ulster Unionists”. Would that perchance be the UUP led by Sir Reg Empey, which is indeed allied to Cameron? Because that party doesn’t have any MPs. What you’ve got is the DUP.

The pundits, thereafter, have tended to automatically lump the DUP into the Tory column. I assume this is because they’re reading Norn Iron politics on a left-right ideological spectrum, and thereby assuming the DUP have an affinity with the Tories. This doesn’t really work, for reasons I will get onto in the next post. Firstly, let me say that the DUP’s actual record in Westminster is one of wheeling and dealing with whomsoever can get them something they want, and indeed Sammy and Ian Jr have been going around the studios showing a bit of leg. Secondly, the DUP has just come out of an election campaign against Cameron’s local allies, fought on a fiercely anti-Tory basis. So an alignment with Cameron, while it can’t be ruled out, can’t be taken for granted either.

What’s more, this would put rather few demands on the Lib-Lab alliance. This wouldn’t be a question of having the DUP in government – we’re not looking at Sammy Wilson becoming minister for climate change – but of cooperation in Parliament, not voting down the budget and such. Nor do the DUP have any wacky policy demands – most of the stuff they care about is devolved to Stormont. What isn’t devolved is fiscal policy, and what they care about in terms of Westminster is protecting the block grant – this was their main line of attack against the Tories – and maybe getting a little cheque for police widows and such. And again, since Norn Iron is such a small place with a small economy, this would be much cheaper than any deal that might be struck with the SNP or Plaid – English taxpayers would hardly notice it, and it could be passed off as a peace process overhead.

This would probably be made more palatable if we put it in terms of the Norn Iron Grand Alliance, which would mean our thirteen MPs who take their seats collaborating to squeeze advantage out of the hung parliament. It helps that the other five are not averse to Lib-Labbery – the SDLP have taken the Labour whip for decades, Alliance have had close ties with the Lib Dems since the 1970s, and Lady Sylvia Hermon broke with the UUP due to her affinity with Labour. (One presumes there would also be moral support from the five abstentionists. Naomi Long raised this in the Assembly today, and Martin McGuinness was notably warm on the subject.) There are no automatically pro-Tory votes over here – nor, importantly, are there parties competing with Labour as the SNP does.

So, is this likely to happen? I don’t know, although if there is a Lib-Lab understanding it makes perfect sense in terms of the maths. It would, of course, cause conniptions in some of the Grauniad-reading advocates of a centre-left progressive alliance, that such a government would be reliant on hillbilly Paisleyites to get its agenda through. Which is sort of why there’s a part of me that hopes it happens, for thon would be deadly crack. And, let’s face it, a government of Blairites and Orange Bookers couldn’t be dragged any further to the right by the DUP.

22 Comments

Area man unimpressed by Mr Nicholas Clegg, even less impressed by Lord Snooty

April 18, 2010 at 7:58 pm (Lib Dems, New Labour, Tories)

Let’s take a brief look at what’s been happening over in Britland, where the main business of the election is. The first leaders’ debate has taken place and, bafflingly, the public seem to have warmed big time to Mr Nicholas Clegg, propelling the Lib Dems up the polls. I don’t really get it, but then I didn’t get the SuBo thing either.

Conversely, I find myself warming these days to Simon Heffer. This worries me a little. I’m not sure if it’s my advancing years or Hefferlump’s, but I couldn’t stand him when he was a brash young Powellite. Now that he seems to have transmogrified into the Telegraph‘s answer to Victor Meldrew, and in particular is pouring copious scorn on “Dave” Cameron, I find him rather entertaining. So, Simon has an idea about why Clegg did so well:

We now know exactly who Nick Clegg is: he is Mr Integrity, the nation’s sweetheart, the only honest man in politics. I had thought the public were a bit brighter than that, and would see through his pious, sanctimonious, oleaginous, not-me-guv display of cynical self-righteousness: but they didn’t. And for that we can only blame the two inadequates with whom he had the good fortune to go in front of the cameras: for they were shocking.

Quite so. Mr Clegg has positioned himself as the anti-politician, helped along by his party having been out of power for nearly a century. And when the public dislike Brown and aren’t sold on Cameron, there’s an obvious gap in the market that Clegg exploited to the full. Helped along, of course, by the performances of his opponents. Say on, Simon:

Mr Brown’s impersonation of a robot, and his projection of all the charm of a caravan site in February, were pretty predictable: but the place where hair was really being torn out yesterday was around poor old Dave. The attempt by this trust-funded Old Etonian (and Old Bullingdonian) to come over as Mr Ordinary was rather tragic: if we have to hear much more about his children’s state school and his family’s experience of the NHS, some of us will need medical attention of our own.

But where he really failed, as could easily have been predicted, was when the economy came up. Let us remember one fact above all others: that Gordon Brown has presided over the greatest economic catastrophe in our country since 1931. And yet, when this subject was raised, the audience regarded his promises on how to put things right as positive and Dave’s as negative. For Mr Brown to come out on top in this is like the proverbial one-legged man winning the arse-kicking contest. It defies belief. Yet he prevailed because the Tories, who went along with Labour’s dire economic policy (“sharing the proceeds of growth”) until banks started going bust, have absolutely no credibility on economic matters. Their policies are, except in one or two details, identical to those of Labour. And when you have a real thing and an imitation to choose from, you choose the real thing.

Hmm. Food for thought there, while Craig Murray has a theory about Cameron’s failure to get his message across:

Cameron is being coached for the debates by the Hon. Anthony Charles Gordon-Lennox, son of Lord Sir (sic) Nicholas Charles Gordon-Lennox, grandson of the Duke of Richmond. The Hon. Anthony Charles Gordon-Lennox is the Tories’ communications guru. Tax dodger in chief Lord Ashcroft presumably thinks the Hon. Anthony is worth the £322,196 pa the Tories pay him.

The Hon. Anthony is, naturally, an old Etonian. This is no laughing matter. Cameron evidently has a visceral need to be surrounded only by people of precisely his own caste. Do we really need an 18th century government? Hence his obsession with tax breaks for the ultra rich. Hence also his inability to communicate anything to anyone who doesn’t think yes is pronounced yaaah.

The Tory front bench does, as it happens, tend to remind one of the denizens of the Drones Club in one of Wodehouse’s lesser works. (Except for Gideon “George” Osborne, who has an uncanny resemblance to that bloke in The Fast Show who was in love with his gardener.) It’s the return of Macmillanism, only without Macmillan’s substance. And you know, “Dave” can be as free as he likes with the glottal stops, whilst Mrs Cameron (the daughter of a baronet and stepdaughter of a viscount) seems to have picked up a distinct Estuary twang from somewhere, but there doesn’t seem to be anyone in the Tory leadership with a feel for the concerns of the council estate, as opposed to the landed estate. Bring back David Davis, I say.

Finally, the Thunderer takes a rare trip outside the M25 to the Nottinghamshire constituency of Ashfield, where Labour candidate Gloria de Piero continues to draw media attention. To her credit, reporter Camilla Long does seem to realise – in tones that make you wonder how often she gets out of Wapping – that Ashfield is a depressed area with serious problems related to deprivation, as you’d expect from a former coalfield area. There’s a story to be told there, and the candidate may even be keen to talk about that story, but as with previous coverage, our press seem to be fixated on the candidate having massive norks. Yes, we’d noticed them. Gloria’s tits may be hard to miss, but do they really justify so many column inches in the national press? Not for the first time – and yes, I’m looking at you, Ruth Gledhill – I go to read the Times and wonder if I’ve clicked on the Onion by mistake. That paywall can’t come soon enough.

4 Comments

A very liberal candidate

March 14, 2010 at 12:27 am (Lib Dems, Sex)

There are some things we come to expect with elections, and dodgy statistics are one of them. And not in the manifestos, either. Already a couple of friends in the Labour Party, in widely differing constituencies, have reported the emergence of everyone’s least favourite bit of election paraphernalia, the Liberal Democrat Bar Chart. I’m sure you’ve seen at least one of these – the Lib Dem candidate’s glossy leaflet will invariably have a colourful bar chart purporting to demonstrate that Only The Lib Dems Can Win Here. It will then be cunningly marketed to wavering Labour/Tory/Green/whatever voters who might be bamboozled into lending the Lib Dems a tactical vote.

As a hardy perennial, it ranks right up there alongside the poll the Daily Record always publishes about a week into the campaign, invariably showing Labour miles ahead of the SNP (regardless of what the likely results may be) and accompanied by furious editorialising to the effect that “Only Labour can win! The SNP are dead in the water!! Vote Labour!!!” As with the Lib Dem Bar Chart, this is aimed much more at influencing opinion than reflecting it. And when it comes to the LDBC, so often is this deployed and with such egregious use of statistics that I’m amazed they’ve never been done by Trading Standards.

You may have gathered that I’m none too sold on the Lib Dems. Although they’ve been having their spring conference this weekend, the idea of turning on News 24 to listen to inspirational addresses from Mr Nicholas Clegg, Ms Lynne Featherstone and Dr Death Evan Harris has proved eminently resistable, although Vince Cable’s lugubrious Yorkshire undertaker routine is not uncongenial. Cranmer takes the jaundiced view, and I largely agree with His Grace.

No, I mention the Lib Dems because of their colourful new candidate for Gravesham, one Ms Anna Arrowsmith. As you may have learnt from your morning news-paper, Ms Arrowsmith is a prolific director of blue movies. Under her Anna Span pseudonym, she has knocked out an extensive back catalogue of what she describes as women-friendly porn. Whether she has succeeded in her task, or whether her films are any good, I cannot inform you, as I must regretfully own up to never having seen any of the Anna Span œuvre. All I can say is that she’s managed to make a living at it. Still, the female-friendly tag might make her a bit more palatable to feminists, who might have got a little hot under the collar if, say, Ben Dover suddenly became a candidate.

So what does Ms Arrowsmith have to say for herself? I suspected she might have been intrigued on hearing Mr Clegg talking about hung parliamentary members, but sadly, she says she was motivated by the expenses scandal. Indeed, she comes across in this interview as being quite sensible:

How seriously will the voters take Ms Arrowsmith, 38, on the election trail? She wants to be respected for her business and campaigning record but knows that her career will present a problem for some. “There will be some people who will never like porn,” she says. “People approach sex in different ways. For some people it is only an emotional act. For others it is a variety of different acts. Some people will never accept that. They are probably the same people who never had a one-night stand. There will be some people who are conservative and very anti-porn. I think on the whole these days people are far more liberal.”

What about the Liberals? Aren’t some of them going to be affronted by a pornographer in their midst? “I don’t think so. On the whole they are a sexually liberated bunch.”

You know, when Peter Hitchens blames Britain’s troubles on “sixties liberals”, I always think he’s being a bit harsh on poor old Jo Grimond. This metrosexual attitude is a very long way removed from the old-fashioned Nonconformist Liberals you used to find in places like Cornwall or Cardiganshire, people who would have thought Clement Freud was a bit racy. Although I suppose the exploits of Mark Oaten and Lembit Öpik may have softened up the Lib Dem ranks a little bit.

Fed up with seeing porn films that focused on women pleasuring men she has carved a niche making films in which a third of shots show the woman, a third the man and a third the couple together. She says that the films she makes are humorous and that there is no airbrushing.

Nearly half her customers are women, she says: “Women definitely need this.”

And it is further reported that Ms Arrowsmith has recently won a battle with the BBFC that allowed her to depict squirting on screen. (If you don’t know what that is, you probably don’t want to know.) Sadly, bar charts notwithstanding, Gravesham is a Labour-Tory marginal where the Lib Dems have no chance of winning. Putting her into Parliament would be nearly as good as having Tuppy Owens as an MP – and, while I wouldn’t necessarily want Tuppy Owens to be dictating policy, there is such a thing as having a voice of conscience that needs to be heard. One may object that the Italians have already been down this road, with la Cicciolina having been elected as far back as 1987, but Cicciolina can hardly be held to blame for the rise of Berlusconi.

No, for those of us who like a bit of grotesquerie, it seems unlikely that the Lib Dems are about to become the second incarnation of Miss Whiplash’s Corrective Party. Mr Clegg and his chums just don’t have the flair and imagination for such a thing. However, Ms Arrowsmith has succeeded in briefly making the Lib Dems look slightly interesting. That in itself is no mean achievement. And the best we can do over here is Mike Nesbitt and Fearghal McKinney? How dull are we?

14 Comments

Publicity junkie calls for privacy law

August 9, 2009 at 3:17 pm (Atheism, Catholicism, Labour Party, Lib Dems)

lembit-katie

Lembit Öpik really is the gift that keeps giving, isn’t he? It’s only a matter of days ago that the swinging Lib Dem MP was making the news for canoodling with a lingerie model half his age. Indeed, they were even posing for photos together. Yet now, the bold Lembit has ventured once more into the public domain, and this time he’s angry.

What has provoked Lembit’s ire is Some Guy With A Website, who has decided to have some fun during Westminster’s summer recess by asking the general public to send him photos of MPs sunning themselves on holiday. Lembit is concerned that this promotes an image of MPs as a bunch of lazy freeloaders, as opposed to Stakhanovite shock workers who spend 18 hours a day attending showbiz parties serving their constituents. And in fact, Lembit is so far mounted on his high horse – or maybe that should be his vintage motorcycle – that he’s calling for a privacy law to protect MPs from being photographed without their permission, as opposed to for photoshoots they have arranged themselves. No harm to Lembit, but isn’t he the very last MP who should be calling for a privacy law?

In other Westminster news, Labour MP Andrew Mackinlay has been talking about his decision to stand down at the general election. I do have my misgivings about Mackinlay, not least concerning his chummy relationship with the DUP. But on the whole, when you think about the identikit candidates filling up Parliament these days, someone like Mackinlay – an awkward cuss, dogged in pursuing his causes, defensive of the legislature against the executive, unwilling to be bought off by the New Labour machine – is exactly the sort of MP you really need more of.

Not, however, according to the misnamed National Secular Society (Titus Oates prop.), who are in full No Popery mode. The occasion for the NSS’s ire is an interview Mackinlay has given to the Tablet, where he talks a little about his Catholicism. Mackinlay, in a rather inoffensive interview, mentions that Catholic Labour politicians face less sectarianism than they did twenty or thirty years ago, and that, although he’s retiring, he expects the incoming House of Commons to have a fair number of Catholics. He also remarks on the way that the Catholic hierarchy dealt rather effectively with Alan Johnson’s crackpot scheme to force faith schools to take 25% of their intake from non-believing families.

There could scarcely be an issue more guaranteed to wind up the NSS, who gratuitously refer to “Andrew MacKinley, Catholic…er Labour MP for Thurrock” in a transparent attempt to raise the old “dual loyalty” canard. And, as if to prove that the NSS’s bigotry is ecumenical, this appears below an attack on incoming European Parliament president Jerzy Buzek, a Polish Lutheran. The article is headlined “New President of European Parliament wants a ‘Christian Europe’”, but unsurprisingly Buzek didn’t say that. He made some general remarks about how his faith informed his politics, how people of faith have a contribution to make to debates about the future of Europe, and how he wants a dialogue with Europe’s Christian churches and other religions.

Buzek is also quoted as saying, “Respect for others who think differently is also a special value for Christians. Such is my understanding of the presence of these values in social and political life. I have never manifested my faith in a persistent manner. The best way of showing what we believe in is through our own actions and behaviour in daily life, and by acting publicly in a way which reflects our deep Christian faith.” For a Polish politician, it’s remarkably middle-of-the-road stuff – it’s hardly what you’d hear on Radio Maryja, and it doesn’t strike me as problematical at all.

Not so Titus’ sidekick Keith Porteous Wood, who comments, “It is depressing that such unrepresentative people keep getting elected into key positions in politics.” It is depressing that Keith fails to understand basic democratic concepts such as “election” or “representation”, or that Buzek holds a key position because lots of people voted for him. Unless we’re talking about some esoteric NSS-speak where only a political sphere composed entirely of militant atheists would be truly “representative”. You know, like they used to have in the Soviet Union.

[Hat tip: Gonzo]

10 Comments

The lothario of Montgomeryshire

August 3, 2009 at 10:25 pm (Celebrity, Lib Dems, Underwear)

katie-green

The young lady above is called Katie Green. She’s been in the news a few times in recent months, but for the benefit of this blog’s high-minded readers it may be worth recapping why. Last summer, Ms Green won a competition to model for Wonderbra. Then, by her account, they referred her to a model agency, where she was unbelievably – no, actually, all too believably – told that she was too fat and she needed to lose two stone, as they wouldn’t have anyone on their books who was more than a size ten. Which says a lot about the modelling world, if this woman can be considered too fat to be a viable proposition.

Katie then went public with this story. That got her into the papers again. Rival bra magnate Michelle Mone, who can spot a PR opportunity a mile off, headhunted her to be the face (well, I say face, but you know what I mean) of Ultimo. And Katie has turned her experience into a campaign against the size zero culture. Fair enough, and I wish her luck. Young women have enough problems with the images portrayed by the media, and any turning of the tide against the idea that women should look like pre-pubescent boys is welcome. Sometimes you would get the impression that the fashion and advertising industries are actively trying to promote eating disorders.

But that’s all by the by. The aspect of this story that caught my eye was this:

lembit-katie

Yes, you recognise that bloke. It’s Liberal Democrat MP, classic motorcycle enthusiast, asteroid aficionado and all-round man about town Lembit Öpik. What, you may ask, is a respectable politician doing hobnobbing with a lingerie model half his age? Officially, Westminster’s answer to George Clooney is simply helping Katie with some ideas about how to publicise her Say No To Size Zero campaign. Unofficially – or at least according to the Mail – it doesn’t seem to have taken him long to get over his Cheeky Girls heartbreak.

Well, one salutes his indefatigability, of course. And I must say, there’s something oddly engaging about Lembit. I remember it was said of the late Clement Freud that, having established himself as a noted wit and media personality, he decided to become an MP so people would take him more seriously. With his party colleague Lembit, the opposite seems to apply. I sometimes get the impression that he became an MP so as to be better placed to blag invites to showbiz parties. Maybe, if he hadn’t become an MP, I would be sharing a drink with him at sci-fi conventions.

Be that as it may, let’s not forget that, while Lembit is the nearest thing we have to an MP for Heat magazine, in formal constitutional terms he also has actual electors. And I often wonder what the conservative Methodist farmers of Montgomeryshire make of their representative’s swinging lifestyle. Actually, they probably love it, on the principle that Lembit’s life of glamour brings some reflected lustre to the area. Certainly, he’s the most colourful character in Welsh politics, at least unless someone can convince Greatest Living Welshman Howard Marks to take a run at the ballot box.

In related Liberal Democrat news, teenage Lib Dem MP Jo Swinson has called for a crackdown on airbrushing in ads aimed at young people, on precisely the grounds that unrealistic body images damage young girls. As Anton remarks, her point may have carried more weight if it was made elsewhere than in the Daily Mail, an organ that specialises in attacking female celebs for being either too fat or too thin, or occasionally looking a bit rough when papped without makeup.

And finally on this theme, a brief editorial note. Despite rumours to the contrary, I am not moonlighting at Stumbling and Mumbling.

16 Comments

Taking the pith

January 18, 2008 at 8:54 am (Afghanistan, Lib Dems)

pith_helmet.jpg

One of the great things about British politics, and the southern Seanad really can’t compare here, is in the job opportunities available to failed politicians. If you’ve failed at a relatively high level, you can then not only get into the Lords, pick up some lucrative directorships or make money on the after-dinner speaking circuit, but the government will find you some berth on the European gravy train or heading up a quango.

Take failed Labour leader Neil Kinnock. He, of course, got packed off to Brussels as a European commissioner. But I hadn’t heard about him for quite a while until last night, when he popped up on Channel 4 News to discuss the ongoing diplomatic row with Russia. Somewhat to my surprise, it turns out that Lord Kinnock is head of the British Council. What qualifies him for that job beats me, but there you go.

For failed Lib Dem leaders, on the other hand, there may be a specialist niche developing as colonial governors. I refer of course to Comber man Paddy Pantsdown. You’ll recall Paddy’s stint as King of Bosnia, where he distinguished himself mainly by sabotaging the peace accord he was supposed to be implementing, while sacking elected politicians who wanted the accord implemented. And, having shown that novel approach to peacemaking, word reaches us that Lord Pantsdown is now to be appointed UN special envoy to Afghanistan, as if the Afghans hadn’t suffered enough. Paddy had best watch out he doesn’t get kidnapped by mad mullahs, or end up with his head shrunken.

From the way the Lib Dems are going through leaders these days, it’s almost a pity that there aren’t many British colonies left. I suppose we must trust in the Yanks to create more protectorates. Perhaps W will have a crack at Iran before he leaves office, or perhaps when Hillary becomes empress she can pick up Bill’s legacy by having some more comic-opera wars in the Balkans. Do I hear Lord Kennedy of Skopje, or possibly Lord Campbell of Novi Pazar?

4 Comments

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