I argue urgently that we Lib Dems should not enter into any formal pact with anyone, but should remain in opposition to a minority Conservative and Unionist government.
I won’t pretend that last night was not horribly disappointing, as First Past The Post radically distorted our representation as usual. I went through this disappointment before, in February 1974 , in the election that first brought me in to political activity. Then, there was an even greater buzz about Jeremy Thorpe than there has been about Nick Clegg – and Thorpe was a spectacularly charismatic figure.
Third party politics really had seemed utterly dead in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Thorpe had inherited a parliamentary party that really could squeeze into a taxi, and Thorpe’s style, underpinned by Jo Grimond’s genuine radicalism, was an achievement more stunning than anything the Liberals or Lib Dems have managed since. It seemed to represent a re-ordering of the political system to accommodate the radical social changes of the 1960’s (and remember it was Liberal MP David Steel’s private member’s bill which liberalised abortion).
When Thorpe’s Liberal Party’s opinion polls rating during the first 1974 campaign hit the 23% level the Lib Dems gained yesterday, that was a quadrupling of support. When the actual percentage share at the ballot was 19.3% it was a huge letdown – and incredibly, 19.3% gave the Liberals just 14 seats – probably the most infamous result FTPT has ever delivered. 19.3% of the vote for 2.3% of the seats!!
That election morning was worse than this one. I had, age 15, worked almost every single non-school hour for 4 months leading up to the election, and had not slept for 96 hours, being out delivering leaflets. I shall never forget the burning sense of injustice.
The second election in October 1974 led to the Lib-Lab pact, which actually was highly succesful for three years in rescuing a near Greek economic situation. But the Liberals got no credit for it. The “Winter of Discontent” actually occurred after the Liberals withdrew from the Lib-Lab pact, but nonetheless the Liberals were swept backwards by Thatcherism in 1979.
That could easily repeat now. A Lib-Lab pact to claw back the dire economic situation would almost certainly be followed in time by a massive Tory backlash for keeping New Lab in power and losses of Lib Dems seats.
On the other hand, we have the scenario I blogged as tempting before yesterday’s vote:
a Cameron administration, with a tiny majority, propped up by some Northern Irish bigots, would inflict such pain on the majority of our society that, before falling after a few years, they would put the Tories out for a generation at least.
In so doing, they would greatly enhance the cause of Scottish and Welsh independence, and with the Lib Dems the second most popular party and the challenger in the large majority of Tory seats, the Tory demise would sweep in a radical change in more promising circumstances.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2010/05/crisis_is_a_gre.html#comments
I rejected this scenario in favour of a good Lib Dem performance yesterday – but given the actual result, I believe the above is the best scenario we have. Let the Tories run a minority administration with unpleasant allies, restraining their excesses. In the next general election the Lib Dems will poised nationally to pick up a huge bonanza of Tory seats. Cameron will meantime be in the minority government position that killed Callaghan and Major electorally. But he will also face the problem that the electorate always punish anyone who inflicts an unnecessary election on them.
So play it long and cool. Resist the tempations of instant power and ministerial limousines, and especially resist blandishments of referenda on electoral reform in which the entire Murdoch and Tory media empires will again be deployed against us to devastating effect.
“See? It wasn’t good enough. There should have been *no option* to remove voters from the list because to do so is anti-democratic”.
I’m not disagreeing, but it doesn’t change my point. I saw people doing it to themselves, not having it done to them.
(more speculative)
They became victims of a conspiracy that they imagined for themselves. A bit like invading Iraq … projection.
Yep, Dismore is Labour – voted very strongly for the ‘Iraq war’ and very strongly against an enquiry…
It’s coming. The blue blood alliance.
Yes mj and technicolour. Yes of course. I did know he was Labour (and LFoI) but am getting addled. Sorry about the mistake.
David wrote:
“This labour government inherited an economy that was is ok shape, and they have stolen its life blood to pay for their own communist agenda ( note i say communist not socialist) Your pension is worthless, your taxes are too high, your freedoms are GONE. I will never forgive the labour party for the last 10 years.”
LOL. What colour is the sky in your world, Dave? New Labour serves its corporate masters and has even gone on its sword for them.
Craig – quick – your comments are needed.
A. George Galloway lost his seat.
B. Jack Straw won with an increased majority.
c. What do you make of it?
Even though I didn’t vote, I could not have asked for a better Result.
You see, even the politicans now actually have to talk to each other and explore each other’s ideas to try and find a Good Policy.
The Policy is How We Move Forward and Try And Solve Our Problems
And because it is all so uncertain
Before they reach the Policy – The Route To Achieve The Destination….
They will have time to ask us
Where do we want to go?
THE DICTATORS
Now Become
LISTENERS
I have travelled the World
Never underestimate the people who live in England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales…
Whilst we have our Differences
The Entire World is Watching Us
And not without a Great Deal of Affection
Tony
Courtenay,
It is not a problem
George Galloway deserves a decent holiday
To lick some cats and behave like a Pussy…but when the time is right…
And the New Government is Formed…
And if The Americans Are Giving Us a Hard Time
We Will Send Our Foreign Minister
To Represent Our Interests
Even Hilary Clinton isn’t in the same league
George Galloway Would Eat Her Alive
The Americans are Completely in AWE of Him
The responses you read after his performance from all shades of opinions in America
Is –
“I wish we had a politician like that”
Check out Youtube if you don’t believe me.
Tony
With Of Course Nigel Farage as Co-Pilot on George Galloway’s European Trips
I can’t think of any other Politicians Worthy of Mention
Tony
Nadine Dorries has been the subject of some of Craig’s blog posts.
Here she is at a recent election meeting in Flitwick on video with Tim Ireland of Bloggerheads. Fun and games. She is full of herself. However does she get re-elected?
http://www.bloggerheads.com/archives/2010/05/nadine_dorries_18.asp
This refers to her expenses claim.
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/05/jump_you_bastar.html
If you google ‘did nadine dorries have to repay expenses’ there are many links.
mary, hey, the way things are at the moment, it doesn’t really make much difference…
i meant, what Dismore calls himself!
other Richard – Labour governments have supported plenty of dictators. They didnt stop selling hawk fighter jets and spare parts for them to Suharto after they won in 97 either. Brown didnt stop backing and arming the Saudi monarchy either – who are corrupt, torturing dictators.
Craig’s right – most Conservatives aren’t fascists, just as most Labour ones aren’t Stalinists (excepting John Reid, Jack Straw etc who are wannabe free market Stalinists, who would like to rule the same way the free market Maoists do in China these days)
Deek Jackson
Leader of The Landless Peasents Party
Gets The Job
Of Astronomer Royal
We were discussing Deek last night
And we wanted to save his Soul
If you want to find Deek Jackson, then it is a slow process that no human being can accept too much too soon
There is Too Much Brilliant Material To Just Link To One
He has done this all himself
He is Scottish
Deek is Amazing
No – Go and Find
The FUCKING NEWS YOURSELF
he spells it fknnewz or something and every single week for over 2 years – on Friday Nights
He would post his own version of the week’s news from his garden shed with better than BBC Studio Graphics Quality
Check out Deek
He was the bloke with the raised fist behind Gordon Brown last night
He got 57 votes
Tony
And so far as Old Holborn is Concerned
Yes I Too Love The Film V For Vendatta
But If You Are Going To Copy Guido
Who to be fair to him, he didn’t actually delete any of my posts – though some I had to wait for over 5 hours until he had approved them – I was a bit strong
The Fucking Guardian, Daily Mail Independent…or any of the rest Never Publicise Anything I Write…
Sorry for the poor structure of this message…
Yes I saw You Old Holborn
But if You Actually Get Invited To Say Something and You Are Wearing This Quite Impressive Mask and Uniform
Use a bit of Technology Too
For Coolant You Could Ask NASA about their Spacemen who it is Rumoured Landed On The Moon and Came Back
And For Speech From Behind The Mask, Maybe You Could Try a little microphone and speaker
You can buy the complete kit from Maplins for about £10
Otherwise
Good Performance…
But you aint in the same league as Deek
(I can feel the heavy breath of the Editor behind me)
I had a great shag after a row in Cambridge
I wasn’t into punting. I was wearing My Yorkshire Gliding T-Shirt
Tony
I reckon the kids who didn’t live under the Tories thought the best way to wind up us grown-ups would be to vote Tory and bring the system to a grinding halt. Craig can’t be serious when he talks about finishing off the Tories.
They did enough to finish themselves off last time.
The fact of a protest vote against New Labour putting the Tories in range of power is down to Blair’s removing the process of internal debate in politics. If government returned to tolerating independent minded M.P.’s internal criticism, the general public would not have to use a protest vote for the Tories to get their dissatisfactions heard.
The hung parliament forces M.P.s to discuss instead of being whipped into party policy. This is the first time discussion has been allowed at Westminster for 13 years, so politicians have forgotten how to do it. They should start, not with economics and electioneering issues, but with a debate on Banking and War. We have to castrate the banks and separate the UK from US foreign policy. Which is in my opinion one and the same debate.
The UK economy was doing exceedingly well before these two cock-ups. Once parliament has cleared up these two rogue issues imposed on us by dictators Thatcher and Blair, the economy will recover on its own. Without exorcising these ghosts, the UK will fail to recover. A Tory/LibDem pact should prosecute Blair for war crimes and the bankers for fraud. You think the Tories will put Nick Clegg in the Foreign Office when they’ve got their own wetter than wet Dominic Grieve.? I suppose that angelic face of his might come in useful for starting the next illegal war.
When I was young and innocent about 15 years ago and the Internet was just starting off…
I looked at the Friends Re-United Website
amd I was reading about the lives of some of my School Friends from when I was 7 Years Old.
I remembered them and their names so clearly – and I was delighted that some of my friends had moved all over the World (many to Australia and New Zealand)
And i thought avout getting back in contact and I had already done this re a Girlfriend I had had no contact with for over 20 years
But then I thought – well that is more than 30 years…
But still I wanted to know how they were getting on…
And then the owners of Friends Re-United sold it for Several Million Quid – and The New Owners Were So Completely Incompetent – They Lost all The Original Database…
Or maybe the original owners retained it – but we are now talking 50 years
I can’t phone Hannah Hrubiak up in Australia after over 50 years and ask how are you doing?
“I used to sit next to you in class when we were in Primary School. You helped me tie my Shoe Laces”
I think her Parents were from Hungary
Tony
“Sadly Clegg hasn’t committed to … higher taxes on big firms and billionaires”
Not true: he is committed to raising capital gains tax.
A commentary by David Hare in the Guardian.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/may/07/uk-election-results-new-labour-rip
Good title
UK Election Results New Labour RIP 1992-2010
but NOT these words – ‘Went wrong’.
Cameron has sweated for every vote, but since the Iraq invasion went wrong, New Labour was always living on borrowed time.
Of all the b!tching Nigel Farage use to do about particular women wearing one too many cloths on their heads, he nearly died flying with one too many cloths of banners.
The thing I can’t understand is…
Didn’t all these Public School Boys have any Girlfriends when they were
3 and 5 and 7 and 8 and 9 and 10 and 11
*I lost my first when I was 4
She was called Susan Speakman and her Parents took her to Australia
There were others and my Best Mate’s Dad recorded us all in Colour on His Home Movie Cameras (I had no idea – this was in the 1950’s)
Of course I really fancied his older sister Stephanie
But she was at least 2 years older than me and when you are 5 or 6 – the time difference is a lot greater…
He was called Bernard Whitney – not sure of his older sister name – but I can kind of remember some really early stuff about her – but it was probably my brain playing tricks
You see – My Parents Were Seriously Programming Me To Become a Roman Catholic Priest
And when I was 10 years old sent me to a Catholic Priests Training College (My Dad went to Ushaw)
But after 1 Day
I came home
I Prefer Girls
I want To Go To a NORMAL SCHOOL
That has Boys and Girls
And So I Did
Unlike my older brothers and sisters who all went to single sex schools
That’s Oldham for You
Where Do You Come From?
Tony
Mary, quite right, the Iraq invasion did not go wrong, it was wrong from before it was started. We the public need to see some public executions of those who conceived that war. We also need to see David Cameron pretending to sweat about the bankers and banking non-industry fraud. Step one. Use waterproofing silicone spray over the prospective prime ministerial forehead. Step 2. Spray on skin contracting Gel to make false furrows of conviction and sincerity on the said brow. Step three. Use forehead perspiration spray.
Not to mention false tan spray, hair spray, and anti-static spray to hide the fact that he is Mrs Thatcher under a rubber mask.
She gave it to me.
I was working with her.
She knew I liked Rock Music
And I lent her my Music
And she lent me Hers
And I Fell In Love With Neil Young
And I found out the details of how to Fly To New York when I was about 21 Years Old
She and Neil
Led Me to Find My
Heart of Gold
Sometimes I wake in the Morning and I See Her Face next to me and I think I am in heaven
Sure we will Do 50 years Together
We are Already More Than Half Way There
I Love Her So Much
She is My Wife
She is an ANGEL
She Comes From Lancashire
Tony
Tony, she must be an angel to put up with your rambling 😉
I wish I could find my heart of gold… been close, but no cigar yet.
I have tried to Apologise To The American People, But I think we should Do more
I am Completely Serious About This.
25% of American Children Are Going Hungry.
Please just forget all your prejudices of what you think it is like for ordinary Americans
I sent $10 a Couple of Years Ago
I thought it was the least I could do
http://feedingamerica.org/
I said this
Sorry,
I Feel Really Guilty About This
I have been writing in England
I really want to find the words
To Apologise
For British Petreloeum
I once applied for a job with them, but they didn’t even give me an interview
Sorry,
Tony – I come from Oldham, Lancashire England
I’ve been writing stuff on Craig Murray’s website
He usually deletes 90% of what I write but I think he is a bit knackered through campaigning
To try and get a Liberal Candidate elected
The Green Party Candidate Today took Brighton Pavillion in The UK General Election and Everyone in The Supermarket Was Elated
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/
After a wait of 25 years the Green Party finally arrived in Westminster yesterday after the voters of Brighton Pavilion elected Caroline Lucas as the country’s first Green MP.
The former Oxfam adviser was elected on by far the most radical manifesto of all the parties, and immediately promised that she would “constantly shine a light on the gap between the other parties’ rhetoric, and what they actually deliver”.
The fact that Ms Lucas is the first Green MP anywhere in the world to be elected under the first-past-the-post system underlines the remarkable scale of her achievement as the leader of a party which a decade ago was widely regarded as a political joke, and which she herself has been instrumental in modernising. Amid 6am scenes of delight and jubilation from her supporters, the 49-year-old current MEP for South-east England ?” a position she will resign ?” took the seat by overturning a Labour majority of nearly 6,000, with an impressive 31 per cent of the vote.
Her election ended the anomaly by which Britain was the only major European country which had never had Green members of its national legislature. The new politics founded in the 1970s by Die Grunen in Germany, which for the first time put the environment at the top of the agenda alongside the economy, health and education, has finally taken root in Westminster, and Ms Lucas said she was confident that more Green MPs would follow her.
“All the evidence we have of getting Greens on to local councils, into the Scottish Parliament, into the European Parliament and the London Assembly shows that once we get that foot in the door, we’re here to stay,” she said.
There is no doubt that her success represents a crucial breakthrough for her party, in terms of political credibility, although hers was the only victory in what was the Greens’ biggest general election campaign ever, with 335 candidates standing around the country at a cost of nearly £400,000, a hefty sum for such a small party.
The Greens had concentrated on the three target seats of Brighton Pavilion, Norwich South and Lewisham Deptford, in all of which they had strong support with significant representation on the local councils. But in truth they had bet the farm on Pavilion, the constituency at the heart of what is Britain’s most “alternative” city where the Greens have always had a strong presence ?” in the last election in 2005 they secured 22 per cent of the vote, their best parliamentary result up to that time.
Three factors led to their success, the sympathetic nature of the constituency being the first. The second was the personality of Ms Lucas herself. Passionate and articulate, radical while seeming unthreatening, Ms Lucas is the most formidable political operator produced by the Green Party since Jonathon Porritt a quarter of a century ago, and a world away from the image of the Green party activist as a sandal-wearing lentil eater.
The third factor behind her success was the Greens’ work to get their vote out in the constituency on Thursday, a professional operation which involved 200 volunteers, with vote-checkers at all the 50-plus polling stations. “We have come a huge way in the last 20 years, and what we have done in particular is to professionalise our approach,” she said.
“But what I would highlight is that we haven’t changed the policies. What’s happened is that some of the issues we’ve been forecasting for very many years, including [the] reality of climate change, for example, have actually come to pass, and therefore our policies are being seen as ever more urgent and ever more relevant.”
Yet it was by no means clear on election night that her success was a foregone conclusion. Arriving at the count at the Brighton Centre on the seafront at midnight, she looked tired and drained and said she felt “sick and nervous with the weight of so many people’s expectations on me”.
The first sign of success came at 5.45am when the returning officer summoned the candidates and their agents, and Ms Lucas’s husband, Richard Savage, emerged with a smile the size of a soup plate. A few minutes later his partner was telling her cheering supporters: “For once, ‘historic’ fits the bill.” She had polled 16,238 votes, compared with the 14,986 of her nearest rival, the Labour candidate, Nancy Platts, and said she felt “exhausted but incredibly happy”.
By contrast, the Tory candidate, former banker Charlotte Vere, who had slipped from second in the polls in January to trail in third place with 12,275 votes, looked like she had swallowed a wasp.
Tony
Hey, Tony,
You were on about LABOR having no one to represent them. Then I asked, if they did have someone to represent them, what would their representatives seek on their behalf? In particular, how do you get 20% of the workforce back to full-time work that provides not only income but dignity.
You never replied. Why not? Were you just in standard left wing whinge mode and really you don’t give a damn? I hope not. I was hoping for enlightenment.
why nick clegg and not tory-lab .. and leave the libs out in the frost.
why the vested interest in conservative victory by so many even those purporting to support the lib dems – i suspect the support given by guardian et al was all about a tory victory more than support for clegg .. who is after all more tory than cameron and a neo con ideologue rather than a lib dem.
think obama and you have clegg … dont expect anything good.
Well I have posted far more words in America over the past couple of years or so
I think Americans are so completely Brilliant
Because they look after me and my family
They let me say anything, but only remove the words I would want them to
You see, My Daughter Has Been Invited To America Twice in 6 Months By American Kids That She Has Met at University
And so when I post all the details about her being arrested (completely innocently – she just wouldn’t run away) when she was 15
They delete all those details because they hope the details haven’t got in the US Border Control Database
I point out that – well they have got her DNA. Tony Blair ordered it – He’s Got The DNA of All The 15 Year old Kids Who Told The Cunts Who Kicked Them To The Ground And Cuffed Them From Behind With a Knee In Their Back To FUCK OFF
Tony
“Tony: I think the driver is called Nathaniel and he’s heading for North West Ontario (I think that’s what it stands for).”
Oh Dog!
MJ: Do you believe the Rothschilds also happen to be lizards?
Just curious…
Anyway, I thought that Gordon Brown was quoted as being in favour of the New World Order so why are the omnipotent overlords getting rid of him?
angrysoba,
Are you still in Japan?
Almost the Entire World Seems To Be in England
Exhibiting Their Art
New Art Galleries Are Opening Up In All Our High Streets
And Our Local Artists Are Selling Their Work
And Making a Good Living
Tony