Battle Is Joined

So, the game's afoot. Nick Clegg today launched perhaps the most fascinating political battle of modern times when announcing the referendum on AV.

It's interesting because it's rare for a government to call for a referendum on a change that it doesn't actually agree with. They'll normally only give us a vote on anything if it's something they want and if they think they've got a decent chance of winning. Yet most members of the government do not want AV, and will campaign against it, and we'll have the spectacle of members of the same Cabinet openly taking opposite sides of the argument.

The Womble doesn't want AV either, and would campaign against it if he could be arsed. There is no perfect voting system, but first-past-the-post delivers strong government more often than not and seems preferable to all the alternatives as far as I can see. Whilst this coalition is working so far, it probably won't last and in any proportional system there is always the danger of simply lurching from one failed coalition to the next, with the centre party holding a level of power that their electoral support simply does not justify. In addition to which - and this is important - the comedy value to be had from Clegg being defeated on this would be immense. Just the prospect of seeing the look on his face in the wake of a crushing defeat surely renders any serious constitutional debate on this redundant. The British public should apply a "sense of humour" factor and reject AV just for the sheer fun of it.

There seems to be a bit of a set-to going on about the date for the referendum; the most persuasive argumnent in favour of 7th May is that it annoys the Welsh, and that swings it for me.

That aside, we have the the proposal to reduce the number of MPs to 600 and equalise the number of voters in each constituency. This is a good thing, and will rain on a few socialist parades. Labour benefits greatly from having many of its strongholds in constituencies with relatively few voters so serve them bleeding well right if they lose a few MPs on the back of that being put right. Ditto the Scots; the average number of voters per Scottish seat is far lower than that in England.

And then there's this dissolution of Parliament business. You're going to have to excuse me here, because I must be being thick. As I understand it, when this idea was first announced, there was a row because Clegg wanted to raise the percentage of MPs needed to vote for a dissolution from 50, where it's been since the dawn of time, to 55. That meant that more than half of our elected MPs could vote for a disillusionment, but not actually get one. I'm pretty sure about this bit, and that there was a row, because I joined in. And now, somehow, it's supposed to be better, because the new proposal requires 66% of MPs to vote for dissolution. It must be because I'm just a simple voter and I don't read the Guardian, but I just cannot see for the life of me how this is any better.

Still, I suppose that's why Nick Clegg's running the country and I'm stuck watching people trying to mend computers.

Thoughts On Coalition Government

It's been a busy old week in politics and things have moved a great deal faster than this blog has. Ideas for various articles have been overtaken by events so in the end I've written nothing. I was so slow I couldn't even write much in the days it took them to form a government. So instead I thought I'd bring together some of the thoughts I've been having throughout the week in a summary.

1) Government paralysis - don't knock it, it's a great idea. If they're not doing anything then they're not legislating against us.

2) Clegg talking to Labour and the subsequent furore - I don't get it. Coalition politics is all about trying to assess what the best and most likely partnership is. Pretty it isn't, and it's one of the reasons I was dreading a hung parliament with Clegg's lot holding the balance of power. It was always going to be horrible. What he hell did everything expect, given where we were ? Personally I'd have been amazed if Clegg hadn't spoken to Brown to see if they could do a deal. In a way I admire those elements of the Labour party who told him to sling his hook.

3) The Cameron-Clegg love-in - OK, I've moved a bit on this now. I still hate it, I hate the Lib Dems, I don't trust 'em further than I could throw them and it all sticks in the throat. Big time. But if there's a better option out there, given the parliamentary arithmetic, I haven 't seen it. Cameron could have gone it alone in a minority government, but what would he have achieved ? Nothing, probably. I admire him for at least trying to make the best of a bad job, even if the bad job is partly of his own making in that he failed to win an election which was there for the taking. I wish him luck; God knows he's going to need it.

4) How long do you give it ? Well I don't it five years, that is for certain. I can see the Lib Dems walking not long after the going gets really tough. All this "doing what's in the national interest" stuff is moonshine. They're acting in their own self-interest because they've been desperate to get their people round the Cabinet table for the last 70 years. But the moment serving in the Cabinet stops being in their interest, they'll be out of there sooner than you can say "You're on your own, Dave".

5) Political reform - I hate it. The AV+ proposal, which I initially saw as the biggest sell-out of the lot, now strikes me, relatively speaking, as one of the milder ones. At least they'll be a referendum on that and the Tories will be able campaign against it. But fixed-term parliaments and a directly elected House of Lords ? Give me strength. The fixed-term government proposal is a naked attempt at self-preservation, designed to protect the Conservatives when the Lib Dems do a runner. It's underpinned by a proposal that a motion calling for the dissolution of Parliament has to be supported by 55% of voting MPs rather than 50% + 1, as now. In other words, more than half our MPs can vote for an election to be called, and yet that vote can be ignored. That strikes at the very core of our Parliamentary democracy and it stinks. And as for reform of the House of Lords; well, isn't there enough to do as it is ? The Lords is one of the enigmas of our constitution. No one can quite explain how it works, it ought not to work, but it does. As a revising chamber it has few equals in the world. I lost count of the number of times, over the last 13 years, when we owed it a debt of gratitude for reining in the worst of the Stalinist tendencies of New Labour. And that's not down to any political bias, either; the House of Lords gave Mrs Thatcher plenty of trouble during her time, just as it should have done. I haven't quite worked out what a directly-elected (by PR) second chamber is going to give us yet, but an improvement is not high on my list of possibilities.

6) Cabinet make-up. Clegg as deputy PM I suppose we're going to have to live with. At one point Iain Dale was predicting David Davies was going to be the new Home Secretary, which would have been tremendous. That role cries out now for a truly liberal mind, and I don't think Theresa May cuts the mustard in that regard. Keeping Vince Cable out of 11 Downing Street was a wise move, the appointments of Hague and and Fox were no-brainers. One footnote: Iain Duncan-Smith; that man worries me.

My Ire Is Rising

My blood’s temperature is rising. My God, is it ever.

I haven’t blogged for ages and ages because I felt all angered out. Utterly dire though the situation that this country funds itself in might be, I thought I’d run out of things to feel completely hacked off about. I thought I couldn’t possibly, under any circumstances, get any more incensed than I already am.

And then Nick Clegg turned up.

Nick bloody Clegg, so-called leader of the most pompous, cynical, self-righteous, wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing and blatantly hypocritical political party on Earth, rises from the gutter like the new Tony Blair and suddenly Britain’s media luvvies are crawling all over each other to laud him as the Nation’s New Saviour. Which he isn’t. The BBC, who have been spinning desperately for a hung parliament all year, think all their Christmases have come at once. Which they might have.

I’m telling you now: if we end up with a hung parliament where Clegg’s Liberals hold the balance of power I am going to be very cross indeed. If David Cameron gets into bed with him and sells out everything that the Conservative party is supposed to stand for and so allows that slippery, scheming little piece of shit and his cohorts places at the Cabinet table, then I am going to be absolutely fucking livid.

And if instead Clegg and his obnoxious, holier-than-thou, we’re-whiter-than-white, narcissistic nannies do a deal with their spiritual Labour sole-mates and keep that thieving, incompetent, snarling Scottish Stalinist in Downing Street then I’m going to go off the scale.

Lib Dems atop the opinion polls ? The country is going absolutely, 100 per cent, stark raving mad. But not half as mad as I’m going to be if this ends up where I think it’s going.

You have been warned.

And Now It's Gone Completely Crackers

The Liberal Democrats have gone stark, raving mad. They've just got rid of Ming Campbell.

It appears that this is a reaction, at least in no small part to the LDs' poor opinion poll ratings which I believe - as I blogged here and here - to be wholly unreliable. As there isn't going to be a general election for at least 18 months there is no need for any party to panic about polls right now.

It is clear that Campbell has been "done in". At the weekend he was insistent that he was carrying on and he wasn't even on hand to announce his "resignation" himself; it befell Simon Hughes (a long-standing schemer in LD politics) and Vince Cable to do that.

Campbell has been leader for just 18 months. Political parties seem to be becoming like football clubs, sacking the man in charge after a few bad results. This is an incredibly short-termist reaction, manifested in a mail posted on Iain Dale's blog, supposedly written by a LD insider, which talks about Nick Clegg's position as favourite to replace Campbell. It says "After all, Clegg is seen by many as our version of Dave [Cameron]. When Cameron was tanking in the polls -during Gordon's honeymoon - there was little chance that Clegg would get elected - after all, good looking young men just weren't flavour of the month then. But now all has changed and so Clegg is on a high. However, this could change. If Gordon comes back strongly against Cameron the expect Clegg stock to fall."

According to which, the Liberal Democrats will simply elect whoever is "flavour of the month" (that month being December, when the leadership election will be held) with no consideration as to what might be in the long-term interests of the party.

Parties need to get a grip, in my view. It wasn't so long ago that people were talking about Cameron being replaced, and now he's seen as a high-flyer. At the same time Brown has experienced the opposite trajectory, and there are even rumblings of discontent about him. And now Campbell has copped it altogether.

And all because the polls have changed in the last month, and all for no real reason.

Oh No, What's Happening To Me ?

I'm slightly shocked to be writing this, but I'm starting to re-evaluate the Liberal Democrats as a national party.

For a long time I've had them down as a Labour clone who tacked a "liberal" label on the end of their tax-rising, EU-loving agenda. Under Paddy Ashdown they were pompous and self-righteous, under Charles Kennedy they were irrelevant. But with Menzies Campbell at the helm, they are starting to cut a new authority.

Campbell's call yesterday for a troop pull-out in Iraq may have merits, for all I know. I'm not close enough to the appalling action to be able to judge. But his assertion that we, as a nation, should be big enough to acknowledge that the occupation of Iraq has been a failure reeks of nothing but common sense and a grown-up ability to examine events in an objective light. David Cameron should do the same.

While we're on Iraq, let's not forget that the Liberals were the only party in England who had the balls to stand up before the invasion and say that it was all going to go horribly wrong.

I could never vote for the Lib-Dems because I wouldn't trust them on tax, their supposed love of political and social freedom is not backed up with a genuine desire for a free-market economy and they'd love to hand everything over to Europe anyway. And locally they still appear to be the small-minded, petty, scheming opportunists that they always were, doing almost anything within the political process if it means they get more votes. But Menzies Campbell does at least have my ear.

Now that's scary.