Éoin Clarke – Good article…

Total Crap.

That was a party political broadcast by the conservative party.

You clearly aren’t very good at reading polls.

Firstly, 20% of the people (it was 33% in another poll) agreeing that the decision made by Cameron was a bad one, is not “nobody” and, since you decide to use an out of date polling figure to say the Lib Dems are on 7 to 9%, then that means Clegg is reaching out to more than twice the core vote of the party.

Secondly, Clegg has negative approval ratings. So does Ed Miliband. But that doesn’t mean that everybody hates them. In fact, just under a third of voters like Nick Clegg and just over a third like Ed Miliband.

You really don’t seem to grasp

a) the actual polling figures
and
b) in a multi party system you do not need to be universally popular in order to do well

I really don’t like being entirely negative but this article is really just one, ill-informed, giant waste of pixels.

“Nick Clegg is a Tory. He craves classical liberal policies…”

???

What are liberals supposed to crave, then?

And this from a man who believes in doing the right thing, not the opportunistic one of being led by the polls instead of leading the polls. Eoin Clarke has sold out to the Blairites.

No.4,

The Tory Party have two wings – the classical free market liberal wing eg. Thatcher (aka Neo-Libs) & the and their Conservative wing and One Nation Tories eg.. Clarke.

I am sure someone could come along and point out the various other wings but that’s two readily identifiable ones..

The Lib Dems have a Keynesian wing eg Cable, Kennedy etc.. In fact Keynes himself was a Liberal.

George,

Your polling data sounds interesting. I’d be greatly obliged if you’d post a link.

I’m not going to lie, Eoin, this article has made me lose a lot of respect for you. I had read many of your posts on UKpollingreport and other sites for over a year and had thought you thoughtful and well informed about all. parties. I am very sad to say I must have been wrong.

I am happy to have left the UK just in time before the UK leaves the EU.

” Saddest of all, Nick Clegg is a Tory. He craves classical liberal policies and has no intention of entering a coalition with Ed Miliband. ”

Would craving classical liberal policies not make Clegg a Classical Liberal? The classical liberals were diametrically opposed to the Tories. In fact, in the original French Assembly the classical Liberals sat on the left. The closest thing we have to the 19th century Tories are some elements of the anti-free trade contemporary UK left. All the romanticising the small and the local is pure early 19th century Toryism. Much of what passes for the UK left nowadays fit into the Romanticism Era, rather than the Enlightenment. Enlightenment = liberals, the rest = romanticism.

1. Doesn’t really apply.

“Veto” would suggest that Cameron has prevented something going ahead.

As the other 26 countries have agreed to do it anyway, you cannot claim that it was vetoed.

“2. Nick Clegg is not angry with Cameron’s move. He stage managed the tension to help cool off dissent in his own party.”

That’s the crucial point. Clegg is much closer to Cameron than he is to LibDem supporters.

Richard W,

It was Gladstone who famously said that he was more at home on the conservative wing of the Liberal party, than the Liberal wing of the Conservative Party. But his point is an important one in the context that you make it.

The modern Liberal Democrats were until very recently more social democrat / Keynesian in outlook that classical Liberal – The Thatcherite departure post 1979 saw the Tories occupy the free-market Liberal ground.

Clegg essentially has been trying to reclaim that for the Liberals, but do not forget that the 2005 yellow manifesto wished to raise taxes for example.

In short, don’t mistake the Liberal Democrats for the old Liberal Party.

13 – even the Old Liberal party pre-1979 was moving in a social democratic direction. That’s where the “beards and sandals” image came from.

As Owen Jones’ outstanding New Statesman article showed, the EU prospective treaty outlawed expansionary fiscal policy (ie, stimulus to get the economy growing). Ed has misunderstood the detail of the deal Cameron turned down.

That wasn’t the part of the deal that Cameron turned down. And in any event, presumably either Miliband or any hypothetical social democrat prime minister would have stayed within the negotiations to argue against this, rather than flouncing out as Cameron did.

Does anyone imagine that Hollande would have staged a melodramatic walkout if he had been there instead of Sarkozy? No, he would have stayed in and fought against the proposals for a perpetual fiscal staightjacket.

Indeed, the whole point of being involved in negotiations is that you shape the outcome. Those on the Tory side that suffer from a sort of jingoistic dementia on the EU seem to believe that Europe is simply something that happens to Britain. Their assumption that Britain cannot shape outcomes is almost, dare I say, unpatriotic. Either way, there is no need for us to buy into their logic.

New Poll shows that less than a third of Labour Voters think Cameron was wrong to veto the EU treaty. http://tinyurl.com/d2c8j3n

You managed to give ten reasons why Milliband shouldn’t embrace Clegg on Europe and not one why Clegg is wrong.

Bagehot is worth a read. The European elite especially in France do not accept for one moment that the euro is fundamentally flawed. They will blame anyone before they will accept that the current euro is the problem. The European banks have been assessed as requiring over 100 billion in new capital, they want the UK to pay for it. Even if you want to see a FTT being introduced here that revenue raised should stay in the UK. There is no case why revenue raised in the UK should go to bailing out EZ banks.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/bagehot/2011/12/britain-and-eu-1

Wow, what a load of ill-informed rubbish.

I love how everyone loves to quote YouGov despite the fact they have been proven time and time again to be the least accurate of all and their methodology is awful.
The consistently most accurate – ICM gets ignored.

Steve M,

Check comment number 16 – it shows that only 14% of the UK’s electorate think Cameron was wrong to reject the treaty.

Well, call me naive, but I hope that voters are smart enough to know when their ‘gut’ is wrong. People do vote for things they don’t like, if they believe it is in the national interest – austerity, for example. Being ‘in’ the EU is a no-brainer as far as national interest, and it would be a strange world if neither of our main party leaders were prepared to say the right thing for fear of what the gutter press might say.

The fact that it is a bad treaty (because of its anti-Keynesian provisions) doesn’t mean Cameron was right to veto. Presumably these provisions would only have affected the eurozone area and that is the eurozone’s own business if they want to sign up to that. You could say that we should try to help them out by blocking that, but as Cameron’s veto showed, it won’t stop the eurozone countries from making a deal among themselves anyway, so just generates ill-will for no gain. There is therefore no sense in which the left can or should applaud Cameron’s actions, the motivations for which were all too clear (a slavish devotion to the City, and the desire to please his own rightwing).

Apart from that Eoin’s arguments are largely based on the polls. Perhaps Ed was wrong to associate himself with Nick. But I can’t agree that he was wrong to condemn Cameron’s approach. To say that he should lie simply to please the voters can’t be right – even if we know politicians do that at times – and to sit on the fence (a mistake Ed often makes) is even worse. So why not tell the voters what they don’t necessarily want to hear? Actually, endorsing Cameron’s position would simply encourage even more voters to agree with Cameron, and Cameron would continue to get the credit for the decision, with very little credit going to a me-too opposition, whereas people are used to the opposition putting the case against, when there is one, and expect it.

Didn’t Nick Clegg want Britain to sign up to join the Eurozone early in the last decade?

In the light of the continuing crisis in the Eurozone, it’s fortunate that we didn’t follow his advice and that of the other prominent Europhiles then.

What rot. You can’t agree with someone when he’s right because of party political factors? Eef!

@3 – I’m fine at reading polls.

Thing is your (and the op’s) analysis is worthless. You’re using figures. That immediately discredits the entire thing. Polls can only show trends, properly controlled studies can provide *figures*.

I once made a poll showing “support” for slapping gingers when I was at university. How? Asked the right question.

“Eoin Clarke has sold out to the Blairites.”

By saying precisely the opposite to what they have?

@24 – Leon Wolfson

Please calm down man – not every comment on this blog is aimed at you personally…

Enough already…

Strangely enough, rat, I hadn’t replied to you in this thread. Getting confused again?

And of course you want the left wingers to shut up.

@7

http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/4429

http://www7.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2011/09/15/leader-ratings-how-ed-miliband-compares/

There are more up to date leader poll ratings than that which I didn’t have time to find with a five second search, but the positions haven’t changed much since then.

“Saddest of all, Nick Clegg is a Tory.”

No, no he isn’t. Until your mob grow up and realise this (I can hardly expect you to realise that in ordinary parlance ‘Tory!’ isn’t an insult, so we’ll start basic), then you can stay wondering why you’re not being listened to.

One of the biggest questions for Ed Milliband in 2012, may not be whether to embrace Nick Clegg or not (though I agree he shouldn’t) but what to do if the Lib-Dems pull out of the coalition.
We discuss the possibility of a snap election in 2012, and the possible outcome for the centre left – it doesn’t make happy reading!
Follow the link and tell me I’m wrong!
http://www.allthatsleft.co.uk/2011/12/general-election-2012/