There’s a bit of meme going around at the moment of various blogger’s choosing theme tunes for their blogs all of which led me to the realisation that, thus far, David Cameron hasn’t got a tune.

Barack Obama had a tune…

Bill Clinton had a tune…

Tony had a tune… (sorry!)

And Maggie had loads… (not that she would have wanted them)

But as for Dave, there doesn’t seem to be anything on the horizon.

Okay, so there are a few obvious contenders, like this…

And Jarvis nails its pretty well, of course…

Sadly, there isn’t a video of Frank Zappa’s cover of The Clovers’ doo-wop classic ‘Cocksucker’s Ball’ so we’ll have to make do the original in honour of D-Cam’s days as a Bullingdon Boy… (definitely NSFW audio)

And I’ve always thought this one by the Beatles fits pretty well…

Although its possible that Beau Bo’s come closest so far to capturing the essence of the Tories…

Tell you what. Let’s throw this one open to the floor… can you think of a better theme tune for D-Cam than any of these?

We recently reported the hilarious, if disturbing, remarks of Tory MP Tim Loughton:

“We need a message that actually it is not a very good idea to become a single mum at 14. [It is] against the law to get pregnant at 14. How many kids get prosecuted for having underage sex? Virtually none. Where are the consequences of breaking the law and having irresponsible underage sex? There aren’t any.”

So, The Guardian asked, should there be prosecutions?

“We need to be tougher. Without sounding horribly judgmental, it is not a good idea to be a mum at 14. You are too young, throwing away your childhood and prospects of developing a career.”

Without sounding horribly judgmental, anybody who thinks that there are no consequences to getting pregnant, and that a criminal record promotes a happy childhood and helps develop a healthy career, is a Platinum Imbecile.

Platinum Imbecility aside, there’s something to note about the bizarre universe Mr Loughton resides in: girls get pregnant by magic. continue reading… »

MPs’ expenses: Nadine Dorries says ‘main home’ is tiny Cotswold cottage

Nadine Dorries, who has repeatedly declined to disclose the location of the property, was paid the allowances on the basis that she needed two homes to work in both London and her Mid Bedfordshire seat.

Mrs Dorries is under investigation by John Lyon, the parliamentary commissioner for standards, who may recommend that she repay public funds received for unjustified claims.

MPs are entitled to claim back “second home” expenses that were “necessarily incurred in staying overnight away from their main home for the purpose of performing their parliamentary duties”.

Most designate a constituency house as their “main home” and bill taxpayers for a flat close to Westminster, where they can stay the night after working in Parliament.

Yet in a highly unusual arrangement, Mrs Dorries tells Commons officials that her “main home” is a one-bedroomed lodge-keeper’s cottage in a small Cotswold village, 90 miles away from Parliament and 55 miles from her constituency.

This allows her to claim “second home” allowances for her family house in her constituency, where neighbours have stated that she spent a significant amount of her time.

In all she has claimed £60,524 since 2006. She used the money to pay the house’s £18,000-a-year rent, as well as council tax and other domestic bills. She recently moved into a bigger farmhouse half a mile away.

—-

What a wonderful job we’re doing of keeping Nadine in the lifestyle to which she thinks she’s entitled.

As a bit of fun for a Friday morning we thought we’d offer our readers an opportunity to choose their political scumbag of the week, largely because this week has conveniently provided us with a strong field of contenders.

The rules are simple. just read through the following list of political low-lifes, decide which one is biggest scumbag and then use the either the comments facility or twitter* to hurl a bit of pithy but well-merited abuse at them.

*If you tweet in a response you’ll need to include a link to this post for it to be picked up

Sometime during the day – which is likely to more or less when I can be arsed – I’ll tot up the scores and we’ll have ourselves a winner.

So without further ado, lets list the nominees…

continue reading… »

From the file marked ‘are you fucking stupid or what?’…

A few days ago Dizzy Thinks spotted an oddity in the expense claims of Hull North Labour MP Diana Johnson:

At the end of the detailed, albeit censored claims, provided on the Parliamentary website, is an invoice to the tune of £1,654 for “delivery of a leaflet in Hull North Constituency during September and October 2007?.

Looks legit doesn’t it? However there’s is an oddity about it. You see, there appears to be no such company as J W Shipley Distribution, either solvent or dissolved, listed on Companies House. An advanced search for all companies with “Shipley” also throws up nothing. Curious!

There is, however, an “independent” member of Humberside Police Authority called John Shipley who happens to be a local Labour Party activist in Hull, who also stood for the Labour Party in Hull during the 2002 elections.

I tried to contact Mr Shipley yesterday for confirmation that the invoice was from him but as yet have had no response.

So is a Labour MP claiming Parliamentary expenses to pay a Labour member to deliver leaflets? Well, although he may not have responded, I’ve been speaking to Liberal Democrats in Hull who confirm they personally saw Labour activist (and frequent election agent) John Shipley out delivering the leaflets in question.

Rum indeed. Investigations are, as they say, continuing…

Tell you what, let’s save both LDV and Dizzy the time and effort of making even bigger arses of themselves by pointing out a few screamingly obvious facts.

1. The invoice from ‘JW Shipley Distribution’ does not include a company number nor does it appear to use the words ‘Limited’ or ‘Ltd’, hence Dizzy’s inability to find any reference to it at Companies House.

2. As a sole trader, John Shipley – it this is indeed him – entitled to use just about any business name he likes when carrying out trading activities, as long he doesn’t misrepresent the legal status of his business or use any of the restricted words or phrases set out in company law.

3. According to a statement given to the Yorkshire Post, who picked up this non-story yesterday, the invoice relates to the “distribution of a non-party political Parliamentary report to 40,000 households in Hull North in autumn 2007.”

Typical costs for a solus distribution of a leaflet or newsletter run to around $50 per 1,000 leaflets, which puts the amount listed on the invoice- £1654 – well within the usual ballpark which would, for a 40,000 delivery run – come in at around £2000.

In fact, if you look at the price here then it seem apparent that what JW Shipley Distribution have done is knock off the VAT that would have been payable had the leaflets gone out via an established distribution company, saving the taxpayer £350 in the process.

Unless either can provide evidence to show that the leaflets weren’t delivered or that the payment was not declared to HMRC as income then there’s nothing more to be said here.

Even if a Labour activist did get paid for delivering these leaflets, its of absolutely no consequence whatsoever.

In the days when I used to produce community newsletters for distribution to upwards of 17,000 households I used to farm out the delivery side of things to a local Scout troop and pay them the same amount that I would have done had I gone through a commercial business. I got the newsletters delivered – and usually much more reliably than I would have done by ‘going commercial’ – and they got their utilitiy bills nicely covered with a bit on top for additional equipment and extra activities for the kids.

It’s called localism and it works.

Over the weekend, I was fortunate enough to receive a review copy of Spirit Level films’ excellent new documentary ‘The Fear Factory‘, which I promise I’ll get around to reviewing for Lib Con sometime in the next few days.

In anticipation of that review and in keeping with my recent post on dodgy election leaflets, its been brought to my attention that the Lib Dems have been actively fear-mongering is some of their recent leaflet, the most egregious of which has to be this effort, which is being delivered to households in Haringey.

Why they don’t just go the whole hog and stick out a leaflet featuring Freddie Kruger and Jason Voorhees I don’t know but for what its worth the leaflet makes the following claims:

One in five thugs who are caught carrying a gun or a knife are let off with a caution. This news once again exposes Labour’s complete failure on crime.

Gordon Brown’s Roll of Shame:

- One in five criminals caught carrying a weapon only get a caution
- Only one crime in a hundred ends with a punishment in court
- Two violent crimes committed every single minute

A little over 18 months ago, a friend of mine left work at about half past six in the evening and started to walk home.

He managed to walk only about 40 yards or so from his workplace when he was stopped by two PCSOs and subjected to a search, during which he was found to be carrying a Stanley knife.

As a result of this, he was issued with a fixed penalty notice for £80.

According to leaflets like this, my friend is both a ‘thug’ and a ‘criminal’, after all he is one of the one in five who ‘got off’ without being dragged in court after he found to be carrying a knife.

As you might well have guessed already, there’s an important detail I’ve yet to mention that casts this story is a somewhat different light, and that detail happens to be the nature of his place of work…

…A local hardware store and builder’s merchants.

My friend isn’t a thug and he certainly isn’t a criminal. He’s was just unlucky enough to forget to take the Stanley knife he uses as work out his pocket on a day on which he ran into a couple of PCSOs on a day who were were on the make and looking for any opportunity the could find to dish out a few tickets.

In fact, he swears to this day that the two PCSOs actually watched him leaving the shop and that that’s the only reason he was pulled over and searched – after all he’s in his late twenties and was wearing his normal work clothes at the time.

So my question to Lynne Featherstone, in whose constituency this leaflet is being delivered is…

Would you like to explain to be my friend exactly why your party is calling him a ‘thug’ and ‘criminal’?

Liberal Conspiracy has obtained a set of notes taken at a recent seminar which show that the Conservative Party is pushing ahead with plans to provide state funding to a network of independent schools with close ties to a controversial occult society.

The notes were taken at a recent seminar organised by the Steiner Waldorf Schools Fellowship (SWSF), an offshoot of the Anthroposophical Society, which exists to promote the occult philosophies of the German mystic Rudolf Steiner, and also suggest that a newly registered educational charity with close ties to the Conservative Party may be actively engaged in the promotion of Conservative education policy in such a way as to breach the Charity Commission’s regulations on charity involvement in political activity.

The meeting, which took place last November, was described as a ‘pre-election seminar about possible developments in the state funding opportunity for Steiner Schools’ and included seminars with Sam Freedman, the head of Policy Exchange’s education unit and a current advisor to Shadow Education Minister, Michael Gove, and Rachel Wolf, the Founder/Director of the New Schools Network and former education advisor to the Conservative Party. continue reading… »

The acute observer may have noted that, whenever the scandal of multi-millionaire non-dom top party donor Lord Ashcroft is brought up, the Tories’ default reaction is “yeah but the Unions too, they bankroll Labour”.

Let’s leave aside the long list of differences (technical, fiscal, substantial, ethical, practical, etc) between the two types of “donations”. Let’s leave aside “solemn and binding” promises.

The best way to gauge weight and influence as carried by Lord Ashcroft vs the Unions is to check the relationship between donors and political parties.

Not a single senior Tory has publicly said a bad thing against the Belize-based tycoon. They said a lot of things, but nothing bad. And how could they, given that the Baron has pumped around £5m into Tory coffers?
continue reading… »

William Hague’s recent remarks in an FT interview, and in a speech to the Royal United Services Institute give us some idea of the purposes and shape of Conservative foreign policy, in the aftermath of a Tory election win. In short, it is exactly the same sort of interventionist twaddle spouted by New Labour, overlaid with the same veneer of humanitarian concern that Blair liked to bathe in.

All the recent talk about whether or not British troops have been given the equipment they need reflects a fundamental problem in British politics: all of the main parties accept Britain’s intervention in Afghanistan, and, to a lesser extent, Iraq. William Hague’s speech gives every indication that a Tory government will continue, and risk expanding, Britain’s military presence abroad.

Hague, unsurprisingly, also repeats the meme about Britain’s credit rating being a worry, citing the ‘recent’ Fitch warning about the loss of the triple-A rating. I say ‘recent’ because Fitch has been carping about this since last year, so a new press release about it is hardly serious news. What makes this interesting is that Hague is all about the deficit reduction…and yet continuously talks up “Britain’s role” abroad.

With what equipment, in this Tory-led deficit-free utopia? Spitballs and paper aeroplanes? continue reading… »

Spring is a time of year that full of firsts. The first newborn lambs. The first snowdrops and daffodills…

…and the first election leaflets to feature an inaccurately drawn graphs, the credit for which appears to be going [inevitably] to the Lib Dems in Camden for this delightful effort>

(Hat Tip: Ben Goldacre)

Obviously, the actual graph that Ben ran across is on the left with my own rather pointed commentary on the right.

So, what are we going to do about this kind of thing?

Rather than run through the usual exercise of taking the piss on a case by case basis, I thought we might try a bit of different approach in an effort to encourage political parties to be a bit more honest in their dealings with the y-axis.

So, today, I’d like to announce the official launch of Liberal Conspiracy’s own Graph-Fix service, which is open to all our readers of whatever political persuasion.

The way the service works is all pretty straightforward.

If you do receive an election leaflet that features a dodgy-looking graph, and it can be any kind of graph from any party, not just the LibDems, then all you need do is send a scan or digital photograph of the graph to me at talkpoliticsuk[at]gmail[dot]com along with the details of the party/candidate responsible and the constituency in which it was delivered.

For purely practical reasons, I would prefer that you only send General Election leaflets – unless you run across something particularly egregious in a local election leaflet – and because there are a fair number of boundary changes this time out, you should also include any information that the leaflet might contain about the source of the information contained in the graph.

I’ll then check the graph for accuracy and, if necessary, redo it so that it provides an accurate visual representation of the information it contains, after which I’ll contact the party in question and send them over a set of corrected image files for future use, including a high quality .eps file for use in their printed materials and jpeg and png files for use on their website.

If we get a few of these, then I’ll also produce a weekly round-up/rogue’s gallery post of the most egregious pieces of y-axis abuse I’ve received that week together with a few suitably sarcastic comments to keep you all entertained.

And that’s all there is to it…

Oh, and regardless of whether you do choose to make use of this service, I would still recommend that you take the time to scan and upload any leaflets you receive to the Straight Choice’s live election leaflet archive.

Guest post by Phil BC

Once upon a time you would be hard pressed to find a more solid Labour stronghold than Stoke-on-Trent. The potteries, the mines, and the steel works gave birth to a close-knit working class that produced generations of Labour party activists who absolutely dominated the city’s politics. But all that began to change when the wind of deindustrialisation blew through North Staffordshire. The pits and steel mill are gone, and the ceramics industry is but a pale shadow of a former colossus. In their wake came call centres, casualised retail jobs, long term joblessness and bleak prospects.

The splintering of Stoke’s working class eventually found expression in its politics. continue reading… »

Oh dear…

Trevor McDonald Meets David Cameron attracted nearly 1.7 million viewers on ITV1 last night, Sunday 14 March – less than half the audience for Gordon Brown’s interview with Piers Morgan on the same network last month.

The Conservative leader opted to submit to a fly-on-the-wall documentary rather than an interview, with McDonald and the cameras following him at work and at home.

ITV1’s resulting 60-minute documentary attracted 1.689 million viewers and a 10.8% share from 10.15pm, according to unofficial overnights.

This compared with Morgan’s interview with Brown, seen by 4.2 million viewers, a 22.7% share, when it screened in the same Sunday-night slot on 14 February.

If that weren’t bad enough, the Guardian are also reporting that Cameron was well beaten in the ratings by both Match of the Day 2, on which the featured games were Man Utd v Fulham and Sunderland v Man City, and by a repeat of episode three of Great British Railway Journeys, which saw Michael Portillo travelling from Todmorden to York with a trip on the Embsey and Bolton Abbey Steam Railway thrown in for good measure.

What else can you say but…

…Mwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

I’ve been itching to get my paws on the latest Left Foot Forward report on the Lib Dem proposal to raise the income tax threshold to £10,000. “Think Again, Nick!” (pdf) purports to show that, far from being the most redistributive policy on offer in this general election, it is in fact deeply regressive and a hallmark of the Lib Dems’ rightward shift.

I’ve been reading the headlines on both Left Foot Forward and Next Left over the weekend, thinking, “They’re not going to take the personal allowance proposal in isolation are they? Surely, this analysis must purport to show how, contrary to all the evidence I’ve seen, equalising capital gains, equalising tax relief on pensions, closing various other loopholes and introducing a mansions tax will actually have a minimal impact on the incomes of the wealthiest on society? That’s got to be some pretty bloody impressive research.”

How wrong I was continue reading… »

A couple of weeks ago James Graham helpfully documented one of the more rapid reverse ferrets in recent political history; the rapid withdrawal of a wholly idiotic Lib Dem statement made in response to the Science and Technology Committee’s recently published evidence check report on homeopathy. This week, James is back with a revised Lib Dem statement on homeopathy which he bizarrely describes as ’sensible and measured’. Frankly, ‘disingenuous and weaselling’ would be a rather more apt description of the new statement, which reads as follows:

A recent report by the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee examined the provision of homeopathy through the NHS and called for funding by the NHS to be stopped. The Committee did recognise that many users derive benefit from its use and did not argue that such treatments should be banned.

When it comes to NHS provision, we support a review by NICE into the cost effectiveness of Complementary and Alternative (CAMs) therapies, including homeopathy; as well as expanding the work of NICE to look at the cost-effectiveness of existing conventional treatments.

The Liberal Democrats believe that, as a basic principle, individuals should have maximum freedom about how they choose to get treated, so long as the therapy is safe. We know that many complementary therapies are popular with the public. The NHS budget is limited and we want to make sure that NHS funding is focused on treatments which are efficacious and cost-effective. NICE reviews of all existing treatments would give us the best possible basis for future decisions over funding.

continue reading… »

This is a guest post by Tim Fenton

Crewe and Nantwich is only one of almost 650 constituencies on the political map of the UK. But the by-election there in May 2008 holds important lessons for the upcoming General Election.

Following the death of Gwyneth Dunwoody, Labour were between the proverbial rock and hard place: whether they called a snap by-election, or played a longer game, the Government’s unpopularity put them at a disadvantage. Moreover, they needed to select a candidate, and quickly.

Both Tory and Lib Dem already had candidates in place. Edward Timpson was, apparently, not well regarded by Tory HQ, but the crucial and sensible decision was made by Eric Pickles, chosen to manage the campaign, to stand by him. The Lib Dems, seemingly in a moment of panic, ditched their man in favour of Elizabeth Shenton, who then had start over with local activists. This gave the Tories a head start.

Pickles then managed expectations well, the press were fed stories of a “rock solid working class seat”, which could be easily disproved by a trip out to Nantwich – solidly Tory – or to outlying villages, and those new housing developments full of potential swing voters. But during the campaign, most of the assembled hackery saw little more than the area between Crewe station and the town centre, and so bought into the Tories’ well crafted myth.

Surprisingly, the media did little analysis on past elections, which would have disproved the myth of the working class stronghold. The last time a majority Tory Government was returned – in 1992 – Dunwoody’s majority was under 2,700. There had been only one instance of a five figure majority, that in 1997: then, the Tories had been caught in a perfect storm, unpopular nationally and disliked locally after the rail sell-offs caused delays in new train orders and the Works had to lay off staff.

Labour selected Dunwoody’s daughter Tamsin to fight the seat. Was this a good or bad thing? My take is that it had no bearing on the outcome. I reckon she was the best candidate, but Timpson’s shortcomings – he’s not a natural talker and doesn’t do charisma – were managed by Pickles guiding and coaching him, making sure he got his talking points over. It would be different in a General Election campaign, where the luxury of a personal minder would be missing, but that would be to miss the point. The matter at hand was winning the by-election.

The Tories were allowed to make the running from the start, and their focus was incessantly negative, and personal towards the PM. They stuck to this tack and their discipline held firm. Labour’s attempts to show Tamsin Dunwoody in a positive light made little impact. Elsewhere, Elizabeth Shenton was having difficulty making herself heard, despite Vince Cable being ever present.

The saturation media coverage, and the dispatch of every well known politician to Crewe and Nantwich, also had little additional impact: on one Saturday in mid-campaign, Simon Hughes turned up to assist Ms Shenton, while earlier, Jack Straw had brought his soap box to Crewe town centre, and took questions from all comers, but they need not have bothered. The same could be said of the “love bombing” of often bewildered shoppers in Asda, who for a moment were considered important enough to have even “Dave” Cameron pack their shopping. The parties’ efforts cancelled each other out.

Was the “Tory Toff” line wrong? Maybe, given that Timpson, although part of the shoe repair dynasty, is not a man of ostentatious wealth. But Labour make Cameron visibly uncomfortable whenever he is the target of such attacks, so the idea that this contest going the way of the Tories would stop them is groundless.

One controversy was generated by a Labour campaign leaflet, which Pickles called out as “racist”. I saw the offending flyer – the contentious part was the policy of ID cards for foreign nationals – and sent it on its way. Was it racist? I think not. Clumsy maybe, and more likely a policy cut and paste job. But racist it had been called, and once more the Tory discipline held: all those from the party venturing an opinion on the matter toed the line. Pickles is supposedly known for his “anti racism”, but on this occasion it seemed more a case of “accusing the opposition of racism at a time likely to cause them maximum damage, and keeping up the attack in order to prevent them effectively rebutting the accusation”. Given his role in the upcoming General Election campaign, look for that one to be wheeled out again.

The Tories then completed their mission by keeping up the campaigning until polling day. Labour did not. On the last Saturday, I spoke with a Labour supporter who assured me that they would return to get out the vote, but later that same day, a conversation with the campaign HQ on Nantwich Road left me with the impression they had given up. So it was: the evening of polling day was a quiet one in what I call “Redbrick Crewe”, the area that returns Labour and Lib Dem councillors. Labour had already admitted defeat: the Tory majority therefore flattered Timpson.

What will happen at the General Election? Well, unless the Tories score a substantial swing, Timpson will be unseated. David Williams, his next Labour opponent, has the presence and the patter: he is a natural politician. Edward Timpson will have served his purpose.

God, politics can be a bit depressing sometimes. Someone comes along with an unusual background wanting to be an MP, and what happens? All of us in the club smirk and nudge each other and roll out a series of pathetic double entendres, her party leader has to declaim her career, and an assembled phalanx of politicians and journalists act as if they’ve never so much seen a naked ankle. Bunch of hypocrites, the lot of us.

So a woman porn director wants to be an MP? Good for her. I’m sure the voters will be much more sensible about it than the political classes.

Anyway, from her wiki entry (I suspect parliamentary computers will prevent going much beyond wiki) she seems like someone with a real belief in personal freedom and choice rather than some sorry mens mag sleazoid, like, well, the owner of the Daily Express.

Is Alan Johnson right to accuse the Tories of deceit over their recent claim that violent crime has risen by 44% since 1998?

Of course he is, in fact he doesn’t go anything like far enough in his accusations. Not only are the Tories wilfully misrepresenting the evidence provided by the police recorded crime statistics, but they are also pursuing a deliberate and wholly mendacious strategy of seeking to undermine public confidence in the British Crime Survey, a point that Johnson has, as yet, failed to put over forcefully enough.

As evidence, let’s refer back to an article by the Shadow Justice Minister, Dominic Grieve, which was published by the Telegraph in January 2009 under the title ‘Fiddling statistics is no way to restore public confidence”.  In the article, Grieve makes the following claims about the British Crime Survey.

The BCS is an obviously poor measure of violent crime. It does not count homicide offences, rape and multiple assaults. It also excludes some of the most vulnerable victims of violence, including: the homeless, elderly people in care homes, students in digs and – until this year – all children. In fact, we know that police recorded violent crime has nearly doubled since 1997.

Grieve’s suggestion that the BCS is an ‘obviously poor measure of violent crime’ because it does not count homicide offences is as risible as it is boneheaded. The clue here is in the name, British Crime Survey, which explains precisely why it doesn’t count homicide offences – you need to be alive in order to complete the survey form. In any case, homicides accounted for only 662 of the 2.1 million violent offences that the BCS estimated as having taken place in 2008/9, a mere 0.03 percent of the total number of offences. continue reading… »

Fraser Nelson previews The Spectator’s interview with Nick Clegg, in which the LibDem leader has “put his heart into showing his hidden Tory side” according to the Speccy editor, who awards him a blue rose in noting his bid for a heir to Thatcher accolade.

It sounds as though it could be a major talking point at the LibDem spring conference in Birmingham this weekend, where it may not meet with universal acclaim among party members.

The LibDem leader is back in “savage cuts” territory, by arguing that the deficit should be dealt with only by spending cuts and no tax rises, which outflanks Cameron and Osborne on the right. (Nelson contrasts that with a Tory approach of 80% cuts to 20% tax rises ratio, and Labour 66% to 33%).

Age, he claims, has taught him the point of Maggie Thatcher. And, apparently, he now seems to see her as something of an inspiration, praising her for her victory over the trade unions.

Clegg may well be decisively outflanking the voters on their right too. continue reading… »

Guest post by Giles Wilkes

Given there is no sign at all that the Conservative’s disastrous 2010 campaign is likely to improve, this question of the economy’s performance with a minority government will continue.

A note from CitiGroup puts the case for the prosecution:

There is no consensus across the parties on fiscal policy, while Lib Dem voters disagree with the Conservatives on fiscal policy and prefer Labour’s policies on most other key political issues. Lib Dem voters would rather go into coalition with Labour than the Conservatives. We suspect that a hung parliament would only be able to implement and sustain major fiscal consolidation if boxed in by a market crisis. Gilts and sterling remain vulnerable.

The author acknowledges Nick Clegg’s recent vow ‘not to take any risk with UK plc’, and suspects that they LibDems will not cooperate unless given the Holy Grail of electoral reform in return. Which the Conservatives will never grant.

Clegg is getting annoyed:

“David Cameron and George Osborne are stoking up fears in the markets, actively trying to destabilise the pound and reduce the government’s ability to borrow. It’s like a protection racket: vote for us or our friends in the City will lay waste to your economy, your savings and your job.”

Too right. Chris Cook in the FT has a more nuanced summary of how things might pan out:

The threat of the LibDems pulling the plug on a government is overstated. The third party would, very quickly, be seen as co-culprits for the administration’s programme. So the LibDems would be stuck with them. If they then caused the fall of the government, they would be blamed for the chaos that follows … So the path of short-term naked self interest – the most powerful force in politics – would almost always be for the LibDems to back the administration.

The Lib Dems have the most to gain and the most to lose from the hung parliament situation. Their incentives are unambigiously in the direction of fiscal responsibility. No-ones goes around thinking “I can’t vote Lib Dem – they are too serious about the deficit”. A period where the LibDems hold the sensible middle of the debate: between diehard romantic deniers on the Labour benches, and blinkered trapped-in-the-1980s CutNowCutHarders on the other side, could gain them real credibility with a public worried about the difficult, um, balancing act that needs to be performed.

Republicanism, communitarianism, John Lewis, EasyCouncils, co-operatives, mutuals, the ethic of engagement, the reinvention of the firm, motivation and productivity in employee ownership and a market economy based on common ownership. Suggestive of the fact that from both the left and right a convergence will soon take place that seeks to undermine the legacy of Thatcher, or an effort from both the left and right to pretend to the electorate that they have their interests at heart? It is all rather indicative that what is fashionable in British politics today is the return to community – and the surpassing of current modes of government and market structure.

Progressive conservatism, a project by Demos and led by Max Wind-Cowie, rolls with this contingent, and like the Red tory Philip Blond, is avowedly anti-Thatcherite with regards to an embrace of greed and yuppie idolatry.

At a time when industrial plants are closing down, there are massive job losses, such as the current events in Middlesbrough with the Corus steel factory, with little that Labour can do about it – even if Peter Mandelson, First Secretary of State,Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, had acted a little sooner – and by disavowing Thatcher (whose image is synonymous with factory closures) a new generation of Tories seek to throw off their nasty party image. continue reading… »