Day 3416: Captain Clegg and the Path to the Dark Side

Monday:


It seems that a lot of people may have voted for Liberal Democrats to "keep the Conservatories Out!" and are now a bit miffed that we might let them in.

Well, sorry, but we never promised to keep the Conservatories out – we only promised that you'd never have to vote tactically again if we could at all help it.

It's our BROKEN, WINNER-TAKES-ALL system that makes us HATE and FEAR other Parties, and in many ways that's WORSE than all the other ways that it poisons our politics.

Seriously, this is what the "New Politics" was ALWAYS going to look like: we WANT people to TALK, and to NEGOTIATE and COMPROMISE.

People HATE and FEAR the Conservatories because of what they did with UNTRAMMELLED power during the reign of Queen Maggie.

Nowadays, almost everyone agrees that SOME changes did have to be made, but equally that the Conservatories were way too harsh in the way that they made them. Could they have been as BRUTAL if they hadn't had a monopoly on power with only a minority of support?

If Queen Maggie had had to negotiate and explain, to listen and to compromise perhaps not only would it have been better for everyone else BUT ALSO everyone else would not have ended up with paranoid terror of the Conservatories ever coming back.

FEAR, as the thousand-year-old Fozzie Bear once said, is the path to the DARK SIDE. FEAR leads to HATE, HATE leads to ANGER, ANGER leads to thirteen years of police powers and terrorism acts. Wokka wokka wokka, he added.

What we've seen this last weekend is that people CAN behave like GROWN-UPs when they HAVE to. Wouldn't it be nice if they have to behave like grown-ups ALL THE TIME?

That is why it is so important, SO important that we reform our electoral system. And THAT is why it is so important that we make these negotiations with the Conservatories work. I KNOW we hate and fear them – we've got to do BETTER than that.

Two points:

First, a BIG part of the Conservatories case for the winner-takes-all first pass the port electoral system is that coalitions are WEAK. If we make this work, it proves them WRONG.

Second, if we do reach an agreement with the Conservatories it proves that we CAN reach a deal with the Conservatories. Because otherwise we will ALWAYS get the "Lib-Lab Pact" thrown in our faces and be told – not least by Hard Labour – that we can only ever be a junior partner to the forces of the LEFT.

(And I am SO tired of being told, by Hard Labour or their stooges, that I am part of the "left-liberal consensus". As Mr Harry Wilcock once said about I.D.iot cards – "left-liberal consensus"? I am a Liberal and I don't approve of that sort of thing!)

Look, even at the heights of "Cleggmania" we were NEVER expecting the Liberal Democrats to poll more than 50% (even if 49% was pretty darn close), so if we really, truly BELIEVE in trusting the people's vote, then we would ALWAYS have had to negotiate a partnership with one or other Labservative.

We're NOT in this to sit on the sidelines heckling; we're here to make a DIFFERENCE. And that means doing politics DIFFERENTLY.


So that's what's in it for us, but what's in it for the Conservatories?

Well, how about the chance of REAL GREATNESS.

Lord Blairimort's biggest problem – apart from being a psychotic monomaniac with a messiah complex, of course – was that he was great at ACHIEVING power and never had a clue what he wanted to DO with it. He was swept in on a great wave of "time for change" and revulsion at the old Conservatory sleaze, but didn't really know HOW he was going to make sure "things could only get better". This meant that his first term was wasted making everyone very cross by following Conservatory spending plans and his second term was wasted making every very cross by following Replutocrat INVASION plans.

Lord Blairimort wanted to go down in HISTORY – which of course he WILL, but not in a GOOD way – but even he sensed in himself the lack of true VOCATION. He wanted to be a "great reforming Prime Monster", like Mr Lloyd George or Mr Atlee or, er, Mrs Queen Maggie.

The reason that he WON'T be remembered as a great reformer is because his vision didn't extend beyond getting elected and then re-elected.

Now Mr Balloon has arrived, with a campaign straight out of the New Labour playbook, swept into power on a great wave of "time for change" and revulsion at the old Labour sleaze and what's he going to do now? His manifesto is less a platform more a collection of sound bites and idea bubbles – "hug a hoodie", "vote blue go green", "big tent society", "save my job"… no, that one was slipped in by Mr Vague.

Mr Balloon, self-styled heir-to-Blair, has always showed every danger sign of being another election-friendly policy vacuum.

But we could save him from himself.

The Conservatories will be negotiating saying "we got 307 seats; you only got 57" and we will be going in saying "I think you'll find that we got 23% of the vote and you got 36%, so we'll be splitting the power 40:60 if you don't mind".

But think about what we REALLY offer the Conservatories: a programme for government that is consistent, thought-through and ready to roll.

A Great Reforming Parliament: the Great Tax Reform Bill, to make the tax system fairer; the Freedom Bill, to roll back the intrusive state powers that Hard Labour have seized; and a new Great Reform Act, to empower a citizens convention and really, really usher in a politics for the New Millennium: the politics of fairness and consensus and individual freedom and empowerment

If you were Mr Balloon with THAT on the table, could you really, REALLY turn down the chance to be remembered in one breath with Churchill or Queen Maggie just because your resident wingnuts were unhappy with changing a system that was really only brought in by Labour less than a hundred years ago with the abolition of multi-member seats?

For goodness sake, STV is even known as BRITISH Proportional Representation. You know, like calling the EMULSIFIED HIGH-FAT OFFAL TUBE the British Sausage, it may just be all in a NAME if you want to get people to swallow something.


I have seen Hard Labour twitterers tweeting and bleating that to deal with the Conservatories is to do a deal with the devil. "If you handle dirt with clean gloves," they say, "it's not the dirt that gets cleaner."

Well maybe that's true, but if NO ONE handles the dirt then we all DROWN in it.

Hate and Fear are the path to the Dark Side. We have to have a BETTER answer.


.

Day 3401: Memo to the Labour Party - We Hate You Too

Sunday:

For four hundred years, Great Britain has had a Liberal Party that exists to set people free from arbitrary power of kings and churches and vested interests. And for the same time there has been a Conservatory Party that exists to try and hold on to power for those same interests.

Then along came Hard Labour.

The Conservatories are wrong and we will oppose them always. But Labour are an insane aberration, an authoritarian elite that believe absolutely that what they are doing is not just RIGHT but FOR YOUR OWN GOOD, and so they will NEVER, EVER STOP.

Labour hates and fears Liberals. When they were weak and we were strong they hated and resented and envied our power; when they got strong and we were weak they hated and feared us for the betrayal they had done.

One thing Labour has never realised, though, is that we HATE them right back.

Let's get one thing completely clear: this "left-liberal" nonsense is just that... NONSENSE. Liberal is NOT an outpost of the "left". The "left" is an outpost of the Labservatives. Liberals are totally opposed to that sort of centralising, authoritarian, nannying dogma.

We see the Hopeless Secretary, Mr Alan Johnson & Johnson, on this weekend's Politics Show, playing the affable, kindly father-of-the-nation-in-waiting, telling us how he's always favoured proportional representation.

Phooey.

He favours AV+ and with the greatest respect to Uncle Woy, it's a GHASTLY system, retaining all the worst of the safe seats for life of the existing system, making them safer by the exaggerating effect of AV and THEN adding SUPER-SAFE seats which are the ones on the Party List which no one votes in and so no one can ever, ever vote out.

Mr Johnson & Johnson's no more tears formula is to support a form of PR for entirely TACTICAL reasons, because he thinks that it will install a Hard Labour HEGEMONY forever, with them in permanent charge and the Liberal Democrats as their natural whipping boys.

It is the attitude of the abusive partner to the battered spouse: you've got no choice, love, you've got to stick with me.

Their whole attitude is stuck in the 1950's. And if you don't believe that, just look at their manifesto cover.

Asked: I'm a Labour voter in a Lib Dem/Tory marginal, should I vote Lib Dem to keep the Tory out? He replies: it would be easier to answer if you were a Lib Dem voter is a Labour/Tory marginal.

This is SUCH a DISHONEST answer. Yes, yes of COURSE it would be EASIER for the Labour Hopeless Secretary to say vote Labour. Colour me SO NOT STUNNED.

It would be EASIER in a SAFE Labour seat to say "vote Hard Labour 'cos no other vote counts and we're going to ignore you anyway" but he's not going to say THAT either!

He WANTS to say he wants people to vote Labour EVERYWHERE. But he knows that saying that will actually REDUCE the number (if there are any left) of people who would prefer to vote Lib Dem, but will vote Labour tactically.

But if you won't answer the question, then you REALLY don't deserve ANYBODY to lend you their votes, let alone people who would rather vote for another Party.

Me? Oh, I say EVERYONE should vote Liberal Democrat, because the more votes we get everywhere, the more clear it will be just how BROKEN and CORRUPT our electoral system has become.

He goes on to policing and immigration - and yes, I realise that Liberal Democrat immigration policy could be a dandy bit more, well, Liberal, though I start to think that the "firm but fair" rhetoric is there as covering fire for the "there's good immigration as well as bad immigration" line - but Mr Johnson & Johnson starts out by saying that ASYLUM claims are right down. ASYLUM, that's people looking to escape from horrible terrible danger, and as usual here's a Hard Labour politician equating that with BAD. And he complains that there's been a huge rise in asylum seekers in the last decade. Really, Mr Hopeless Secretary? And can you think of any geo-political event of the last ten years that might have caused such a huge rise? Anything at all?

It's just the sense of ENTITLEMENT that sends me NUTS: there he sits, the Hopeless Secretary, knowing, KNOWING that his Party isn't just going to LOSE but quite probably to come THIRD, but still with the secret smile of a man who EXPECTS that he'll still have his fat bottom behind a Whitehall desk in a fortnight because we just HAVE to fall into line as junior partners.

Well, news for you, Mr Johnson & Johnson: Captain Clegg thinks it would be PREPOSTEROUS for your boss to be loitering in Number 10 if your lot come third and I reckon it'd be pretty PREPOSTEROUS for you to be loitering in Whitehall under the circumstance too, what with the HEART of Liberal Democrat policy being a FREEDOM BILL to undo all of the, pardon my language, do do that you have made into laws. So you better start thinking again.

Honestly, I really REALLY don't want to see Mr Balloon as Prime Monster, but when this smug, repellent, arrogant... GIT is on the telly, I start to think it might be a price worth paying to get rid of this sort of person. At least until I see Mr Balloon's puff-pasty face again, anyway.

Everyone knows that Liberals and Conservatories will oppose each other forever.

So can we PLEASE get on with Killing the Labour Party so that we can get back to the REAL business of defeating the Privileged Party of Vested Interest and Status Quo.

.

Day 2254: Total Eclipse of the Ming

Sunday:



Well, at LEAST it wasn't the Trident Atomic Missiles that EXPLODED in our faces!


It has been a bit of an up and down few days for Sir Mr the Merciless, hasn't it? First, he did jolly well on Questionable Time, then he walked into a drubbing from the Newsnight Show, but then he turned the Trident debate around leading from the front, only to have his leader's speech overshadowed by confusion over doing a deal with Mr Frown.

(In this context "confusion over policy" can be translated as "we journalists aren't going to admit to taking a wrong steer".)

I have to admit, my first reaction to hearing the "five tests for a coalition with Labour" spin version was a Homer Simpson/Darth Vader-esque:

"Noooooooooooooooooooooooooo!"

Once Daddy Alex had found a stepladder and pried me down off of the ceiling, however, I thought again and decided that I was COMPLETELY RIGHT the first time!

This Labour government is probably about as ILLIBERAL as you can go without ordering black uniforms and shiny boots. The thought of doing a deal with them – not just with them but with one of the principal architects of the NuLabour "Project" – is TOTALLY HORRID!

How can we even THINK of having a coalition with them?


In fact, we have to face TWO important questions:

Is it REALLY conceivable that we could go into government with Mr Frown's Labour?

And

Is it REALLY INconceivable that we could go into government with Mr Balloon's Conservatories?

The DANGER of Sir Mr the Merciless speech is that it looks like answering YES to both questions.


The core of that speech is his quickly INFAMOUS five tests for Mr Frown.

(1. Are you frowning? 2. Do you bite your nails? 3. Is your mouth hanging open? 4. Are you sulking? 5. Do you have the natural charisma of a dead undertaker? If yes to all five, you are Mr Frown!)

We all know that this was a VERY FUNNY joke about Mr Frown's own "five tests": five impossible things to do before breakfast if you want to join the Euro – and in that sense, it is saying "here are five things that Mr Frown will NEVER EVER do which is why were are NEVER EVER entering a coalition with him!"

But HONESTLY, we have had ten years of the Labour in government and they have come up SERIOUSLY WANTING. Do we really need more TESTS?

And dismissing the Conservatories with a single "Are the Conservatories up to this same challenge? Of course not" appears UNBALANCED – and that opens the door a CRACK to letting people think that you favour Mr Frown a wee bit but Mr Balloon not one jot.

The true tests for the Conservatories surely should be the SAME, but with ONE MORE: have some policies so that we can TELL whether you have changed or not!

And maybe we should even just consider calling Mr Balloon's bluff on this one – ask him if HE wouldn't be willing to join US in a coalition. After all, we know already that he thinks that several Liberal Democrat MPs are BETTER than any of his Conservatory candidates.

(Personally, I do not think that the Conservatories could BEAR the idea of being in a coalition with us, so often do they pour scorn upon us, but maybe some of them are a bit more grown up than their more outspoken colleagues. Hmmm, interesting choice for Mr Balloon: irritate a whole load of loud-mouthed Conservatory reactionaries – and simultaneously surrender in every Liberal/Conservatory marginal – or repudiate his whole Liberal Conservatory persona.)

On the other fluffy foot, although we would certainly get some publicity from the SHOCK VALUE of suggesting we might consider a coalition with the Conservatories, we would be giving entirely too much CREDIBILITY to Mr Balloon in advance of him having a policy on anything at all.

(One of Sir Mr the Merciless' BEST moments was on Questionable Time when, as Auntie Maude shrivelled under cross-examination on the Conservatories' latest marriage-related-tax-break whimsy, he said "no wonder they don't have any policies – as soon as they announce something it unravels within 48 hours". In fact, it was less than 24 hours later that Mr Boy George Osborne was already rowing back, saying they HADN'T DECIDED what the policy actually was yet.)

Because that is the problem of talking up coalitions: it stops us talking about OUR agenda and just makes us a support act for one or both of the other two.

We get little enough coverage as it is. Journalists are usually pretty bright sorts of people, but they do seem to have a habit of treating their readers and viewers as though they are FIVE.

Some of us are SEVEN you know! [R: six, but the point still stands.]

You do not need to talk to us like there are only two nice easy choices. We can cope with a third idea! And if a third idea comes along, well it's not got to lean to one side or the other; it can stand on its own.

But we're not doing ourselves any favours if we make picking sides look like something we're interested in. Because it will let them carry on pretending it is all we are about.

The Sainted Oscar may have said: "There's only one thing worse than being talked about and that is not being talked about" but he hadn't thought of the possibility of only being talked about to talk about someone ELSE!

Five ways to answer THAT question:

Mr Charles always managed to deflect the "hung parliament question" with aplomb, but then in fairness after 1997 it never looked like the Labour were likely to lose their majority, mainly thanks to the inadequacies of the Conservatories. Right now, though, the outcome of the next election looks like it could be a toss up between Mr Frown squeaking home with a tiny majority – or minority! – or Mr Balloon managing to come in with most seats. And that makes the "hung parliament question" much more of a HOT TOPIC.

So what SHOULD you say?

1. Push your own agenda instead

"Well, Kirsty/Jeremy/Ant&Dec, I want to deliver Liberal Democrat policies for the people of Britain. Just this week I'm talking about how We Can Cut Crime/make the Green Tax Switch/…"

2. Dismiss the premise

"You already know my answer to this. I'm not interested in making deals after the next election. I'm interested in getting as many votes and as many seat for the Liberal Democrats as I can. And people should know that they can trust us to deliver Liberal Democrat polices in return."

3. Differentiate ourselves from the NuToryLabour parties

"At the moment, Mr Balloon looks like he's already in a coalition with Lord Blairimort, supporting the government on education, taxation, benefits, Iraq… Only the Liberal Democrats are a distinctive voice for change, a change that people are crying out for."

4. Attack the question

"If this IS a legitimate question, why do you never ask Lord Blairimort or Mr Balloon whether they would try do a deal with us or each other in the event of a hung parliament? Surely it is more urgent to know what THEY would do to get over the winning line."

"The outcome of a general election is in the hands of the people, and we should trust them to make their decision when the time comes. To ask about horse-trading in a hypothetical hung parliament after an election that hasn't even been called yet is to take the electorate for granted and I'm never going to do that. People want to hear about our policies. Why aren't you asking me about the environment, or crime, or taxation. These are the questions that matter to people. And on the subject of the environment/crime/taxation just this week I've announced new policies to tackle…"

5. Be Honest

"We would have to wait and see. At the moment we couldn't work with either of them, but things can change. In 1997 I was in favour of a coalition with Labour if it would get rid of the Conservatories and that is no longer the case. There are parts of the Labour Party's agenda that are wholly unacceptable to us – I.D.iot cards, centralisation, all this testing. But the Conservatory policy remains a total mystery to everyone; we hope that Mr Balloon actually spells out his position on the issues, but until then there is just no telling what they stand for. So in the end we might not find ourselves able to work with either of them. In which case we would just continue to do what we've always done – vote on the issues based on our Liberal principles to protect the freedom of the individual and to curb arbitrary power."