Obsolete

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Ready for drowning.

Nick Clegg is deeply upset at how human beings, not migrants, people are drowning trying to make the desperate journey across the Mediterranean to gain asylum in Europe. Nick you might remember was, still is the deputy prime minister in the government that along with much of the rest of EU declared the Mare Nostrum mission undertaken by the Italian navy a "pull factor" in migrants attempting the journey. Not a single politician honestly believed it to be the case, because not a single one of them is that stupid. 99.99% of those boarding the rickety boats are completely ignorant as to what awaits them if they complete the journey, let alone if their vessel begins to sink. The mission was downgraded first because no one was prepared to help the Italians with the costs, second because of the turn in attitudes towards migrants across Europe and the rise of various populist/far-right parties and movements, and third because they didn't think anyone honestly cared thousands drown every year fleeing war and oppression.

That decision was not then taken with the best of intentions. It was taken for entirely cynical reasons and then justified on the basis of a lie they knew would ring true to those convinced migrants come to Europe for the benefits rather than to escape the unbearable. They obviously didn't know that once winter was over and conditions had eased that more than ever would try and make the journey, but they did know Libya was more of a basket case than in previous years and so correspondingly open to the traffickers. They knew more people would drown than before. It was a choice they made and one they should answer for.

Clegg and the Lib Dems at the time said nothing. Now Clegg knows what the answer is, and what isn't. The problem's not that migrants are making the journey, but the conditions leading to them trying to make it. Conditions like the collapse of the Libyan state, which came about as a direct result of the Nato intervention Clegg and the Lib Dems fully supported. For argument's sake let's accept that was a decision taken with the very best of intentions, to prevent a massacre in Benghazi. What followed on from that, the choice not just to protect civilians but act as the rebels' ostensible air force, ending only with the death of Gaddafi, was taken despite knowing Gaddafi effectively was the state. Perhaps little could have been done to prevent Libya becoming the all but failed state it now has, but little is precisely what was done once David Cameron had his moment in Benghazi.

We should then be supporting the security forces in Libya, despite said security forces as far as they exist being far more interested in propping up the two separate governments Libya now has, neither of which really controls much in the way of territory anyway. We need coordinated action against the people traffickers, despite the people traffickers only really providing a service, if it can be called that, that wouldn't exist if countries like Libya that previously offered better paid work to Eriterans hadn't collapsed in part thanks to actions supported by Clegg. Clegg recognises the Libyan situation is a problem, and yet still insists it was a fabulous idea to intervene.

Nick is of course right that a "sustainable future" has to be built for those who live on the borders of Europe. It strikes as just a little bit lacking in joined-up thinking then that we were so quick to dispense with the Gaddafi that up until the Arab spring it had been decided we could do business with. Whether that was the right decision in the first place is open to question, but it was the one that was made. Also entirely absent from the piece is so much as a mention of Syria, the country so many of those trying to make the trip are from, and which no one bothers to pretend has a "sustainable future" on the horizon. There's little point in yet again reheating the same old arguments about our policy in Syria; suffice it to say the Liberal Democrats haven't made a squeak about it having been wrong or having contributed to the clusterfuck still unfolding across the region.

It's difficult to demur from Clegg's conclusion that a multifaceted approach is needed and that "intelligent use of our international development budget" is essential. Quite where Clegg gets off on attacking UKIP for pointing out the obvious though, that decisions made by the coalition contributed to where we are now is a mystery. When he claims in complete seriousness that the original decision to end the Mare Nostrum mission and replace it with Frontex was made with good intentions, at the exact same time as Theresa May and Philip Hammond, Clegg's fellow ministers and likely allies in a second coalition continue to insist there is a "pull factor" while hundreds drown, then it's not UKIP and the Tory right-wing that are "washing their hands", it's the Lib Dems that have gone along with such decisions and seem destined to do so in the future. We have failed these people again and again, Clegg writes. Indeed he has. He should be judged on those failures.

Labels: asylum seekers, Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, European Union, foreign policy, Liberal Democrats, Libya, Mare Nostrum, Nick Clegg, politics

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4/22/2015 11:15:00 pm | Permalink | | links to this post

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

The Liberal Democrat manifesto.

For the second day in the row, the Liberal Democrat "battlebus" broke down. As metaphors go, they don't come much more obvious and yet all but impossible to avoid using.

Only it's probably too kind to how the party has gone about the campaign thus far to say it's merely having a few mechanical problems and will be up and running again shortly. In actuality the Lib Dem campaign hasn't so much as got started. The party has been all but invisible, and when it has succeeded in getting coverage it's been possibly to its detriment. Clegg was anonymous during the leaders' debate, the party's reliance on their desperately unpopular leader baffling. It's not as though the party doesn't have other communicators it could push to the fore when they have Vince Cable, Tim Farron or Jo Swinson to name but three they could choose from, and yet it's Calamity Clegg every time in front of the cameras.

The campaign's biggest misstep isn't the reliance on Clegg so much as the patently false, confused and deeply negative message they've decided can't be reiterated enough. You see, the Tories, the party they've propped up for the past 5 years are heartless bastards, whereas Labour are economically incontinent. Only the moderating influence of the Lib Dems can ensure the Tories won't bring back the workhouse, while if the numbers go in the opposite direction only the mellow yellows can ensure Labour won't immediately increase the deficit by eleventy trillion pounds. This assumes firstly that everyone accepts there's going to be another hung parliament, which despite being highly likely isn't a certainty, and secondly that the past five years have been such a wonderful experience everyone will vote for the party that wants to do it all over again. Precisely who this is meant to appeal to beyond past Lib Dem voters isn't clear.

It also assumes it's accepted the Liberal Democrats have been that moderating influence, when this is a view held almost only by right-wing Tories. Yes, they did prevent the very worst instincts of the Conservatives from becoming reality, stopping the snoopers' charter, the repeal of the Human Rights Act, further cuts to welfare, but this has to be offset against their support for the immediate austerity that stalled the recovery, the imposition of the bedroom tax, the hardening of attitudes to those on benefits, the welfare sanctions that hundreds of thousands have suffered for the merest of infractions if that, and every other destructive policy the coalition has pursued.

This knowledge makes the party's claims that either the SNP or UKIP will hold their prospective partners to ransom all the more risible. The UKIPs aren't going to win enough seats to be able to govern alone with the Tories full stop, while the SNP would have to extract a far better deal from Labour than the Lib Dems did the Tories, and they would be making demands not so much for a coalition as a confidence and supply arrangement. It simply isn't credible, and that the party hasn't realised its pitch has failed to hit home and switched tactics strikes as being in denial.

Nor would it matter as much if the manifesto (PDF) had been written with the intention of being genuinely open to coalition with either Labour or the Tories. Instead the policies on the front cover, declared by Clegg to be all but non-negotiable are almost a mirror image of the ones announced by their coalition partner yesterday, right down to the £12,500 personal tax allowance. The only real sticking point would be Clegg's one other declared "red line", the further £12bn in welfare cuts, and that isn't too massive a stumbling block when few realistically expect the Conservatives would even as a majority government eliminate the deficit wholly through reductions in spending as they claim. Dropping opposition to the Tory pledge of holding a referendum on EU membership all but gives the game away.

Which leads directly on to the other obvious problem: you therefore can't take seriously a single other policy set out in what is by far the most extensive but by the same token least enlightening manifesto of the main three. Those who like me will cheer the promise to take the very first steps towards reforming our drug laws will at the same time know it'll be one of the first proposals to go. Then there are the sections that are just embarrassing: the party that as Ian Dunt says went along with the disgraceful ban on sending books into prisons still claims it will put an emphasis on rehabilitation and reducing the prison population. There isn't so much as a hint of the crisis inside as a direct result of the cuts and overcrowding the Liberal Democrats have to take ownership of, while the spare room subsidy, aka the bedroom tax, which the party belatedly discovered was cruel and unfair is relegated to the very last point on the unbelievably patronising "improving support for the hardest to help" page.

The decision to hug the Tories close, understandable as it is considering most of the former Labour-Lib Dem marginals have been written off as a lost cause with a couple of exceptions, has some especially perverse consequences. The effective choice in the south-west for instance, likely to be the party's one remaining stronghold come May the 8th, is between the Tories and the Lib Dems. Following today's manifesto launch that choice has effectively become a Hobson's choice, with all that entails for disenchantment and resentment. Nick Clegg talks of being the alternative to a coalition of grievance, yet the Lib Dem decision to move to the centre-right when 5 years ago there seemed for the first time to be a real third party alternative is a manoeuvre guaranteed to create very legitimate grievances, with so many of those voting for a change left feeling abandoned and unrepresented.

Nick Clegg opens his introduction to the manifesto with the line "few people expected that many of the policies it [the 2010 manifesto] contained would be implemented by the next Government". Least of all, the statement begs, the party itself. We could also quibble on just how many of its policies have been implemented also (three quarters, Clegg claims, hardly any, the Graun answers back) but frankly my will to live is ebbing just thinking about it. On this day back in 2010 I concluded my post by saying what was holding the party back was knowing when to go further and "most pertinently, their leader himself". In 2015 the only thing motivating the party is holding on to the vestige of power, and that self-same leader is in a position where he could oversee the loss of half of his MPs and still remain deputy prime minister. Funny thing, politics. And by funny I mean hateful.

Labels: Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, economics, elections 2015, Liberal Democrats, Liberal Democrats manifesto, Nick Clegg, policy, politics

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Friday, April 03, 2015

A complete waste of everyone's time.

"Thank you ITV for the opportunity to put my case", David Cameron tweeted 35 minutes after last night's debate had finished. As ITV was the broadcaster so desperate to hold any sort of debate that it effectively forced the BBC, C4 and Sky into all but giving in to the prime minister's wider demands on the format and timing of the events, he did indeed have much to be grateful to them for. Also worth remembering is the Tories didn't come up with the involvement of either the SNP or Plaid Cymru; that again was the brilliant idea of the broadcasters, which Cameron, not believing his luck, then tried to turn into 8 by saying the DUP should also be on the stage.

All Cameron had to do then last night was turn up, repeat the mantras we've now heard 8 bazillion times, and that would be enough. The sheer number of people on the stage would ensure there couldn't possibly be a clear winner, the debate itself would be completely unfocused, those already decided would insist their leader won, and the undecided would be left as confused as ever.

And what do you know, it went completely according to the Lynton Crosby plan. Cameron had been allocated the position on the far right by the drawing of lots, and while he might have preferred to be centre stage it reflected exactly how he played it. He involved himself as little as possible, and when he did it was to either attack Ed Miliband personally or Labour's time in office. He briefly came alive when he declared all of the parties except his would ramp up the debt and put up taxes, but otherwise he was content to just let everyone come to the conclusion his opponents were wasters and the entire thing was a waste of everyone's time.

Which it was. Rarely are there two hours of prime time television where so little of consequence happens, where issues that in a better more disciplined format could have been properly examined were if anything made more obscure. Absolutely everything about it was wrong, from the number of participants, the questions asked and the answers given right up to the complete pointlessness of there being an audience at all. Little wonder Victoria Prosser finally lost patience and assailed David Cameron, only in keeping with the debate in general completely ineffectually. That she was then grabbed by a mere 7 security guards and marched out speaks volumes of the limits of debate at an event supposedly dedicated to it.

Nigel Farage, having realised the format had been similarly designed to drown him out attempted to get round it by being as loud, obnoxious and one note as he could get away with. Everything can be solved by leaving the EU and imposing a cap on immigration, whether it be housing, the deficit, hospital parking charges or Jodie Marsh. All these parties are the same he repeatedly intoned, and before declaring that the root cause of the problems with the NHS was all the foreigners with HIV, he played his usual strategy of making clear just how outrageous he was about to be and how his opponents would be mortified. If a politician has ever been so boring, so predictable, so completely transparent over such a lengthy period of TV before I haven't seen it, and yet as the polling has shown, being a monomaniac, pretending to be an outsider and saying despicable things really impresses a substantial number of voters.

Distinctly unimpressive were both Natalie Bennett and Leanne Wood, neither of whom came anywhere near to justifying their presence. Perhaps Wood's performance will have gone down well in Wales, but I can't now remember anything she said except for her response to Farage's HIV gambit. Bennett was by some distance the worst of the lot, by the end desperately bringing up climate change in an attempt to get on more comfortable ground, only it was far too late. Almost as mystifying is just what so many seem to have got out of Nicola Sturgeon's performance, which as ever from the SNP was all big talk with absolutely no substance to back it up. She was without doubt strongest on tuition fees, but then it's very easy to talk about how it's a betrayal to take away the free education you had from today's students when the money funding it is topped up by the Westminster establishment the SNP so rails against.

With everything stacked against Ed Miliband, that he either came out on top or was there or thereabouts in the various polls is the best he could have hoped for. Throughout he was assured, spoke to the camera and tried his level best to involve Cameron more than he wanted to be. None of Cameron's jibes or insults stuck, and his pre-prepared line that Cameron wanted only to talk about the past was one of the few interventions that had an impact, as did his late ad-lib about Cameron and Clegg wanting to blame each other and both being right.

Overall though this was a debate where the result had already been decided, to the point where both the Sun and Telegraph clearly had their front pages finished before it was over. No one could possibly have emerged as the unqualified winner from such a format, and despite some of the more excited commentary few are going to conclude 5, let alone 7-party politics is the way forward based on what was on offer. The real story remains the broadcasters in connivance with the Conservatives denied the public the chance to see a true showdown between the only two leaders who can be prime minister, and we're all the worse off for it.

Labels: David Cameron, Ed Miliband, elections 2015, leaders' debates, Nick Clegg, Nicola Sturgeon, Nigel Farage, politics

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Wednesday, March 04, 2015

Drugs, sensationalism and paternalism.

I didn't watch Drugs Live, mainly for the reason that like most people my age I know fairly well how cannabis affects those who use it. It doesn't instantly make you an utter prick, as say cocaine does, nor is it unpredictable in the way alcohol is. I've also known people who've been smoking it for so long it has almost no effect on them whatsoever, or seemingly doesn't. David Nutt then ranking hash, as opposed to skunk at the very bottom of his harm index doesn't come as a major surprise.

You can't though have a television programme in this day and age purely discussing the effects of drugs or even just how they impact on the brains of Mr and Mrs Average Punter, as that's boring and not going to get Twitter, err, blazing. No, instead you must have Jennie Bond and Jon Snow (the other one) getting baked, purely for scientific reasons, of course. I did happen to catch one moment when the former royal correspondent's "pleasure sections" of her brain lit up while listening to music after taking a good long pull, which was instantly declared as definitive proof that weed does make shit music sound better. It reminded me and no doubt only me of the Monty Python Planet Algon sketch, or at least the presenting style did, so the more things change etc.

Any chance the programme had of being more than just a typical Channel 4 stunt, coming after the previous show on ecstasy and Mariella Frostrup asking couples who had just finished shagging in a box in the studio how it was for them was rendered all but academic in any case by the advance promotion. Jon Snow declared he found being on skunk while in the MRI scanner to be more terrifying than when he'd been in war zones, to which one response is he should try it while in any smaller town's excuse for a nightclub. Post-traumatic stress disorder would no doubt instantly descend. Regardless of Snow's intentions, this was the cue for the likes of the Mail to declare that if someone as unflappable and worldly wise as Snow could be reduced to such a state, just what is it doing to the immature and less refined?

Coupled with the other new research into psychosis and use of high strength cannabis, the government was quick to declare it had no intention of changing the law, unless of course there's enough of an outcry to think about tightening it further. What better time for of all people, Richard Branson to renew his call for the government to follow the example set by Portugal's decriminalising of possession, only this time joined by the man who's turned many of his own party to drink if not drugs, Nick Clegg?

Had Clegg been as explicit in his support for decriminalisation earlier in this parliament, as opposed to simply making noises in that general direction he might just have made something approaching a difference. Leaving it this late invites cynicism that his conversion to the Portuguese model is less out of genuine belief it would reduce drug usage overall and help addicts and more about trying to retain some of the votes his party has lost. To be fair, the Lib Dems have long called for a rethink on drugs and they did succeed in getting their comparative study published, even if it did little more than just reinforce what most already knew.

We also shouldn't get carried away, just as it was advisable not to after said report. Branson and Clegg write that as well as remaining illegal drugs should also remain "socially unacceptable", to which the obvious response is why? Why should it be socially acceptable, even felt to be obligatory in some circumstances to drink fermented vegetables and fruits but not smoke or chew the extracts of a plant, when the effects are often far less damaging? Why should it be unthinkable that MDMA could ever be legal, when the real danger from "ecstasy" is from adulteration, or when the supplied pill or powder doesn't contain MDMA at all? Why should someone be arrested for possession of small amounts of cannabis or any other number of drugs we know to pose a low risk and cause little overall harm, let alone then sent for treatment or assessment for a problem the vast majority won't have? Surely If we're looking towards any model it ought to be the American one, where the effective legalisation of cannabis has taken the trade almost wholly out of the hands of organised crime. This isn't to deny there will always be problem users, addicts and the potential for harm beyond that measured on a scale, but we have the worst of all worlds at the moment.

The answer to all the above is not just that we have a sensationalist approach to drugs and the harm they can cause, hence why journalists can be felt responsible enough to take them and tell us plebs what it's like, just as The Day Today satirised years ago, but we also have doctors who believe smoking should be banned in parks and squares. When smoking is to be made socially unacceptable, regardless of your personal view on it, and my own isn't favourable, what chance is there of making any progress on drugs that are illegal but we know to be less harmful?

Labels: drug policies, drug prohibition, drug stupidity, drugs, Drugs Live, Home Office, Nick Clegg, politics, tv, war on drugs

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Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Is it that time already?

Gosh, can it really only be 100 days until the election already? The last 1,727 days have just flown by, have they not? It seems only last week Dave n' Nick were consummating the coalition deal in the rose garden, except what if they didn't and it was all just boasting? Perhaps if we end up with much the same result as last time we'll have Tory leader Boris Johnson renouncing the coalition mid-term on the basis Clegg really did have relations with Dave despite his denials. Is that a convoluted enough non-gag that doesn't work referencing Wolf Hall and Tudor history for you? I sure hope so.

We could do with a politician much like Hilary Mantel's depiction of Thomas Cromwell, that's for sure. Ruthless but compassionate, dedicated to his masters yet ferociously independent, against lunatic foreign adventures and depraved and corrupted religious scroungers, what's not to like? Well, you could factor in the real Cromwell almost certainly wasn't as enigmatic as Mantel paints him in her wonderful novels (I must thank a certain someone whose sort of recommendation finally persuaded me to stop my procrastinating and read them), more a brutal cove who introduced the first sort of intelligence service, enabling Henry to become a tyrant, but all the same. He rather puts Dave, Ed, Nick and Nige in a certain perspective, doesn't he? Son of a blacksmith, did a real job abroad before entering law, a man truly out of time.

Anyway, enough wishful thinking and putting off discussing our rather sadder reality. In truth, no one except those paid to be have been remotely interested in the campaigning thus far. This might have something to do with how dismal it's all been. We've had the Tories release their don't vote Labour and drive advert, or whatever it was, which the Lib Dems have since parodied. Without inserting a joke sadly, although some might say, ho ho, they are the joke. Both Labour and the Conservatives are hoping to attract your attention with a set of themes, even though we all know it's going to be NHS, NHS, NHS from Miliband and pals and, economy, economy, economy from Dave and friends. Ed was duly at the site of the first NHS hospital today, while yesterday dearest Cameron was explaining how thanks to them every man, woman and child can look forward to tax cuts, provided they're hard-working men, women and children, naturally. If they aren't, and they're naughty workshy layabouts, the benefit cap will drop 3 grand almost immediately after a Tory victory, while unemployed under-21s will also be denied housing benefit.

The Conservatives are forewarning everyone at least. Any questioning of just what sort of jobs have been created under the coalition is jumped on as being dismissive of "aspiration". Heaven forfend for instance that a business leader of the future might have been able to launch their enterprise sooner if they hadn't been stuck on zero-hours work, saving the little they could, or indeed needed housing benefit to be able to escape a home life from hell. The message from here until May the 7th will be we've sort of stabilised the economy, so just put all the unpleasantness of the past few years at the back of your mind and try not to think of the cuts to come. Cuts which George Osborne in best infuriating fashion succeeded in not outlining in last week's interview with Evan Davis, falling back on the old no one thought we could achieve the cuts we have made argument, so obviously we can hack and slash without anyone suffering in the next 5 years also.

Nor would Labour under Ed Miliband be the party we've come to shake our heads about sadly without an old Blairite figure turning up and dripping poison. Labour is running a "pale imitation of the 1992 campaign", says Alan Milburn, which is just a bit rich considering it was a certain Alan Milburn behind 2005's phenomenal "forward not back" Labour election campaign. His warning of the party being seen as not in favour of reform and just putting in more funding would carry more weight if Labour was promising increased spending, except they aren't. Only the Lib Dems say they'll find the minimum £8 billion NHS head Simon Stevens believes is needed, and they all but needless to say have not given the first indication of where they'll get it from.

Speaking of which, have the Liberal Democrats started campaigning yet? One might assume if they have they're keeping a low profile due to how utterly ashamed they are over the party's strategy: neither "reckless" borrowing or reckless cuts, you can rely on the Lib Dems to keep those wild crazies in Labour and the Conservatives on the straight and narrow. This presumes the public give the party credit for reining in the Tories worst excesses, except they don't, nor has the experience of coalition led many to want the same thing again. Or at least not with the involvement of the Lib Dems, who surely must be getting extremely worried they could end up with fewer seats than the SNP and back in the wilderness years of the 70s prior to the SDP-Liberal alliance. That would be quite the legacy for Nick Clegg, to go down not so much marching towards the sound of gunfire as leading his party off Beachy Head.

One thing Cameron must be given credit for is just how successful his kill the debates gambit has been. As soon as the broadcasters suggested including UKIP, as they simply couldn't resist the prospect of bar room bore Nige shaking things up, they ought to have known every other smaller party would say hang on. Rather than just invite the Greens as Cameron insisted, and say it's daft including the nationalist parties when they don't fricking stand candidates outside of their respective countries we now have the SNP and Plaid Cymru involved. Why not the DUP and Sinn Fein? Why indeed? While we're at it, why not also Mebyon Kernow, Britain First, the Monster Raving Loonies, the Natural Law party or any other gobshite? Does anyone honestly believe a 7-leader or more debate or debates is viable? Of course they don't, just as the "empty chair" threat is precisely that. Without Cameron there aren't going to be debates, and so his terms with minor concessions, probably a couple of debates, one between him and Miliband, one also with Clegg, one before April and one during, will probably win out.

All in all, it's shaping up to be an extraordinarily tedious, long-winded and highly familiar campaign. Much like something something you might add. Except, I wondered, perhaps not. Looking at today's Sun front page, could it be possible the paper had finally, genuinely opened up itself to the views of its readers as suggested? Err, no. Sun readers apparently want the BBC cut down to size, and also think politicians should ignore the Twitter mob, among other priorities that just happen to also be the paper's long-term concerns. Interesting at least the Sun is so exercised about Twitter demanding attention; in the past of course it was the Sun politicians listened to. Not everything remains the same.

Labels: Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, David Cameron, Ed Miliband, election 2015, Labour, Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg, politics

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1/27/2015 11:04:00 pm | Permalink | | links to this post

Wednesday, October 08, 2014

The chronicles of Glasgow.

And so to Narnia (surely Glasgow? Ed.) for the Liberal Democrat conference. For the second year in a row the yellow peril have decamped north of the border, opting not to go somewhere different every 12 months as the other parties tend to, presumably as booking the hall 2 years in a row was the cheaper option. Never let it be said the Lib Dems don't know how to save money. Indeed, such has been their dedication to making the most out of old material, at times you could be forgiven for wondering if they weren't just giving last year's speeches again, hoping no one would notice. Certainly the media wouldn't have done, and with reports of plenty of delegates leaving before Clegg's main speech, the hall apparently less populated than it was for Vince Cable's annual bash-the-Tories-let's-hope-everyone-forgets-we're-propping-them-up oration, neither would most of the party's members.

Give the delegates their due: they've continued to oppose the leadership's worst instincts, defeating the party on airport expansion, much to Clegg's chagrin. If anything can save the party from being all but wiped out come the election, their sacrifices and dedication just might. What certainly won't is the strategy, or rather lack thereof emanating from the party's advisers. They just can't work out why it is Nick is so disliked, especially when Cleggmania reigned for a couple of weeks, and when he's so personable, honest, prepared to apologise for broken promises and all the rest of it. He's the political leader all the focus groups and people in the street when asked the qualities they most admire are effectively describing, and yet he remains less popular than Ebola.

Perhaps the contempt for Clegg and the Lib Dems in general might just be linked to how the party that once tried to be all things to all people has become disliked for that very reason. If you're a right-wing Tory then Clegg's mob have prevented the coalition from being truly radical, while if you're a Labour supporter or even vaguely left-of-centre then by the same token they've enabled and supported a right-wing administration that's cut the public sector to the bone, privatised Royal Mail, put in place a Health and Social Care act that opens up the NHS to privatisation as never before, froze benefits and introduced the bedroom tax. Most pertinent of all, if you were a floating voter last time around and plumped for Clegg, loathing Brown and not trusting Cameron, believing Clegg when he promised a new politics, no more broken promises and all the rest, you really have been taken for a ride. It isn't just tuition fees, although most will point to it as the most glaring betrayal; it's the whole damn package.

Nor does it help when at the same time as they condemn the Tories as evil for proposing to slash the benefits of the working poor to pay for tax cuts for the well-off and poor old Ed Miliband for his never to be forgotten or forgiven failure to mention the deficit, everyone knows they're actively reaching out to both should there be another hung parliament, as the party itself believes. It takes some almighty chutzpah for Clegg one moment to be going on alarming about an us vs them mentality, the tribalism of right vs left, swinging at both the other main parties, and then once again making the case for how wonderful coalition is with one of those tribes, as though his party's mere presence makes it all better, "undermining the soulless pendulum".

The voting system, for all its faults, does after all protect the Lib Dems to a certain extent. While the party seems destined to lose most of the seats where Labour is its main opponent, in the constituencies where it faces off against the Conservatives the choice for those on the left is either the Libs or bust. With the Tories bound to lose a uncertain percentage of support to the UKIPs, they can afford to be quietly confident about hanging on to around 30 or so seats. It'll mean the party seeing its number of MPs cut in half sure, but the way polling continues to suggest either a dead heat or slight Labour lead it will likely still mean they hold the balance of power. The nightmare scenario, outlined somewhat by Norman Lamb, is Labour winning the most seats but coming second in the popular vote to the Tories, while UKIP picks up a token number of seats if that but manages to come third in the popular vote ahead of the Libs. The right-wing press would duly howl about the illegitimacy of a Lib-Lab coalition, something preventable had they err, supported the alternative vote, and the likely outcome would be a second election sooner rather than later.

This assumes of course enough former Lib Dem voters return to the fold, something not guaranteed by Clegg's address. While Miliband spoke for over an hour and yet managed to say very little, Clegg had everyone heading for home in 52 minutes, racing through all the reasons why the party has much to be proud about and so should return to their constituencies to await their doom. Again we heard how the Tories couldn't have stalled the recovery for 2 years without the help of Clegg and Danny Alexander, although he might have phrased it slightly differently, how the raising of the income tax threshold is the greatest single tax initiative of all time, despite how it helps the better off more than it does the poorest, and how the pupil premium has saved the lives of thousands of school children, with teachers and parents coming up to Clegg in the street to thank him. In spite of the drubbing their anti-populist strategy took in the European elections, Clegg and his party will be resolute in standing up for liberal values, a position less brave than it seems when there's not really that much further their support can fall.

To give Clegg some credit, his speech was probably the best of an extremely poor vintage. He's spent the week acting like someone who can go no lower, coming across happier and more content with his lot. There were some exceptionally dodgy parts, mostly the guff about opportunity all but required by diktat and the parts about "vested interests" where he seemed to be channelling Tony Blair, but this was outweighed to a point by the announcement on mental health services, which if followed through on has the potential to be something resembling a legacy for him. Sure, his portrayal of the Liberals as the only people who can possibly be fair to society while also strengthening the economy is completely putrid when his proposal is for the same 80/20 ratio of cuts to tax rises as the coalition has been pushing through, still leaving the country in the dark to just how savage the next round of cuts will have to be, but at least it's a start. His and his party's chief problem is most people made their minds up long ago. And as the rise of the UKIPs has demonstrated, something akin to realism and shallow decency aren't the sellers they once were.

Labels: conference season, Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, Liberal Democrat conference, Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg, politics, Tories, Vince Cable

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10/08/2014 11:59:00 pm | Permalink | | links to this post

Thursday, July 17, 2014

The differentation of fools.

It begins. Still 10 months away from the election and the two constituent parts of the coalition are starting their differentiation strategies. Apparently we're meant to believe it was pure coincidence Danny Alexander penned an article for the Mirror detailing how deeply iniquitous the bedroom tax, sorry the spare room subsidy is just after Cameron launches his biggest reshuffle of the parliament and news "leaks" out about how the Tories intend to engineer a "legal car-crash with a built in time delay" with the European Court of Human Rights. The Tories are feigning shock at the duplicity of the Lib Dems at the same time as Nick Clegg claims to have been left "blindsided" by the very much anticipated sacking/retirement of the ministers opposed to leaving the ECHR. If it wasn't all so obvious you'd be forgiven for deeming it cynical.

What certainly is cynical is the Liberal Democrats only now deciding the bedroom tax doesn't work, can't work and is extraordinarily unfair even by the coalition's benefit reform standards. It was the report this week (PDF) that truly opened our eyes they say, ignoring the assessment by the Department for Work and Pensions carried out beforehand which predicted exactly the outcome we've arrived at. This can only be explained in one of three ways: either they didn't read the assessment, they didn't believe it, or they just didn't care either way. The Conservatives for their part say not once had the Lib Dem leadership raised concerns with them over the policy, and on this occasion it's difficult not to believe them.

After all, this is the same Nick Clegg who gave a speech back in December 2012 claiming that the welfare system was in danger of becoming unaffordable, in only one of many remarks Iain Duncan Smith or David Cameron could just as easily have made. The only thing that's changed between now and then is, unlike most of the rest of the welfare reforms, the bedroom tax has become unpopular as a direct result of people knowing friends or relatives affected by it. When there are no suitable alternative properties for someone to downsize to, as the government knew there wouldn't be, the policy was always going to result in flagrant injustice.

While the Tories have been in the vanguard of attempting to portray all those claiming benefits (with the possible exception of child benefit) as scroungers, both of the other main parties have been happy to go along with it, not prepared to fight against the increasingly pernicious narrative pushed by both the tabloids and broadcast media (although the Lib Dems should be given some credit for opposing the Tories on limiting housing benefit to the over 25s). Labour eventually realised so many of those who couldn't be easily dismissed as dole scum were being affected they could oppose it without the Tories and the tabloids tearing them to pieces. Now the Lib Dems, despite having voted against Labour's attempts to alter the legislation as recently as February, have moved on the most obvious policy they can quickly say they were never convinced of in the first place.

It's precisely the kind of politics that only increases cynicism, rather than as the Lib Dems clearly believe might persuade a few former supporters to return home. It's also one thing for the Tories to move to do something they've threatened for quite some time, regardless of the politics involved; it's another for the Lib Dems to row back on a policy that would have never passed in the first place but for them. Just as every previous attempt by the Lib Dems to make amends for broken promises has been rebuffed, so too will this latest desperate gambit be.

Labels: bedroom tax, Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg, politics, welfare reform

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7/17/2014 11:21:00 pm | Permalink | | links to this post

Wednesday, June 04, 2014

It's not a peak, it's a plateau.

Well, here we are once again. Another state opening of parliament. Another Queen's speech. Another brick in the wall. Somehow, quite possibly as a result of a voodoo curse, the coalition has stuck together four whole years. If any Lib Dem MPs would like there to be a conscious uncoupling, ala Gywnnie n' Chris, then clearly Clegg and Danny Alexander aren't listening. They must know the longer they remain bound together the less chance there is of their old supporters returning, and yet they seem determined to see it out to the bitter end.

Speaking of which, we can't have a Queen's speech post without remarking on the lunacy of the ceremony itself. You can't help but wonder how much longer poor old Brenda is going to put up with having to don full regalia for the benefit of a bunch of sycophants and royalist nutbars, not least when she has to read out such a wretched shopping list of bills and platitudes. She's now 88, is she really going to be expected to keep doing this into her 90s? If we can't just dispense with the entire parade of stupidity, is there any real reason as opposed to a nonsensical traditional one why Charles can't take over? And what happened to the idea of the Lord Chancellor performing the head of state's role?

As for the speech itself, when one of the pages collapses out of stultifying boredom, you know it's pretty bad. At best there are three notable, important pieces of legislation: the pension reforms we've known about since the budget, the tax relief on childcare, and the fracking act. The rest are typical of legislation left over at the end of a parliament, only the coalition has been running on empty for the best part of two years. Liz was duly left with even more flannel to spout than is usual, informing the world of how her government intends to prevent further violence in Syria, not something immediately compatible with supporting the people attacking polling stations, and will also continue "its programme of political reform". Sorry, which one is that again?

The day after somewhat defending politicians, it can only be described as immensely depressing to realise today effectively marks the beginning of the general election campaign. Not one, not two but three Tory MPs stood up to demand to know whether Labour intends to put a penny on national insurance to fund the NHS, further dispiriting evidence of where the Lynton Crosby-helmed Conservative campaign is going to focus its attacks. Had he wanted to be truly honest, Ed Miliband could have responded by pointing out whoever wins the next election is almost certain to raise taxes, such remains the size of the deficit thanks to three years of the economy flatlining, with it being almost impossible to keep the roughly 80/20% ratio of cuts to tax rises. The correlation between the pensions reform, all but encouraging early cashing out, as it provides the Treasury with a healthy percentage at the same time and the continuing state of the public finances is obvious and direct. In the long run it might turn into a loss for the exchequer, but by then Osborne and friends hope to be long gone.

Much of the rest was similarly short-term. The infrastructure bill looks set to reform the trespass laws to make it impossible for landowners to object to drilling under their property, something that strikes as just a little ironic considering the coalition's insistence on toughening the law against squatting only a couple of years ago. An issue no one saw as being a major problem had to be tackled in order to defend property rights, while here we are now doing precisely the opposite to start the dash for gas. There's also yet another crime bill, as no parliamentary session is complete without one, despite last year's currently being stalled in part down to the row over sentences for those caught with a knife for the second time.

If we had a media that was more interested in the substance as opposed to the procedure and knockabout, they might have dedicated slightly more time to Miliband's response. In a similar style to how Cameron took on Gordon Brown at the height of the expenses scandal, he set out how many believe "this House cannot achieve anything at all", condemning the paucity of help on offer to those for whom work doesn't pay, and how following the Mark Carney's declaration that inequality was one of the biggest challenges facing the country, politicians should be judged on how they respond. It was a strong performance, one Miliband desperately needs to put in more often, and suggests behind the scenes the party has finally realised how to develop the cost of living from being merely a slogan into a defining argument against the lethargy of the coalition.

The election obviously isn't going to be fought over the final year's tepid legislation, but Labour must hold it against the coalition. Wasted years, a masochistic fetish for austerity then swapped with a lust for reflating old bubbles in the search for growth of any kind, and a determination to play one part of society off against another. We can and have to do better than this.

Labels: austerity, Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, Conservatives, David Cameron, Ed Miliband, Labour, Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg, politics, Queen's speech

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6/04/2014 11:59:00 pm | Permalink | | links to this post

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

You can't put the vibe back into this hospital ward.

Now that the tears have been dried, the usual suspects have slunk back to their corners and the UKIP bubble of hype has at least somewhat deflated, we're finally getting something resembling a coherent reaction to last week's elections. Appropriately then the Liberal Democrats find themselves staring into the abyss, the only vaguely plausible response to the shoeing they received from the electorate as whole. It's been a hell of a long time coming and they still don't seem to have twigged precisely why it is they're about as popular as drug resistant gonorrhoea, but hey, at least it's a start.

It also wouldn't be a crisis if there wasn't a botched attempt at a coup, so major props must go to Lord Oakeshott, following in the illustrious footsteps of such titans as John Redwood, Adam Afriyie, James Purnell and Geoff "Buff" Hoon. There he was, innocently commissioning some private polling for his old mate Vince in Twickenham, only he also got ICM to conduct identical surveys in other constituencies as well. Including Nick Clegg's. And Danny Alexander's. All without Cable's knowledge or authorisation, natch. The results predictably show the Liberal Democrats could lose all the seats, although rival polling companies have since cast aspersions on the weighting, sample size and methodology used in general. Despite being conducted at the beginning of the month, with the exception of the one in Alexander's constituency, they were then "leaked" to the Graun ready for Monday's edition, just as it looked as though Clegg was wobbling. Or at least more than usual.

Has Clegg then duly realised he's leading the party to disaster and stepped in front of the proverbial omnibus? No. Has Oakeshott had to resign from the party before he had the whip suspended? Yes. There's losing spectacularly, there's failing cataclysmically and then there's what could become known as doing an Oakeshott. It takes quite something to make Clegg look sympathetic, and yet against all odds Oakeshott's completely transparent plotting has achieved it.

It's made all the more ridiculous as Oakeshott has realised why the party's bombed since it signed up to the coalition, he's just advocating completely the wrong solution. Tony Blair in one of his rare moments of lucidity had it right on Monday: you can't run on a platform to the left of Labour, then join a centre-right party in government and expect those you won over to stick by you. The Liberal Democrats have always been a coalition of social democrats and free-market liberals, to state the freaking obvious, but the former usually held sway. Allied to the Tories they've tried to present themselves as the kinder face of austerity, and well blow me down if this hasn't turned off both Labour and Tory voters. Even a particularly stupid dog could have told them taking the credit for three years of a flat-lining economy was sensationally foolish, and yet they've kept on doing it.

The key to understanding why the party remains doomed is in the survey conducted by Lib Dem Voice on their members only forum. 81% still support the coalition, despite it having become ever more blindingly obvious it was the rush to jump into bed with Dave and pals, not thinking properly about the consequences that led them to this point. The achievements simply haven't been worth the sacrifices, the broken promises, the abandoning of the principles and values Oakeshott points towards. They fell into the trap of believing in their own fantasy of power, the majority still not shaken out of their lust, despite everything that's happened since. Getting rid of Clegg isn't going to change that, unless his replacement intends to break from the coalition prior to the election, something neither Cable or Alexander have given any indication they would support.

Whether this has truly secured Clegg's position, at least for now, is open to question. Nor has it really damaged Cable: such is the lack of talent in the party, with Tim Farron the only realistic opponent in a leadership election, he would almost certainly become leader, if only in the interim. All depends on just how deep into the abyss the grassroots stare. To develop further a Lib Dem source's take on Oakeshott, who said whether inside or outside the tent he pisses all over the place, at least that's better than pissing on himself. That's precisely what the Lib Dems have been doing for the past four years in the coalition. Only when they've finally finished emptying their bladder might the electorate start listening again.

Labels: Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, European elections, Liberal Democrats, Lord Oakeshott, Nick Clegg, politics, Vince Cable

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5/28/2014 11:20:00 pm | Permalink | | links to this post

Thursday, May 08, 2014

The curious state of the Liberal Democrats.

On one solitary score, you have to give the Liberal Democrats credit. Compared to both Labour and the Tories, whose respective right-wingers are convinced they are being led towards electoral doom, there are almost no such murmurings within the Lib Dems whether at parliamentary or grassroots level. This is especially curious considering how quick they were before to get rid of Ming Campbell, felt incapable of leading a hip n' happening, designed to appeal to students and lefties in general party.

Compared to Nick Clegg now, Campbell looks as dynamic as he was back in 1964. There's a distinct possibility the party could come 5th in the European elections, behind the Greens and with no MEPs whatsoever. Is the party worried about the damage such a disastrous performance could do? Apparently not. Clegg's masterstroke is to run a campaign based around our place and role in Europe, an admirable concept it must be said, but to judge by the reception he received doing just that in the debates with Farage, it's not exacfly a guaranteed vote winner.

For all the occasions the other two main parties have been accused of running a core vote strategy, neither have taken it to the extremes decided upon by the Lib Dems. Faced with the problem of their 2010 supporters deserting them due to the various betrayals and broken promises of going into coalition with the Tories, the only response has been to double down. We're in government! Look at what we've achieved! It might not be much and we've sacrificed our principles on a number of policies, but we did it! The economy couldn't have flatlined for three years without our going along with the cuts to frontline investment! Only we could have allowed George Osborne to set off another housing bubble in a desperate bid to get growth of any kind! Vote Lib Dem, the only party that wants Europe to stay broadly the same!

And so on. To be fair, it is somewhat down to the party deciding it's still too far away from the general election itself for most of those who've gone elsewhere to think seriously about coming back. The hope is, faced with the march of the Ukips, the likelihood of the Tories coming out with a ridiculously right-wing manifesto, already certain to offer a referendum on EU membership with a likely side order of withdrawal from the European Court of Human Rights, and the sheer rubber-faced goonery of the two Eds, Clegg and his constantly sad expression might seem not so bad after all. It sounds and frankly is a rather forlorn hope right now, but when there's so little else to work with, amounting to over-hyping the pupil premium and ignoring how the rise in the personal allowance helps the middle far more than it does the lowest paid, there's not much other than promising not to prop up a Tory government next time, a strategy itself suffused with risks, to try.

This still doesn't explain however why of all the things Clegg could have chose to make a stand on, he's done so on those caught carrying a knife for a second time. Again, it's a perfectly reasonable, decent liberal stance to take: judges should have the discretion to take extenuating circumstances into account when passing sentence. Putting mandatory terms into law except for the most serious offences is an unbelievably bad idea, as demonstrated by the widespread misuse of indeterminate sentences, with many of those given them still trapped in prison, unable to access the courses necessary to prove they are safe to be released. All the same, regardless of the reasons behind it, those caught for a second time with a blade in their possession aren't the easiest people for most to sympathise with. Clegg also undermines his argument in his Graun article by criticising Labour for letting the "prison population spiral out of control". The number in prison at the end of May 2010 was 85,500 (PDF). The number now? 84,697 (XLS).

It further boggles the mind considering the party's climbdown on removing the citizenship of naturalised citizens should they be accused of going overseas to fight alongside jihadists. As is so often the case, and as the Home Office minister Norman Baker himself wrote to MPs, the promise of the home secretary not taking away the citizenship of someone "reasonably believed" unable to get an alternative passport, and a review system, by which point it will be too late, was enough to override "a point of principle". Considering the ridiculous case currently being pursued against Mashudur Choudhury, who went to Syria with the intention of fighting only to return, unlike the others he travelled with, the amount of faith anyone should have that the removal of citizenship will be fair and justified ought to be around nil. The irony and shameless hypocrisy of supporting the rebels fighting alongside the jihadists and then charging those who do go to fight with terrorism should not be lost on anyone, let alone the Lib Dems. Baker's plea that "if we demand major concessions from the Tories and get them, that should affect how we vote" would be a respectable sentiment were Clegg not manufacturing a falling out over knives at exactly the same time.

You could call it choosing which battles to fight and which to not, or you could put it down to how confused in general the party seems to be right now. Whether it's simply projected confidence, activists genuinely don't seem bothered by the colossal hammering coming their way. They imagine their local organisation will save them from complete collapse, as evidenced by the Eastleigh by-election. They could be right. If they're not, we might find ourselves in the distinctly odd situation of having four parties getting media attention when there are only two properly represented at Westminster.

Labels: Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, European elections, Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg, politics

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5/08/2014 11:00:00 pm | Permalink | | links to this post

Thursday, March 27, 2014

Rocking all over Europe.

I decided to give last night's flyweight tussle between Nick n' Nige a miss (although I've since skipped through it). There are after all only so many times you can hear precisely the same arguments without then wanting to take a long jump off a short cliff. If there's been a week recently when Question Time hasn't discussed immigration, as the Europe debate has transmogrified into, then I can't recall it. Minds have long since been made up, and there's little in the way of middle ground: either you view open borders as an unalloyed good, for both economic and social reasons, with the negatives far outweighed by the positives; or as Farage does, you find the very fact 450 million people could move here tomorrow and there would be nothing we could do as both outrageous and dangerous.

Unsurprisingly then, the YouGov poll conducted after the debate suggested support for withdrawal had gone up by a meagre 2 points, within the margin of error. The debate wasn't really about such things though; instead it was how the leaders of the third and fourth biggest political parties would come out of it. While all agree he started well, Farage faded badly towards the end, getting increasingly agitated and sweating heavily, the decision to go for a pint beforehand perhaps not the best idea. Clegg by contrast was fairly consistent throughout, predictably enough considering this was his fourth appearance in such a format. With the exception of a couple of major slips, such as his opening, where he all but repeated word for word the same message he gave four years ago, and his laughable assertion that three million jobs are dependent on the EU, he gave as good as he got.

Albeit not according to the audience, who fairly convincingly gave the debate to Farage. Again however, this doesn't really tell us much, especially when the first three questions were pretty much gifts to the UKIPs, being on a referendum, then immigration, then benefits, only after moving onto Europe in the wider sense. Add on Clegg's deserved unpopularity, and Farage being more popular than his party, and the disparity lessens. Clegg's approval rating also went up, although frankly it could hardly have gone down much further.

Farage and UKIP's problem which as yet they haven't been forced to address is they're the equivalent of a band that can only play two chords. The first of the chords, being anti-immigration, is a damn good one and it's served them really well. The second, blaming everything on the European Union, isn't quite as good and only works when played sparingly. When forced to rely on that second one, as Farage was towards the end last night, it no longer sounds as catchy. Claiming that 75% of our laws originate in Europe is just completely absurd, and when he then said the EU had blood on its hands over Ukraine it revealed a complete lack of awareness. Russia's intervention in Crimea is not about the EU, but instead all to do with Ukraine seeking its own path. It was only when Yanukovych cancelled the agreement with the EU that the Maidan movement came onto the streets; the EU didn't push for it as much as it was ordinary Ukrainians demanding it and until his u-turn, the president favouring their offer of loans. The idea anyone could want to be a part of the EU is so anathema to Farage and those he surrounds himself with that it blinds him to the easiest and right explanation.

As Clegg showed during the election debates, being the outsider works so long as you can continue playing the part. Taken out of that comfort zone, as Farage was towards the end, when he whined that no other politician had "worked so many hours and had as little fun as me" after a questioner asked about his wife being on the EU gravy train he so opposes, he started looking remarkably similar to the rest of the political class, precisely because he embodies them just as much as Clegg does. Besides, isn't his entire image meant to be of the laughing, jolly but still angry man of the people? He's often photographed appearing to be having fun, pint in one hand, so is it all an act? Well, of course.

Quite how they're going to get another long debate out of the pair of them also perplexes. There simply isn't that much about the EU to discuss, unless they really get stuck into the common fisheries/agricultural policies, which while important subjects aren't going to keep most audiences tuned in. More fundamentally, for all the hype around Farage, all these debates are going to do is further cement him as a single issue politician. Considering UKIP aspires to become the third party, or supposedly does, to actually win seats at Westminster it needs to at least expand its repertoire to a Quo challenging three chords. There's been so sign of that whatsoever as yet, and you can't survive forever as the party of protest. The Lib Dems have been there, done that, and part of Clegg's reason for agreeing to these debates was to shore up his own support. In those terms, he's succeeded. As for whether it will do the same to his party's vote in the European elections, he'd be advised not to hold his breath.

Labels: Europe, European elections, European Union, Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg, Nigel Farage, politics, UKIP

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3/27/2014 09:27:00 pm | Permalink | | links to this post

Monday, March 10, 2014

Tell me what you hate, not what you love.

To get an idea of how divorced from reality the Liberal Democrats have become, you need only know they seem to have been genuinely delighted with Nick Clegg's speech at their spring conference. Mostly a rehash of his and the party's rhetoric on how only they can save the country from the respective tyrannies of Labour's irresponsible statism and the Tories' selfish kicking away of the ladder, an argument only slightly undermined by how, err, the government they're in at the moment is doing precisely the things he thinks are so contemptible and will drag us backwards, the more interesting section was on what dear old Clegg loves about Britain.

This is now a recurring theme in speeches by the main party leaders. Ed Miliband's done it, Cameron has waxed lyrical on a number of times on how great Britain is, and now we have Nick praising the BBC, the NHS, and err, how we queue abroad even if the locals don't. He loves Britain for its contradictions, for how we're modest while at the same time proud. Just as all litanies from politicians on why their particular country is the greatest on Earth are patronising, cringe-inducing bollocks, so was Clegg's. According to Nick, Miriam loves to tell him how you don't get the feeling of freedom you get in Britain anywhere else. Now, it'd be great to think this is Miriam being far too subtle for her husband, making the case that we have a very different sense of what freedom is to both the French and the Americans, and that we could learn something from both, but I suspect it's meant to be taken as is, as he then goes on to say how he loves living in a country "synonymous with human rights and the rule of law," for which try and control your sniggers.

Like Cameron, Clegg doesn't seem to realise that while we're not a worldwide laughing stock, no one takes pretty much anything we say seriously any more. This isn't incidentally anything to do with weakness or perceived weakness of the Dan Hodges "we're not bombing a country at the moment hence clearly every tin pot dictator is getting ready to invade their neighbour" variety, more that just like most other nations, we're hypocrites and our politicians continue to pretend to be like the great elder statesmen of yesteryear when they are very much not. There are only two great world leaders currently, and they are predictably enough from Germany and America. Moreover, we ourselves recognise this, as the treatment given to Angela Merkel a couple of weeks back showed.

What's more, I really don't care what politicians love about the country. Unless they love the country exactly as it is, which none of them do, telling me how much the admire the BBC, enjoy our love of the monarchy or the irreverence of Private Eye doesn't tell me anything. What I really want to know is what they hate, and I mean really despite about the country and the world. Not the obvious easy things, whether it be benefit cheats, bankers, Bashar Assad, or ignorance, I mean the stuff that annoys or outrages them on a daily basis. It doesn't have to be strictly political; it can be television shows, music, culture or the media. If they don't like football, beer or pop music it would be genuinely interesting to know. So one-dimensional have our leaders become, both out of how they've been told to act by spin doctors and focus group gurus and how the media responds to them, that they feel obliged to pretend to like all of these things. If they also loathe the things that are spectacularly wrong right now, such as how a country as rich as ours needs hundreds of food banks to feed the poorest, how hundreds of thousands are being punished for not being able to get a job despite there not being enough vacancies, and how millions of those in work are paid a pittance and don't know from one week to the next how many hours they will get, then all the better. Let's go one step a time though.

More than anything, it would be great if we could move on from the Tony Blair-era of politics. Clegg's speech said absolutely nothing that we don't already know about him or his party. It did however contain the same empty platitudes, verbless sentences, and shaming mendacity we came to expect from one of his sermons. The reason Nigel Farage appeals to some is he is the anti-Blair, and that's why Clegg's debate with the leader of the UKIPs (™ Stewart Lee) will be so utterly pointless when both sides have made their minds up already. What we could really do with is a politician who talks straight and isn't a populist cretin. Barring Boris, we might be waiting a while.

Labels: Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg, politics

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3/10/2014 10:51:00 pm | Permalink | | links to this post

Tuesday, March 04, 2014

The more things change, the more tiresome this line staying the same becomes.

You wait ages for a frontbench politician to so much as address the continuing Snowden files saga, and then two do (almost) at once. Oddly, the Cleggster (who he?) and Yvette Cooper both came up with proposals that were almost identical. Both said the Intelligence and Security Committee needed to be further beefed up, and while Cooper prevaricated somewhat, raising the possibility of emulating the Australian system of oversight, Clegg made clear he and his party are committed to the creation of an Inspector General.

Clegg's speech especially made all the right noises, with Cooper predictably saying national security had been damaged in an attempt to be even-handed, it was just there was a lack of reality about both. Ed Miliband's Labour has become a different party in some ways, but really hasn't in plenty of others. It takes a lot of chutzpah for instance for a party which has shown no sign whatsoever of regretting trying to foist ID cards on the country to criticise the government over the botched introduction of the new NHS care.data database, even more so when Labour introduced its also controversial predecessor, Spine. Up until now Labour had been almost as silent as the government itself on the Snowden revelations, with if anything less backbenchers speaking out. The party has made the odd attempt to suggest it understands partially why it became so loathed for its disregard for civil liberties while in power, yet is no nearer now to modifying its approach than it was in 2010, as the response to the TPIMs absconders showed.

As for the Lib Dems, it's the same old story. In power, and yet so clearly not at the same time. In a position to do something about how the intelligence services, GCHQ especially, have been operating, and there isn't even the slightest signal that they've put any sort of pressure on their coalition partners to do anything about it. Then again, this isn't surprising when Clegg himself seems caught in two minds, defending the arrest of David Miranda in almost exactly the same style as the Conservatives did, then saying err, actually, maybe we do need the sort of journalism Miranda was helping with after all.

It was always instructive how William Hague's first resort was the old "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" line, something brought into sharp relief by the Yahoo Webcam revelations, and there has not been the slightest indication since that anything has changed in either the minds of the securocrats or that of the government. Nor is there any reason to believe Yvette Cooper would follow through on her fine words were Labour to return to power in just over a year's time. Even as the technology and threats change, the spooks have an eerie way of preserving themselves. Anyone would think they might have a few files on people.

Labels: civil liberties, Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, GCHQ, Labour, Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg, politics, security services, Yvette Cooper

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3/04/2014 11:59:00 pm | Permalink | | links to this post

Monday, January 20, 2014

Much as I'd like to just laugh...

Is there anything quite as hilarious as a political party tearing itself apart? Well, obviously, almost everything is funnier than a party being plunged into crisis over what amounts to in practice a refusal to apologise, even when the party is the Liberal Democrats, but bear with me here. It's more to do with how the Lib Dems have so often portrayed themselves as being holier than thou, having such deep integrity, being above the petty squabbling which the Tories and Labour have so often descended into. In actuality the party can be and has been brutal, not least in the way it dispensed with the services of Ming Campbell in double quick time, while if anything it's long been a master of the political dark arts, smearing and engaging in ad hominem attacks on opponents when it's suited them.

It also takes quite something to relegate the small matter of a UKIP councillor informing the world that the recent floods are God's punishment for the government daring to legislate for gay marriage to being a lesser story. Nigel Farage, bless him, has pledged to smoke out the "extremist, nasty or barmy" from his party ahead of the all important European elections, raising the question of when he intends to resign, especially considering his intervention today to claim that sexism no longer exists in the City.

The Liberal Democrats, it's fair to say, have a problem with women. Not necessarily on the policy front, and I fully respect their decision not to introduce all-women shortlists in an attempt to increase the party's share of women MPs, but clearly something hasn't been right for some time. All the main parties have their dinosaur tendency, especially among those elevated to the Lords, and it seems due to a mixture of old fashioned views on what constitutes unacceptable behaviour as well as loyalty towards Lord Rennard that they weren't exactly fully enamoured with the verdict of Alistair Webster QC, who while deciding that the evidence and allegations made against Rennard were "broadly credible", also felt they couldn't be established beyond reasonable doubt. His suggestion was that Rennard should make a formal apology.

Rennard however has refused to apologise, believing that if he were to do so it would amount to an admission of guilt and leave him liable to pay compensation if sued. He also continues to maintain his innocence, and so an apology would be fairly meaningless in any case. The Lib Dems have duly reacted by suspending Rennard again, although it remains to be seen exactly what sanctions can be brought against a peer who is refusing to apologise, other than continuing to withhold the whip. Rennard in response has released a statement saying he's considering legal action against the party, ably assisted as he has been throughout by Lord Carlile, the former "independent" reviewer of terrorism legislation, the same Lord Carlile who never saw a control order he thought wasn't justified, and pretty much complained only during his time in the role of the overuse of section 44 of the Terrorism Act. It's also the same Carlile who took to the Mail on Sunday yesterday to complain that Rennard had been subject to treatment "that Thomas Cromwell would have hesitated from using on behalf of Henry VIII". Quite apart from how the Mail and its sister paper were in the vanguard, leading the charge against Rennard, it's odd that someone so outraged by an injustice done to a friend never expressed anything even approaching such passion when it came to the "mistakes" of the state.

This isn't to say there hasn't been skulduggery on the part of all sides. Despite the insistence of Channel 4's Cathy Newman, it always felt suspect that the allegations against Rennard were brought out into the open so close to the Eastleigh by-election when they had been known about for some time, and the email chain which fell into the hands of the Rennard camp more than suggests it was timed for maximum damage to the party. This said, equally clearly those who complained about Rennard believed that the only way they would be taken seriously was to go all out, and they were fully entitled to do so. We don't know the exact details of the allegations, not least because it doesn't seem as though Rennard himself has been given a copy of Webster's report, but they amount to more than Rennard just putting his hand on the women's knees. The Telegraph, having heard of the allegations in 2010, noted that they included accusations of groping, and most seriously, two prospective parliamentary candidates who after a dinner at Rennard's home were told to "go upstairs", and were only allowed to leave when one threatened to call the police.

Rennard could of course be telling the truth, but when you consider the allegations against him were so widely known at Westminster before they became public knowledge, and it was believed his resignation in 2009 from his role as party chief executive was not entirely about his health it becomes less and less likely. The opaque nature of the investigations also hasn't helped, making it unclear exactly what he had been accused of. Whatever it was he thought he was doing, some came to see his approach as being to promote those who played along, while those who didn't found their careers floundered. Whether accurate or not, he clearly has plenty to apologise for, and his mealy-mouthed and self-pitying statement today has exacerbated the situation rather than brought it nearer to a conclusion.

Much as we could enjoy the schadenfreude and leave it at that, it reflects badly on politics as a whole. One suspects Rennard abused his position precisely because he felt he was indispensable, a situation which isn't analogous to the other main parties, although it has been true of the SWP, which has been going through its own agonies over far more serious allegations. The sooner the party gets a grip, difficult due to its structure and how Rennard is no longer an employee, the better.

Labels: Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, Eastleigh by-election, Liberal Democrats, Lord Rennard, Nick Clegg, political scandals, politics, sexism

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1/20/2014 09:22:00 pm | Permalink | | links to this post

Monday, January 06, 2014

A bad omen.

As omens go, the extremely sad passing of Simon Hoggart just 5 days into the new year is hardly the best for the 12 months to come. I did wonder why his parliamentary sketches in the Graun seemed to be appearing ever more irregularly, replaced by the able and amusing but nowhere near as witty Michael White, and now we know. The only indication he gave that he wasn't well was in November, and even then he didn't so much as begin to spell out he was slowly dying from pancreatic cancer. He still managed to return, and filed this superb column less than a week later, a wonderful distillation of his craft for anyone not familiar with his work. As it's worked out, he died less than 2 months after Araucaria, aka cryptic crossword setter John Graham, who also succumbed to cancer.

Hoggart's gift was to be able to ridicule the bombast, pomposity and silliness of politicians without ever suggesting that parliament or politics itself should be held in the same contempt. I have to admit to stealing a couple of his more cutting put-downs, one being his "unpopular populist" formulation, as well as his war on absurd rhetoric, the kind rendered meaningless or worse when reversed. When we have a government that thinks it spectacularly clever to continually define itself as being for those whom "work hard and get on", it's nice to think if there was any justice there would also be a party for those who do the minimum possible and are more than happy to just drift through life. With his death the Graun has undoubtedly lost one of its most distinctive voices, as well as one of the few contributors who make the paper still worth buying.

His return to dust is given all the more poignancy for how desperately we could do with more of his ilk to mock the dishonesty currently being perpetuated by the two sides of the coalition. If it hadn't been apparent enough already, George Osborne's speech today signalled the start of the 2015 general election campaign, a mere 17 months and one day before the nation goes to the polls. This has always been the problem with fixed term parliaments, as evidenced by the absurd electoral cycle in the US, where the knowledge of the date of the next election means anything up to 2 years is wasted preparing the ground for the ballot.

The Tories seem convinced that the only way they can possibly get a majority is to, err, all but completely dispense with an entire section of voters. Signs are that their wizard wheeze to abolish housing benefit for those under 25 isn't popular, and yet they continue to insist that saving a relatively slight £1.9bn is an essential contribution to cutting the deficit, while the more populist telling those earning £65,000 or more a year to move out of their council digs is likely to recoup even less. Chris warns against falling into the trap of viewing the promise from Cameron to keep the "triple-lock" yearly increase in the state pension as being a bribe to those who do go out and vote, and yet it's extremely difficult for those just entering the job market to rationalise how they will one day also benefit, presuming of course the policy doesn't change between now and their retirement, and that they live to be 70.

Then we have the Lib Dems, whose mission between now and May the 7th 2015 seems to be to pretend to be against everything the Conservatives are proposing, while at the same time having supported the policies that have laid the foundations for such draconian cuts should they come. Clegg complains of how he doesn't know a single serious economist who supports the "lopsided" Tory ratio of cuts to tax rises, and yet he's the one who's signed off on the spending round up till 2016 which puts those plans in motion. In fact, as other far superior bloggers have pointed out, the Osborne strategy seems to be a fantasy. Cutting spending back the way he proposes simply isn't feasible without public services collapsing, meaning he will either have to raise taxes, or more likely, further delay the point at which the deficit is eliminated. The point is to hope we won't worry our little heads about the potential paring back of the state and instead focus on the recovery, leaving the unpleasant decisions to either after the election or his successor.

The irony of Osborne describing this as a "year of hard truths" while projecting his fantasy would not have been lost on Hoggart. He would also have seen the inherent absurdity in Nick Clegg one moment talking about how his party and the Conservatives are "co-authors of fiscal responsibility", then in the next talking of how the difference between them is they would do things "fairly". The party that made the bedroom tax possible, that still believes there are further ways to "sharpen the incentives to work", i.e., going along with Osborne's Help to Work scheme, which claims the Tories couldn't have delayed the recovery without them, yet again claiming to be on the side of the downtrodden and vulnerable. Only he would have expressed it without sounding bitter or dejected. Simon, RIP.

Labels: Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, economics, George Osborne, Grauniad, Nick Clegg, politics, Simon Hoggart

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1/06/2014 08:46:00 pm | Permalink | | links to this post

Obsolete

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Ready for drowning.

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

The Liberal Democrat manifesto.

Friday, April 03, 2015

A complete waste of everyone's time.

Wednesday, March 04, 2015

Drugs, sensationalism and paternalism.

Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Is it that time already?

Wednesday, October 08, 2014

The chronicles of Glasgow.

Thursday, July 17, 2014

The differentation of fools.

Wednesday, June 04, 2014

It's not a peak, it's a plateau.

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

You can't put the vibe back into this hospital ward.

Thursday, May 08, 2014

The curious state of the Liberal Democrats.

Thursday, March 27, 2014

Rocking all over Europe.

Monday, March 10, 2014

Tell me what you hate, not what you love.

Tuesday, March 04, 2014

The more things change, the more tiresome this line staying the same becomes.

Monday, January 20, 2014

Much as I'd like to just laugh...

Monday, January 06, 2014

A bad omen.

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