My enemy's enemy

Why the Liberal Democrats love UKIP, and how Nick Clegg may be the saviour of the United Kingdom.

It is a truism that in politics as in war, my enemy's enemy is my friend. This is being seen in Scotland right now, where Alex Salmond is rooting for a Conservative comeback in the opinion polls down south in the knowledge that the more likely a Tory government in 2015 appears, the more likely Scotland will say Yes to independence in September.

(It must be strange for David Cameron to know that the more likely it appears he will win the UK general election in 2015 the more likely it is it will be the last ever UK general election. The only person I can think of to have perhaps experienced similar emotions is Adolf Hitler in 1933.)

Nevertheless, this truism is something that appears to have been forgotten in much of the commentariat's analysis of When Nigel Met Nick, round 2.

I must confess from the outset that I have not yet had the dubious pleasure of watching this intellectual joust between a somewhat posh, privately-educated, former City commodity trader, MEP and self-proclaimed man of the people, and a somewhat posh, privately-educated, former political advisor, MEP and self-admitted son-of-privilege. However, it is pretty clear that the general consensus was that the UKIP leader Nigel Farage trounced Deputy Prime Minister and Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, leaving Farage 2 for 2, as the Americans like to say.

According to the opinion polls Nick Clegg lost the first debate. he appears to have changed tack for the second resulting in even less success, leading some commentators to opine that in agreeing to debate Farage the Liberal Democrat leader had made an enormous error. He provided a fillip to the Kippers in advance of the European elections, and in the longer run damaged the pro-European cause and his own party, by reminding a broadly Euroskeptic British electorate that the Lib Dems, as well as being in favour of vivisection, chemical warfare, castration of homosexuals, denying women the vote, a 90% top rate of tax and the closure of all private television stations, they are an avowedly pro-European party. (Admittedly, I made up all the other policy positions apart from being pro-European, but given the current political mood in Britain, being pro-Europe or a Lib Dem is about as socially acceptable as any of the others).

Still cannot believe what persuaded Clegg to challenge Farage to a debate, nearly as bad as Cameron's mistake in 2010 to debate Brown/Clegg
— Lord Ashcroft (@LordAshcroft) April 5, 2014

Contempt: what unites Labour and the Conservatives

Despite their obvious differences, there is one thing that unites significant sections, if not all, of the Conservative and Labour parties: contempt for the Liberal Democrats.  An Economist Intelligence Unit report from just a few weeks ago highlighted how the Tories' contempt for the Lib Dems could well have the result of putting David Cameron out of office after the next general election, due to be held in May 2015.

(I would quibble with the author's assertion that many Conservatives "now are" contemptuous of the Lib Dems: 'twas ever thus).

As the EIU hints, neither Labour nor the Tories have come to terms with the fact that the days when they shared 97% of the vote between them (such as in 1951) are long gone and are never to return.  Many Tory backbenchers on the right of the party continue to cling to the fantasy that David Cameron could have formed a minority government in Amy 2010 that would have allowed him to call a snap general election some time after that would have delivered the Tories an overall majority.

The attitude is reminiscent of former Irish Prime Minister Charlie Haughey's remark after the 1989 Irish general election, describing the first-ever coalition his Fianna Fáil party had ever had to enter into as "a temporary little arrangement".  (Fianna Fáil have not won an overall majority since).

This is, of course, as Mike Smithson has pointed out repeatedly on PoliticalBetting just that: a Conservative fantasy.  Nonetheless, the spirit of Britain's "natural party of government" refuses to reconcile itself to the fact that they didn't win the 2010 general election, bringing to four the number of successive general elections the Tories have failed in.

Nicholas Watt Should Know Better?

I wasn't going to post any more until I saw this howler of a piece of bad journalism from Nicholas Watt, The Guardian's Chief Political Correspondent.  In his piece, entitled 'Labour support up 14 points after Miliband's energy pledge' Watt states that:

"Voters in the "squeezed middle" are flocking to the Labour party after Ed Miliband pledged to freeze fuel bills for 20 months if he wins the next general election, according to a new poll that shows a dramatic fall in support for the Liberal Democrats."

If you are a Liberal Democrat, that sounds very bad indeed.  And it only gets worse:

Oi, Owen! Shut it!

So, David Owen has been opining about how Ming Campbell should hand over the leadership of the Liberal Democrats to a "young Turk". O.K., so a man whose party (the S.D.P.) at its last electoral outing finished behind the Monster Raving Loony Party has given his opinion on the leadership of the Lib Dems. Fair enough. But rather more egregious is the coverage given to his remarks in The Guardian.

The opening paragraph of their story is:

"Sir Menzies Campbell's leadership of the Liberal Democrats suffered a fresh blow today after a party stalwart called for him to be replaced by a 'young Turk'."

I just fired off this email to The Guardian, (politics.editor@guardian.co.uk)

"Dear Sir/Madam,

The above-mentioned story of Tuesday, February 6, 2007 begins with the sentence, “Sir Menzies Campbell’s leadership of the Liberal Democrats suffered a fresh blow today after a party stalwart called for him to be replaced by a ‘young Turk’.”

Anyone with the most basic knowledge of British political history would be aware that David Owen is not a “party stalwart”, nor even to my knowledge a member of the Liberal Democrats. He broke away from his own party, the S.D.P., after the majority of that party voted to merge with the Liberal Party and form what is now the Liberal Democrats.

He sits in the House of Lords as a cross-bencher, not a Liberal Democrat.

If Lord Owen is a stalwart of any party, rather than a bitter old man whose own party went against his wishes, it is of the S.D.P – which has one branch in Bridlington, I believe, and about a dozen members."

I suggest others do the same.

'24' and the Scandal of Extraordinary Rendition

I first heard about what we now know is euphemistically called 'extraordinary rendition' about three or four years ago in the T.V. show '24'; I presumed it was an example of creative license, just like the C.T.U. (Counter Terrorist Unit) for whom Jack Bauer worked. I was very disturbed to discover I was wrong.

In the past week, this practice has hit the headlines again, with a Canadian man receiving a pay-out of US$9 million from the Canadian government because it passed on faulty information that led to him being effectively kidnapped by U.S. authorities, sent to Syria (from where he originally hailed) and there tortured and imprisoned for a year without trial.

Similarly, a German court has issued a writ for the arrest of a number of C.I.A. agents involved in the kidnapping of a German-Lebanese man who was kidnapped in Macedonia and shipped off to Afghanistan to be abused for 5 months before being released in Albania. (You'd think they'd at least have the courtesy to drop him off where they picked him up.)

I have to admit to being a fan of '24' - though I could never watch it on T.V. as opposed to D.V.D. because it is too gripping: I don't think I could wait a week for the next episode, and very often I sneak in 'just one more' episode before I go to bed. But there is something about '24' that bothers me; simply put, it feeds the 'terrorist death-cult paranoia' that leads to things like the Roller Dome in Fort Wayne being put on a list of Indiana's some 8000 (!) potential terrorist targets. And while I know there is a degree of pork-barrelling going on there (more potential terrorist targets=more federal funding), the fact is that the chances of being in a terrorist attack are tiny; however, the fear of terrorism that such actions generate actually mean the terrorists are winning.

Too much of what is sometimes called 'asymmetric warfare' is broadly labeled 'terrorism'. But terrorism is not simply random acts of violence by non-state groups. As the word implies, it is designed to instill fear or terror; and for that to be effective the threat doesn't have to be real or present, you just have to be scared.

So, to return to my original point, extraordinary rendition is a form of torture, and a form of terrorism. The concept that the C.I.A. can pick up whoever they want and whisk them away to Crap-knows-where-istan to have God-knows-what done to them scares me; maybe it's meant to scare the terrorists too, but I doubt it.

What's more it angers me - particularly the suspicion that this wretched government acquiesced in it.

This is an issue that the Liberal Democrats should be banging on about more, for it stands right at the heart of what we represent as a party (as Martin Kettle graciously pointed out yesterday - see above).

Come on Ming - make some noise!