Liberal Vision

Brown’s biggest balls up yet

Vince Cable must think that Christmas is about to come early for him. It would seem that Gordon Brown wants to make Ed Balls the new chancellor in the up-coming reshuffle.

When we all finish rolling around the floor laughing, we should maybe ask the question ”why have his advisors in the bunker not told him the sheer lunacy of the action”?  

Pick one of the following.

1. There is no one in the bunker stupid.

2. They were too scared they would be shot.

3. They did but Gordon was in the corner,hands over ears, shouting “la la la la I’m not listening”.

4. They thought Ed Balls was as good as a cyanide capsule and probably for the best.

5. He They have annointed Ed Balls as the next leader & want to raise his profile.

I personally favour answer 4, though in the mad world of Labour-land i dont rule out 5 (Pete and Ed do now sit next to each other in Cabinet after all).

If reports are true, then after some arse-saving warning about ”the potential dangers” involved ( erm yeah..), Lord Mandelson has said he is ready to support the move as part of a final attempt to revive goverment’s fortunes” . Please note the word “final”. 

Another question for you. Is Mr Mandelson..

1. Sitting there head in hands, wondering where it all went wrong

2. On the phone to Mr Johnson as we speak

3. On the phone to Ed Balls as we speak

4. Still deciding which horse to back (we know he likes to leave it late).

I dont know either, though I’m pretty certain it’s not answer 1.

Tags: Ed Balls, Gordon Brown, Peter Mandelson

Sort out the party and do it now

Just when we were all getting fatigued with stories of the Commoners raiding the cash box, The Sunday Times brings us fresh tales of skulduggery in “the other place”. One Labour peer and one Lib Dem peer are accused of some serious fiddling of allowances.

Lord Clarke of Hampstead makes some sort of a fist of it. A true Labour peer, (starting out life as a postman before climbing the trade union pole to the top) Lord Clarke does a full mea culpa in the paper. His admissions are simply toe-curling. He admits to regularly falsely claiming overnight allowances, pocketing around £18000 a year and, more shockingly, that he was told to do it “as a way of getting remuneration in the absense of salary”. Worringly he ranked as the lowly 169th highest claimant for overnight expenses across 2007-2008. The cat, as they say, is well and truly amongst the pigeons.

The Lib Dem peer Lord Dykes of Harrow Weald is an altogether a different matter. The paper states that Lord Dykes has claimed £66,000 since 2004 by claiming his main home is in Normandy - despite one Normandy neighbour stating that “they are here only one or two weekends a month. It is a second home”. Lord Dykes response to the paper thus far has been only to say that his main home is in France.

Maybe his neighbours are mistaken. Maybe he does live in France and can, as Agent Orange identifies, easily explain how he clocked in 139 days in the House of Lords in the year 2007-2008, and maybe he was too busy (or in France?) to clarify his position with the Sunday Times more fully.

But the question must now be, who within the party is advising Lord Rennard and Lord Dykes to stay quiet? And if they are not being advised by the Party to  stay quiet, if indeed, they are defying the party by their refusal to explain themselves, then why is no action being taken? This is doing the party harm.

I am not sure why it took 4 days for the Federal Executive to issue a lamentable 5 point plan on expenses that I could have written in ten minutes. I am also not sure why we as a party are so forthright on our suggestions for reform of the  system, and so backward at putting our own party in order.

But action must surely be taken now by the party, or it will be the party itself that will have to face reform.

Tags: Federal Executive, Lord Clarke of Hampstead, Lord Dykes of Harrow Weald, Lord Rennard

BREAKING NEWS: Glenda Jackson repays £8k in expenses for Labour report

Glenda Jackson has been forced to repay £8,000 in expenses that funded a report promoting the Labour Party, according to the Telegraph (who else?).

The article also outlines a number of previous cases in which Jackson has merged parliamentary expenses with party business.

‘In March 2006 she claimed £7,500 in office expenses from the taxpayer to pay her local party for the “provision of constituency services during 2006″.

The payment was made to Hampstead and Kilburn Labour Party. ‘

This continued in following years and payments were also made to a Labour party product entitled:

“Computing for Labour”

Imagine what that covers.

The article also claims that Jackson is one of parliament’s “least value for money” MPs. In spite of attending only 27 per cent of votes and speaking only twice in debates in 2007-08, she claimed over £135,000 in expenses.

I suppose Hampstead is expensive, darling.

As a surprise to some, she has decided to contest the new Hampstead & Kilburn constituency whenever her clumsy boss decides to go to the country and face his political end.

Even prior to this story breaking, odds have recently shortened on Lib Dem candidate Ed Fordham winning the seat.

Jings and crivens! We do do God!

“To be honest, what I’ve seen offends my Presbyterian conscience.”

So allegedly said Gordo to Mr Marr this morning.

Good Lord. I don’t even know where to start; and being overcome with pollen allergy, I won’t try. Except to say we all know what people really mean when they qualify their words with “To be honest.”

Anyone see the full interview?

Oh and…

… today’s Torygraph story about Labour MP and Socialist Campaign Group member Frank Cook expecting the taxpayer to cover a £5 “donation” he made to a House of God fund reminds me of an anecdote Iheard told by Gyles Brandreth one delightful evening.

Back in his parliamentary days, he narrated, he had been desperately trying to figure out how to avoid paying constant amounts of cash into various community raffles. The plight of an MP, he told us, was underrated in this regard; constituents forever expected one to have contributed generously to their latest collective enterprise.

“Oh you don’t have to buy all those raffle tickets” assured PM Major.

“But I do! They’ll crucify me otherwise” cried Brandreth.

“No no” said Major, “You just carry around a back up supply of variously coloured raffle tickets”, and pulled from a top pocket such a collection, ready for their devious use.

Haha! Hoho!

Maybe it worked better on the night.

Tags: God, Gordon Brown

LibDems overtake Labour in opinion polls

Just to show how amazingly febrile the present political atmosphere is, compare tomorrow’s Sunday Telegraph ICM poll with the post from Julian, below.

The poll puts the LibDems ahead of Labour - for both the Westiminster and European elections. These are staggering figures - and point to Labour teetering on the brink of oblivion. Is this finally the just reward for Nick’s high media profile over the past ten days?

Westminster: Con 40%, Lab 22%, LibDem 25%

European: Con 29%, Lab 17%, LibDem 20%, UKIP 10%, Green 11%, BNP 5%

UPDATE: The Sunday’s Telegraph coverage is here

Tags: opinion polls

NEW TIMES POLL: LD AND LABOUR CRASH

The Times has just revealed some findings of a new poll, carried out by Populus ahead of the Euro elections next week.

The poll shows voting intention per se, combined with an added question asking how respondents will vote next Thursday.

Worryingly the LDs are severely down on both counts.

Here are the stats:

Overall standings

Conservatives - 41%   (+2)

Labour - 21%   (-5)

Lib Dems - 15%   (-7)

Euro Election standings

Conservatives - 30%   (-4)

UKIP - 19%    (+13)

Labour - 16%   (-9)

LDs - 12%   (-8)

Green - 10%   (+5)

A couple of weeks ago I suggested on this blog that UKIP would be significantly greater beneficiaries of Snoutgate than the BNP.

Full details of the poll will be published tomorrow.

Nick Clegg: Reformer of the Week

Ol’ Nicko the Cleggmeister has been granted the esteemed title of…

REFORMER OF THE WEEK

…by pro-reform think tank Reform.

In their end of (the working) week e-mail, Lucy Parsons says that Cleggster wins the award “for urging that reforming Parliament should take precedent over MPs’ summer holidays.”

Hurrah!

Even more splendidly, their Reactionary of the Week award goes to…

… Prezza Prescott

He of the taxpayer-funded mock Tudor wooden beams is given the award “for blaming the media for the wrongdoings of MPs.”

Well bloody said.

You can sign up to these things by clicking here and smacking your e-mail address into the pink bar thing at the top.

BBC Radio 4’s The World Tonight

I’m on Radio 4’s The World Tonight at 10pm this evening discussing Nick Clegg’s and the LibDems’ handling of the expenses scandal. My basic analysis? Pretty good, but could do more.

UPDATE: You can hear the interview here - 11 mins and 55 seconds in.

Tags: Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg

BBC: what’s wrong in the Mekong?

The Today programme ran a story this morning on drug resistant malaria growing in south east Asia (around the Mekong delta).

They’re right to highlight the problem, and correctly point out that around half the world’s population are at risk of the disease.

Every thirty seconds a child dies of malaria.

Furthermore, artemisinin is our last defence against malaria – older drugs have succumbed to resistance themselves, and no new drugs appear to be in the pipeline.

So whose fault is this? Is it just one of those things that happen? Predictably, no – it’s worsened by overbearing governments, fetters on liberal institutions and ugly politicisation.

Today’s report mentioned that insecticides now might be brought into the heavily affected areas. These have always provided great protection to the poor from infectious diseases, yet since the ’60s have been vehemently lobbied against by environmentalist group opposed to anything that doesn’t directly spring from the mud. Government bans on DDT and other insecticides continue to thwart the fight against diseases like malaria.

Secondly – fake drugs. These don’t kill a disease parasite sufficiently, so allow it to mutate and become resistant. The Mekong delta is home to some of the highest rates (up to 68% according to one study) of fake malaria drugs in the world.

Funny how it’s also where drug resistant malaria first blossoms.

Governments provoke the existence of fake drugs by imposing high tariffs (and non-tariff barriers) on pharmaceutical goods – this deters high quality drug producers so that they don’t enter the market, leaving a vacuum for counterfeiters to fill.

Action against counterfeiters is often not possible due to flimsy courts where political interference and corruption are commonplace. Where liberal institutions and the rule of law are strong, companies and victims can take action against producers of fake and substandard drugs.

Examples abound of political vested interests in counterfeit products. In China, the second largest supplier of fake drugs in the world, this is very much the case. Li Guorong, the General Manager of China United Intellectual Property Protection Center, says that action against counterfeiting would “destabilize a government where counterfeit factories and warehouses are often owned by local military and political grandees.”

As usual stories like this provoke the “what can government do to help?” reaction. And also as usual, we should instead be acknowledging how big, centralised government is culpable in the first place.

Tags: government failure, malaria

Lord Rennard and the future of the Lib Dems

Diabetes and “family time” aside, according to Agent Orange, Lord Rennard is still out and about doing his bit for the cause. Whether this is wise with allegations over his allowances claims still unanswered is another matter.

Tags: Add new tag, Lord Rennard