For You Cleggy, Ze Election Iz Over!

Front-page of today's Mail. Nick Clegg is in a traitorous plot with foreigners. Unlike some people. Seriously, if the Lib Dems were offering a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty (not even saying whether people should vote yay or nay) I would really consider voting for them, just to see the front-pages of the Thatcherite newspapers on May 7th and the headline 'IT WAS THE SUN WOT LOST IT!'

Moreover, although it always like to wrap itself up in the Union Jack, I always think the Mail is skating on the proverbial thin ice when it goes on about World War Two (it is for it) and Nazis (it is against them). After all, its owner at the time Lord Rothermere can hardly be said to have covered himself in glory:

On 10 July 1933, Rothermere wrote an editorial titled ‘Youth Triumphant' in support of Adolf Hitler, this was subsequently used as propaganda by the Nazis. In early 1934, Rothermere and the Mail were editorially sympathetic to Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists.Rothermere wrote an article entitled ‘Hurrah for the Blackshirts’, in January 1934, praising Mosley for his ‘sound, commonsense, Conservative doctrine’....


Rothermere was a friend and supporter of both Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, which influenced the Mail's political stance towards them up to 1939. Rothermere visited and corresponded with Hitler. On 1 October 1938, Rothermere sent Hitler a telegram in support of Germany's invasion of the Sudetenland, and expressing the hope that 'Adolf the Great' would become a popular figure in Britain....


In 1937, the Mail's chief war correspondent, George Ward Price, to whom Mussolini once wrote in support of him and the newspaper, published a book, I Know These Dictators, in defence of Hitler and Mussolini....


In 1938, as persecution of the Jews in Europe escalated, the Mail objected to their seeking asylum in Britain. ‘The way stateless Jews from Germany are pouring in from every port of this country is becoming an outrage. The number of aliens entering the country through the back door is­ a problem to which the Daily Mail has repeatedly pointed.’


Rothermere and the Mail supported Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement, particularly during the events leading up to the Munich Agreement. In 2005, the British Foreign Office disclosed previously secret letters from Rothermere addressed to Hitler from the summer of 1939, in which he congratulated the German leader on his annexation of Czechoslovakia, urged him to invade Romania, and called Hitler's work ‘great and superhuman’.

Lord R and Adolf The Great: 'Herr Hitler, before we move onto meatier questions- Marmite, Love It Or Hate It?'

Election Links and More Cameron Cobblers

Then I woke up...

According to a poll in The Sunday Times, Nick Clegg is almost as popular as Winston Churchill. This is probably not doing Rupert Murdoch's digestion much good at the moment, which is, overall, a pretty good thing. For those who are not totally into the 'Clegg= The British Obama' narrative you may want to check out Tim Pendry's thoughts. For those of you who like fishing around in Memory Holes you may be interested in this (only from last month, but that is an eternity in the 24/7 continuous media-news-entertainment loop we now live under).

One of the mitigating factors working against a Lib Dem breakthrough, apart from an electoral system where the third placed party in terms of votes could be first in terms of MPs (and vice-versa- how on Earth is that democratic?), is the tribalism which infects British politics. Frankly, it is damn hard to vote for something you were not brought up to support. I said something in a post not so long back that politics and elections should not be treated like a sporting event, one where you support your side whatever happens. However, even now I would no more think of voting Conservative than cheering on Birmingham City FC! The fear of letting your perceived main enemy win can often paralyse any effective poltical action that would really change things. Perhaps if we get electoral reform for General Elections (a big if...) people will feel freer to vote for political parties they actually agree with (as happens in European, London, Scottish and Welsh Elections, which have PR elements). Until then I think 'my party, right or wrong' will continue to shape many, if not most, people's political views, as Julian Glover discusses.

It might have been worth putting a question mark at the end there...

What makes Gordon Brown tick? An interesting interview with Colin Harvie, author of  Broonland and former acquaintance of the PM, sheds some light.

A critique of Phillip Blond's 'Red Toryism', which was half-adopted by David Cameron in the same way c.1996 Tony Blair half-adopted Will Hutton's 'Stakeholder Economy' concept, can be found here.

Finally, Dave Cameron is coming out with more cobblers, the sort Tony Blair would be proud of. After talking about ten year old members of the Royal Navy in last Thursday's TV debate (and nuking China), Call Me Dave was in fine form again yesterday:

'David Cameron clearly has trouble understanding childhood. In last week's debate he claimed to have met a man who joined the navy as a 10-year-old. Now the Tory leader seems convinced that he grew up in the 1990s. At the launch of his manifesto for older people yesterday he reminisced about his childhood, claiming the idea of the big society came from his parents. "My mother was a magistrate. She used to come home and tell us all stories about the Newbury bypass protesters and Swampy up his tree." At the height of the protests Cameron was 30 years old. And, apparently, still living with his parents.'

 

Black Wednesday, September 16th 1992: 'Mr. Lamont, can I go home now? Mother expects me home by 10 o'clock and my dinner will be burnt to cinders.' 'In a minute, son. Now watch and learn, watch and learn...'

Battle of the Three Armies?

August 1578: Ksar El Kebir- Battle of the Three Kings

Nick Clegg did well in the first TV debate by all acounts. The polls suggest a surge towards the Lib Dems, which if repeated on May 6th, would liven things up no end.

Labour does not seem to be too bothered, even as polls suggest it has been pushed into third place. I do not think anybody, except maybe for Gordon Brown and Ed Balls, expects Labour to get an overall majority. However, for the Conservatives, who for a long time have expected an overall majority, the chances of  a hung parliament increasing is not good news at all, and they seem to be panicking. The general consensus is Call Me Dave did not do very well in the TV debate ('Ex-Carlton TV PR Flak Not Very Good On TV Shock!') and it must have galling to have been out-Obamafied by Clegg.

Nick Clegg: 'Bitter, Dave?'

Dave did himself no favours by telling an anecdote of a 40 year old black man from Plymouth who told Dave he supported tighter immigration controls. The problems being, all else being left aside, (i) Dave claimed he had been in the navy for 30 years, which defies basic mathematics (unless you can join the Navy at 10); (ii) the man was 51 and had been in the Navy just 6 years, which hardly inspires confidence in Dave getting to grips with the numbers involved in reducing Britain's deficit; and (iii) the subject of his ancedote did not say what Dave claimed he said. If you want to make up your own Dave-like anecdote, you may want to try this, which comes up with various plausible Dave bon mots.

Consternation about Dave's performance was reflected in the hardcore Thatcherite press coverage of  the TV debate. For instance, Simon 'Don't Hassle The Heff' Heffer, pompous priggish Thatcherite bore par excellence, was not impressed by Dave's performance.

Simon Heffer: 'Vote Labour and see Elevenses banned by the Politically Correct Brigade!'

Fellow Thatcher worshipper Charles Moore was not happy either. How dare those Liberal Democrats stop us Tories get an overall majority with less than 40% of the vote?

 Charles Moore: 'Brussels and BBC-backed Bolshevik Bounder Clegg deserves a damn good thrashing!'

Anyhow, the Tories have started their fightback against the Lib Dems. According to the BBC:
  

In the Sunday Times, [Shadow Foreign Secretary] Mr Hague argued a vote for Mr Clegg was a vote for the "European super-state" that would give away "more and more of the powers of this country".

It seems to me a bit late for the Conservatives to attack the Lib Dems for their supposed softness towards the European Union. As I said in a post a couple of days back, the Lib Dems should be ashamed of their behaviour in Parliament to scupper a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. It's the main reason why I won't vote for them. However, I think it equally disgraceful that the Conservatives dropped their 'cast-iron' guarantee of a referendum on it as well. Attacking the Lib Dems for their alleged softness towards the European Union has the potential to open a proverbial can of worms for the Conservatives.

2011: "Come Back Gordon, All Is Forgiven"?

Just some thoughts on politics both here and abroad at the moment…



One wonders how long the Labour Party can carry on without an attempt to bring down Gordon Brown. I think the only thing stopping a coup d’etat against him is the knowledge that once a new leader has been elected a General Election will have to be called soon after. Another Labour leader without any electoral legitimacy with the public would make a potential electoral wipeout even worse. If I was a betting person I think GB will stay on until the end of the year. Then he will be ousted (the only thing I can see saving him is a major national crisis in the next few months), followed by a leadership contest. The new leader (almost certainly a NuLab Bugger-All In A Suit) will achieve another “dead cat bounce” in the polls, before a General Election is called for May or June next year (same time as the local elections or the European elections). I imagine the Labour slogan would be something similar to Stanley Baldwin’s Tory slogan for the 1929 General Election: “Safety First”.

Whenever it comes, I think the Conservatives will be the largest party. If GB stays I think it will be a handsome Tory win. If he goes…maybe not. I think that, faced with a Con win, enough erstwhile Labour supporters will come out to stop it being a landslide. However, I think the Labour Party will be out of power a long time. What makes it worse than previous ejections from office is that the grass roots of the party are in a state of terminal decline. Also there is no ideological force that could unite or inspire party members. Since the collapse of the Alternative Economic Strategy and the retreat of the Labour Left in the 1980s, there has been nothing really on offer but managing Thatcherism with a smile. As I’m sure I’ve said before, publications by centre-left pressure groups such as Compass and Catalyst are frankly yawn inducing, which can inspire no one. If, as Harold Wilson said, the Labour Party is a crusade or it is nothing, then I think it will be nothing after the next General Election.




I can see some, if not all, of the Conservative readers of my blog (I have a few!) rubbing their hands at the thought of David Cameron re-establishing their hegemony over British politics after the next General Election. However, I would caution them, particularly if they are EU-critical. As is pretty well known, the Cameroonies have modelled their plan for winning the next General Election on how Tony Blair transformed the Labour Party in the mid-1990s. Due to the massive majority Labour achieved in 1997, one part of the NuLab game plan was not implemented. To quote from The Survivor: Tony Blair in Peace and War (2005, Aurum, p.171) by Francis Beckett & David Hencke:

“The Liberal Democrats were to join the new Labour government- even if it had a majority of up to fifty seats.”

“The most extraordinary decision taken by Blair was to reserve two cabinet seats for the Liberal Democrats in advance of the 1997 election campaign.”


Only at the weekend before the 1997 General Election, when it was clear that Labour would get a majority in excess of fifty, was the plan abandoned (ibid, p.173).

So if the weekend after the next General Election David Cameron announces that Nick Clegg is the new Foreign Secretary, you read it here first…!



I would say the EU is the issue that Cameron needs the Lib Dems onside. He is, after all, the man who complained about people “banging on” about the EU and called UKIP members "fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists". The Lib Dems are leading members of the Far Centre’s “My EU right or wrong” brigade, as their opposition to any British referendum on the Lisbon Treaty this year made clear. My own opinion is that Cameron will also reach out to the ultra-Blairite wing of NuLab in a “Government of All The Talents” [sic!]. After all, there are a fair few careerist chancers amongst Labour MPs who have no loyalty to the Labour Party and would, if offered a position (again!) in Government, have no qualms about jumping over to the Conservatives. Not least, if the Government is led by a man who claims to be “The Heir to Blair”. (A billboard poster of DC next to that caption would probably the best way for Labour to prevent a Tory landslide at the next General Election…!)

Returning to the Lib Dems, the way things are going they appear to be returning to the days of the “National Liberals”, whose political existence was dependent on the Conservatives not standing against them for Parliament, and which almost merged with the Tories in the early 1950s. The decision to oppose a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty appeared to have cost them votes in the London Elections, not least in their electoral strongholds. Furthermore, in Camden, where I live, the Greens pushed the Lib Dems into fourth place in 11 of the borough’s 18 wards, although sharing power with the Tories on the council doesn’t seemed to have helped.

In fact, Nick Clegg seems set on committing a form of political hara-kiri, as this article from the Western Daily News suggests:

Fighting Tories not a priority - Clegg
Western Daily News 02-August-2008

LIBERAL Democrat leader Nick Clegg has stunned party members in the Westcountry by announcing that fighting the Tories is no longer a priority.

Amid plummeting poll ratings for Gordon Brown, Mr Clegg said he would focus on unseating Labour MPs at the next General Election.

More money will be spent on the seats where the Lib-Dems are “taking on Labour,” he said.

But the move will come at the expense of battles with the Conservatives who are the Lib-Dems' main rivals across Devon, Cornwall and Somerset.

One Lib-Dem MP said he felt he had been “cut loose” while other senior figures warned that the party faced “wipe-out” at the hands of a resurgent Tory party.

Several said Mr Clegg should be concentrating on “consolidating” the 63 MPs he has at present instead of opening up a new battlefront with Labour. “I wish he had told me first,” said one Lib-Dem MP faced with a close battle against the Conservatives.
Current opinion polls suggest David Cameron's Conservatives could sweep the board in the South West, unseating almost all Lib-Dems without the most substantial majorities. Mr Clegg recently insisted the party was performing well in the region but his move to focus on Labour seats in the South East and the North of England left some activists feeling he had given up on the Westcountry.

The party released a list of 50 target seats it hopes to win – and not one is the Westcountry, traditionally seen as Lib-Dem heartland.

Mr Clegg insists he is directing resources away from fighting the Tories because the turmoil engulfing the Government is a “huge opportunity”. In a summer podcast for the Lib-Dem website, Mr Clegg said Labour was “tearing itself apart”, and he had “never seen anything like it”.

Labour had proved it could not deliver help with spiralling energy bills or run public services effectively, according to Mr Clegg.

“It's over for them,” he insisted. “There is no point voting Labour any more. There are no safe Labour seats. They will lose every by-election they fight in this parliament. And at the next General Election, they will lose in their heartlands to the Liberal Democrats.

“A Labour vote is now a wasted vote. This is a huge opportunity for us. We've got to seize it. So I'm shifting our resources to put more campaigners and more effort into those seats where we're taking on Labour.

Mr Clegg said the Lib-Dems would launch a fundraising drive in the autumn specifically to bring in cash for fighting Labour.

But the move was greeted with dismay in the Westcountry where activists had been hoping Mr Clegg would “take the fight” to the Tories.

It also risks reigniting speculation that in the event of a hung parliament Mr Clegg would be more sympathetic to a pact with the Conservatives.

The prospect of seeing financial help and campaigning muscle diverted from the region – once seen as the home turf for the Lib-Dems under Paddy Ashdown's leadership – provoked fears that Mr Clegg had given up trying to beat the Tories.

Senior Westcountry Lib-Dems in the privately fear they are “facing wipe-out”.
“We are going to be squeezed out again and again,” said one.

“I just think people from North Cornwall to Plymouth will be thinking 'what are we playing at?'”

In short, it appears the Lib Dems are planning to be junior partners to the Cons after the next General Election. However, there is plenty of time to go until the big day yet…

Well, if we are not getting a vote on the Lisbon Treaty, the Irish appear to be having one again, after failing to give the EU the right answer the first time around. Frankly, I think the whole thing stinks- if Ireland had voted “Yes”, an EU-wide putsch would have taken place without any more ado. No wonder less and less people vote any more…



What riles me almost as much is the way that the US Presidential Elections are covered here, compared to the near silence about the lack of a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. If I hear one more pundit saying “why we don’t have primaries like the Americans? Isn’t it great how they care about their democratic process?” I will scream! I don’t want to get all Euro-centric about this, but more people this side of the pond vote than they do in our ex-colony. (bit below the belt there, but…) To quote Andrew Stephen, in an excellent piece on NuLab’s infatuation with the USA:

“voter turnout is much higher in Europe than here; in Britain it averaged 76 per cent between 1960 and 1995. In the 2004 US presidential elections voter turnout was 59 per cent, and plunged to 29.7 per cent in the 2006 midterms; maybe as many as a third of all Americans do not even bother to register to vote at all.”

As for Obama, he’s another “Heir of Blair”…

Finally, I’m glad tensions have gone down a little over Iran. However, I fear there are enough war-mongers in Iran, Israel and the US who want a war, and will try by all means possible to start one. Perhaps they should settle it by a Bush v Ahmadinejad drinking contest…