Good grief. I thought that the age of politicians cynically talking out interviews was over. Over the past 13 years Peter Mandelson had developed the art of talking a lot but saying nothing. He honed his techniques of deceit and obfuscation and almost rendered interviews pointless. His goal was to say nothing. I thought that with New Labour out of power we might return to the days when the purpose of political interviews was to give the public a chance to understand the actions of politicians. It seems that Zach Goldsmith, MP for Richmond Park, has other ideas.
In fact Goldsmith is not the same as Mandelson. While Mandelson came across and a bit of an outsider Goldsmith comes across as a member of an over privileged elite which considers that the world revolves around them.
He suffers from, what a friend from New Zealand once termed, the sickening over confidence of the English upper classes.
I am getting really irritated by Labour in opposition. Their outrageous self riotous indignation is disgusting. From Roy Hattersley arrogant assumption that the Lib Dems should ally with Labour to Harriet Harman winging that Lib Dem voters did not vote for the current policies.
Hey Harriet! I am a Liberal Democrat voter, don’t tell me what I think!
This week Tom Watson, Labour MP for West Bromwich East became almost hysterical in the House of Commons and shouted that the Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove, was a “miserable pipsqueak”. This abuse from a member of a party which led the UK into war under the leadership of such miserable frauds as Mandelson, Campbell and Blair!
Labour backbenchers have still not faced up to fact that their acquiescence to being led by charlatans and incompetence for the past 13 years has cost them power and cost the country dear. Labour should wake up and smell the coffee. They knowingly allowed a bunch of frauds to lead them in order to win the election. This is an open secret. Even Tony Benn has admitted it publicly. They sacrificed their principles for power, they screwed the economy, they lost the election.
When Mr. Watson uses the term pipsqueak, I suggest that he is projecting. Today he swaggers around insulting people like a drunken bouncer but why did he not have enough courage to speak out when Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were shafting Labour and the country? Could it be that Mr. Watson is a miserable pipsqueak?
The TV is burbling about how the ex-Treasury Secretary, Labour’s Liam Byrne, left a note for his sucessor which said: ‘Dear chief secretary, I’m afraid to tell you there’s no money left.”
Apparently this is in contrast to the previous Tory leader, John Major, who left a note for the incoming Prime Minister, Tony Blair, along with a bottle of champagne.
Champagne to bankruptcy. That about sum up the past 13 years!
Supporters of Labour in the United Kingdom appear incensed that they are no longer the party of government and are condemning the Liberal Democrats for forming a coalition with the Conservatives. Words such as despicable, treachery and deceit have been used.
Labour suffered a massive drop in support and polled far fewer votes than the Conservatives. The Labour party, Gordon Brown and the rag tag bunch of nobodies that formed the last cabinet are widely disliked throughout the country yet they now behave as if they have been cheated of power.
“I fear the lady doth protest too much”! Their allegations of betrayal and despicable conduct should be directed at their own leadership. Gordon Brown’s decision to bring the twice disgraced Peter Mandelson back into government placed the Brown premiership firmly in the “spin over substance” camp of Tony Blair.
Let’s just list the reasons why they are out of power:
No party gained an overall majority.
All parties are free to negotiate alliances as they see fit. The Liberals Democrats are an independent party and are not obliged to side with Labour.
A Labour / Liberal Democrat coalition would not have achieved a majority and would therefore have no more right to govern than the Conservatives alone.
So the results are in fro the UK General Election 2010 and no party has a clear majority. Not only that but the two parties which are generally considered to be left leaning, Labour and Liberal Democrat, cannot combine to form a majority. The pie chart below shows the problems. The number of seats are split straight down the middle with LIB/LAB on one side and CON on the other. In the middle are a handful of tiny parties.
UK Election Results 2010
However, what is even more interesting, is to see that the people who are eligible to vote but did not vote are the real majority. These are people could easily have swung the election one way or the other if they’d got off their arses. – Hey ho.
Currently the UK uses the First-past-the-post voting system for electing members to the House of Commons. Labour have expressed interest in moving toward a Single Transferable Vote system and the Liberal Democrats want Proportional Representation. Please vote and state which system you would prefer.
In the past, when people discuss which party they will vote for in Great Britain they often consider voting Liberal but then dismiss this as a wasted vote. The logic is that they quite like the Liberals but that they wont get in. A similar argument is made that the Liberals are “too nice” and so will not have the ability to get into government.
These people are TALKING BOLLOCKS!
Twenty years ago The United Kingdom had two main parties plus the Liberals and a smattering of others. The two main parties had opposing ideologies and the vote was broadly split between them. However, Tony Blair transformed the Labour Party from a left leaning semi socialist party into a Tory convert. Margaret Thatcher believed in privatisation because she thought that nationalised industries naturally inclined to inefficiency and that the power of the market keeps private enterprise on it’s toes.
Tony Blair believed in privatisation because he had seen that this strategy had worked for Thatcher. Tony Blair understood nothing. He believed fanatically in privatisation the same way that a convert becomes bound up with the rules and not the spirit of their chosen religion. The same way that ex-patriots fein obsession with the minutia of their home county.
The result is that we now have two capitalist parties fighting over the same vote.
Both Labour and the Tories have shown themselves to be corrupt and despicable and Labour have shown themselves to be incompetent.
Of course Liberal MPs have been involved in the expenses scandal and, I believe, do receive financial contributions from non doms. But I believe that in general the Liberals have been more honest and principled than either Labour or the Tories.
The Liberal Democrats were formed from the old Liberal party which in turn was formed from the old Whigs. During the 18th and 19th century the Whigs along with the Tories were the main party of government. The prominent Liberal, Sir William Harcourt said this of the Liberals:
“Liberty does not consist in making others do what you think right. The difference between a free Government and a Government which is not free is principally this—that a Government which is not free interferes with everything it can, and a free Government interferes with nothing except what it must. A despotic Government tries to make everybody do what it wishes, a Liberal Government tries, so far as the safety of society will permit, to allow everybody to do what he wishes. It has been the function of the Liberal Party consistently to maintain the doctrine of individual liberty. It is because they have done so that England is the country where people can do more what they please than in any country in the world.”
The Liberals have stuck to their principles. Their policies are not driven by ideology but by traditional British pragmatism. Though they stand for broadly free market economics it was the Liberals who were responsible for creating the welfare state under Asquith and his Lloyd George.
We should also remember that Vince Cable appears to be the only MP who understands economics and has the best chance of digging the UK out of the current mess.
So now, when we go to vote, will we once again vacillate between the two options which you loathe or, will you do what your heart always told you should do: Vote Liberal Democrat.
The election campaign in the UK seems to have started and it has been a pretty miserable affair. The priority of any new government must be to cut the deficit and this means cutting expenditure or raising taxes (or a mixture of both). However, politicians know that they are unlikely to get elected by telling the pubic the truth so they ar all tiptoeing around the issues while lobbing insults at each other.
The Tories lack of policies has given the public no great reason to vote for them and their lead dropped to around 6%. Then we heard that the deputy chairman of the Conservative party, Lord Ashcroft has non-domicile status and therefore does not pay much UK tax. Mr. Ashcroft has donated large amounts of money to the Tories and has played a major part in their elections strategy. Outrage ensued amongst Labour until it was pointed out that they have their share of spongers such as Lord Paul. However the Tories seem to be suffering most from this because of the tawdry way in which Lord Ashcroft got his peerage. It seems that he was turned down the first time but the little shit was so desperate to be made a Lord that he actually entered into off the record negotiations and gave his word to become a permanent UK resident. He later changed his mind on that of course but by then he had his peerage.
It may seem right that the Tories get attacked for this but we all know that this sort of thing goes on and I would like to remind everyone that it was New Labour who pledged to reform the House of Lords. In practice this reform amounted to doing away with the hereditary principle and promoting the sort of back street dealing that is the traditional path for Life Peers. Lord Ashcrof’s appointment would not have happened if Tony Blair had not made a balls up of House of Lords reform.
This morning we were told that Michael Foot has died. As the media is reporting, Mr. Foot was an old style Labour politicians. A socialist and a man of principle.
The fear now must be that traditional Labour supporters will recall fondly the honestly and integrity of Michael Foot and, in misty eyed desperation, decide that Gordon Brown best reflects those same characteristics. It could be that the electorate hand the government of the country to the very man who betrayed Labour’s principles and plunged the country into the worst mess since Denis Healey was forced to go begging to the IMF in 1976.
I have been mulling over the expenses scandal currently bubbling away in the British press and it seems to me that this is the straw that broke the camels back. The expenses scandle is the last in a long stream of betrayals by our leaders and specifically by New Labour. It is time for a general election. (See petition information below).
New Labour came to power promising an end to the sleaze that defined the fag end of the last Tory government. Tony Blair portrayed himself as embracing an innovative vision of The United Kingdom and promulgated a bold modern vision of the future of the UK.
MPs who tried to stop you seeing their expenses
However, it quickly became apparent that the cardinal attribute of New Labour was not vision but spin. One after another New Labour ministers proved themselves corrupt and were dismissed from office only to be brought back in once the fuss had died down.
New Labour policies turned out to be the wholesale adoption of Thatcherism but, as with all converts, the policies were embraced as a doctrine and without understanding or judgement. Privatisations continued and New Labour became the bitch of big business.
Tony Blair began hobnobbing with the super rich and power went to his head. At the frenzied height of New Labour devotion to hyper-capitalism he tried to introduce super casinos. That a Labour government should consider the massive expansion of gambling in this country when the only people calling for it were greedy American business men beggars belief but by this time he was so far gone he could not see further than the Gordon Brown’s balance sheet.
When George Bush decided to go to war with Iraq Blair’s dragged us in too. The Islamist terrorism unleashed the Big Brother tendency that is never far from the minds of any Labour government. New laws were introduced to detain people without trial, CCTV became almost ubiquitous
The credit crunch brought claims from our leaders that this was a global phenomena that had little to do with their policies ignoring the frequent articles in newspapers such as The Economist describing the dangerous asset price bubble which was being fueled by cheap money and would eventually burst.
When ordinary people protested against the bankers in London the police responded with highly questionable tactics such as kettling and casual violence which may have left one man dead. Yet our leaders supported the outrageous tactics and trotted out the usual platitudes about violent demonstrators.
Luckily the widespread use of video technology by the general public revealed that the violence was mainly perpetrated by the police.
Now we learn that those we trust with the leadership of our country are fiddling their expenses like so many seedy second hand car salesmen.
On The BBC, Radio 4 program Any Questions this week it was suggested that the British people use the upcoming European elections to withhold votes from the major parties. Our leadership on the panel showed the depth of their depravity once again by attempting to scare the public with the spectre of racism and erroneously implying that this meant a vote for the BNP.
Lord Falkner went on to complain that it was a tragedy that New Labour would be judged on the expenses story and that this was a distraction when more important issues were at stake.
Lord Falkner is Talking Bollocks!
There can be no more important issue than whether our leaders are trustworthy. Their policies and promises mean nothing if the are prepared to waive aside their probity and obligations for a few thousand pounds.
While preaching prudence our leaders have led us into the worst economic crisis for decades. They led us into an illegal war that caused the deaths of thousands and severely damaged Britain’s reputation abroad. They continue to introduce ever more draconian laws which erode our civil liberties and they encourage the police to suppress protest using methods not dissimilar to those found in Zimbabwe.
Now we hear that they have been fiddling their expenses.
During the Any Questions program Susan Kramer, MP, suggested that we need a general election. She is right. The British people must be given the chance to decide whether their representatives deserve the confidence and the responsibility with which they are entrusted.
