Do the Lib-Dems need media tuition?

Ed Miliband recently told Labour MPs that being in opposition is crap. After 60 years out of office, many Liberal Democrats would no doubt sympathise with that sentiment, but it has to be said, that being a Liberal Democrat has lately been a bit crap too.

On the whole, I have been fairly pleased with the Coalition, which has delivered a number of policies I have wanted to see for some time: from a less authoritarian state, taking low paid workers out of tax, reform of political institutions, changes to the benefit system, prison reform, to the pupil premium. For the party which finished third in the General Election, this is a good return.

Tuition fees however, is the hot topic which looks likely to cause the Lib-Dems serious and long term political damage. This is especially galling, because the policy negotiated has some really positive aspects. If the Coalition had bothered to ‘go on the offensive’ rather than talking to themselves, then the spin from Labour and the NUS could have been exposed.

Aaron Porter: President of the NUS, member of the Labour Party, and if he follows the path of many of his predecessors, recipient of a safe Labour seat sometime in the not too distant future, has been eager to play down any progressive elements of the policy Instead he chooses to express it in as much inflammatory language as he can muster. The NUS have proposed a graduate tax, (as have I), but they have not explained to students that they would pay as much, if not more, under such a system. In essence, both systems are virtually identical.

The problem for the Lib-Dems is not that they are proposing this policy, but that they were naive enough to sign those NUS pledges. The leadership desperately tried to discard the albatross of scrapping tuition fees, on the grounds that it was impossible to implement in the real world of government. But the Lib-Dems are democratic, and activists insisted they kept this policy – it was popular on the door steps and they were realistically unlikely to get into government. The leadership made the same assessment and the MPs signed the NUS pledges. The fact is that the Lib-Dems did get into government and now have been ‘mugged’ by the realities of power.

Let’s be clear. If Labour had won the election, they would be implementing this exact same policy. They promised there would be no tuition fees in 1997, won the election and brought in tuition fees. They promised they would not bring in top-up fees in 2001, won the election and gave us top-up fees. They created the Browne Report, to push the decision to raise fees until after the election, and a graduate tax was not even part of its remit. Under Labour, the Browne Report’s only possible recommendation could have been to raise fees. Labour’s policy now, is rank and naked opportunism – they have twice made election promises about higher education funding, and then broke them whilst in majority governments. They now are pillorying the Lib-Dems for not keeping to their manifesto commitment, as the party which finished third in the General Election.

How Clegg must regret those pledges. It feeds the strong narrative in the leftish media of ‘Tory cuts and spineless Liberal lickspittles’, or simply the ‘Con-dems’. The Tories are indifferent about all this, they are supported by the vast majority of the media, but for the Lib-Dems this is damaging. Much of this could have been avoided by better leadership; talking to the voters rather than concentrating on Coalition management and the party taking better control of its media image. The Lib-Dems are still operating as a second opposition, not as a Coalition partner in government and if this does not change soon, the Labour spin machine will crush them.

Forget the cuts: tuition fees will be the first test of the Coalition’s resolve

Yesterday the Lib-Dem membership received an e-mail from Vince Cable ruling out “a pure graduate tax”, adding that “while it is superficially attractive, an additional tax on graduates fails both the tests of fairness and deficit reduction”.

What this actually amounts to, is that despite the best efforts of Vince and David Willetts, the Treasury would not wear a graduate tax. It was always going to be tough to get a ‘tax’ past the Conservatives, especially one which would disproportionately affect upper middle-class families. It would have also been difficult, as there would be an interim period between tuition fees being phased out and graduate tax funding paying into the system.

Vince cited three problems of a graduate tax, which he maintains would make it unviable. Some graduates would end up paying more than the cost of their education; UK taxes would not be able to be collected from foreign students; and a graduate tax would not help reduce the deficit over the next five years.

The first two reasons do not seem particularly insurmountable. I suspect that it would only be a minority of graduates on obscene salaries who would pay “many times more than the cost of their course”. Foreign students could pay the cost of their studies, in full, upfront. However it is the last problem which has decided government policy, a graduate tax would indubitably add to government spending over this parliament - but it would be progressive in the longer term.

Quite how this fits with Nick Clegg’s speech on the 18th of August, where he said: “governing for the long-term means thinking not only about the next year or two, or even the next parliamentary term. Governing for the long-term means recognising that the decisions of one generation profoundly influence the lives and life chances of the next”, is anyone’s guess.

This announcement will be of serious concern for the 57 Lib-Dem MPs, 54 of whom including Nick Clegg and Vince Cable, signed the NUS pledge to oppose any rise in tuition fees. If a graduate tax is dismissed, then tuition fees will undoubtedly have to rise, with some reports of students being charged £10,000 a year. Each of those MPs will have to decide whether abstaining will honour that pledge, or whether they will have to vote against the government.

This is a major headache for the Lib-Dem leadership, and if it is not handled well, Nick and Vince may find their party in open revolt. The abolition of tuition fees is a policy which has support from virtually all activists and by signing the NUS pledge, the MPs have no space for manoeuvre. They will either be disloyal rebels or proven hypocrites. Either way, this will provide a large stick for their opponents to beat them with.

A Tale of Two Wars

David Cameron and Barack Obama met last week in Washington for their first bilateral talks. At the top of their agenda was how to extricate themselves from the wars they have inherited. With the announcement of a phased withdrawal from Afghanistan by 2015, it would seem that neither administration is willing to stay any longer than expediency allows. The terrible cost in blood and treasure has turned public opinion firmly against the war, and both will be eager that they do not pay a political price. It is likely that Iran and North Korea also formed part of their discussions, but both men would do well to learn the lessons that their predecessors provided and should be wary of any future interventionist adventures.

In 1989 the world changed. The Berlin Wall was torn down, bloodless revolutions swept Central and Eastern Europe and by 1991 Boris Yeltsin rode on a tank into Red Square. The Cold War dissolved with the preconceptions of how global politics worked. The problem with this post-cold war idyll was that it took from our governments their raison-d’être, as leaders of the ‘free’. Into this vacuum entered Tony Blair, whose path to interventionism it would seem was initially an organic one. British troops were sent to Sierra Leone to free UK hostages from the rebel forces, but once on the ground they quickly realised they could end the civil war with ease, and did so, apparently without explicit government consent. Buoyed by this success, Blair turned his attention to Kosovo and led Bill Clinton’s America reluctantly to the conflict. It is hard to criticise either of these interventions, and in so far as any wars can be called good, these were.

After Kosovo, Mr Blair became a firm believer in interventionism as a force for good and when George W Bush’s hawkish Republican administration took office in 2001, he found a leader who shared this world view. The Republicans dreamt of creating a global democratic free-market utopia and they believed that US military power should be deployed to impose it, especially in the troublesome Middle East. The Muslim hardliners who preached of ‘The Great Satan’ - with its imperialist pretensions in the Arab world - felt vindicated and Bin Laden attacked the Twin Towers. The philosopher John Grey, in Al Qaeda and What It Means to Be Modern suggests that the ideologies of both the Western interventionists and Al Qaeda were born of contradictions and false premises - nonetheless they led us to war.

In his polemic three part documentary, The Power of Nightmares, Adam Curtis argues that the ‘war on terror' lies largely in the imagination of our elites as a post cold war narrative, and the resultant actions of British and American foreign policy have made the world less safe than it was before. He believes that Western governments were emasculated by the ending of the cold war, but by deluding themselves of a global terrorist nightmare and saving us from it - they could become powerful once more. The real threat to Britain lies in the disenfranchisement of youth from minority ethnic Europe, the oppression of Palestine, the manipulation of Pakistan, the nation building in Afghanistan and that we have ended up fighting a morally dubious conflict as part of a deeply misguided post colonial doctrine. These actions have created a discontented Islamic world, and a minority have been drawn to violence - but to characterise this as a replacement threat equal to the Soviet Union simply does not stand scrutiny.

David Cameron has already betrayed a poor grasp of history, when he described Britain as “America’s junior partner in 1940”; one might have thought an expensive Eton education would have taught him that Britain stood alone in that year - America would not join the conflict until December 1941. It is however a more recent history that Obama and Cameron must learn from if the damage to America and Britain’s reputations in the international community are to be repaired. When Nick Clegg stood at the dispatch box on Wednesday and denounced “the illegal invasion of Iraq” as “Labour’s most disastrous decision”, he may or may not have been materially correct, but he accurately articulated the deeply held view of a great many across the globe. It is a timely reminder that we must face up to what has been done ‘in our names’ to make sure that it can never happen again - and that the rule of law extends not just to citizens but to our leaders as well.

It would be naive to think endless peace is credible, but I believe that it is fundamental that Britain should only ever fight ‘the good fight’ in the future.

Flaming June

Well, it’s been over a month since I last wrote a blog; for you see I’ve been busy writing essays, making a radio feature and working extra nights at the petrol station (the things I will do to put bread on the table!). It has certainly been an interesting month and I’ve rued not having the time to pontificate on a number of events.

My last offering correctly predicted The Supreme Leader’s end and the absurdly titled ‘Rainbow Coalition’ which seemed to exist only in the minds of left leaning daydreamers; however I didn’t guess it would be the Scottish Old Left Dinosaurs who would snuff out such an outcome. It seemed that opposition was preferable to having to compromise with their despised SNP counterparts. It was a remarkable sight, to behold Mandleson and Campbell running like demented schoolboys to the Sky/BBC news circus on College Green, one day fawning over the Lib Dems and then within 24 hours castigating them. It was enlightening to see how our country had been run for the last decade, only for once being conducted in the glare of the TV cameras. This has however provided us with the ‘spectacle’ of a Labour ‘leadership’ contest, which seems to highlight to the uninitiated an amazing lack of talent in the ranks of the party; I have tried to imagine any of the contenders in the role and can only see disaster ahead for those of a Labour bent. We have seen Diane Abbott given her place in the contest, an act which smacked of unbelievably patronising tokenism from the other contenders and it would serve them right if she won. To be fair to Ms Abbott, she at least has a little integrity, which is notably lacking in the others, even though she is woefully unqualified for the role which she seeks. The belief of many Labour activists that when the coalition becomes unpopular, they will waltz back into government regardless of policy or leader, which seems to be somewhat optimistic in my humble opinion. However its endless reassertion in the Guardian seems to provide them succour, so I will wish them the best of British luck with that strategy.

We have also seen BP unleash the greatest environmental disaster on the world ever. Well, the largest to affect a Western country anyway. Who gives a toss that there has been a strikingly similar event going on, unreported for years, in the Niger Delta. Rule one of news – a hundred dead Africans is no news; ninety-nine dead Africans and one dead Anglo-Saxon and it leads the ten o’clock news. Still, this has given the increasingly suspect Obama the opportunity to rant and rave with high hyperbole about this being a new 9/11, and to exercise his barely concealed Anglophobia. Never mind that the rig was operating under licence for BP by an American company; never mind that it was Halliburton (of course it was!) that was responsible for the failed blow out preventer; never mind the criminally lapse US regulatory body, which it would seem didn’t regulate anything other than signing off contracts; never mind the fact that the US is the largest polluter on the globe by a very large margin and have done their utmost to block any attempts to modify their excesses, and that their insatiable craving for oil has caused untold misery across the globe for the last hundred years. Why take an uncomfortable look at yourself, when you can whip up xenophobic sentiment against ‘British Petroleum’ to mask your own impotence in the situation and the subsequent drop in the approval ratings. We’ll ignore the fact that BP is 40% US owned and Britain has been America’s staunchest, loyalist and some would say slavish ally for a century, even when that has meant British leaders damaging themselves to defend America’s interests. We’ll ignore all that, because you’ve got those midterms coming up, oh brave and principled leader of the free.


We also had a mad man go on a killing spree in Cumbria. Whilst this is a thankfully rare event in the UK, it didn’t stop the media going into overdrive, with all its phoney soul searching and seeking answers to unanswerable questions. BBC news24 and Sky take the prize though, for their usual brand of insensitive reporting. Did they really still need to be camped on the street 48 hours later, interviewing people with no connection to the events? Is it only me that finds the mawkish and intrusive way that rolling news treats these events so distasteful? These were real people whose lives were cut short in a brutal way by a man who clearly had severe problems. It wasn’t an episode of Midsummer Murders or CSI. It should be possible to report the news in restrained and respectful manner; I suspect there is just too much emphasis on ratings and too much technology available to these rolling news shits. I half expected a reconstruction of events by day two to star Robert Carlisle as the gunman being stalked by PC Dick van Dyke with Cracker providing psychoanalysis back up, leading to a final confrontation at the top of Scarfell Pike.


Now to the much maligned coalition. I am growing somewhat weary of people telling me that the Lib Dems are somehow sell-outs, I have been told we should have, for some reason yet to adequately be explained to me, put the national interest behind some narrow ideological standpoint, which isn’t what we stand for anyway. This probably stems from the woeful and lazy media coverage we have received for the last two decades, where we have unfairly been labelled as Labour-lite. We are now the little-Tories, which of course is equally inane and un-descriptive of our politics. We are a liberal party. That we have areas that overlap with Labour and at the same time with the Conservatives shouldn’t be that hard to grasp, unless you have a very low intellect. We believe in protection for those who have fallen through the gaps of society, we agree with the welfare state (to a degree) and it was the Liberal Party of Asquith, Lloyd-George and Churchill who instigated the state pension, unemployment payments and National Insurance. It was Beverage, a Liberal, who drew up the welfare plans adopted by Labour after the war, and which we have supported ever since. We also deplore bureaucracy, government waste and seek value for money; we believe that the free market is the best way to deliver economic freedom; however that it requires regulation to reduce inequality and to produce stability. Above all else, we believe in personal freedoms in all its forms, the state should be limited in its interference in personal affairs; only to prevent individuals from impeding on another’s freedoms.


As a Liberal, the idea that you can have welfare provision which offers value for money and reduced bureaucracy and that you can have a government which doesn’t spy, pry or dominate individuals, whilst seeking to restrain the free market to reduce the inequality gap doesn’t seem inalienable positions. We have much in common with the liberal wing of Labour and the One Nation Conservatives – at the same time! It would have been just as difficult to form a coalition with Labour, as we Liberals despise the authoritarian Old Left Labourites as much as we despise the ‘unreformed right’ of the Tories. I believe Clegg made the best of the options available to him. We have an amazingly liberal set of policies for the coalition – and for the record, coalition doesn’t mean the Lib Dems have ‘joined’ the Conservatives, it is an agreement between the two parties forming a joint government of Lib Dems AND Conservatives – but the fact remains the country is bust and some unpopular choices will have to be made.


What this will mean for the Lib Dems in the future is difficult to guess, however I strongly believe that any other choice made by Clegg would have led to an even worse outcome. If we lose votes, so be it. If we lose the more demented of our activists, to Labour or the Greens, good riddance. Finally, I would like to counter a repeating charge that the Lib Dems have betrayed Labour supporters, who voted Lib Dem to ‘keep the Tories out.’ As a party, we could not have been any clearer. Repeatedly in the last week of the campaign, Nick Clegg urged voters to not vote tactically: “vote with your heart, for what you believe in” he said maybe a little too frequently. It was Peter Hain, Alistair Campbell, the Mirror and the Independent who urged you to vote tactically – not us.

Uncertain times

If one thing appears certain in this period of uncertainty, it is that Mr Brown's days are numbered. I have to admit that I have a grudging admiration for the Supreme Leader - his resilience is nothing short of phenomenal. He had to live in Blair’s shadow for thirteen long years, he has faced down a number of coup attempts from his own party, and has suffered a sustained character assassination from the right wing press which most of us mere mortals would have found difficult to survive. By the end of the campaign it was beginning to show on his time wearied face. But the die is cast and the daggers are poised, Mr Brown can fall on his sword or he will be decapitated. For the good of his party and the good of the country and for his own good, he must go.

Mr Brown and Mr Darling will be much better treated by historians than by us, because of the vital job they did stopping this country from folding during the banking crisis, which nearly caused the Western financial system to collapse and which certainly wasn’t Labour's fault. Britain plc came within a hair’s breadth of going bust, something a great many still do not seem to fully grasp and something which we will still be paying for perhaps two decades from now. Our bile should be directed at the bankers who bet the house and lost, taking us down with them and who are now dictating demands for cuts in public services for those of us who bailed them out. Our politics however dictated that Brown and Labour had to take the flak. It is a repeating feature of our history that the British public may be thankful for your services, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they will vote for you come polling day. Churchill was beloved by the nation after the war, but he was still swept away by a Labour landslide. Mr Brown was by no stretch of the imagination Churchill and he was most defiantly not beloved, however he will be shown to be the longest serving and most successful Chancellor in our long history.

The election has delivered the hung parliament that we were vociferously warned about by Ken Clarke and the poisonous right wing press – and so far the sky hasn’t fallen in. Welcome to ‘grown up politics’ everyone, where a fraction of the population aren’t able to exercise a five year tyranny over the rest of us. It is worth noting that Britain and the Vatican City are the only states in Europe to not have a proportional system, so one assumes the rest of Europe are watching the media whirlwind here with mild amusement – or they would be if Greece wasn’t weighing so heavily on their minds.

The Lib-Dem bubble was blown by our old nemesis, First Past the Post and when it came to it, the charge of ‘vote Clegg get Brown’ from the Tories and ‘vote Clegg get Cameron’ from Labour, coupled with anti-Tory tactical voting made liars of the opinion pollsters. We increased our share of the vote and those sneering from the Labour ranks should note they got just six percent more than us, or two million more votes from an electorate of forty five million. The Conservatives with two million more than Labour, or four million more than us, do not under any definition have a mandate from the nation.

I have deep, deep misgivings about any suggestion of a coalition with the Tories. I have been impressed by the conciliatory nature of their leadership’s rhetoric since the negotiations, but the vile hot air blowing from the party’s right wing mean that we would get bugger all from Cameron et al, other than sharing the blame for the inevitable savage cuts and punitive tax rises that have to come. I do not think cabinet jobs are in anyway worth the cost without a cast iron guarantee for a Single Transferable Vote PR system – something Cameron cannot deliver. As for a ‘rainbow coalition’, as much as I would like to see it ideologically and as Labour would give us whatever we wanted, it doesn’t seem likely and it would not go down well with the nation. The charge of a stitch up would be difficult to defend.

There is a growing movement for electoral reform, a so called 'purple revolution' which possibly before too long could force this issue out of the politicians’ hands – it has outgrown being simply the ‘third’ party’s concern, there is deep anger and resentment bubbling beneath the surface. The current system is indefensibly corrupt. More people didn’t bother to vote than those who voted Tory. Those of us not voting for red or blue account for 35% of the electorate and we got 85 seats. The Tories got 36% and were entitled to 307 seats, Labour with 29% are somehow allowed 258.

The current system is a Victorian relic which only works in a two party state, something Britain hasn’t been for thirty years. I believe that the whole of our politics needs to be restructured and that it would be beneficial for those trapped in the charade ‘parties’ of Labour and the Conservatives, which are in reality coalitions of competing ideologies. The lurches from left to right lead to instability, each gleefully tearing up the others legislation as soon as the pendulum swings. Society is more complex than this false system and everyone has the right to have their voice heard in a democracy. The real world is one based on compromise, where people have different opinions and consensuses are built. A system where our politicians seem to behave like children is not in the national interest. It is time for Britain to enter the 21st century.

Here's John Cleese explaining PR from a 1987 Aliance broadcast.


The British establishment should be warned, if it thinks that stealing 35% of the electorate’s representation is permissible and that they will keep getting away with it forever, then they are very much mistaken. We will not go away, we will not give up. We demand a fair voting system. Nick Clegg should also be warned, ‘getting into bed’ with the Tories whilst failing to deliver a fair voting system would not be easily forgiven either.

If you would like a fair voting system please sign the petition here.

Liberal principals

Reading the newspapers this week, one would be forgiven for thinking that the Liberal Democrats were a collection of unprincipled opportunists, or a gang of miscreants who happened onto the political stage last month, to scupper the old parties ‘battle of ideas.’ This has come from hacks on both sides of British politics and ignores a number of facts which are worth mentioning.

In the last general election the Lib-Dems got over a fifth of the vote. They have increased their share of the vote in every general election since 1997 and polling has consistently shown that there is a significant number of people, who given the opportunity of Lib-Dem success, say they would support them. So they have been a growing presence on the political landscape; albeit one hampered by a corrupt voting system, ignored largely by the press, and patronised by Labour and the Tories.

As for the charge of not having an ideology; it’s a bit rich coming from Labour commentators. If ‘new’ Labour has an ideology, it is a particularly muddled and contradictory one. The Conservatives represent what they have always held dear; featherbedding the wealthy, inwardly looking, with fear, loathing and contempt of the poor. ‘People in glass houses’ maybe springs to mind?

The press are clearly worried about this election and it would seem that its influence may be on the wane. We have changed a great deal in the last ten years and the establishment hasn’t kept pace with either technology or the zeitgeist. It doesn’t like what it sees, and it is terrified the old way of doing things may be at an end. We will see a concerted effort to scare the voters back into line next week and the headlines will be interesting on May 6th should the polls remain as they are; who knows whether they will succeed.

As for what the Lib-Dems believe in, I cannot put it any more succinctly than the preamble to the Liberal Democrat constitution (below). Read it, and then tell me that they do not stand for anything, that they don’t believe in anything and that they have no ideological beliefs. It sounds pretty good to me.

Preamble to the Liberal Democrat Federal Constitution:


“The Liberal Democrats exist to build and safeguard a fair, free and open society, in which we seek to balance the fundamental values of liberty, equality and community, and in which no-one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity. We champion the freedom, dignity and well-being of individuals, we acknowledge and respect their right to freedom of conscience and their right to develop their talents to the full. We aim to disperse power, to foster diversity and to nurture creativity. We believe that the role of the state is to enable all citizens to attain these ideals, to contribute fully to their communities and to take part in the decisions which affect their lives.


We look forward to a world in which all people share the same basic rights, in which they live together in peace and in which their different cultures will be able to develop freely. We believe that each generation is responsible for the fate of our planet and, by safeguarding the balance of nature and the environment, for the long term continuity of life in all its forms.


Upholding these values of individual and social justice, we reject all prejudice and discrimination based upon race, colour, religion, age, disability, sex or sexual orientation and oppose all forms of entrenched privilege and inequality. Recognising that the quest for freedom and justice can never end, we promote human rights and open government, a sustainable economy which serves genuine need, public services of the highest quality, international action based on a recognition of the interdependence of all the world's peoples and responsible stewardship of the earth and its resources.


We believe that people should be involved in running their communities. We are determined to strengthen the democratic process and ensure that there is a just and representative system of government with effective Parliamentary institutions, freedom of information, decisions taken at the lowest practicable level and a fair voting system for all elections. We will at all times defend the right to speak, write, worship, associate and vote freely, and we will protect the right of citizens to enjoy privacy in their own lives and homes. We believe that sovereignty rests with the people and that authority in a democracy derives from the people. We therefore acknowledge their right to determine the form of government best suited to their needs and commit ourselves to the promotion of a democratic federal framework within which as much power as feasible is exercised by the nations and regions of the United Kingdom. We similarly commit ourselves to the promotion of a flourishing system of democratic local government in which decisions are taken and services delivered at the most local level which is viable.


We will foster a strong and sustainable economy which encourages the necessary wealth creating processes, develops and uses the skills of the people and works to the benefit of all, with a just distribution of the rewards of success. We want to see democracy, participation and the co-operative principle in industry and commerce within a competitive environment in which the state allows the market to operate freely where possible but intervenes where necessary. We will promote scientific research and innovation and will harness technological change to human advantage.


We will work for a sense of partnership and community in all areas of life. We recognise that the independence of individuals is safeguarded by their personal ownership of property, but that the market alone does not distribute wealth or income fairly. We support the widest possible distribution of wealth and promote the rights of all citizens to social provision and cultural activity. We seek to make public services responsive to the people they serve, to encourage variety and innovation within them and to make them available on equal terms to all.


Our responsibility for justice and liberty cannot be confined by national boundaries; we are committed to fight poverty, oppression, hunger, ignorance, disease and aggression wherever they occur and to promote the free movement of ideas, people, goods and services. Setting aside national sovereignty when necessary, we will work with other countries towards an equitable and peaceful international order and a durable system of common security. Within the European Community we affirm the values of federalism and integration and work for unity based on these principles. We will contribute to the process of peace and disarmament, the elimination of world poverty and the collective safeguarding of democracy by playing a full and constructive role in international organisations which share similar aims and objectives.


These are the conditions of liberty and social justice which it is the responsibility of each citizen and the duty of the state to protect and enlarge. The Liberal Democrats consist of women and men working together for the achievement of these aims.”

A very British revolution?

I’m a member of the Liberal-Democrats, my football team is Newcastle United and I’m a fan of Worcester Warriors in the rugby. I can speak with some authority on false dawns, raised expectations and ultimate disappointments; although on the flip-side it has also taught me to enjoy the good times along the way.

The second leaders’ debate seems to suggest that the increase in the Lib-Dem poll position would appear to have traction, leaving us in second place with Labour just behind and the Tories slightly ahead. But whether that will transfer into votes and how this national trend will play out locally, with all the vagaries of the ‘First Past the Post’ system appears to be quite unfathomable. It has at least been refreshing to see the political map shifted and the conservative press have a collective nervous breakdown.

Labour and the Tories are both clearly surprised and unsettled by the yellow surge, which begs the question why? Was it arrogance, a sense of entitlement or were they just hoping two party politics would always remain, even though we’ve had three party politics for thirty years? The position the old guard find themselves in, is not in itself merely an infatuation with Clegg –a honeymoon which the voters have foolishly foisted upon them caused by the leader’s debates. We may be witnessing something entirely different, a revolution in the grand old traditions of all British revolutions since our bloody civil war – simmering and gradual and bloodless ones being led by improbable characters.

There are many parallels in the 2010 election with the one in 1924 – Britain’s last gentle revolution - Lloyd George had destroyed the Liberal party seeking his own personal power at any cost, there was an amicable toff trying to recast the Tory party from a ‘nasty’ image which was still haunting it and a wily operator casting himself as outsider against ‘the two old parties’ and presenting himself as ‘real’ change. Does that sound familiar to anyone?

I’ve spent much of the last decade wondering what the point of Labour is (and to a lesser extent the Conservatives), in the 21st century. The Labour Party was a rational expression of the socialism that the then large and recently emancipated working classes justifiably demanded. They wanted reform more quickly and radically than the Liberals of the middle classes were offering, and by the 1924 general election they overtook the Liberals to become the dominant progressive force in British politics. The Liberal agenda of individual freedom was swallowed by ideas of collectivism, but have we not now come full circle?

Now that old the working class is now largely part of the middle there seems to not be so much desire for socialism anymore - social democracy maybe, but not socialism. This was in my opinion what accounted for the 1983 Alliance splitting the progressive vote causing Labour to have to redefine itself, and if the Falkland’s war hadn’t luckily changed the game for Thatcher, could have ended in a very different result.

The ‘new’ Labour rebrand promised so much, but I think history will remember it harshly for being nothing but a cynical mirage. Blair and Brown built a government which seems to have had only one driving ideological principle – namely to win power and then to cling to it at any cost. They shamelessly bought favour from the right wing press, and whilst promising change to liberal voters, their leadership leapt straight over their heads to the left wing of the Conservative party. They told their core vote to shut up, for they had ended Labour’s time in the wilderness, threw a few bribes to floating voters at elections and failed to deliver much in the way of the progressive policies that the British liberal majority clamours for.

The Conservatives – despite their laughable change rhetoric – are exactly the same old Tories they always have been and always will be. They are there for the wealthy, the traditional, the little Englander, the xenophobic and big business, dreaming dreams of non-existent golden yesteryears; in fact all that has changed is that Labour have become unpopular, so they have assumed that means power is theirs to claim again.

Whether the public really want a Liberal-Democratic government is questionable. What, however is crystal clear, is that over a third of the electorate are indicating that they don’t want either a Conservative or a Labour government. They want the Lib-Dems to be there when the next government are discussing cuts, or taxes, and most importantly on political reform – looking over their shoulders and interjecting on the public’s behalf. The First Past the Post system has been shown to be exactly what those of us outside of the duopoly have said it was for decades. It is undemocratic, unrepresentative, corrupt, and delivers this country five year tyrannies that only a fraction of the electorate have voted for. No British government has actually had a mandate since Atlee in 1945.

There needs to be huge and sweeping changes to our system of government. We need to have a stronger and fully elected second chamber. That there are still hereditary peers in the House of Lords is frankly disgusting. That our constitution is so vague and malleable, combined with a corrupt voting system which means that we live in only a notional democracy is utterly unacceptable. In fact we would not be able to join the EU if applying today, as we would fail its democracy criteria. Hooray I hear the right-wingers shout – but even they would have to admit that this is a sorry state of affairs that cannot continue indefinitely?

I can understand that the Conservatives and Labour (the consequence seemingly has only slowly dawned on Labour this week) want to protect this corrupt system, for strong third parties and proportional voting systems mean an end to them forming elected dictatorships. I passionately believe that a plurality of parties is far more democratic, if over half the electorate vote for a coalition, then it has a real mandate. We could work together, cooperating to get things done and the vested interests would have less influence in our governance. People could go and vote for what they believe in, not for what they dislike least.

A proportional system would ultimately result in a Labour split along the lines of the SDP and old Labour traditionalists. The Conservatives would split along their European divisions and would see the Greens entering parliament. It may well perversely split the Lib-Dems as well. We would see much higher turn out when every vote counts and everyone can potentially make a difference. If nothing else can be learnt from this election, let it be this: when people can see that they have a voice, they become engaged with the political process.

Surely even the most partisan and biased Tory or Labour supporter can see that the time for reform has come? Whether we get that reform this year or not – it will come sooner rather than later – the great British public always get their way in the end.

A week in politics

For a lifelong liberal, of both the small and capital L variety, the last week has been a very surprising one, to say the least. We all had thought that the long anticipated leader’s debate (sorry Scotland – Prime Minister’s Debate) would give us a bit of a bounce in the polls; but a ten point poll bounce, actually being in a poll lead for a while and ‘Cleggmania’ would be an utterly incredulous prediction. Yet here we are.


So it was with that on my mind last night, as I went to the Worcester News election debate. It was as entertaining (well for an anorak like me anyway) as it was un-informing; it essentially boils down to the fact that the three main party candidates are fairly bland and middling politicians.

The incumbent, Mike Foster, in the red corner seemed to be in a surprisingly redolent and conciliatory frame of mind; in answer to a question about what he’d say to enter the Pearly Gates, said that he wanted the people of Worcester to “remember him as putting their interests first” – not the “five more years!” one may have expected given the polls. He put in some fiery defences of New Labour’s policies and eloquently highlighted the inequity of some of the Tory’s proposals; he was certainly the most statesmanlike of those on show and deep down there somewhere, beats the heart of a social democrat.

The main contender, Robin ‘jobs tax’ Walker, fighting in the blue corner, was like the invisible man. He was there allright, his was the only head I could actually see through the crowded room; he just seemed to disappear like the vanishing point on a hazy, long and lonely road. In the opening exchanges we heard last week’s Tory mantra of “jobs’ tax”; I’m sorry – but yawn. Nearly every tax is a tax on jobs, what they really mean is that National Insurance is a tax on businesses, but it is framed in the way it is assumedly because “a-bit-of-a-tax-on-you, but-a-far-larger- tax-on-your-boss” probably didn’t play so well in the focus groups. It’s not a great tax rise, but when viewed against the ‘age of austerity’ the Tories promised us a few months ago, seems unavoidable. He shoe-horned the Tory catch phrase into a few more of his answers before (to my mind, in any case) seemingly disappearing from the debate. He was simply a well groomed and no doubt perfectly capable Tory, who’s keeping his head down, assuming that Labour discontent and apathy will see him and not Mike Foster returned to Westminster.

Jackie Alderson, who was representing the Lib-Dems did okay, but if you are standing for a political party, don’t refer to them as “they” all night long. Surely when you get to the point where you are a candidate, you can use “us” as your choice of pronoun? To be fair, Jackie is contesting a Labour/Tory marginal which she isn’t particularly likely to win, was selected without much time to prepare and she is working on a shoestring budget compared to the other two. She incidentally got the loudest cheer of the night when outlining the proposed abolition of tuition fees over six years – it would seem the policy’s dilution is still preferable when compared to those on offer from the other two parties.

Perhaps more enlightening than last night’s debate was seeing the full force of the Conservative attack press unleashed on Nick Clegg this morning, lined up like tin soldiers patrolling on the petrol station forecourt. If you want to see just how rattled the Conservatives and their establishment are by this election campaign, then today’s headlines are more telling than their words could ever convey. If they had followed one line of attack then it may have popped the bubble that is clearly troubling them. However when viewed next to each other they took on a slightly comical appearance; it was just a little too visceral, as cynical as it was predictable and as crass as it was inevitable. It is the wounded war cry of vested interests. The headlines will no doubt cheer up a few Conservative voters but I suspect they will not have as much effect on those who have flown to Clegg’s banner as these papers may think.

What will happen next in this general election is anyone’s bet. Much will depend on tonight’s TV debate and Clegg’s performance. He has taken advantage once, showing when he is able to talk to the nation without the lens of a partisan press filtering him out, (a former editor of the Sun admitted that it was the paper’s policy to deliberately ignore the Lib-Dems), and without Labour, Tory and SNP MP’s boorishly heckling him in the chamber, that he can connect with the British public. Whatever happens now, at least Cameron will have to earn them, if he still wants those keys to No 10 and that looks far less likely than any point since 2007.

And for the progressives out there; the prospect of a really fair and democratic nation seems at least more plausible than it has done in a very long time indeed.

Leave the Tent and Bunker: bring politics back into the open.

This week has been an interesting one for those of a political bent. It started with an Ipsos MORI poll showing that the Tories' lead has been reduced to 6 points, producing Conservative fear, Labour hope and a combination of both for those of us in the Lib-Dems. In the event of a hung parliament we have a difficult choice; to prop up an unpopular Labour Government, to form a coalition with the Tories who would refuse to offer constitutional reform - a fundamental Lib-Dem condition, or to do neither and allow a minority government. The latter would be my preference, which would mean the Lib-Dems wouldn’t be sullied by Red/Blue policies and leave us as power brokers in parliament; whoever was in government would have to tailor legislation to get liberal support.



We could have moved from Blair’s ‘Big Tent’, via Brown’s ‘Bunker’ into a brief period of compromise and government by consent.


Then we had an unusually exciting Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday, with David Cameron attacking Labour over giving public money to an alleged extremist organisation, namely Hizb ut-Tahrir, via a ‘front’ organisation running two schools in the South-East. If true then this is an extraordinary revelation; £113,000 pounds of tax payers money, possibly from the Pathfinder fund set up to combat extremism, being given over to an organisation who are reported to have stated that: “Jews should be killed wherever you find them” and their constitution states of non-Muslims that: “their blood is lawful, as is their property.” The Government have denied that the money came from its Pathfinder scheme; however this misses the point, why an organisation like this is running schools in the first place? Most would accept that any public money handed over to them is outrageous, though until the full details emerge we should perhaps reserve judgement.

After this we had Nick Clegg strike a direct hit on Gordon Brown over the Chilcot Enquiry into the contentious Iraq War. Clegg first asked the PM to confirm the enquiry was to be open and transparent, save on matters of national security. The PM stated: “I have set out a remit and brought it to the House of Commons. Sir John Chilcot has been given the freedom to conduct his inquiry as he wants. He has chosen to invite people to give evidence, and he will choose how to bring his final report to the public. That is a matter for the inquiry.” Clegg responded: “As I think the Prime Minister must know, the matter is not just for the inquiry, because his Government have just issued a protocol - I have it here - to members of the inquiry, governing the publication of material in the final report. If he reads it, he will see that it includes nine separate reasons why information can be suppressed, most of which have nothing to do with national security. Outrageously, it gives Whitehall Departments individual rights of veto over the information in the final report. Why did the Prime Minister not tell us about that before? How on earth will we, and the whole country, hear the full truth of the decisions leading up to the invasion of Iraq if the inquiry is suffocated on day one by his Government’s shameful culture of secrecy?”

Not quite as open as we had been led to believe then – we shouldn’t forget the PM wanted this enquiry to be held behind closed doors, I can only assume because it severely embarrasses many of those still in government, himself included, which exposes how they knowingly and willingly led this country into war on the basis of lies and spin.


For those who want to know the full truth of this sorry episode of British foreign policy, I fear we shall have to wait for the 30 year rule to be implemented.