Day 5769: Marmite Wars are Merely the Beginning

Monday:


Today Captain Clegg launched his third pamphlet on the challenges facing the UK due to Brexit. This one is about food and drink.

Nick Clegg at the National Liberal Club

If you’re still watching POLDARK on the BBC you will know it’s a tale of noble-but-impoverished workers of mine and land, ground down by the machinations of sinister bankers who manipulate the laws and the local dimwit Tory MP for their own ends, and so must turn to smuggling to get goods past the exorbitant import tariffs.

What you might NOT realise is that this is a BOLD sci-fi drama set in the DISTOPIAN post-Brexit FUTURE! With occasional topless scything.

And the reaction was basically terrifying. (To Brexit, not the topless scything!)

That’s not the position of Captain Clegg – who was at pains to point out that we should definitely be trying to save people from their fears by at least agreeing a Norway-style EEA agreement that maintains our trading links.

No, the fear was present in the questions arising, questions from small farms, from small retailers – corner shops and newsagents – who are all already staring down the barrel of disaster as the collapse in the pound sees their prices soar; the sort of everyday working folk whose concerns for their businesses and livelihoods and families are dismissed from the ivory towers of Conservatories like Jacob Rees-Mogg who’s never had to do a day’s work in his life and puts down the questions of ordinary people as “just more Project Fear”.

And another very good question came from the Commonwealth countries who can see their gateway deals to the EU via the UK collapsing and WTO trade tariffs of 40% on chocolate or 50-60% on beef and lamb being imposed by the careless diktat of Liam “Fantastic Dr” Fox, disgraced former Defence Minister and not-yet-disgraced (‘96 days and counting’) International Trade Minister.

Across the continent, the papers are not full – as Cap’s Nick put it – of the cunning of Mr Fox, the honesty of David Davis or the diplomacy of Boris Johnson. No, our friends and allies are instead AGHAST at the language and occasional downright xenophobia coming out of this chaotic Tory government, particularly things like the conference speech of the “Go Home” Secretary, Ms Green Amber Rudd. Less of a dog whistle; more of a traffic light stuck on stop!


Prime Monster Theresa May (or May Not) holds out against delivering ANY answers beyond Brexit means Brexit means a slap on the wrist for ministers who dare to speak the unspeakable, but insists that she has the power to Invoke Article 50 without taking a vote in Parliament. Talk about “taking back control!” Will those Tories – David Davis, John Deadwood, Peter Bone, Rees-Moggy? – who made such a BIG THING of Parliamentary Sovereignty call her to account? Or will they sell their principles in a heartbeat?

MPs were EXPRESSLY told that the Referendum would be only ADVISORY – or else they might have voted for more stringent checks, such as a two-thirds majority, or other thresholds – and those Brexiteers who are trying to say that in passing the referendum BILL Parliament has already voted on Brexit are clearly trying to take away the democratic and sovereign rights of Parliament.

Noted thinker A. C Grayling is writing to every MP to ask them why they are allowing this, and that they should demand a debate AND VOTE on the issue.

It is, after all, their DUTY to “take back control”.

It is clear that unchecked, Mrs Maybe’s unelected administration will see us BOUNCED into the most CHAOTIC TORY BREXIT!

Unilever and Tesco may have come to an accommodation that sees the Marmite back on our shelves, but that’s far from the end of it.

We currently SELL more than £18 billion of food abroad, one of our biggest export industries, and two thirds of that goes to the EU. Tariff and other barriers, like regulations or defining chocolate to be only high cocoa solids, that would exclude British chocolate altogether, will more than eliminate any benefits of the cheaper pound. And THEN we have to compete with the highly subsidised EU food production because THEY’LL still have the much-derided Common Agricultural Policy that WAS pouring billions into OUR farms.

But also we EAT more than we can GROW, so we have to BUY IN more than 25% of the food we need, and more than 70% of that is from Europe.

Companies importing food are going to face a choice of three options: put up prices – difficult in a cutthroat market with discounters already at their heels; cut into their own profits – which are already very tight, especially for small firms that import ingredients to make into prepared foods; or stop stocking certain lines altogether – the Marmite option.

For the moment, big importers will have their prices protected – either by long-term agreements with their suppliers or by insurance (called “hedging”) that will cover the higher cost of buying stuff with a pound that is worth up to 18% less.

But small companies who can’t afford big insurance are being hit with those choices already.

And even the bigger companies, their contracts will run out and, as Tesco discovered, new agreements will need to be made; those insurance policies are to smooth out short-term the ups and downs of the currency markets, not to protect long-term from a major devaluation. And then the higher prices will have to be paid.

In the next year to two years we will see a (first) big spike in food inflation, and that will hit the least well off the hardest.

We need to work RIGHT NOW to protect against an even bigger hit from collapsing out of the Single Market.

As Master Yoda so very nearly said of Bojo’s foreign policy: Victory? There was no victory. Begun, this clown war has.

Steve Bell in the Grauniad

Day 5239: Worst! Election! Eveh!

Wednesday:


A British General election is NEVER an "edifying" process. The electoral system makes most voters irrelevant and the media craves the spectacle of a car crash not informed debate, so the voice of the people is most often lost under the slanging match.

In my fluffy lifetime, I've seen one or two British General elections. (Well, four, ACTUALLY, but I don't remember 2001 when I was 1 [R: nothing] –shut up, daddy), and my Daddies have seen LOADS more, but even THEY don't remember one that's been as HOLLOW and EMPTY a CHARADE as the current Cavalcade of Whimsy™.

The prospect of another hung Parliament, almost guaranteed if the current polling is even remotely close to accurate, has made the question of the Parties' policies, their differences and their overlaps, ever more vital to the empower the voter to understanding of how to use their choice.

So OBVIOUSLY the entire campaign has been reduced to two questions:
• who will "get into bed" (in a "darkened room") with whom – or, apparently more importantly, who will RULE OUT getting into bed with whom; and
• dividing ALL policies of all Parties into (not, as you might expect, those that cause cancer and those that cure cancer), but into those that are RED LINES and those that are TUITION FEES.

The media are of course completely culpable, and have totally let down the public (though the public's almost complete disinterest in controlling their own lives was just begging to be let down).

We have not had any representation of different policy or philosophy; instead, we've had a three-ringed circus, where the clowns throw meaningless custard pies at each other and the Nationalist/Green alliance – riding on the suddenly-popular coattails of Nicola Sturgeon (this year's Nick Clegg, lest she think she's in any way special) – have had three bites of the cherry in every debate while former media darlings the Farragist Kippers have been sidelined to their furious but impotent chagrin and the Liberal Democrats have been stitched up like, well, kippers.

Only the third, "Question Time" style "debate" came close to properly interrogating the leaders and drawing out any differences. Even then, the differences were primarily: "I won't tell you where I'm cutting" v "I won’t tell you I was overspending" v "sorry about that".
The meeja have OBSESSED about what the deals post-election will be like – it's almost as though they're deliberately ignoring the one part of the narrative that they cannot control and is increasingly predictable only in its unpredictability. So they've been pressing all and sundry on who would do the deed with whom, leading to this silly spectacle of ruling out partnerships that the public may press upon us.

Yes, I realise the Liberal Democrats did that too. Yes, we were wrong to. This is a democracy: we have to work with who the people send to Parliament to represent them. You won't beat the Nationalists by isolating them – that just makes them SPECIAL. Northern Ireland could only BEGIN the path to healing when we TALKED to the Irish Nationalists. Where does not talking to the Scottish Nationalists get us, other than BROKEN? Liberalism BEST represents people by bringing them together. We are pluralist by nature; we form coalitions because it is our PHILOSOPHY not merely pragmatism.

So please, no more ruling out deals before the people have got a word in edgeways!

And if I NEVER HEAR the words RED LINES again in my LIFE it will be too soon.

(Yes, we are guilty of this one too.)

The possibility that it might just be SLIGHTLY more complicated than "this policy will cause an irretrievable breakdown of coalition negotiations" while "this policy will be tossed to the winds for a whiff of the ministerial leather", does not apparently excite anyone.

So we see Cap'n Clegg trapped on Andy Marrmite's sofa between Nasty Nige and Yvette "the Snooper" Cooper and trying to put on a brave grin as he is harangued from left and right, as each howls like a banshee to demand that he rule out this or rule in that; while interviewers, thinking they are being SOOOO clever, try "trapping" candidates with the question "well, it's not on the front of the manifesto so is it a red line?"

(Apparently we're afraid to just answer: "no, we'd like it and we'll get it if we can", to this. It would be nice to think that that would be the grown up answer, but you just KNOW it only sends us further down the rabbit hole of "well, is it more important or less important than your pledge on tuition fees?".)

And you know what, not even the tuition fees policy was as simple as "red line" or "toss it aside": the Liberal Democrats had to barter it up to a better deal for students, effectively a graduate tax, and the price for that rather than just Labour's system plus unlimited fees, was having to vote for it.

CHAPTER ONE: LABOUR AND THE BIG LIE

The nadir of this is the blind arrogance of Hard Labour's "our entire manifesto is the red line"; the take it or leave it and accept nothing from anyone else approach. Well, it's what Mr Milipede and the rest of the Labour "negotiating" team "offered" the Liberal Democrats last time. Remind me, how'd that work out for him?

(Clue: it got his boss fired.)

The bitter irony is that there's nothing IN Hard Labour's manifesto, their anodyne pledges – carved, ludicrously, into a giant tablet (of soluble aspirin, probably) – do not amount to a hill of beans large enough on which to mount the fatuous Ed Stone!

I think – I hope – that people voting for the Labour Party are doing so because they hope for a better society, a more compassionate one, a more responsible one where people care for each other.

(Because the CYNICAL view is that it's a load of public and third sector workers demanding that the government spends a lot more of other people's money on the public and third sectors… and calling the Conservatories the SELFISH ones. But that would be – almost literally – uncharitable.)

What I regret, though, is that I see absolutely no evidence that the Labour Party will deliver on that hope.

Harriet the Harminator and Rachel the Reaver promising that Labour will get "tough" on benefits. Mr Milipede, son of immigrants, promising that Labour will get tough on immigrants. This is not a ploy to fool the Kipper vote and slip into power; this is what these people truly believe. If power means sacrificing some poor/foreign people, they'll be first to construct the giant wicker Kinnock.

I remember who it was who started taking away the benefits of disabled people because they decided that people too sick to get out should prove they were not fit to work. And it wasn't the "evil" Tories. The Tories may be VENAL, but they only want to cut the money. Hard Labour will sanction your benefits BECAUSE IT IS "GOOD" FOR YOU.

And so, the beginning, middle and end of ANY deal the Liberal Democrats do with the Hard Labour Party has got to be to require the HARM PRINCIPLE be made a fixture of the work and benefits system!

"First Do No Harm" is the Hippocratic Oath; we need a "First Do Not Starve People to Death Because You Believe They're Not Working Hard Enough" Oath!

(I refer again to how ANGRY I am with the Greens for making such a total DOG'S BREAKFAST of selling the Citizens Income!)

In spite of this… in spite, or even BECAUSE of the Milipede-crafted model of offering nothing to anyone in order to offend no one… I was almost coming to the conclusion that Mr Milipede, arrogant and yet useless as he is, with his talent for holding things together by an act of zen-like doing nothing, might be the man for the job, the Perfect Prime Monster for a Parliament that no one wins and cannot do anything.

And five years of Parliament doing nothing might be a blessed relief to us all.

But then he went and told a direct lie.

He told Mr Marrmite: "The deficit didn't cause the financial crisis; the financial crisis caused the deficit."

This is palpably, provably untrue. Hard Labour spent more than they raised in tax, and so had to borrow the difference – that is, in the jargon "ran a deficit" – in 2007. And in 2006. And in 2005. And 2004. And 2003. And 2002. And 2001. A Debt Odyssey. Long, long, LONG before the economy was consumed in the flames of Northern Rock's crash and burn and Lehman Brothers' self-immolation.

But that lie was a cock-up. A rhetorical spasm caused by trying to sound cleverer than he really is.

The real lie that Labour have been telling is a complicated one, hidden by claiming that they are the ones lied against: that the story of the recession is itself a lie, one told against them.

The left generally, and Labour particularly, have latched onto this line: "Labour's borrowing did not cause the financial crash".

This in itself is NOT clearly true.

Certainly it's not a DIRECT cause – the banks lent too much money to people who could not afford to pay it back, and in the end those loans (the so-called "sub-prime" mortgages) going bad is what toppled the global banking system.

But WHY and HOW did the banks lend that money?

WHY did the banks lend the money? It takes two to tango, so WHY did so many people go on a borrowing and spending spree? WHO – implicitly, even explicitly sometimes – encouraged them? Buy now pay later was the ethos of the naughties, condoned by a Hard Labour government "entirely relaxed about people getting filthy rich", and who totally played along with their PFI schemes, paying for vanity projects on the never-never.

The bankers were ABLE to lend too much because credit was so cheap, because the West's leading bankers – including those in the Bank of England – wanted to keep interest rates low to stop the bursting of the dot-com bubble from turning into a recession. Mr Frown's fingerprints are on that decision, entirely supporting the "wizard" Alan Greenspan at America's Federal Reserve, just as Lord Blairimort gave unquestioning support to President Bush.

And who should have been regulating the bankers? Step forward City minister, Ed Balls. Oh yes, egged on by the Conservatories. (And of course over the protests of the Liberal Democrats and sage warning of Dr Vince "the power" Cable!) And as the old saying goes, if Mr Balloon had said go "jump in a lake" would the Labour Government have done that too?

So Hard Labour are far from INNOCENT of responsibility when it comes to causes of the crash.

But that ISN'T the point.

Overspending IS A BAD THING.

It is A BAD THING regardless of whether the entire global economy goes into meltdown on your watch.

Hard Labour's BORROWING might not have led directly to money-geddon in 2008, but that absolutely does not mean that borrowing to cover your spending at the height of the biggest bubble in history was OK!

WHO said "no more boom and bust?" Who was proved SPECTACULARLY WRONG about that?

There's a very scary thesis about – called Modern Money Theory (but known as the Magic Money Tree for reasons that quickly become obvious) – that a lot of dangerously stupid people who think they are clever (cough cough Ed Balls cough cough) have latched onto, that says "if you print your own currency you cannot run out of money". Oh BOY are they wrong!

The Chinese famously invented paper money. The VERY NEXT thing they invented was HYPERINFLATION when the Emperor's children thought "if we're printing this stuff, then we cannot run out of money".

[Sidebar: In fact, Great Britain and Americaland HAVE printed a whole lot of money during the recession – the "Quantum of Easing" you may have heard of – and the Eurozone is doing it now. But we just about got away with it because the DEFLATIONARY pressures of the economy IMPLODING kind of cancelled out the INFLATION of blowing up the currency.

But when Mr Alistair "Captain" Darling – ADC to Mr Frown's General Melchett – printed a whole lot of money in 2009, there was a huge spike of inflation in 2010. Coincidence? (Darn it, fairness makes me admit that partly it WAS – food and energy prices also shot up as India and China expanded. But only partly!)

So it's treated like playing with FIRE because everyone but everyone knows that if it goes into a hyperinflation spiral then it's next stop Weimar Germany and literally Goodnight Vienna!]

And yes, it's correct, as they keep saying like it proves anything, the national debt WAS a lower share of national income in 2007 than in 1997 – that's because the debt was at a high point in 1997 and was brought down by following Ken Clarke's Tory spending plans for Labour's first term, and the economy was in a dip in 1997 (post housing crash, pre dot.com) and at the height of a boom in 2007, a bit like saying you're shorter as a share of altitude when you jump off Beachy Head than when you jump of Brighton Pier. It's still not clever to jump off either!

The Tories ran up the national debt in the Nineties to get themselves out of the political and economic hole caused by the Poll Tax and the ERM debacle and the house price crash. And they were JUSTLY punished for their economic incompetence. Why do Labour think THEY should be allowed a free pass for hosing money on THEIR political toys?

So Hard Labour say that it's a "Big Lie" that people say "Labour's borrowing caused the crash".

But that itself IS the lie – NO ONE says that; what they say is that Labour's borrowing (and their decision to put all our eggs in the City's basket, AND their failure to supervise the unscrupulous bankers, AND the climate of borrow today and leave the future to deal with the debts) left us in the WORST position to survive when the crisis hit.

We, Great Britain, had the longest, deepest recession and slowest recovery of the Western nations. But Labour says that was ALL the Coalition cuts, and nothing to do with the depth of the swan dive they had taken. Oh no, honest guv, you can trust us, we're mates with that Russell Brand now.

Labour's economic message is one of COMPLETE DENIAL, a total failure to recognise that they were in any way to blame for the pain of the last five years, or that they would have done anything substantially different, or to come up with any realistically different alternative plan for the next five years. ("The same but with the pain lasting a bit longer and not properly finishing the job," would be the fairest assessment. And the SNP's "end to austerity" is just "the same as Labour but with even longer pain again"!)

When Ed Balls (and those on the left who parrot him and retweet him mindlessly) accuses Master Gideon of ending up where Labour were planning to be in terms of borrowing as much as Labour planned and cutting as much as Labour planned… what exactly IS the accusation here? That Labour wanted the cuts to be deeper?

CHAPTER TWO: TORY FANTASY ECONOMICS

So how DID we end up where Hard Labour were planning to be?

Well, dur! Because Master Gideon's "long term economic plan" lasted about a FORTNIGHT!

It was about that long before the nice people in the Treasury realised he couldn't even work an abacus and gave him some bricks to play with while asking Danny Alexander to take charge. (David Laws, alas, not available!)

(Master Gideon, remember, is the "genius" who engineered the "No" vote in the AV referendum and thereby GUARANTEED that the Tories would LOSE this election.)

Lib Dem policy was to invest in infrastructure. Ooh look, the Coalition invested in infrastructure. Classic Keynesian spending in a recession and the economy started to recover. The quid pro quo of shifting to Plan B was we allowed Osborne to keep CALLING it Plan A!

Which of course makes even MORE ridiculous the Tory campaign of: "let us stick to the path we've been on (by veering off sharply to the right into these dark and trackless woods and I'm sure that's not a cliff ahead of aaaaghh!)".

Labour's total failure in the last five years to come up with ANY economic answers AT ALL, is intimately bound up with the Tory's decision to throw economic caution to the dogs and promise anything and everything to everyone: £7 billion for middle-class tax cuts; £8 billion for the health service; £10 billion for a free pony in every child's bedroom (not actually true); and a surplus on the accounts on top!

And all to be funded out of £12 billion of unspecified cuts to "benefits". But not pensioners. Or children. Or the disabled. Or workers. Or non-workers even… It seems we must give a LOT of money to IMAGINARY claimants! That must be why so many REAL people need to use FOOD BANKS!

But not content with stealing Labour's clothes to spend money we don't have, the Conservatories ALSO want to derail the recovery by clamping down on the people who are making the economy work (immigrants) and the people who are buying what we make (Europe).

Hard Labour may want to blame all the ills of the economy (since about 1799, it would seem) on the Coalition – while giving themselves a FREE PASS for "global events" – but back in the REAL world, we are part of the European economy and instability in the Eurozone – Greece, again, but also the domestic slowdown of our neighbours in France, and even Germany, not to mention the troubling, brooding presence of Vlad the Bad making war in Ukraine – are all bad for business.

All of which makes it a REALLY bad time to be causing EVEN MORE uncertainty over whether we might even stay IN the biggest economy on the planet for the sake of FLIRTING with Nationalism.

(It's possible that by now, the pressures that the Kippers and the Europhobe Tories have built up have reached such a pass that ONLY the explosive release of a referendum will settle them; that's no excuse for having built up those pressures in the first place, and this campaign has only stoked the fires further – all heat and no light at all. And, of course, as we've seen with the twisty-turniness of the SNP when avoiding ruling out a Neverendum for Scottish Independence, one referendum is never enough; it's just a temporary "hit" before the cravings start to build up all over again. Or until you kill the patient.)

As for the GROTESQUE pandering to the Kipper tendency over immigration – indulged in by BOTH Tories and Hard "Controls on Immigration, indeed" Labour – is just economically illiterate. The idea that you could just round up the unemployed youth of the country, ship them off to Norfolk or Morecombe and have them replace semi-skilled labourers like crop or cockle-pickers would be FARCICAL if it would not be so RUINOUS to our wellbeing.

(And the Liberal Democrats got burned on this last time so we are FAR TOO CAUTIOUS when we should be defending the rights of people to live and work and contribute where they wish. Immigrants, after all, are PEOPLE who have been GOOD enough to choose HERE of all places to make lives!)

So the Tories want to undermine our key economic strengths of being open for business; pull savings out their fluffy behinds by cutting benefits to they won’t say who; and at the same time spending like it's going out of fashion on unicorns and magic beans.

So OBVIOUSLY their entire campaign has been about the SNP!

CHAPTER THREE: SCARY MOVIES

It's been the FEAR election, hasn't it?

Hard Labour want you to be afraid for the NHS.

That is, the one Party that has NOT promised the £8 billion extra funding that the NHS's own Stephens report said was needed… and that privatised TWICE as much of the Health Service's services when they were in power than the Coalition ever did… says you should be afraid that the two Parties who HAVE said they WILL fully fund the NHS, and didn't put as much out to the private sector, will instead cut the service and sell it off.

So THAT makes sense.

Meanwhile, the Tories want you to be terrified that Nicola Sturgeon will wrap Mr Milipede round her little finger, that Alex (missing in action) Salmond will lead a tartan army of about 7% of MPs to overwhelm the decent yeomen and backbenchers of this very England.

That is, the one Party that is ACTIVELY campaigning for something that could break up the Union, by destroying the equality of MPs, by giving extra powers to the English only… is trying to tell you that Hard Labour must rule out ANY kind of Coalition… while being IN a Coalition themselves, AND playing footsie with the Kippers.

So THAT makes sense too.

And don't think that the Liberal Democrats fluffy feet are clean in all this – we've been putting out the fear of EXTREMEISM (left OR right) to convince people to try and stay with our nice safe middle-of-the-road managerialism.

That is the one Party that should be radical and mould-breaking and tearing down the walls of the establishment and letting in some light and change is saying "you'll be safe with us, snuggles".

So THAT makes NO FLUFFING SENSE AT ALL! But it's all we got. Along with the red lines and the tuition fees.

Everyone insists on talking about LEGITIMANCY (isn't that a spell from "Harry Potter"?) as though the British Constitution were set in tablets of stone (soluble aspirin, again) rather than a form of INTERPRETATIVE DANCE!

Once again, Hard Labour's MORE STUPID bellows of betrayal come back to bite it on the ARSE! Just as the nationalist chickens of blaming EVERYTING on a Westminster elite that takes Scotland for granted has come to roost in the rise of the SNP to supplant them in all their safe seats North of the Wall border, having spent five years slandering the Coalition as "unelected", they are REALLY in no position to claim a minority Labour administration will have ANY moral right to run the country.

Nicola Sturgeon talks about "legitimacy" only if a government draws members from all the nations of the Union, knowing full well how unlikely it is that Scotland will return Tories (Conservatories OR Laboratories!) in enough numbers to satisfy her test – and as a prelude for a pretext to claim "the Union has broken down; we must have another independence referendum!"

The Tories talk about "legitimacy" being conveyed by what I suppose we might have to call the "Clegg Doctrine" of the Party with the most seats and most votes having best and therefore first claim on forming a government. Of course, the Tories want to take this further and make it the ONLY claim on forming a government. Which is even MORE ludicrous, because they know they're not going to. The Party of the Union and tradition reduced to a dog in the manger.

CHAPTER FOUR: THE FUTURE'S BRIGHT; IT MIGHT EVEN BE ORANGE

If there's one good thing that might come out of this total disaster of an election it's this: the system is just so obviously, patently, totally broken, the result will be so plainly totally unfair and askew from what people voted for, and in such a way that it screws over both Hard Labour and the Conservatories AT THE SAME TIME, that everyone might finally realise it's time to stop using a Seventeenth Century system for the Twenty-First.

In fact, I'd say we should ditch ALL of our red lines for ONE thing: we will give you a government for six months – or a year – during which we will all take part in a Constitutional Convention under a Royal Commission that will let us TOGETHER sort out how we elect our Parliament (and executive, and if we want the one to be a chunk of the other or to separate them like America or France or Germany or, actually almost everywhere else, do); and who sits in Parliament (if we want unelected Lords and Bishops and Rooks and Castles, er) or even WHERE it sits (because they've got to move out of that Thames-side fun-palace before all the wiring catches fire)!

The answer is obvious so it will obviously take a great deal of time and patience to arrive at the obvious answer that we need a federal state with Parliament of multi-member constituencies elected by British Proportional Representation, and a national senate replacing the House of Lords Club.

But it can be done. The Scottish people showed the rest of us that it CAN be done: a proper reasoned – polite! – argument that sorts things out.

And maybe next time we can do this General Election thing PROPERLY.

And meanwhile we will rebuild a properly Liberal Liberal Democratic Party. A Party that exists to bring HOPE to people: a Party that will address the crisis in housing and give people the opportunity to live where they work; a Party that will invest in education and apprenticeships and even the living costs of all the students we now have going to universities; a Party that will clean up our environment, improve the quality of air in our polluted cities, by preparing the ground for switching to clean, all-electric cars (and there's a LOT of work that needs doing); a Party that will tax wealth more in order to tax income a less; a Party that will stop criminalising people for doing things that harm no one; a Party that will put a stop to bullying people for what they eat or how they dress or who they love or where they come from.

And, by Grimond, we might even do it in Government!

NOW, GO AND VOTE!

Day 4898: Infinity Percent Better than Expected!

Friday:


In purely mathematical terms, it could have been worse. But not by much. The voters' ongoing desire to give the Liberal Democrats a pummelling for giving them what they voted for saw us losing another swathe of councillors and all but one of our Members of the European Parliament.

Unsurprisingly, there have been calls for Cap'n Clegg to step down, many from friends.

And, despite suspicious leaks from "usual suspects" in the Grauniad (who are NOT our friends), most of them have principled reasons for wanting him to go.

But I disagree with them. I still agree with Nick. And here's why:

Firstly, Cap'n Clegg is a Liberal.

The idea that he's a pseudo-Tory is absurd. In fact, he's one of those soggy, left-wing, interventionist Liberals – you can tell can he believes in the power of the State to make things better from the way he always, but always, puts education first: pupil premium, more apprenticeships, free school meals.

Could he be a BETTER Liberal? Who couldn't? He thinks first of the State as an agent of change for good, before remembering that it can be abused which is why he occasionally fumbles the pass on civil liberties issues (though to be fair, once he sits down and thinks about it, he comes to the right answer). He's against the establishment, but it's not his first instinct to tear it down. His first thought is usually how can we HELP people, rather than how can we got out of people's way.

Secondly, Cap'n Clegg is actually saying Liberal things.

The "Party of In" campaign was the right thing to do, it was the Party being unashamed of the policies and positions we are trying to sell. The debate around more draconian penalties for knife possession – not even knife CRIME – was a needed standing up to of the Home Office, while Labour and Tories continue to try and outflank each other to the right. Free School Meals – a policy based on EVIDENCE, supported by TRIALS – is absolutely the right sort of thing we should be doing. The economics of the Coalition – shifting tax away from the incomes of lower earners and onto wealth and green taxes is entirely Liberal.

Thirdly, he's by far the best we've got at communicating Liberal things.

Town Hall meetings, Call Clegg on LBS, TV debates: Cap'n Clegg is really very good at delivering the message. The case against him is that no one is listening. I would dispute that. No one who writes for the Grauniad is listening; no one who writes for the Tell-lies-o-graph is listening. But Pollyanna Toytown and Dan Hannan sticking their fingers in their ears going "lalalala" does not mean that everyone else is deaf to our appeal. But equally, it doesn't seem likely that they'll suddenly start giving a fair hearing to any other Liberal Democrat. We have always had to struggle to get our message past the gatekeepers of the meeja. I'd rather have someone who's good at doing that still on board.

Fourthly, the Coalition's policies look like they might just be starting to work.

There are signs that we are turning the economy around, benefiting people at last. Do we really want to derail that by letting the Tories take charge while we go into a tailspin? Which is more important: serving the public trust or serving the Party's re-election? Yes, I realise we will need to get re-elected to keep on serving the public, but we must never fall into the trap that Hard Labour has: existing ONLY to get themselves elected.

One of the few good things the press pack are willing to say about us is that we've held it together in the face of, well, them being pretty beastly to us. I'm sure our opponents would love it if we tossed that aside. ("Oh they betray everyone, and then themselves too in the end", they would say. You know they would.)

Fifthly, he does actually listen.

Nick's office is far more open and accessible to the membership than previous leaders (excepting, possibly, Paddy pre-Blair-love-in-bunker phase; don't worry, he got over it). Telephone conferences, video interviews, question and answer sessions at conference, interviews with bloggers… he's been very much more open to interacting with and responding to the members. I was part of the phone call that turned Party policy around on internet snooping. Did they get it wrong? Yes. Did they put it right? Absolutely.

But if – as the complaints go – the leader's office / Party headquarters are supposed to be "disconnected" and "not listening", why hasn't that been fixed? It takes two to tango. We've had two rounds of Federal Executive elections now where a slate of candidates promised to mend that relationship. So if it's still wrong, why haven't they? No one is saying the FE should be considering their own positions for their share of this supposed failure; but equally no one ON the FE is in any position to be calling for Nick to go either. (We've failed so he should go! Not very edifying, is it?)


I try to avoid the negativity of a small group of people commenting intemperately on Lib Dem Voice – or rather accusing anyone who voices disagreement with them, including Auntie Caron of all people, of being part of an "Orange Booker" conspiracy! – who leave the campaign to replace Nick appearing sadly tainted.

So I've stayed away from the purely pragmatic reasons for not dropping the leader at this stage. You know what they are: the timing isn't good; it damaged the "brand" when we dropped Charles (arguably that act cost us seats in 2010; not Cleggy's leadership); it did so again when Ming stepped down; there's no evidence that anyone else would get any fairer hearing than Nick does; why if you believe we're going down to inevitable defeat next year (which I don't), make someone else carry the can. Most importantly, why should we ditch the leader who took us into government on the say so of, frankly, a conspiracy in the pages of the Grauniad? (Reminder: they are NOT our friends!)


We DO need greater coherence – and a great deal more what is technically called… oomph! – to our message; we need to talk louder about tearing down the system that has herded people into voting UKIP; we need to earn back a reputation for fairness and honesty.

I don't see how stabbing Cap'n Clegg in the back helps with any of that.

We lose a lot by getting rid of him; we gain more by keeping him.

I think he should stay.

PS:

Yes, Daddy was there in the 'Eighties when Captain Paddy went from 0.0% to 0.4% and his Spitting Image puppet was appearing in a cross-wipe, neither in the previous sketch nor the next one but somewhere in between… He – Puppet Paddy, that is – promised us then that a similar increase at the next election would see him elected Emperor of the Universe… oh, those were the days to be a humiliated Liberal Democrat!

Day 4876: The Day Labour Admitted They Have Lost

Thursday:

Wednesday night's Partly Political Broadside from Hard Labour seems to have got a lot of people talking.

Dan Hodges thinks Hard Labour have gone insane.

Owen Jones thinks it's lacking in hope.

(and it takes some doing for Mr Milipede to look like a less mature grown-up than my fellow Stopfordian!)

While the New Statesman thinks it means Labour are going all out for a majority.

Personally, I think that that last analysis is 100% wrong.

Because self-indulgently playing to their CORE VOTE prejudices is a sure sign that Labour are now falling back on a CORE VOTE STRATEGY.

Sure, Hard Labour supporters may all be very tickled with the "LOLS". But guess what – they were going to vote Hard Labour anyway!

EVERYONE ELSE is going "Well, that's a bit SHI—, er, negative!" And if you want to ensure a majority, then it's EVERYONE ELSE you should be talking to.

You need to be reaching out to floating voters and your rivals' supporters. You know, like that thing that Captain Clegg has been doing with his "we're the Party of IN", building a – dare I say – coalition of people because they support our actual POLICY on Europe, even if they've made up their mind to blame the Captain for not having given him a majority Liberal Democrat government in 2010.

Of course, to do that you do have to have some actual POLICIES to sell them. And it turns out that Hard Labour are coming up empty. Sort of a Hard Up Labour, in fact.

OK, Mr Milipede did have ONE policy – that "energy price freeze" lark that touched the media's sweet spot last year. But that is looking SO 2013, now that the energy companies have hiked their prices and announced their own eighteen month "price freezes" – just like Mr Ed and everyone else said they would – and the meeja have decided La Farage is their new darling.

And – in an obvious effort to strike it lucky with the same card twice – they have now announced they're in favour of rent controls as part of a continuing effort to try to REINTRODUCE THE CORN LAWS: i.e. to artificially depress prices thus cutting off SUPPLY making everyone worse off, rather than trying to address the real need which is increases in DEMAND.

To underline their paucity of ideas we have Mr John Crude Ass Cruddas (trying to get the silly names right…) – Mr Milipede's "policy co-ordinator"; an easy job when they've only got two policies, I suspect – writing in the Grauniad that: "Labour will pioneer the post-industrial economy" off the back of a new "Digital Revolution". So that's "post-industrial" in the sense of no one having any jobs? Do they really believe we'll all be e-commerce entrepreneurs and app-store millionaires? That's quite an upskilling they're promising. Or is it just an acid flashback to the dot-com bubble of 1997? And how did that work out, can anyone remember?

But it's all very thin stuff, dressed up with an anti-Farrago fringe of "No we ARE against the Kippers REALLY!" I guess it's because Cap'n Clegg's been questioning why their leader is not standing up for Europe against UKIP. Not so much "Where's Wally?" as "Where's Milly?". It must have really hit a nerve.

Vague promises of "devolution to our cities and regions" and "renewing the bonds of trust" and "new ways of doing politics" though will give anyone with even a passing familiarity with Lib Dem policy a profound sense of déjà vu.

It seems WILFULLY PERVERSE to depict Nick Clegg as NAKED just as you are trying to steal his clothes!

Oh yes, back to the barely-coherent "plot" of that election broadcast that sees a not-very-Clegg-alike "shrinking" as his promises are undermined by a nasty pseudo-Mr Balloon. It attacks Nick with all the usual old catalogue of allegations while simultaneously depicting him as being forced to do it all by the evil Tories. Well, make your mind up, boys: is he victim or villain?

I even feel some sympathy for the Conservatories in this. Absolutely they've made some pretty poor choices and there has been much pain, often falling on people who should NOT have been let down. But the Tories – and we – didn't do it for "teh Evils"! It was because Labour left behind a situation that was damn near IMPOSSIBLE.

The sort of Cameron-caricature depicted in Hard Labour's ad is the sort of thing you expect from Tweenie Trots in fashionable student debating clubs. But it's not proper politics, is it.

If you want to reduce some really complicated economic factors and impossibly hard decisions to Dr Evil stereotyping, then expect to see LABOUR BROKE THE ECONOMY coming right back at you. That's what everyone believes anyway, no matter how many times you trot out "No, it was like that when we found it, it was the bankers, it's not FAIR!"

In some ways the worst of all is the sheer ARROGANCE of the ad's conclusion that the British people will just drop a Happy Ending into Hard Labour's lap without the Milipedes, Ballses or Crude-asses having to DO any actual "labour" at all.

And in a way, they might. Because Labour's core vote strategy is to try and leverage the unfairness of the electoral system and scrape a majority out of the bare 35% of people who voted them in last time they were "elected", back under the old war-criminal Lord Blarimort.

Because it's quite clear now that they don't expect anyone else to vote for them. And why would they? There were no reasons to vote Labour here, no reaching out to the electorate, no "vision".

Their cartoon-Clegg might be naked on screen, but it's Hard Labour who look like the Emperor with No Clothes.

Day 4833: In and Proud

Wednesday:

Did you miss me? I've been EVER so busy (definitely NOT sulking. JUST because I'm a TEENAGER now!)

Tonight we'll be supporting a POSITIVE case for IN, cheering on Captain Clegg when he faces off against evil former-banker Mr Farrago, aka Dr Nigel No, Chief Kipper of the UKPNuts.

And HOORAY! for that! It's been AGES since I was so PROUD of the Liberal Democrats*. Just watch the video:



Doesn't that WARM your FLUFF!

It's certainly woken Daddy Alex up. He's written some NEW words to help the Captain out: Putting #WhyIAmIN Into What the Lib Dems Stand For!

And, like BAGPUSS, when Daddy wakes up, all his fluffy friends wake up! (Don't be RUDE! I mean ME!)

Like Daddy, I've had another look at my answer to his challenge last year and like Daddy I've added more guff included even more good Liberal values!

“The Liberal Democrats stand for freedom.

Freedom from poverty, ignorance and conformity.

Freedom for every individual, family, group, community, society or nation.

Freedom from inheriting the financial and environmental mistakes of earlier generations.

Freedom to live your life enjoying the rewards for your own endeavour, governed by your own choices – with equality before the law; without harming others.

To deliver these freedoms, for today and the future, needs both fairness and practicality; opportunity and compassion.

• An economy that is stronger, and sustainable for the future, where everyone also pays their share.
• A society which is fairer and that recognises that we work better together, together locally, together in the UK and together in Europe, to fight crime, ensure fair trade, tackle climate change and break down barriers to understanding.

The Liberal Democrats believe in a better future. That’s why Liberal Democrats are working to build a fairer, freer society and a stronger, greener economy, enabling every person to live the life they want.”

With all that help, I'm sure that Captain Clegg will do well.



*What has a Liberal Government ever done for us, eh?

Apart from being the only Western country with falling inequality, obviously, what have the Lib Dems in government actually done for us?

That is apart from falling inequality and getting through the worst recession for a hundred years with falling unemployment, falling inflation and a falling deficit, what have the Liberal Democrats achieved?

You know, set aside the falling inequality, strengthening economy, and raising the personal allowance so that millions of people on low and average earnings have had a tax cut (while taxing the rich more), can you think of anything that the Lib Dems have actually done?

Because and obviously we're not mentioning the falling inequality, strengthening economy, fairer taxes and sorting out the pension system, with a triple lock to maintain the value of current pensions, with better provision for everyone in future AND trusting people with their own money when they retire, can you think of any reason we should be proud of the Lib Dems in power?

I mean, not counting falling inequality, strengthening economy, fairer taxes, better pensions, and turning Labour student loans into what is effectively a graduate tax when graduates will pay less each month and that has seen more people from less well-off backgrounds than ever before going to University, what use have the Lib Dems been in the Coalition?

So if we ignore the falling inequality, strengthening economy, fairer taxes, better pensions, wider access to University, and of course free school meals… and ending child detention … and the world's first green bank… and apprenticeships… and no I.D cards… and the pupil premium… APART from all that…

What HAVE the Liberal Democrats done to make us feel proud?

Oh, and before we all have a Miranda moment, we got equal(er) marriage too.

Day 4663: Cap’n Clegg Replacing Diplomats with Warriors

Monday:


It’s reshuffle day, and there’s been much surprise over the departure of widely-admired smooth operator Michael Moore from the Cabinet role of Secretary for Scotland to what we laughingly describe as the “lower guest suite” of Castle Carmichael (hot and cold running water… down the walls of your cell), and the equally unexpected defenestration of ultra-orange* Jeremy Browne, perceived as close to the Cap’n but also blamed for not stopping those pesky Tories’ “Go Home” vans.

But what they have in common is both being conducive to smooth relationships with the Conservatories; while their replacements are a touch more… abrasive.

Norman Baker, the battling biker, taking over at the Home Office will, hopefully, be a shock to the system of anyone planning abolishing the Human Rights Act. The news that Theresa May is “spitting tacks” at his appointment can only be greeted with smiles in Liberal camps. And having Susan Kramer take up the mantle at Transport might well be the Lib Dems setting a marker against any Conservatory about-face on Heathrow runways.

And the laird of Carmichael, as a former Chief Whip, is used to – as the saying goes – putting a bit of stick about. Bless Alistair: he greeted the news of my daddies’ engagement with a rumbled: “I hope ye’ll be every bit as happi as we ave bin.” Which we’re sure wasn’t a threat. As MP for Orkney and Shetland he’s well placed – geographically as well as figuratively – to say to Alex Salmond: “we don’t want ruling by a distant elite… in Edinburgh either!”

Alistair at an informal session in the Whips' office

Caron is right that it’s a loss to see Mr Moore go – but perhaps a role in preparing for any future Coalition negotiations could be placed in his capable hands. Alas, poor Jeremy, the party may well be more cheering the drafting of your replacement.

What does it mean? Well you hardly need to cast the runes: there’s a General Election coming in less than eighteen months, simples.



*Some might say turned out to be more of a Lemon others that he went native and became a Mandarin.

Day 4295: Wealth is the Enemy of Growth

Thursday:

Returning from his holiday, Captain Clegg talked to the Grauniad and mentioned a WEALTH TAX.

You'd think this would be entirely UNCONTROVERSIAL. It's Party policy after all, and we've talked Mansion Tax enough for everyone to know that.

But BOTH other Parties ATTACKED him.

Predictably, the Conservatory right called it "politics of envy", then warned that it might "drive wealth creators away".

Meanwhile Hard Labour sneered disingenuously that if he wants to tax the wealthy he shouldn't have voted to cut the top rate of income tax.

But we're NOT talking tax on INCOME. We're talking tax on WEALTH.


Mr Milipede has already been called to task over his DODGY MATHS and FALSELY accusing Mr Balloon of getting a £40,000 cheque from the treasury.

(Because that's how tax works in New One Nation Hard Labour's heads – ALL your money goes into the Treasury and then Mr Bully Balls decides how much he will generously allow you to have back.)

And it's very interesting that Mr Milipede OBSESSES with the top rate of INCOME tax. And IGNORES or RUBBISHES the actually more important question of WEALTH taxes.

People who are WEALTHY (that is have lots of ASSETS, whether that is money in the bank or estates in Oxfordshire or another small Picasso) do not necessarily have a lot of INCOME.

If the house is paid for, and the kids school fees are covered by the trust fund and there's money in the bank to pay for the next holiday... you don't have to EARN money, and so you don't pay tax. Oh, you might have to pay a bit VAT but by and large you can arrange matters to avoid most of the unpleasantnesses of Inheritance or Capital Gains Taxes.

People who are WEALTHY are NOT necessarily "WEALTH CREATORS" either. If you don't have to work, you don't have to build a business or employ people or invest in anything. Largely you can sit on your pile of dosh and cream off the rents from your properties. (Literally rent if it's buildings, but it could also be dividends from shares.)

Jobs and growth are "created" by small businesses. This has always been the case.

Oh we all LIKE the idea of WEALTH, of being, as Lord Mandy so memorably put it, intensely relaxed about becoming filthy rich, We'd love to have so much money that we don't need to work. It's why the Lottery and Downton Abby remain so popular. But at the same time, we all secretly know that it's totally PARASITIC.

If you are WEALTHY already – like, say, those good COMMUNISTS, the Milipedes – then you don't NEED to EARN lots of money. No, you can afford to take unpaid internships, getting on the inside track, and the old boy network paves your way up the greasy pole (to well and truly mix that metaphor).

But economic GROWTH, at least in a CAPITALIST society, depends on money being INVESTED to earn a PROFIT. That way your society has more money at end of the year than it did at the start. And then you reinvest it again.

WEALTH, on the other fluffy foot, means taking money OUT of the economy and parking it in a piggy bank. Or "house" as we usually call them in Great Britain, what with the ridiculous runaway house price inflation we've contracted, with the full collusion of every government and pretty much every homeowner. After all, when you're spending SO MUCH money on a house you REALLY don't want the value to go DOWN.

Wealth is about EXTRACTING productive capital from the economy. It actively harms growth.


That is why Captain Clegg is COMPLETELY right to say we want to move tax OFF the income of working people, and ON to the wealth of the well-heeled. It's not JUST about FAIRNESS – though obviously it IS more fair – but also about rewarding the people who are ADDING to the Growth while at the same time getting hold of some of that locked-away money and putting it back to work for the benefit of all of us.
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Day 4043: Yes to Help for Low Earners, But We NEED to Help the No-Earners Too!

Thursday:



Today, Cap'n Clegg will be calling on Master Gideon to ACCELERATE the increases in personal allowance, giving lower and medium earners more of their money back SOONER (paid for by taking MORE tax from the better off).

This is a GOOD idea. It's giving money back to the people who are most likely to spend it, and more spending will help with the woes of a shrinking economy and falling high street sales.

But cutting taxes for people IN work DOESN'T help the growing numbers of people OUT of work. People we seem to be ATTACKING rather than HELPING.



Like many of my Liberal Democrat friends, I got an e-mail this morning from Mr Dr Vince "the Power" Cable, was by way of a TRAILER for Cap'n Clegg's speech, telling me he is PROUD of the Coalition's commitment to increasing the tax allowance to £10,000.

I WISH I could take PRIDE in this Coalition, but I'm afraid the best I can manage is a sort of NUMBING of the GNAWING HORROR that we are barely taking the edge off the Conservatories' aggressive right-wing agenda.

This sort of thing can't convince me we're doing the RIGHT thing; merely that we're trying to do the LEAST WRONG thing.

(Well that and that the ONLY thing WORSE would have been propping up the AUTHORITARIAN LUNACY of a discredited and economically illiterate HARD LABOUR Party!)

So while you are considering Mr Vince's e-mail, can I also direct your attention to THESE THOUGHTS written by our friend Mr Simon.

Now, I confess that my first reaction was DEFENSIVE – a LOT of my first reactions are defensive these days; I wonder if I'm developing STOCKHOLM SYNDROME – responding to a story about bullying Job Centre staff with the thought "well, would that REALLY have been any different under the LAST government?" In fact, I'm sure we can all get out the DVDs that show that this sort of thing has been in currency since the last Conservatory recession. In fact, probably since the one BEFORE THAT!

And with the increasingly CONTROVERSIAL Welfare Bill still actually in Parliament (and hence all over the news), surely we can't be blamed for how the Law stands just YET – this is still HARD LABOUR's law of demanding people get back to work because of Mr Frown's PROTESTANT WORK ETHIC, not the Conservatory law of, er, demanding people get back to work because of Mr Iain Drunken-Swerve's VICTORIAN VALUES.

But read on!

Because what Mr Simon has to say about MESSAGE and TONE is frightening and true. The messages that are spilling from the Conservatory part of the Coalition – aided and abetted by the frothing venom of the newspapers – are all about VICTIM BLAMING and a VILIFICATION of the NOT WELL OFF.

And so long as we continue to use the words "hard working families" we're SUPPORTING this TOO and that is WRONG with a capital WRONG.

It does not MATTER that Cap'n Clegg assures us that he means "hard-working" in a BROADER sense; it's still using the word WORKING. It implicitly says "and not working equals BAD".

There are two things to say to this:

FIRST: people who are out of work and looking for work – especially when there is NO WORK – do NOT need the extra grief of getting it in the neck all the time.

SECOND: people who are out of work and not looking for work – good luck to 'em. It is NOT the business of government to MAKE people live their lives any particular way and it is COMPLETELY HYPOCRITICAL of the Conservatories to laud as "bold entrepreneurs" the wunch of bankers who get government support while decrying as "scroungers" the bunch of people getting government support because they're not employed any more.

If you WANT help to get back to work then the government should give it, but if you DON'T and if you can live on sixty-seven squids a week then frankly you deserve a NOBEL PRIZE FOR ECONOMICS and not more rude words from people who couldn't get elected against the worst Labour government in History!

(And since I've been saying for AGES that I would support a flat Citizen's Income if only I could make the maths add up – the problem remains the disproportional effect of Housing Benefit in a housing market that is still massively over-inflated, which is why that's proving such a botherer in the current debate about a "cap" on benefits – and I would be the hypocrite to say anything else now.)

There is very little fraud in the Benefits system, and I bet that any there is is more than cancelled out by people doing THEMSELVES out of Benefits because the whole business is too darn complicated.

And because of that, the PLAN was a GOOD plan to SIMPLIFY the benefits into one, and to change the way benefits are taken away as you get into paid work, the so-called "taper", so that working does always pay.

But at a time of massive fiscal contraction that was always going to be difficult to do FAIRLY (and I THOUGHT Mr Drunken-Swerve had got extra money from the Treasury to make the transition more PAINLESS) and doing it at the same time as trying to cut projected benefit payments is WILDLY DODGY!

(Even though that's a not-increasing-the-total-payments-by-20%-like -wot-Labour-said-they-were-planning sort of "cut" i.e. a not cutting but not increasing either sort of cut – or a letting INFLATION inflict the PAIN for you sort of cut, if you prefer.)

But we DID win the fight to make Chancer Osborne increase benefits – not just pensions, but ALL the main benefits – in line with the 5.2% Inflation in September this year when he wanted to use a lower number. Which on the one fluffy foot is a GOOD THING because it's hard enough to live on benefits as it is; but on the other fluffy foot focuses the problem on cutting NUMBERS, because you can only cut the OVERALL Benefit bill by cutting the AMOUNT that people get OR the NUMBERS of people getting it.

Which gets us to the aggressive approach to job centre staffing.

The government spends something like three quarters of a TRILLION pounds and about a THIRD of it goes on the NHS and about another third goes on the benefit bill. If you've sworn not to cut the money to the NHS, then there really is NOWHERE ELSE to cut than the benefit bill. And THEN most of the benefits are actually PENSIONS. You can't cut THEM either – even if it weren't political suicide to piss off the "grey vote", EVERYONE hopes they're going to end up a pensioner one day. The great UNSAYABLE of British politics is to suggest a freeze in pensions or freeze of the NHS, 'cos that's where all the money REALLY goes.

But if you CAN'T freeze those, well, you can see how more and more of the cuts get focused on the segment called "in work benefits" which our Conservatory (AND Hard Labour!) masters appear to think should be called "ought to be in work" benefits.

Quite simply, there is NO WAY to make this add to fair treatment.



At the moment there is BIG BLAME BATTLE going on.

Hard Labour, for obviously self-serving reasons, have been pushing HARD – and with some success – the idea that it was gambling by bankers that trashed the economy.

(Though, of course, that's only HALF the story: what the bankers were gambling ON was that millions and millions of ordinary people would carry on borrowing to fund lifestyles in excess of what they were earning, egged on by a government that was borrowing to fund a lifestyle in excess of what the whole economy was earning.)

In return, the Conservatories (and us!) have with even greater success pinned a lot of the blame for the CRASH on Hard Labour. But the blame for the ONGOING pain... that's more difficult to explain.

(Particularly since a LOT of people are feeling the "double whammy" of the economy grinding to a halt at a time when they have huge debts. The answer "well that's your fault" not being very conducive to re-election.)

Inevitably, we turn to the very human way of excusing ourselves for the pain that we are causing. By BLAMING the very people on whom the burden falls heaviest.

And then BOTH sides take a pop at the IMMIGRANTS!

It's got to STOP.



We should make the benefit system simpler, that's a given.

We should make it more generous too, but we can't get the money.

(Sure, we could talk about mansion taxes and no corporation tax cut, but we won't get them past the Conservatories and we can't cut MORE from anywhere else! And borrowing is RIGHT OUT!)

So let's talk about what we CAN do which is change the LANGUAGE.

'Cos no one is a "scrounger". They are all future entrepreneurs. Or future artists. Or future teachers.

Mr Balloon needs reminding that his BIG SOCIETY depends on people who AREN'T GETTING PAID: volunteers, or carers. Or at the root of it, your basic parents.

So as Liberal Democrats let's make it a CAMPAIGN to talk POSITIVELY about the people who aren't working because they haven't got work or aren't able to work. We can start with thinking of better words than "unemployed" or "job seekers". I've come up with the phrase "free sector" (as opposed to the "waged sector"), but you might think of something better.

And perhaps "families doing their best" instead of the wretched "hard-working families".

Yes, it might sound like political correctness, but if political correctness didn't work, we'd still be using the N word and Conservatories wouldn't talk about "death taxes".

In summary: let people get on with rebuilding their lives and they might start to rebuild the economy.


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Day 3778: The People Have Spoken… the Bastards!

Friday:


Well, THAT went well, didn't it.

{…tumbleweeds… …tumbleweeds… …tumbleweeds…}

Okay, how about this then:

I’ve never really GOT poetry, but today made me think of this:

“Between the idea
“And the reality
“Between the motion
“And the act
Falls the Shadow”

We KNEW this day was coming, was inevitable really, as a consequence of the position we were left in at the end of the last General Election.

But there’s a difference between “knowing” that and the reality of it actually happening, the difference, the “shadow” that we put between ourselves and the abyss staring us in the face.

Hence all the WAILING and GNASHING of TEETH today. Hence the RENDING of GARMENTS and SILLY calls for Captain Clegg’s head on a plate. And all the GENUINE pain and heartbreak.

Cold comfort for all our friends who've lost council seats, I know, but actually they all did BLOODY WELL to stand up AT ALL under UNPRECEDENTED fire. The No2AV campaign was, basically, a not-very-disguised MASSIVE ATTACK on the Liberal Democrats and on Captain Clegg in particular, with every voter getting at least two leaflets that can be summarised as: "Don't vote Lib Dem! Traitors! Scum! Broken Promises!"

We faced the full might of the anti-democratic vested interests, the “right” AND “left”. And they won. But some of us, at least, survive.

Remember, our choice, our ONLY choice, last May was whether to face electoral ruin here and now, or irrelevance and annihilation at Westminster in a snap general election last October.

And I know some people will think we chose the wrong forum to take our whipping.

But this is politics: it’s not a SPECTATOR SPORT; it’s about GETTING THINGS DONE, and that only comes from BEING IN POWER. We could not, at Westminster level, opt out of that without making ourselves POINTLESS. And although there are now councils across the country where we AREN’T in power; nationally WE STILL ARE.

But there's really no dressing up that these results are a BIT of a BLOW.

It's difficult not to see this as a victory for Labservatism.

The British People may SAY that they prefer their politicians to behave like grownups, but when it comes to it, they punish the junior coalition partner – nationwide, the Liberal Democrats; in Wales, Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid Cymru. Depressingly, this suggests that, contrary to all my beliefs, the electorate is stupid. But then, the "No2AV" campaign appear to have prospered by assuming that the electorate are stupid. So what do I know.

The worst thing will be if Hard Labour decide that eleven months of screaming TRAITORS! SCUM! BROKEN PROMISES! in the faces of Liberal Democrats is a successful electoral strategy.

Worst for us, obviously, because they'll keep on doing it and believe me it is NO FUN AT ALL.

But worst for our already damaged democracy, since reducing your entire position to NEGATIVITY and PARTISAN NAME CALLING abdicates your responsibility as opposition to present alternative policies. You can't complain that "there is no alternative" when you can't be bothered to PROVIDE ONE!

And actually worst for them too. Because it's NOT a successful strategy. At BEST Labour have made themselves the repository for anti-government protest votes. And then, ONLY where they are seen as the only alternative; in Scotland, the voters preferred to switch to the Scottish Nasties.

(And whoever thought that we'd say "thank goodness for Mr Salmon"!)

But thanks to the hopeless Mr Potato Ed's BRILLIANT strategy of telling the Scots that their election was just for sending a message to Westminster – nice that he thinks Scotland is just a warm-up act for his own doomed election campaign – and he may have secured the break-up of the United Kingdom and the end of any hope of a British Labour government ever happening again.

And, it has to be said, whoever advised him to make the "Well, dur!" observation that the Coalition "split down the middle" over AV needs to get fired. (It was almost certainly an alien space-lizard thinking it was a week early for the Apprentice!)

Mr Potato Ed's MAIN contribution to the referendum seems to have been to LOSE CONTROL of TWO-THIRDS of his own Party. And his PETTY and IDEOLOGICAL decision to refuse to share a platform with Captain Clegg was a GODSEND to No2AV's "Hate Clegg" campaign. Genius lead there, Mr Ed, showing us that before we can have grownup politics we're going to need some GROWNUP POLITICIANS.


As far as I can see, nothing has changed my forecast for the outcome of the NEXT General Election: either a small Conservatory majority or another hung Parliament.

Hard Labour are just not doing that much better, and (worse-for-them, worse-for-us) they are only doing better against US, better enough perhaps to switch some Liberal Democrat marginals to the Tories; but that HELPS the Tories and NOT Hard Labour.

So in 2015, either Mr Balloon gets to keep his job, and then we'll be able to say: "look, you see, we DID make a difference. Look at them NOW!" Or else Mr Potato Ed is going to have to accept looking VERY SILLY INDEED when he has to ask Captain Clegg to be HIS Deputy PM. Oh yes. Because the answer to his PETTY and IDEOLOGICAL "the price of a Lib/Lab Coalition would be Nick Clegg's head" (haha, very "Rewenge of the Frown-ites") is "fine, bye then". Because under those circumstance, either Mr Millipede can be Prime Monster or he can be the ex-Labour Leader.

Captain Clegg's intervention in the referendum campaign – repeating the mantra "our electoral system is broken, we need a change" and "if you think our electoral system works, think again; we need a change" – clearly shows that he was the ONLY ONE WITH A FLUFFING CLUE!

So just look at him doing his job – doing it, as Captain Paddy puts it, superbly well with tremendous grace under pressure – and you must realise he's the best we've got. And we've got a LOT of good people!

There are JUST TWO messages in politics: "don't rock the boat" and "time for a change". Captain Clegg gets it. "Yes2AV", hmmm, not so much, it appeared.

Only an IDIOT would call for him to resign, now. (And we Liberal Democrats HAVE THAT IDIOT!)

As for a leadership challenge… look, I am a BIG FAN of Mr Huhney-Monster – and look, in Eastleigh we actually MADE GAINS; so clearly what we need is a charismatic, aggressive millionaire cabinet minister in every seat and we're sorted. Sigh. But I CAN'T believe he would mount a leadership challenge. And actually I DON'T believe it, because he's too smart and too loyal and this rumour smells too much of STIRRING. And if anyone ELSE want to challenge Captain Clegg then they'll have an angry baby elephant to go through first!

This ISN'T the end of the Coalition.

Ironically, Captain Clegg's position may actually be strengthened. Mr Balloon had to do BIG FAVOURS for the rightwing loony tunes of his own Party and he knows it. So he knows he OWES us BIG TIME. Absolutely, we need to trade that for PROPER REFORM in the House of Lords Club. And it's probably the end for Mr Andrew Landslide and his NHS plans too. And if we're getting three wishes, Mr Balloon can sack Lady Insider Warsi before she appeals for votes from the BNP again makes his government look any MORE two-faced and incompetent.

This ISN'T the end of Electoral Reform either. In fact, this is merely the beginning. The pressure to fix our broken politics is only going to get more and more urgent.

We've got lessons to learn. Starting with a big bang conversion of Westminster elections was NEVER the way to do it. Not because – as cynical Lady GoreGore has it – the very thing that gives us the power to ask the question simultaneously taints any question to which we want the answer "yes". No, it's because if we've learned ANYTHING from our Liberal traditions it's that it's no good just giving people a TOP-DOWN solution IMPOSED take-it-or-leave-it Hobson's Choice. We need to re-grow our democracy FROM THE ROOTS UP.

That means starting with the LEAST democratic part of the system: much needed reform of local government.

We DESPERATELY need more voices to be heard in our council chambers, and that makes them the perfect fertile ground for PR (and that tiresome and frankly half-untrue "constituency link" argument falls immediately because most wards already HAVE multi-members.)

And we need to do this PROPERLY, do it in a way that people can see what they are getting and decide if they like it, running local trials first, letting people find out what works for them, bringing in local PR, bringing in House of Lords PR, working UP towards the Liberal Democrat policy of a Constitutional Convention, where everyone in the country can contribute and have their say.

Because BADWORDS they may be, but the people HAVE spoken, and it's up to us to LISTEN and come back to them with what they WANT.
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Day 3661: The Wrong Kind of Story

Sunday:


Let's face it: human beans are pretty badly put together in the BRAIN department. It's in your interests to cooperate, but you just don't.

Instead, inside your little heads, you're all the heroes of your own story, as I said yesterday. You don't SEE other people except as BIT PLAYERS in your own PERSONAL DRAMA.

The whole of American culture – and now, by extension, the whole of OUR culture – encourages this idea: "one man (it usually IS a "man") CAN make a difference". And the corollary: the government/big business/the bureaucracy/the Matrix/absolutely everyone else is venal, incompetent, corrupt. And probably out to get you.

In how many films is this the plot? In how many TV series is this the premise? From John Wayne to "Knight Rider", from Superman to "24", even "Doctor Who" (the "rebel" from a world of "self-absorbed bureaucrats who run the universe" – which may be why it is as beloved to right-wingers as to Liberals) all say this.

(Of course it's an almost perfect fit for TV or Movies where the economies of the form – dramatic as much as monetary – require a preference for a small central cast of characters and almost certainly a single key protagonist. Who, by a total coincidence, is usually white and male and almost-without-exception heterosexual and cis-gendered.)

The maverick entrepreneur is lauded as heroic when the faceless bankers are condemned (hence the "lucky chancer barrow-boy" persona presented by Lord Sugar-Plum Fairy); the iconoclastic artist is praised as a radical while the populist is condemned as bourgeois (unless you are on "Britain's Got Strictly the X-Factor on Ice" where the plucky populist is the "underdog" against the elitist "industry" – does NO ONE see the irony in this?!); the brave protester, standing up against the vested interests of the establishment is lauded as the lone voice of "common sense" (and so the Prince of Wales, the World's most establishment Don Quixote, wearily tilts at the windmills of "Big Pharma" – defending the multi-billion pound "alternative medicine" industry – and "Big Agriculture" – defending the multi-billion pound "organic farming" industry (in which he has an interest) – and "Big, er, Architecture" – defending, well, his NIMBY chums – in an effort to use the story to make himself popular).

And it doesn't stop there, of course: it's the basis of revolutionary communism and the Führerprinzip too.

Even the World's biggest RELIGION is based on this idea. Heroic outsider who makes a BIG change; corrupt and incompetent government (bribery with thirty pieces of silver; washing their hands of decisions)… is any of this ringing any bells? Christianity historically does VERY well among the poor, the deprived, the underprivileged, the ill-educated and why? Not because those people are more credulous or more gullible (…well, maybe not JUST that…), but because it has a really good STORY.

The REASON that Superman ends up as Mr Jesus so often is because Superman AND Jesus are both YOU. In your own story you are the unique individual that changes and creates the world around you.

It's no wonder that Mr George Lucas ended up turning his own mythology INSIDE-OUT: a Force that relies on you building connections with other people, working together even(!), is the EXACT OPPOSITE of the story of the "chosen one", the one special flower who will do… whatever (in this case "bring balance to the force" but basically "win").

And in a very real way this is how the Captain went from Cleggmania to being burned in effigy: the story of the coalition simply does not fit this overriding world view.

"Star Wars" has to END with the moment that the rebels WIN; you can't go on and have them form a GOVERNMENT (and no, I'm NOT getting into "expanded universe" novels). How's the story supposed to work if the rebels next worry is about the fact that the Emperor has spent all the money on Death Stars so they have to choose between raising taxes or cutting benefits?

Likewise Dr Woo has to LEAVE the moment that the monsters are DEFEATED. Russell Davies' first series of "Doctor Who" (the one with Mr Dr Eccythump) toyed with considering the consequences of this, even went so far as to hint it was a moral derogation that ultimately allowed in the fascists. Or Daleks as Dr Woo calls them. Incidentally, it's easy and obvious to say that the Daleks represent Fascism or the Cybermen represent Communism, but actually both (and indeed our real world fear of "Fascists" and "Commies") also draw on our ALIENATION from a world that at times seems full of identical blank-faced hostile and oppressive OTHERS. Still, a literal deus ex machina saved Dr Woo from having to face the consequences of his sticking to the "and now we leave" script, and he's shown no sign of wanting to take responsibility since (compared with Mister the Master who actually bothered to run the planet for a year! With admittedly MIXED results.)

And also likewise – and forgive me – Mr Jesus' victory definitely has to come in HEAVENLAND in the AFTERLIFE. Actually solving problems here in the real world would involve, well, actually solving problems here in the real world.

Because that's the problem with the story: Real Life does not HAVE winning lines. You don't ever get to "happily ever after". Or "heaven on Earth". Or the communist revolution. "Utopia" MEANS "nowhere". It's why the ENDS never justify the MEANS – because there AREN'T ANY ENDS.

So Captain Clegg gets to be the dashing rebel, the outsider, the underdog and everyone LOVES him and against all the odds – just as the story says he should – he wins, overthrows the government and takes his place in the throne room (or Downing Street garden). He even wins the heart of the Ice Princess. Er.

After that, ANYTHING (short of hopping into the TARDIS) is a betrayal of the story. So actually GOVERNING the country was the WORST thing he could have done!


Which brings us back to the right-wing commentators and their use of the language of HATE.

Somehow the right… actually it's not "the right", that's wholly imprecise; it's the AUTHORITARIAN Parties in Americaland (who, like an icky ichneumon wasp, are consuming the economically DRY Replutocratic Party from within)… anyway THEM, somehow they get away with this.

Perhaps they're particularly good at wiring themselves into the story, subverting the story, so that their supporters get to feel like the "lone hero" up against (if the Authoritarians are out of government) the government or (if the Authoritarians are IN government) the foreign foe/enemy within: commie or terrorist or whoever. Effete European will do at a pinch, particularly in Hollywood.

They SAY they are about INDIVIDUALISM, but it's the sort of individualism that leaves you ALONE and AFRAID. Individuals who wish to be separate should have that choice, of course they should; but authoritarians DEPEND on making you feel separate, and tell you you have NO CHOICE but to be that way. It is the individualism of divide and conquer.


That's why it is so important for me that I remind you of this: Liberalism IS about empowering the individual. But it's not JUST about individuals. It's about the CONNECTIONS that you make as an individual. So it's about FAMILIES. And about COMMUNITIES. And about NATIONS. And about WORLDS.

It is the CONNECTION between us that means we have a duty to be KIND to one another. Disagree, surely, but don't despise.
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Day 3631: Did Yooooooo Betray Meeeeeee?

Friday:



To Paraphrase an old joke…

He delivers a Green Investment Bank, New Green Deal and cancels the third runway at Heathrow but is he known as Clegg the Green?

He delivers two-and-a-half BILLION quid for deprived school children but is he known as Clegg the Educator?

He delivers a tax cut to every basic rate taxpayer in the country but is he known as Clegg the Generous?

He delivers the AV referendum, an elected House of Lords and a fixed term Parliament but is he known as Clegg the Reformer?

But he screws-up over ONE pledge to the NUS…


The deed is done.

Have a HEART people.

We all LOVED him during the election, and thought he was totally magnificent. So what if it turns out that he CAN walk on water but he gets his SOCKS WET in doing so.

No, I realise it's more SERIOUS than that. For some people, this will be a burnt bridge too far – and a metaphor too mixed – and they won't be able to support Nick any more. And that's sad.

Remember, Nick has still delivered MORE from a Liberal manifesto than ANYONE since Mr Lloyd George, and he's not split the party nearly so badly as the boy David did! Er.

Look, in spite of the meeja's ALL-TOO GLEEFUL expectations of a three-way – or even FOUR-way – split, in the end the Liberal Democrat votes divided almost exactly into ministers who voted to keep their pledge to the Conservatories and backbenchers who voted to keep their pledge to the students.

And now we see why that UNPRINCIPLED OPPORTUNIST Mr Potato Ed put his own brand of student politics above the urgency of the Climate Change summit AND broke a long-standing tradition of which his own Party had taken advantage, when he refused to "pair" any ministers: he wanted to POSE and PREEN that every single Hard Labour MP voted against the rise. How sad that his response to the GROWN UP politics of the Coalition is to become more tribalist and isolationist.

It is typified by the accusation of "BETRAYAL", the worst sin – at least according to Mr Dante – the one that gets you sent to the NINTH and very DEEPEST circle of HELL.

Are we supposed to believe that Captain Clegg is, like LUCIFER, some fallen angel flung splat into uttermost perdition?

It's this constant refrain of "betrayal" that hurts the most. It doesn't hut US – our fluffy skins are thicker than that; I'm not made of ELEPHANT HIDE for nothing! No, it hurts the discussion, it hurts POLITICS. It reduces intelligent debate to the level of the PLAYGROUND: his fault, her fault, his fault, her fault!

And it ignores the fact that HALF of our MPs actually DIDN'T break the pledge; ignores that the rest of the Party has repeatedly restated our support for the policy; and just ignores, for that matter, that when we couldn't deliver on the pledge we KEPT ON FIGHTING for the best possible deal for students in the face of Conservatories who would not let us raise the extra cash to pay and a Labour Party that would rather play SILLY BUGGERS than engage constructively either in Coalition negotiations where they demanded an increase to SEVEN thousand, not SIX, or since when they've suddenly invented graduate tax proposals that would be LESS PROGRESSIVE than the deal WE negotiated.


It's not like the NUS are even keeping their OWN pledge, since their policy is just a RE-BRAND of student loans as a capped graduate tax. And yesterday's Tell-lies-o-graph revealed that, when pushed to the wall, odious little self-serving Labour-crats like Mr Aaron Porter would rather CUT GRANTS TO THE POOREST than have rich little princelings made to contribute more.

But never mind ANY of that!

You want to know who betrayed you? It was all those STUDENTS who said they'd vote Lib Dem and then didn't bother to turn out. If they could have been BOTHERED to "protest" for five minutes at a ballot box then we could have had a dozen more MPs and had the LEVERAGE to block the fees rise.

And it's worth reflecting that students ARE a PRIVILEGED class. For all that they shout the loudest. In all the hullabaloo the voices that AREN'T being heard are the more-than-fifty-percent of people who DON'T get to go to university.

I believe in abolishing tuition fees because I believe in greater OPPORTUNITIES for EVERYONE. And if there's one thing that I've realised in the debate over student fees it's that we haven't thought nearly enough about how to bring the same sort of LIFE-CHANGING opportunity to people OTHER than our most academically gifted. What has happened to our polytechnics? To apprenticeships? To the third of people LEFT BEHIND by Labour?

So we need to start thinking again about post 16/18 education and training and investment in our young people's future. And that is where we should start.

The deed is done. Let's move on. Together.


Captain Clegg asked his fellow MPs to walk through fire with him. So here is a CHEERY video to remind him how THAT works out…

Run VT!


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Day 3547: Is that REALLY Machiavelli on the Wall? Millennium Elephant meets the Deputy Prime Minister

Friday (again)



The first thing you see on entering Captain Clegg's Cabinet Office is a picture on the far wall of one of those ascetic thin-looking medieval chaps and you think… isn't that Machiavelli?

Well, no, the FIRST thing you see is, of course, the ebullient form of Captain Clegg himself, bouncing around, welcoming you in, looking rather trim as though RUNNING the COUNTRY thoroughly agrees with him.

Well, no, the REALLY FIRST thing*, before you even GET to his office, you have to go through some of those glass TUBES off the "Grid" from my SECOND-favourite SPY series, Pooks (aka MI:5 for the Americalandians). And, given that Pooks is some of the most silliest fiction ever, it's moderately ALARMING that it turns out to be real!

(*…I'll come in again)

I'd show you, but they wouldn't let us take photos. They wouldn't EVEN let us take a photo of the "Security Alert Status" brass plaque on the wall (currently set to "highlights" – i.e. above "combover", but bellow "mullet").

Anyway, once we all got in, and after they'd carried out a controlled explosion on Auntie Linda, and once Captain Clegg had welcomed us into his office, there was a nervous declaration that the art on the walls was still that of the previous occupant, Lord Mandelbrot, the former first Fractal of Darkness.

Which would explain Machiavelli.

Captain Clegg hastened to add that he has commissioned some of his OWN choice of art to replace Lord Mandelbrot's tastes.

(He didn't specify whether he would also be replacing Lord Mandelbrot's PIRANHA POOL with optional trick bridge.)


Anyway, speaking of dubious Italianate social realists who favour stability over moral virtue has absolutely nothing to do with our first question which was about the POPE.

Sitting down with the Deputy Supreme Pumpkin of Great Britain – and some rather nice cookies – I said to him, as an "aggressive secularist" with two gay daddies, was there anything he thought he ought to say to Papa Joe?

Captain Clegg said that for a short audience he wasn't going to open Pandora's Box and a few minutes were not really enough time to enter a theological debate.

Which is pretty much all you could expect him to say; I mean it would be charming if he'd said "I considered performing a citizen's arrest and dragging the elderly former member of the Hitler Youth off to a trial before Richard Dawkins and Peter Tatchell but decided it would have been bad form", but it wasn't really LIKELY was it?

More interestingly, he did go on to develop his own personal position, saying that although he's not a man of faith that doesn't mean he wants to play the arch-atheist all the time (oh, go on, it's FUN!). In fact, he said he felt that if must be fantastic to have faith and wonders whether the lack of it is a shortcoming in himself.

To me, "faith" is CERTAINTY without EVIDENCE and for that reason alone is very, very dangerous. I'd rather have one good solid DOUBT than a bucket-load of faith.


We moved on to more serious questioning, and it quickly became obvious where the concerns of the Party lay.

Throughout the Liberal Democrat conference that followed on from our interview, there were these two almost-contradictory narratives running: the one from the Coalition leadership emphasising that the Coalition is strong, and functioning well, operating together and with no major differences; the other from the membership crying out that they WANT to be distinctive and different, they want to be reassured that they are not just winning their share of achievements, but also that we are not being subsumed by the Conservatory Party, devoured by Mr Balloon.

And so we came up with questions looking for distinctiveness, not division, from Daddy Alex wondering why the Conservatories reform proposals seems more favourably treated than ours; from Auntie Linda, asking "how did we get here?" and "where are our values really reflected?"; or from Ms Charlotte Henry wanting to know how the budget would have been different without input from the Liberal Democrats.

The budget is actually the obvious place to go to to look for a checklist of Liberal Democrat "wins", and Captain Clegg had his ready: without Liberal Democrats in government, we wouldn't have got the increase in capital gains tax; we wouldn't have got the increase in personal allowance; we wouldn't have got triple lock on pensions, increasing by the best of earnings, inflation or 2% a year.

Some of those things portrayed as "Conservatory wins", things like simplifying the business tax rates, were things we always campaigned on too.

He also promised that we will see introduction of new green taxes and we'll see further steps towards our promise of no tax to pay on your first ten thousand pounds of income. To people who say that the budget "watered down" that Lib Dem pledge he reminded them that we never said it was to be achieved overnight.

In what was to be really the leadership's major theme for Liverpool, Captain Clegg told us we should "hold our nerve" and not allow the language of the "old politics" to derail all that we've achieved so far, that it was very early days and while the need to tackle the deficit overshadows everything we should look at those achievements, not least the budget, as a downpayment on fairness to come. He also promised us, in a teaser trailer for Mr Huhney-Monster's announcements, big green developments over the Autumn.


Before all that, Daddy Alex had asked about electoral reform and the Coalition agreement: the Conservatories had wanted to equalise the electorates and cut the number of seats in the House of Commons and they got it; the Liberal Democrats had wanted Single Transferable Vote and only got AV and only then after a referendum. Weren't we short-changed?

There were two things the Captain pointed out in reply: one to the Conservatories; one to Hard Labour.

The first on was that the cut in numbers was not as big as Tories wanted, and was only to bring the House into line with EXISTING legislation, the 1986 Act, so actually this is not a Tory thing.

The second thing was that constituencies of equal size come from the Chartists and is not just a founding principle of Labour movement but already a legal requirement – technically all the current bill does is elevate one of several criteria to lead criterion. And there's a 10% leeway so the Commission can work with existing ward boundaries.

Furthermore, he insisted, it's a huge exaggeration to say the re-boundary-ing will benefit Conservatories over Hard Labour, except in Wales where people are hugely overrepresented. But rectifying that overrepresentation, now that there is a Welsh Assembly, is in keeping with the spirit and practice of devolution.

On AV, he admitted to the compromise. Idealism and pragmatism bump up against each other, he said. But no other party was willing to go further than AV. With no cross-party support, further reform was not going to get off the starting block.

Auntie Helen reminded him of the question he'd fielded at Prime Monster's Questionable Time: asked if amending the current bill would be the end of the Coalition, he'd said that the AV deal wasn't the be-all and end-all of the agreement.

Imagine what would have happened if I'd said the opposite, replied Captain Clegg. At the moment they're only trying to amend the bill; if I said it would pull the plug, those Conservatory backbenchers on the wingnut fringe would be CERTAIN to make SURE the bill was amended and that the Coalition fell.

He reiterated that there is a COMMITMENT in the Coalition Agreement to see that the referendum bill is passed.


Is the Coalition working, interjected Daddy Richard.

Much, much better than anyone could have imagined, replied Capitan Clegg. It's much more about what both sides can bring and working out solutions jointly. There's no need for a narrative of winners and losers.

Not like Tony and Gordon, muttered Daddy darkly, and that may have raised a smile.

The press, says Captain Clegg, are still looking at the government through the prism of the old politics and can't cope with the new dynamic. If we can show, through the Coalition that there IS an alternative to the old yah-boo politics, THAT is the PRIZE.

On a more personal note, Daddy Richard wondered about the volleys of abuse – "traitor", "sell out" and the rest – that have been launched at the Liberal Democrats and mostly at him personally. That's got to hurt, Daddy asked.

Brickbats from other politicians don't bother him, he said; it's only when it comes from people in his Sheffield constituency, when people in his surgeries are like that that it gets to him.

But not politicians. Referring to Hard Labour's leadership contest, he remarked that clearly if you want to curry favour with Labour you get nasty about Nick Clegg.


Then Nick Thornberry asked a rather interesting question. Reminding the Captain of his often-used example of the life-chances of a bright child from a poor part of Sheffield being eclipsed by a less able one from a more affluent part of town, one Nick asked the other: will the Nick Clegg of ten years in future be able to say I fixed the social mobility problem?

The other Nick's reply: yes.

Credit where it's due, he admitted that there are some good trends based on Hard Labour decisions of a decade ago.

But for him, obviously, education is key, and the pupil premium and more autonomy in schools should have a big effect.

He also wants to address how the health system works, suggesting a "health premium" like the pupil premium, and radical decentralization, and drawing a link between child mortality and ill housing.

He added that his biggest regret of the first months of the Coalition is that he didn't do enough personally to say that Health White paper is a really good liberal piece of legislation.

And then there are the proposed welfare reforms, not all in this Parliament, that he hopes will do something over time to shift incentives from dependency to work.

Expressing genuine frustration with the games that the press play, he referred to his writing what he believed to be a considered and thoughtful piece for the Times only for it to go misrepresented as an attack on the poor.

What he wants is to use the the welfare and tax reforms to challenge the culture of dependency fostered by the Labour government and all Mr Frown's tax credits.

The approach of previous government was almost a statistical game, drawing a line in the air to say you are "poor" if you are below it and then spending millions on nudging a few people from just under the line to just over the line and calling this success.

For Captain Clegg a truly fairer society has to go hand in hand with radical devolution, really setting people FREE.

Finally, there was the question that the Captain asked of himself, inspired perhaps by our probing for differences with the Conservatories, perhaps by his own narrative of unity:

What do the Liberal Democrats get out of the Coalition?

His answer:

Everything.


And then our hour was up and it was time to go: us to race off to Liverpool for conference; him to a meeting with the Home Secretary! So we gathered up our stuff and left him there under the watchful eye of (possibly) that notorious Florentine political advisor.

Machiavelli once wrote that REFORM is the most dangerous endeavour a Prince can embark upon. Those who benefited from the old regime will resist with all their might; those who might benefit from the changes will be only half-hearted for they have no benefit yet, and worse you will inevitably disappoint some of your supporters.

Yet he ALSO wrote that a Prince who gains power by fortune or inheritance or in the gift of powerful figures rises easily to power but has a hard time maintaining it, while a Prince who comes to power by SMASHING the existing order rises with difficulty but rules with ease once he has power.

I wonder what he, sitting there on the wall, would make of Captain Clegg.
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