Lest we forget…

This was one of the funniest things I've seen all year. By glorious coincidence, the Liberal Democrats were roundly punished for their perfidy in the local election in the same week that Osama bin Laden was killed.

The Lib Dems stood on an election platform of abolishing the £3000 tuition fee, and promoting our European identity. In government, they've allowed the Tories to triple fees to £9000 and sat idly by as Britain withdraws from any serious engagement with Europe just as it becomes clear even to the dullest brain that individual nation states are powerless in the face of the bond markets and ratings agencies (yes, the people said Enron, Lehman Brothers et al were fine, and proceeded to punish governments for bailing out the banks they said were in tip-top shape).

So all in all, not exactly a triumph for Nick Clegg.

Why the Liberal Democrats are (and deserve to be) dead ducks

A very interesting report into the operation of the Tory-Lib Dem coalition was published today. Unsurprisingly, it declared that the Lib Dems are too few, too poor and too weak to make much difference to the Tory juggernaut.


Most damning of all was this bit:

In a sign of the ideological unity inside departments, the unit said: "There have been very few – if any – cases where ministers in departments have divided on party lines.

"Indeed, across whole swathes of policy the coalition partners have discovered little difference in their policy responses when confronted with the hard choices of government.

We on the left have always known that under the Arran jumpers and sandals was a party of selfish rightwingers, but many deluded people have seen them as the 'nice' party. No longer. Why vote Lib Dem if they're Tories? If you're a Tory, vote Tory. If you're not, vote Labour, Green or the imaginary Green Socialist party I've just thought up. If you're actually a Lib Dem, be honest and vote Tory. 

How are you going to vote in the great AV referendum?

The Liberal Democrats, when they were a real political party - one with stabilisers on mind - spent all their time declaring that we needed Proportional Representation to produce parliaments in which the number of MPs matched the preferences of the voters.

They agreed to prop up the most malicious Tory government in decades if they were allowed to hold a referendum on the Alternative Vote - a weak version of the voting system which allows us to rank candidates in order of preference and transfer votes until one reaches 50%. It's not proportional but it's better than the First Past The Post system.

So the referendum may or may not be in three months. The Lib Dems didn't want AV. The Tories don't want it. Labour doesn't want it (some want FPTP, some PR). I think it's better than the current system but not good enough. I also think an easily lost referendum on something you don't support is an insultingly cheap thing for which to sell your soul. It's like the Tories have tossed their spare change on a girl's bedside table: they should either pay their prostitutes properly or treat the coalition like a mutual encounter with benefits on both sides. Buying them so cheaply is simply an insult, but clearly one the Lib Dems were happy to take.

So. Do I vote for AV because it's a mild improvement? Or do I vote against it because it might help bring down a disgraceful and damaging government? I have my doubts that it will, actually: the Lib Dems are going to be punished massively at the next election, so won't want to bring down the wrath of the people 4 years earlier than they have to. Their current strategy is to support everything the Tories do - however evil - in the hope that the financial situation will improve by 2015 and claim some of the credit. They're politicians: they crave power above all things.

What are your thoughts?

Snow train to Georgia

OK, terrible pun, I know. Yesterday's weather forecast promised 10-20cms of snow overnight, and I kept waking up to look out of the window, so excited was I, only to be disappointed each time. Luckily, a few cms fell this morning and The Dark Place doesn't look as surly as usual.

In other news, the coalition's falling apart as the Daily Telegraph tries to pull it to pieces. This very rightwing newspaper has always hated the Lib Dems and distrusts Cameron, so it despatched pretty female journalists disguised as constituents to the offices of various susceptible Liberal Democrat ministers. Lo and behold, they revealed that Lib Dems don't like or trust what their Conservative colleagues are up to, and Vince Cable said some true but undiplomatic things about Rupert Murdoch.

Ho hum. It's not a great day for democracy: it means that any MP will no longer say what they think to their own constituents, because they might be undercover journalists. Replacing Vince Cable with a Tory bastard (Jeremy H-h-hunt) means that Murdoch's bid to dominate Britain's airwaves will probably be waved through, so that's bad too. But at least it'll be harder to maintain the coalition.

More mischievously, it means that Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg is left between a rock and a hard place. As an economic conservative he's trapped between the Tories - whom he strongly resembles - and his own party, which is largely to the left of him. Does he stay with his tribe or move closer to his spiritual home with the other privileged millionaire neoliberals?

Moore, the Berwickshire MP, describes the increase in tuition fees to a maximum £9,000 as "the biggest, ugliest, most horrific thing in all of this … a car crash, a train wreck".

Speaking to reporters posing as constituents, Moore said: "I signed a pledge that promised not to do this. I've just done the worst crime a politician can commit, the reason most folk distrust us as a breed. I've had to break a pledge and very, very publicly."

Moore said the move was "deeply damaging" to Lib Dems, who had promised to abolish fees, but he added: "What we've all had to weigh up is the greater sense of what the coalition is about." He added that Conservative rightwingers "hate us with a passion".

Splendid.

Oh yes: some Uppal news. I wrote to him asking him to inquire about the moronic decision to remove scientists from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. He hasn't advanced an opinion either way, but has written to the Home Secretary for clarification.

Poor ickle Lib Dems

Those fearless politicians have cancelled a conference in case those nasty students stand outside shouting rude things about them.

Their logo isn't the only thing that yellow about the Lib Dems (though it's time the Tories got a similar pasting).

If you're free on Saturday, you could always join in the Taxpayers' Revolt: gathering outside Philip Green's retail empire to point out to shoppers that this government adviser paid himself £1.2 billion tax free by routing it all via Monaco, while our public services are cut.

"Haven't the rich suffered enough?"

Astonishingly, that's a quote from Peter Mandelson, supposedly a Labour politician, in negotiations with the Liberal Democrats before they decided to go with the Tories: the Lib Dems toyed with an extra tax for those who owned houses worth more than £2 million.

The simple answer from those of us who don't habitually hob-nob with the super-rich is that they appear not to have suffered at all. Bankers' bonuses are going to be around £7 billion pounds this year. On the other hand, the poor are going to suffer an awful lot.

This is why Mandelson's hated in the Labour Party.

Meanwhile, the National Union of Students has come up with a cunning wheeze. The Lib Dems proposed a recall election if 10% of a constituency signed a petition, so the NUS are planning to recall all the Lib Dems who lied about tuition fees. If the government doesn't bring in the law, they'll look like cowards. If they do, many Lib Dems might lose their seats and the government may fall. Excellent.

Also: support the national day of action on campuses, 24th November.

Nick Clegg lying to your face

Hope he dreams about this every night:



Meanwhile, I'm off. I've been reading John Stuart Mill's On Liberty all day, and need to escape (boom, tish). It's Back to the Future at the cinema tonight!

Sold! To the Tories!

OK, I'm not invigilating - got the week wrong.

Mark has sent me this: someone, bored by Nick Clegg whoring himself around the main parties, has put Clegg up for sale on EBay (sale withdrawn at £1m due to some petty clause about not selling humans: proud of yourself, Wilberforce?).

In today's irony news, the new Home Office minister and Minister for Equality has consistently voted against equal rights for homosexuals. Well done, Theresa May (but probably won't). She loved the Iraq war but didn't want an inquiry into it, adores nuclear weapons and hunting (voting record).

The Cabinet's up: depressing if you know who these people are, enigmatic if you're normal. I see that Cheryl Gillan (another millionairess with expenses problems - amongst other things, the taxpayers fed her dog), the Secretary of State for Wales left that country at 11 and never came back - she doesn't even represent a Welsh constituency. She opposed Wales's National Assembly and doesn't speak Welsh. Which means we can look forward to a repeat performance of John Redwood's triumph (though to be fair, speaking human would be an improvement on his normal approach):