Clegg Hoist With Own Petard 47

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Students of irony may enjoy this one.

The only time in the entire last parliament where the Lib Dems actually stood up to the Tories and whipped their MPs to vote in the opposite direction, was not to protect the poor and needy from vicious cuts. It was to protect their own jobs. They voted down the Boundary Commission proposals to amend constituency boundaries to account for population shifts and make them more equal sized, and to cut Westminster from 650 troughing MPs to 600.

A general cut of 8.5% in the number of MPs was not the only problem for the gravy train Lib Dems, who were particularly concerned that they could suffer a net extra loss of half a dozen seats from boundary changes in rural constituencies with small populations. There was no hint of principle in their decision, merely a desire to keep their snouts in the trough.

The wonderful irony is, their arses will now very possibly be booted from their ministerial limousines by their own actions. Because the large majority of over-small population constituencies are in the centre of declining post-industrial cities, the beneficiaries of the Lib Dems action will be mostly the Labour Party and secondly the SNP.

Indeed if the total number of votes cast in the UK for Tories plus Lib Dems is equal to the total number of votes cast in the UK for Labour plus Scot Nats (which is more or less what the polls are showing), then Labour plus the Scot Nats will win approximately 35 more seats than the rival bloc for the same total votes, entirely because of the Lib Dem veto on the Boundary Commission proposals.

It’s convoluted, but delicious irony once you get your head round it. What an arse Clegg is.

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47 thoughts on “Clegg Hoist With Own Petard”

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  • Daniel

    The party who voted down the Boundary Commission’s proposals are the same party who apparently favour PR. You couldn’t make it up.

  • Mary

    I have not forgiven them for colluding with the Cons to get the Health and Social Care Act 2012 put into effect. It may very well prove to be the final straw for the NHS.

    If Clegg gets the boot, I reckon he has other plans, perhaps in the EU.

  • Winkletoe

    Devious ends frequently underpinning boundary adjustments notwithstanding, I can never understand how fewer representatives in a parliamentary democracy can be touted as a good thing.

  • Free Speech

    The extent of the falsehood is stupendous, with the expected beheading of a hundred fifty year old party in the offing, the fool still has the temerity to say he will stay on under “any circumstance”. Its a centuries old liberal party tradition, a “cyril smith syndrome” as it were (they had a denial alcoholic in leadership too), and we can expect to see him still in Lib Dem leadership, making out as if no orphans sphincter were ever penetrated.

  • lysias

    OT, further Janner news:

    Lord Janner’s lawyer ‘thought peer would face child abuse charges’:

    The son of barrister George Carman, who was hired by Lord Janner in the early 1990s, told ITV News his father once believed the Labour peer would have to face charges over child abuse allegations.

    ITV News Social Affairs Editor, Penny Marshall reports.

    Dominic Carman says his father felt there had been, “some interference and some pressure brought to bear,” after the case was dropped.

    Anger Lord Janner sent ‘thank you’ card to police who dropped child sex abuse probe:

    A police officer has spoken of his anger after receiving a ‘thank you’ card from Lord Janner after an investigation into child sex abuse claims against the peer was dropped.

    Labour politician Janner wrote to Kelvyn Ashby – then a detective inspector at Leicestershire Police – after police chiefs decided not to arrest him over serious allegations in the early 1990s.

    Ashby was left fuming by the decision and says his team had found evidence against Janner. He spoke of his “disgust” after the Lord invited him and his wife to join him for lunch in a Westminster Christmas card.

    . . .

    According to Ashby, there was pressure from his superiors to back away from the Janner case, due to the peer’s position in British society. He called the experience “frustrating”.

    “Someone higher up told us that we couldn’t just arrest an MP and it went no further,” he said.

    “We were told that by someone senior, who I can’t name, but the order had to have come from the very top. I’m sure my bosses’ hands were tied. I was extremely frustrated. Janner should have been arrested. He was treated differently because he was an MP.”

  • lysias

    More Janner news from the Daily Mail: Janner’s thank you note to detective who was forced to drop case by bosses: Peer sent Christmas card after learning he would escape child sex abuse charges :

    The decision not to charge Janner in 1991 was taken just weeks after Sir Allan Green quit as Director of Public Prosecutions when he was caught kerb crawling in King’s Cross in London.

    His deputy David Gandy took over temporarily until a full-time replacement was appointed the next year. But Mr Gandy, 83, yesterday said he could not remember seeing Janner’s case file.

    He told The Daily Mail: ‘I have no knowledge of it whatsoever. It may well be the decision was taken by someone else in the department or it could have been sent out for senior counsel to make a decision on. Whatever happened I simply don’t have any knowledge of it.’

    Nobody wants to take responsibility.

    Also from that Daily Mail article:

    Four medical experts who examined the peer did not all agree on the nature and extent of his dementia, as outlined by Mrs Saunders;

  • lysias

    That RT article says a 2014 book said MI5 and Special Branch were running the coverup for Cyril Smith. Anybody know what book that is?

  • Habbabkuk (la vita è bella)

    3/ 13 = 23%. And all off-topic within an hour of Craig’s post. Very rude.

  • Habbabkuk (la vita è bella)

    Why not send an email to RT and ask. They couldn’t have made it up, after all.

  • lysias

    The Janner business shows what’s wrong with all the establishment parties, including Clegg’s.

  • Mark Golding

    I have to say Eddie with a good deal of certainty, the Lib Dem soldiers were consumed by their own hierarchical stratagem.

    Rarely have I, myself witnessed at grass root politics, the emotional and emotive vibes endorsing the hideous ramifications of the Iraq ruin after a year of human slaughter by a coalition of Britain and America.

    These folks earned the SNP.

  • RobG

    Ha, for once I can kind of stay on-topic while going off-topic with the paedo stuff:

    http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/aug/19/leon-brittan-conservatives-nick-clegg

    Clegg’s first political job was working for Leon Brittan (see link above), and Clegg’s father was a long-time friend of Brittan. The following video clip is quite interesting, and seems to be often removed from YouTube. It shows Nick Clegg being confronted by anti-child abuse campaigner Bill Maloney, on Budget Day 2014.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zRBe9ZhCFQ

  • fedup

    That RT article says a 2014 book said MI5 and Special Branch were running the coverup for Cyril Smith. Anybody know what book that is?

    Lysias even a more explosive revelation is made in one of Ken Livingston’s books, I will try and find it for you, meanwhile here is a snippet for you MI5 filming

  • mike

    Great last few posts, Craig. Loved the paedo elite one especially. The net’s closing on these fuckers, and not before time. I’m sure there are a few Speculative Society bods up here who are feeling a little uncomfortable.

    Angus Robertson on the steps of number 10 will give the Hitchens and Phillips of this world absolute conniptions.

  • RobG

    @Fedup

    The Soundcloud link you’ve given is not working for me.

    In the meantime, here’s a vid of Chris Lyttle, who represents the East Belfast constituency, where the Kincora Boys’ Home was located, talking about it all recently in the Northern Ireland Assembly.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZgvHEfbntg

    The crux of it is that yet again Theresa May has blocked a proper inquiry into serious allegations of child sex abuse and murder.

    People like May, and Cameron and Clegg, and all the rest of them, are not just totally corrupt, they are also serious criminals who have to be brought to justice.

  • Mark Golding

    I wish I could say the SNP will burn the Establishment, even so, an Establishment with crumbling foundations cannot be immune to the thriving sensibilities of a ‘phenomenon on Canadian proportions’ according to the ‘running scared’ stooge Iain Dale in his piece here:

    http://www.iaindale.com/posts/2015/04/25/how-david-cameron-unwittingly-promoted-the-rise-of-the-snp

    Apologies – Dale’s dark energies echo the wrenching hands of agent Cameron a.k.a ‘WebCameron deceased’ and his inner circle…

  • John Goss

    Noddy got hoist on his own neckerchief a couple of days ago. I think he will lose his seat on the Toy Land Council! 🙂 Same again tonight. He fled from the last poetical thread.

    If Fred had fled from the last thread instead
    the bleeding thread instead would be well bled
    of Fred and Freddy’s spread of daily bread:

    “Fuck off and die fucking retard cunt.”

  • John Goss

    My poetical mind tells me there’s something wrong with the last line in the above. Is it metre? Profanity? Repetition? Rhyme? Scansion? It’s late. The wine is what you get for the price. Sulphates? Shit?

  • fred

    ““Fuck off and die fucking retard cunt.””

    You fuck off and die retard.

    I was happy to talk politics, others made it personal.

    You are a fucking cunt, al you retards who attack the person are retard cunts.

  • RobG

    Mark, Iain Dale is a psychiatrist’s dream, and thus gets one of the top spots on LBC, which is a totally balanced radio station.

    John, thanks for the laugh.

    If police state Britain does go into full swing (and it’s now all written into law – and people need to realise this) we’ll probably all end-up sharing the same cell, waiting to be questioned by the likes of Habba.

    Kevin Ayers, Song For Insane Times…

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2AtJsi3ZIQ

  • John Goss

    Fred, lighten up. We all get attacked here. There was some very serious stuff on the previous post you must admit. It was not an attack directly on you so much as the frustration of not being able to make rhymes work. And of course an effort to entertain. Not really personal. You just had a good rhyming name withother words.

  • fred

    “Fred, lighten up. We all get attacked here.”

    I don’t attack anyone unless they make personal comments about me.

    If you can’t do the same you get flamed.

    If you don’t like that fuck off.

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