Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Monday, May 10, 2010
Why not a Lab-Con pact?
Last Thursday, the people spoke, and what they said was this:
"We want a proper government. A strong, honest government that works for us.
"One that doesn't make stupid compromises just to keep in power. One that works for what most people want.
"A job. A better chance for our children than we had. Money to pay bills, to pay for a bit of fun, to save for when we're old. Decent education and healthcare, keep crime down, protect us from enemies domestic and foreign.
"Apart from those things, if you have a wonderful vision of the future, write a novel or make a movie. We don't want revolutionaries, Puritans of any religion or none, national separatists or the European Brotherhood of Man.
"Now, get on with it. And stop lying and fiddling the expenses."
So, why not a coalition of Conservative and Labour? Up to the 70s/80s, when the country was tearing itself into pieces because of economic crisis after Bretton-Woods collapsed, there was quite a lot of consensus between the two sides.
If Clegg can talk face to face with Brown and his back can talk to Cameron, maybe Lab and Con could discover that they have more in common with each other than they have with the LibDems. (For a start, neither of them thinks that a white flag is a robust defence in a nuclear world.)
With 424 seats, a Lab/Con government of national unity would have a majority of 198. Enough to ignore special pleading and political blackmail from Alex Salmond, Ieuan Wyn Jones and the Northern Irish factions; enough to ignore the babel of grand reformist schemes from the LibDems; and enough left over to ignore episodes of up to half a hundred backbenchers at a time temporarily crossing the floor of the House in a hissy fit about their own pet projects.
We face enough challenges to occupy a full-length Parliament, challenges that all serious politicians would wish to solve together.
So, why not? Out of 650 Members of Parliament, is is really impossible to find 326 that would cooperate for the national good?
There might even be some Liberal Democrats willing to help.
"We want a proper government. A strong, honest government that works for us.
"One that doesn't make stupid compromises just to keep in power. One that works for what most people want.
"A job. A better chance for our children than we had. Money to pay bills, to pay for a bit of fun, to save for when we're old. Decent education and healthcare, keep crime down, protect us from enemies domestic and foreign.
"Apart from those things, if you have a wonderful vision of the future, write a novel or make a movie. We don't want revolutionaries, Puritans of any religion or none, national separatists or the European Brotherhood of Man.
"Now, get on with it. And stop lying and fiddling the expenses."
So, why not a coalition of Conservative and Labour? Up to the 70s/80s, when the country was tearing itself into pieces because of economic crisis after Bretton-Woods collapsed, there was quite a lot of consensus between the two sides.
If Clegg can talk face to face with Brown and his back can talk to Cameron, maybe Lab and Con could discover that they have more in common with each other than they have with the LibDems. (For a start, neither of them thinks that a white flag is a robust defence in a nuclear world.)
With 424 seats, a Lab/Con government of national unity would have a majority of 198. Enough to ignore special pleading and political blackmail from Alex Salmond, Ieuan Wyn Jones and the Northern Irish factions; enough to ignore the babel of grand reformist schemes from the LibDems; and enough left over to ignore episodes of up to half a hundred backbenchers at a time temporarily crossing the floor of the House in a hissy fit about their own pet projects.
We face enough challenges to occupy a full-length Parliament, challenges that all serious politicians would wish to solve together.
So, why not? Out of 650 Members of Parliament, is is really impossible to find 326 that would cooperate for the national good?
There might even be some Liberal Democrats willing to help.
Exports and loans
The way Charles Hugh Smith explains it, it seems that Germany is the China of Europe.
Goldman Sachs - "financial terrorists"
Max Keiser claims GS quite deliberately caused last week's 1,000-point drop on the Dow, just to remind the US Government who's master.
Who is Nick Clegg?
For someone propelled into the political spotlight, Nick Clegg is an oddity. Unlike Blair, who treated attention like a sunlamp, Clegg seems oddly uncomfortable - not just with his situation, but with himself. Many photographs show his head tilted forward slightly, as though manfully resisting the urge to look down; after making key points in the pseudo-Presidential TV debates, his eyes would flick to the floor; and if you cover the top part of the face, look at the mouth - all wrong, somehow.
Like Baroness Ashton (Europe's first High Representative For Foreign Affairs), he looks like a natural loser who's won the Lottery, but is going to have it all taken away from him at some point. True, both are winners in a sense now, but the European setup that gave Clegg his first major political position as an MEP (after some years of service with the European Commission), and Ashton (I think) her last, has carefully arranged matters so that you have a big group of nonentities in a mock-Parliament, while all the real power is vested in the Council of Ministers. In short, these two are perfect stooges and the light of publicity does not flatter them.
It is, I think, significant that Clegg's postgraduate learning included a spell at the College of Europe in Bruges, an outfit whose purpose was described by postwar Euro-idealist Henri Brugmans as "to train an elite of young executives for Europe." I read that as a sort of McKinsey for pliable idiots. Other British Isles alumni include former Tory MP Nigel Forman, Neil Kinnock's sprog Stephen, LD stiff Simon Hughes, ScotNat MEP Alyn Smith (how a nationalist and a federalist? explain!), and Irish-born ex-Gen Sec of the European Commission David O'Sullivan.
Now, for a short spell, Clegg's playing with the big boys, and they're going to have his marbles and the bag they came in. Nothing will persuade any Labour or Conservative leader to agree to PR, a system that would guarantee perpetually recurring crises of governance like the present one. The Single Transferable Vote as some describe it (preference ranking within conflated groupings of constituencies) would tend to a squeeze of minor parties in favour of the largest two; tweaked versions of the Alternative Vote are obvious political fudges designed to include cosy dunroamin deadend spots for loyal, clapped-out Party hacks or political chessmen in search of a sinecure (I believe AV+ was Roy Jenkins' brainchild, if so the connection doesn't surprise).
The best that can be hoped for by LibDems is constituency-level Alternative Vote, and it's by no means certain that AV would prove greatly helpful to them. In habitually Conservative seats, many LD voters may be slightly disenchanted Tories who will return to the fold if they feel threatened by some Lib-Lab combination; in Labour seats, the same situation in reverse; and some Liberal seats could be threatened by odd tactical combinations of their enemies, questioning LD policies on e.g. nuclear disarmament, Eurointegration, immigration.
The best that can be hoped for by Nick Clegg, I think, is to do a Blair: sell out to powerful interests who will springboard him into some position less vulnerable to the people's franchise. Perhaps the reward for his long service to Europe will be a seat on the European Commission (maybe he still speaks to David O'Sullivan and friends - see above). He, and ultimately his descendants, will be accepted into that modern equivalent of the Hapsburg dynasty that is the nascent power support structure of the EU.
Or maybe he'll stand his ground, and watch his party get whittled away back down to six seats, a fate David Steel vividly remembers.
Like Baroness Ashton (Europe's first High Representative For Foreign Affairs), he looks like a natural loser who's won the Lottery, but is going to have it all taken away from him at some point. True, both are winners in a sense now, but the European setup that gave Clegg his first major political position as an MEP (after some years of service with the European Commission), and Ashton (I think) her last, has carefully arranged matters so that you have a big group of nonentities in a mock-Parliament, while all the real power is vested in the Council of Ministers. In short, these two are perfect stooges and the light of publicity does not flatter them.
It is, I think, significant that Clegg's postgraduate learning included a spell at the College of Europe in Bruges, an outfit whose purpose was described by postwar Euro-idealist Henri Brugmans as "to train an elite of young executives for Europe." I read that as a sort of McKinsey for pliable idiots. Other British Isles alumni include former Tory MP Nigel Forman, Neil Kinnock's sprog Stephen, LD stiff Simon Hughes, ScotNat MEP Alyn Smith (how a nationalist and a federalist? explain!), and Irish-born ex-Gen Sec of the European Commission David O'Sullivan.
Now, for a short spell, Clegg's playing with the big boys, and they're going to have his marbles and the bag they came in. Nothing will persuade any Labour or Conservative leader to agree to PR, a system that would guarantee perpetually recurring crises of governance like the present one. The Single Transferable Vote as some describe it (preference ranking within conflated groupings of constituencies) would tend to a squeeze of minor parties in favour of the largest two; tweaked versions of the Alternative Vote are obvious political fudges designed to include cosy dunroamin deadend spots for loyal, clapped-out Party hacks or political chessmen in search of a sinecure (I believe AV+ was Roy Jenkins' brainchild, if so the connection doesn't surprise).
The best that can be hoped for by LibDems is constituency-level Alternative Vote, and it's by no means certain that AV would prove greatly helpful to them. In habitually Conservative seats, many LD voters may be slightly disenchanted Tories who will return to the fold if they feel threatened by some Lib-Lab combination; in Labour seats, the same situation in reverse; and some Liberal seats could be threatened by odd tactical combinations of their enemies, questioning LD policies on e.g. nuclear disarmament, Eurointegration, immigration.
The best that can be hoped for by Nick Clegg, I think, is to do a Blair: sell out to powerful interests who will springboard him into some position less vulnerable to the people's franchise. Perhaps the reward for his long service to Europe will be a seat on the European Commission (maybe he still speaks to David O'Sullivan and friends - see above). He, and ultimately his descendants, will be accepted into that modern equivalent of the Hapsburg dynasty that is the nascent power support structure of the EU.
Or maybe he'll stand his ground, and watch his party get whittled away back down to six seats, a fate David Steel vividly remembers.
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