Chris Huhne pitches to the left

jheath

So why are you so shocked by this? Britain has a left of centre majority (not even centre-left), and that includes a number of politicians in the Conservative party. An elite that sees itself superior to those it is supposed to serve is just as easily left of centre as right wing.

In reality these three politicians are only interested in how to maximise their own power and influence, and saw AV as the way to do it. If they had a shred of understanding of the realities of life outside their privileged bubble we could take them seriously.

Rhoda Klapp

Is it your contention that Cameron does not use the progressive word in what seems an approving attitude?

Mike, Brighton

If this is an advertisment for coalition government as promoted by the LibDems I ain't buying....

Iain

What a deeply unpleasant man Huhne is

Nicholas

Bearing in mind Huhne's climate change credentials this alliance with the ex(?)-communist Caroline Lucas smacks of "Trojan Horse". She is one of the most dangerously extremist politicians in the fascist left tendency of modern British politics. Huhne seems to have aspirations in that regard too and probably needs slapping down by the coalition.

The way the left have hi-jacked the term "progressive" needs to be challenged in that it is the results of "progressive" politics that should be judged not their intentions. Many of Labour's "progressive" initiatives have resulted in decidely regressive outcomes. But as long as the mainstream media conform to and perpetuate this leftist inspired myth truth will continue to be the rarest commodity in politics.

Huhne's contention is ridiculous and is only utterable by the fact that Blair managed to shift the centre-left to the centre or even right of centre, at the same time heavily masking hard left and fascist elements busily beavering away within it. New Labour was indeed "New" and I think Huhne missed his vocation by not joining them.

Britain suffers from having too many left-wing fractionals who have been allowed to form separate parties whilst maintaining a leftist common purpose. The blurred dividing lines that confuse and frustrate voters but which allow so much thinly-cloaked mischief from the likes of Huhne and Lucas have done the country no favours. Radicals masquerading as moderates and attempting to re-define the centre ground to accomodate extremist or minority single-issue lobbying are a threat to democracy - as most of Eastern Europe found. But this is the very basis of the Fabian project, missed by everyone it seems but them.

toco

Chris 'the buffoon' putting his name alongside Caroline Lucas who is a committed anti royalist together with Labour's Hain,Macshane and Straw whose families variously emanate from Africa and Eastern Europe.Not sure whether the tax avoiding Guardian has done the Yes campaign any favours here despite its dogged anti royalist stance.

Nicholas Hallam

"Today, two-thirds of MPs have more people voting against them than for them."

But by adding people's second and third preferences we can make sure that they all have more people voting for them than against them. Brilliant!

TrevorsDen

The Conservatives are basically centrist. So Huhne's premise is wrong.
Furthermore the issue is not left and right (except on the part of some on the left) its a question of affordability and unaffordability. Its a question of managing our finances.

Greenslime

The first thing that Huhne does when he gets home is to rush up to the bathroom, looks into the mirror and says, "hi honey, I'm home". The bloke is so far up his own tailpipe he could floss from the inside.

TrevorsDen

Huhne is also trying to prop up his 'tendency' in politics. The reality is that his future either lies as a right wing socialist (which I suspect he is not) or a left wing member of a Progressive/ Conservative Alliance - which I suspect I (as a right wing conservative) could quite easily support.

LibDems and Conservatives will have to agree on the 2015 budget and shout praise for the 2014 spending review. Its hard to see them not staying together after 2015, after all why should the LDs go through all this only to end up in a share of opposition?

And what benefit to any of us is a labour govt?

tankus

Just watching him on sky now ....an individual like this should not be permitted in parliament.

Vulture

This horrible little man Huhne sums up in his one creepy person all that is wrong with the political clique who lord it over us all.

Consider:
He is a millionaire property developer yet espouses leftie liberal high tax causes: HYPOCRITE!

He attacks his Cabinet colleagues with vicious diatribes - even absurdly threatening to take them to court - yet is perfectly happy to sit around the same Cabinet table, drive around in a Govt limousine, and of course pocket the not inconsiderable salary of a Secretary of State. HYPOCRITE!

He extols his wife and family in his election literature while planning to run off with his mistress - a senior member of the Electoral Reform Society which, as Coffee House has exposed, is both bankrolling and planning to make a fat profit from the Yes to AV campaign. HYPOCRITE!

He abandons his principled opposition to nuclear power when it threatens his political career, yet loves to foist unnecessary, expensive, subsidised and inefficient wind farms on us all because they 'Look beautiful' (Huhne on "Any Questions, 28.4.2011). HYPOCRITE!

He constantly calls for a 'new politics' yet secretly briefs against his colleague, rival and leader the hapless 'calamity Clegg' and is already on manoevres to succeed Old Nick should AV be lost.
HYPOCRITE!

He prates democracy yet plots to subvert it to the control of the unelected EU-elite to which he belongs. HYPOCRITE.

IT is astonishing that the so-called Nice Party, the LDs, contain so many truly nasty people, of which horrible Huhne is by some distance the nastiest.

If for no other reason, he alone shows why we should all say NO to AV!

Woody

Greenslime

Wonderfully put!!

John HW

Anyone who can chew up and spit out sneering John Humphrys as Huhne can has to have something good about them. Not much perhaps but something.

Occasional Ostrich

tankus

Patience . . . May 2015 will come.

RCE

"Britain consistently votes as a centre-left country."

But England does not.

Frank P

I dunno about Hunhe dressing to the left. I would guess that his dick isn't big enough to dress either way; it just sort if withdraws somewhere up the middle into his pubes until his Lesbo mistress muffs around down there looking for some shrimp. Trimingham? I bet she HAS to - to find it!

What is this political imposter doing in the government; the electorate rejected the LimpDicks, as they did for the past century.
We simply have to have another GE before they start jigging the voting system to save themselves from obscurity. Vote NO!

English Electric

I was toying with voting 'yes' but Huhne's intemperate words and manners have put me off.

Obnoxious man.

Rhoda Klapp

Frank, you put that picture into my head, how am I to get it out?

Frank P

Rhoda Klapp

Just brush your teeth and gargle with Listerine - that should do the trick.

TGF UKIP

Simply reinforces the degree to which the Cameron Tories are on the wrong track by joining in and validating the stance of the Left in their game of "Mirror, mirror on the wall who is most "progressive" of all."

What a great pity it was that the poor old Stupid Party allowed itself to be conned into electing someone who was, and is, so deeply ashamed of being Leader of a party calling itself the Conservfative Party.

Cynic

Here in the real world, where people have to work, pay bills and cope with Whitehall's interference, people of my acquaintance are more conservative with a small C than centre left.

MALCOLM BELL

Well said 'Vulture'! Huhne really is a most obnoxious person. Who can forget his spat against Nick Clegg in the last Lib Dunce leadership race. He showed himself to be a self-interested little creep then and he continues to do so now. Who exactly does he think he is?

Sometimes, though, I have another theory. Could he possibly be the 'No' Campaigns 'secret weapon'? I've lost count of the number of people who have said they were going to vote 'yes' until Huhne opened his mouth! Keep up the good work Chris, keep on speaking out, almost there!!

Noa.

"..it is hard not to see leadership ambitions writ in his actions".

Yes, I agree with you Pete.

Huhne is anticipating the demise of Clegg, possibly after the rejection of AV, a leadership struggle with the osscillating Cable and inserting a stilletto into the back of the Coalition, when acceptable terms have been negotiated with Miliband for a switch of alliance.

Timescale? Prior to any enactment of the iniquitous fixd term legislation.

Fergus Pickering

Why is fixed term legislation iniquitous? I'm not saying it isn't. I really haven't give the matter any thought.

Surely the replacement of Clegg by either of the creeps, Huhne or Hughes, MUST do harm to the Liberal Democrats, although theyare so bollock stupid, the majority of them, that they might not think so. The important thing is to keep them on board until we, the Tories, have got through the stuff about redrawing boundaries and getting rid of fifty, mostly Labour, seats. And of course the more time we can buy the greater is the chance of a Conservative administration, led by Dave natch (who else do you have in mind?) to do more Conservative things.

Noa.

So your argument is that for the one time tactical benefit of holding the now damned Coalition together, Cameron is entitled to further weaken the UK's constitutional fabric in perpetuity?
I've raided Wikipedia for this explanation;

"..Dissolution of the Parliament of the United Kingdom is one of the Royal Prerogatives, meaning that the British monarch decides when to dissolve Parliament. The Septennial Act 1715 specified that Parliament expires after seven years and this period was later shortened to five years by the Parliament Act 1911. Notwithstanding emergency legislation enacted during the World Wars (which extended the life of Parliament beyond the period mandated by the 1911 Act) Parliament has never expired since the 1715 Act – the King or Queen has always dissolved Parliament prior to its expiry.

While historically the monarch chose when to dissolve parliament solely by will, this gradually evolved over time, and since the mid-19th century monarchs act only on the advice of the Prime Minister. This means that Prime Ministers have had the de facto power to dissolve Parliament and call a new election at a time of their choosing...".

It also undermines another key principle; that Parliament cannot be bound by its predecessors.

Cameron is even more destructive of our constitution than Heath, Blair and Brown.
.
See also: Lascelles Principles

Steve Tierney

Personally, I think our country is a center-right country and the majority are further to the right than the present government.

How people vote is about tribalism. How they think is about politics. When you talk to the "man on the street" Labour voter and listen to their views its surprising how right of center many of them are.

At some point, the old family and cultural ties to existing parties will fade away and people will begin to look at what the parties are really saying. Then, I think, people like Huhne will find out how wrong they are about the nation.

Simon Mitchell

Frustration breeds a degree of foolishness. Its that simple.

Britain is not a left-of-centre nation, neither is it a right-of-centre nation, nor are all of us in the dead centre. What seems to be the issue, is that the electoral system we have doesn't do anything like a good enough job of expressing the shifting centre of gravity in British political opinion, at the same time as still expressing the considerable range across the 90% of the electorate who vote for 3 parties. And this doesn't touch upon the other dimensions of our difficulties - for example where we have significant and unrelenting challenges emerging from diminishing turnout, disengagement, ever-reducing party attachment and increasing regionalisation.

No system is perfect but one which seems powerless do anything about these things to a half-wit like myself seems pretty redundant.

Change may bring about something different, and in that sense Huhne may be right - those most (if not solely) disaffected by the injustices of the age-old and period-past electoral system may see something different in the results, even if they do not fundamentally change (which from the evidence of AV in national parliamentary elections, they generally don't).

Calm down darlings, you only sound like a bunch of rapid right-wingers....

[Sorry just realised that its the Spectator and not the New Stateman I've stumbled across getting all hot under the collar about a lib-dem...Times must be a tough!]