Clegg's new direction?

luke

Ashdown is now very clearly looking for a cabinet job

Fatbloke on tour

JF

Best news in ages

Just what the LD's need to lead them to the promised land.

A never wizzer showing the way for a soon to be forgotten has been.

At least all the sugary sweet coating has been removed from the LD's, their public face is now their true one. Tories without their kicking boots on - the political expression of holier than though, middle class self interest - more interested in the poor 5,000 miles away than those down the road who they patronise at every turn.

All the talk has been about the re-alignment in the left of British politics, at least the ConDemNation has shown the real nature of the true class based division of ideas and solutions.

All that is needed is a true expression of "Vince the Unstable" understanding of economics. That would his first thoughts not the crowd sourced wish list of what we want him to say. It would complete the troika of true beliefs after Ming's honesty over the fact that he can have no opinion until it has been approved by the Russians and the Chinese and it agrees with French self interest.

What apart.
What a bunch of chancers.

They will be dancing on the streets of UKIP tonight.

Rhoda Klapp

An irrelevant post deserves an irrelevant comment.

A man walks into a pub, and approaches a beautiful woman at the bar.

"Would you sleep with me for a million pounds?"

"Well, I suppose so."

"Would you sleep with me for a tenner."

SLAP!. "No, what do you think I am?"

"We've established what you are, now we are negotiating about the price."

And that is the Lib-Dems. But isn't it a bit early to be negotiating about the price for next time?

Apologies to those who remember me doing this one a couple of years back.

Oedipus Rex

He predicts that Labour will look increasingly like “a bunch of superannuated students shouting from the sidelines.'

Wait while I pick myself up from the floor - never had such a good laugh in ages! This from a LIBERAL??!!!
Methinks this is just the realisation that, now in partial power, the LibDems have realised that their support was mainly, er...students shouting from the sidelines. They have now deserted them in droves so Ashdown commits a wonderful act of Chutzpah!

And where is the Free Care For the Elderly (irrespective of income) promised so long?

And all the other Motherhood and Applepie that this bunch of amateurs have been promising everyone without any need to presume they would gain power and have to deliver?

Utterly pathetic!

NeilM

If this article is to be taken as accurate it is yet another reminder of just how utterly and totally out of touch with people our politicians are. I would suggest that if this is really the case there won't be any voters for Clegg to take in any direction.

Simon Stephenson.

"The other school of thought, of which Ashdown seems to be a member, argues that the aim should be to dismiss Labour as irrelevant and portray the Lib Dems as the mature, alternative to the Tories. That his mentor is endorsing this view, suggests that this is where Clegg is planning to take the party."

This is all very well, but the reality is that for the foreseeable future there is a rump of 6 million people who will vote Labour or nothing, while the equivalent for the LibDems can hardly be more than 1 million.

If there is to be meaningful representation for left-leaning people, it's like pushing water uphill to work on the idea that this should be channelled through the LibDems rather than Labour. Certainly the moderate left-leaners have always had a problem with the fact that Labour objectives are far more representative of the politics of the activists than they are of the party supporters in general. But I should have thought, as tasks go, that the eradication of far-left influences from the direction of the Labour party is a somewhat less daunting task than persuading 4 or 5 million people to change their lifelong habits and vote for policies rather than for a slogan or a legend.

The other point, of course, is that 6 million easy votes is a pretty good incentive for political parasitism, and that therefore if the LibDems did start to become the natural party of the left-leaners, would it really be very long before the far-left infiltrators abandoned Labour and started their takeover of the LibDems?

There's no acceptable way forward that isn't effective at confining the activities of the extremists to political groupings which are transparent about their allegiances.

john smith

I would be much happier having the Lib Dems as official opposition with Tories in power and Labour relegated to a 3rd party. Lib Dems have been attacked for going into coalition, but I think they did the right thing for the country. More voters voted for the Tories than Labour and so if they had gone with Labour - many would've felt cheated. Labour are basically run by the unisons. Lib Dems do have some stupid policies, but they're more independant than Labour.

Cameo Parkway Kid

And the third school of thought is that Shifty Nick will be looking for a new job in 2015 - if the ConDemNation lasts that long - after the good people of Sheffield have shown him the door. Bon voyage to a chancing liar...

Charles

@ Rhoda

Funnier in the original (true) setting:

George Bernard Shaw (who was at the top of his game and popularity, but still famously ugly) talking to a beautiful-but-not-very-bright society gal at a dinner party. (Believe it may have been one of Nancy Astor's)

TGF UKIP

But of course the one thing the Clegg LibDems can be sure and certain of is the unstinting support and assistance of the Cameron LibDems, with another u turn today on Education Maintenance Allowance on top of all the other cringing u turns such as on preventing private companies bidding for work that councils wish to keep in-house.

BTW, nice one Rhoda, demonstrating once again that the old ones are very often the best ones.

denis cooper

I should have thought it was obvious that above all else the coalition government is a partnership between two men, Cameron and Clegg, who disagree about some things but who nevertheless have a strong personal sympathy which enables them to work together.

Therefore unless there is a successful revolt among LibDem activists which leads to Clegg being removed as leader, which seems unlikely, he will continue to move his party towards a permanent alliance with the Tories, perhaps eventually leading to the full-blown merger which some have suggested.

I've just looked up the LibDems' "Constitution of the Federal Party":

http://www.libdems.org.uk/siteFiles/resources/PDF/Election%20Policy/CONSTITUTION_(NOVEMBER_2010_EDITION).pdf

and find that under its Article 10.2 a leadership election could be triggered by inter alia:

"(f) the receipt by the President of a requisition submitted by at least 75 Local Parties (including for this purpose, the Specified Associated Organisation or Organisations representing youth and/or students) following the decision of a quorate general meeting"

Sso it could happen.

But then there is the question of which other LibDem MP could be proposed as an alternative leader, who is not himself also implicated in the unwelcome actions of the coalition government, and who could beat Clegg and take his place as Cameron's partner in government.

My central prediction is that Clegg will remain as leader and the coalition will endure; and - depending on how things have panned out, most especially on the economy - the day after the 2015 general election Cameron will either be back in Downing Street and maybe thanking AV for making it possible for the two coalition parties to support each other, or he will be out and regretting his misguided his decision to oppose AV.

Occasional Ostrich

@Fbot

Are you unwell? Where's your obligatory phrase 'dog boiler'?

TrevorsDen

You took the words out of my mouth Mr Stephenson. I think you make fair points.

As does Mr Smith.

Its still fun watching the usual loony tunes banging their heads against the nearest brick wall.

Commentator

Without the slightest hint of irony (TragicTrev doesn't do irony), Trev describes himself perfectly in his last sentence...

TrevorsDen

You'r terribly kind Mr Commentator (irony alert!) but as ever quite wrong. Nice try but you are the one as ever with a bump in the forehead.

Commentator

How are the cuts coming along, Trev? Oh sorry, there aren't any! just public spending rises. How are the Coalition's deficit reduction plans shaping up? Oh February borrowings were the highest on record. Go on. Spin that.

Simon Stephenson.

Commentator : 5.20pm

As far as public-sector savings are concerned, we need to distinguish between spending that is structural and that which is cyclical. The deficit-reduction plans embrace both active savings being made in the structural element along with passive savings from the cyclical element, as the economic recovery causes increases to the tax-take and reductions to the benefit costs of unemployment and short-term working.

Maybe the explanation of the February figure is that the cyclical net costs have not yet started their downturn - something for which you could hardly allocate the entire responsibility to a government which had been in power for only nine months. That is, if you wished to maintain a reputation of being honest and reasonable.

GDT

@ Simon Stephenson....
may I comment of all the posters on Coffee House I make a point of finding yours and reading them as they are often very good.

Simon Stephenson.

GDT : 6.18pm

It's comments like this that help to make it seem worthwhile. Thank you.

Commentator

Simon, I would have thought that the point is much more basic. The UK is far far closer to the kind of situation in which the peripheral Eurozone nations find themselves than conventional wisdom would have you believe. Arcane distinctions between cyclical and structural spending cut no ice with the bond markets for whom unaffordable debt is just that, unaffordable. Are you trying to argue (I think you are) that "structural" spending is somehow always to be applauded? That is clearly not necessarily so.

Keith

Yes Fatty: wot no dogboiling?

daniel maris

Some of you appear to have gone into orbit -on the far-fetched side of Planet Zog.

Lib Dems as the second party? That objective, which was within reach, is now well and truly off the agenda.

The Lib Dems are going to lose the AV vote badly - as soon as people see a vote against AV is a vote that will hurt the coalition they will opt to keep first past the post. That will bring on the agony with the LD activists - assuming there are a few left.

Clegg is a leading a hollowed out party - hollowed out of principles and activists.

I think a lot of their votes will go to UKIP, however counterintuitive that may seem.

Simon Stephenson.

Commentator : 7.17pm

I have no authoritative information about the debt position, nor access to such in the global bond markets. However, I'm less than convinced by the proposition that the UK's fiscal deficit translates neatly into a similar level of national overspending. As I've suggested on earlier threads, my doubts about this are raised by the lack of any solid corroborating evidence from adverse movements in the UK's International Investment Position over the last few years. Moreover, I'm impressed by the Sectoral Balance analysis that shows an extraordinarily high negative correlation between movements in public sector deficit and private sector surplus (*). Correlation is one thing, and the whole question of causation is another, of course.

* http://liberalconspiracy.org/2011/01/10/why-labour-was-right-to-run-a-deficit-before-banking-crisis/

I've got nowhere near enough information to be willing to assert positively that our financial imbalance is one chiefly of internal allocation, rather than external debt-building, but I feel that I do have enough to be hesitant in endorsing the bien pensant view that our fiscal deficit represents national gluttony.

Also, although it seems logical to assume that a reduction of a private-sector surplus should lead fairly automatically to a reduction of the public-sector deficit, I find it harder to follow the logic path that would support asserting a similar degree of causation working the other way. For example, if taxes are raised, or spending lowered, to reduce the public deficit, isn't there a danger that the consequence of this is to reduce demand, increase unemployment, increase benefits payments and put the deficit back where it was, except with higher tax rates/lower spending?

It strikes me that at the heart of our economic problems we may have something that we don't yet have the theoretical wherewithal to tackle. And this is that we have a chronic investment/consumption problem in the company part of the private sector, which is leading to private sector surpluses even in period of high activity. Could it be that this is the ultimate elephant-trap of financialisation - that it's become too easy to make money without actually doing anything productive?

And no, you're coming from the wrong angle if you think I'm an apologist for unrestricted structural spending.

Mr L

If you think Paddy Pantsdown's views are of any consequence at all, just look at his diaries. Oh dear.

Dimoto

Simon Stephenson: since somebody praised your posts, you seem to have turned into a cross between Stephen Fry and Sir Humphrey Appleby.
Or were you just being ironic ?

Simon Stephenson.

daniel maris : 9.53pm

"I think a lot of their votes will go to UKIP, however counterintuitive that may seem."

Counterintuitive you say. I think this thinking is closer to the "far-fetched side of Planet Zog" that you refer to earlier in your post.

If the LibDems have any memorable policy at all it is their stance that the sun shines out of the arse of anything to do with the EU. I find it takes somewhat more than counterintuition to reach the conclusion that a mass of disgruntled LibDem voters will change their allegiance to UKIP. I reckon there'd be more who'd switch to the Loonies than to UKIP.

Unless, that is, they know something about UKIP that we don't - such as that it's really a clandestine bunch of false-flaggers on a mission to deflect hostility to the EU by hoodwinking a whole heap of anti-EU suckers into voting for the opposite of what they actually want.

Simon Stephenson.

Dimoto : 12.42am

Yes, I take your point. Sorry.

When I last got involved in discussing the location of the liability double-entry to the public deficit, I got into all sorts of trouble on CoffeeHouse for being, I thought, too definite and conclusive in presenting my alternative to the conventional view. I've not really changed my mind that the orthodox view may misinterpret the nature of our economic problem - as with the pre-Keynes Gold Standarders and Balanced Budgeters of the 1920s and early 30s - and I thought that maybe a presentation with more nuance and equivocation, a la Sir Humphrey, might be better received. Obviously not.

Please God I don't come over like Stephen Fry. Comparison to Appleby I can take, but Fry .......

anxiouswarrior

what a load of pompous shite ,the labour party does have and always will have tremendous support in this country and when it tells the truth about the right wing scum which runs and owns three quarters of the wealth and opportunity ,it will gather more support the liberal democrats my arse an alternative

Paddy

anxious warrior: Grow-up!

anxiouswarrior

paddy, just because people have opinion different to most of this odious right wing shite on these boards doest give somebody the right to tel me to grow up now fuck off you right wing vermin