Articles with the Tag nick clegg

Yet Clegg does speak Dutch…

UK elections, UK politics
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Daniel Davies analyses the LibDem’s failings:

This is, to a large extent, why the vote share has collapsed. The median LibDem voter between about 2002 and 2010 was quite likely someone who believed (sensibly, a respectable case could certainly be made for this) that they were to the Left of Labour. Their signature policy was a hypothecated income tax increase for education, along with did-they-or-didn’t-they opposition to the Iraq War. Now, their electoral support consists of electoral reform trainspotters, about a dozen people who read the Orange Book and daydream about being Gerhard Schroeder, plus that part of the West Country that doesn’t get regular newspapers and believes that it is still voting for Gladstone. They have lost precisely that set of voters who they have spent the last year more or less intentionally losing.

Had Clegg made use of his Dutch heritage other than flattering Dutch newsmedia by talking to them in their own language, he could’ve boned up on the example of D66, like the LibDems a centrist party in some aspects to the left of the (Dutch) Labour Party. in the Dutch system coalition governments are of course the standard rather than the exception and D66 has had long experience with the opportunities and perils they offer.

D66 always has troubles in government because while usually the centre of a coalition, it’s also the smallest party, caught between two bigger ones with more opportunities to let their own voice be heard. So you’d have the CDA or VVD on the right fighting their corner, the PvdA on the left doing the same and D66 being crushed in the middle. As a rule of thumb, government participation leads to losing the next election. D66 knows this and therefore is careful to get something back for it; when they don’t and let the desire to be in government overrule their principles, they get punished even harder for it. Luckily for them the Dutch voter is more forgiving than the British and they have usually been able to quickly rebuild their following once back in opposition. Even so the party has been careful in getting concrete results in return for their support.

Something the LibDems forgot. If the best you can do is to get a referendum on a voting system you don’t actually want yourself, you haven’t really bargained all that well. Had I been Nick Clegg my two set in stone demands would’ve been getting the ministery of finance and getting a vote in parliament for proportional representation. It was the Tories who needed the LibDems, not the other way around. Instead Clegg traded everything for a chance to feel important and is now paying the price. Had he paid attention to Holland, he would’ve known better.

QotD: Billy Bragg gets his very own Internationale

Comment of the Day, UK elections
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Facebook friends of Mr Bragg, annoyed at his endless pre-election shilling for the Lib-Dems and his assurances that they would never form a coalition with the Tories, have written their own version of The Internationale for him:

Desert your working class traditions,
Renege on all the hopes of man
For middle class is the position
And consensus is the plan

Forget your history and reason
Servile masses, you know your place
For now class warfare’s the new treason
And the market, we embrace

So to dorset we’ll hurry
And pretend that day is night
And proletarian best interests
Are served by Clegg, that shite

In the final conflict
We now know where we will be
The sordid wasted cannon fodder
For the Liberal bourgeoisie

Found in comments at Unfogged. No Facebook link because we don’t roll that way.

Attack of The Twitterati

Activism, Manufacturing consent, Media, TV, UK elections, UK politics
Published on 2 Comments on Attack of The Twitterati

What are they putting in Sky News‘ office coffee machine these days, crystal meth?

You’d think so, judging by the behaviour of Sky News presenters Adam Boulton and Kay Burley today….

But first a few words of explanation.

One of the most highly-trending topics on Twitter during the past day or so has been #don’tdoitnick. It’s been an attempt by twitterers to stop LibDem leader Nick Clegg forming an alliance with David Cameron’s Tories. Part of the action was a flashmob on College Green this afternoon.

It’s outside Parliament and always chosen by publicity hungry demonstrators, because a] it’s small and thus makes the protest look huge and b] it’s easy for the major media outlets to get to (especially as this afternoon, pre-El Gordo’s resignation announcement, they had bugger-all else to do).

In this YouTube video, Sky News presenter/reporter (I hesitate to dignify her with the title ‘journalist’ in this instance) Kay Burley interviews one of the protesters. She gets very shrill indeed, not to mention political, and starts shrieking at the quietly reasonable interviewee:

Sky, or rather Murdoch’s News Corp, supports the Conservatives, the party the twitterers are there to try and stop the LibDems forming a coalition with. If they were to form a coalition, the Tories could be the next UK government. There’s a palpable conflict of interest there, and Kay Burley’s not even making a pretence of being a disinterested reporter.

The protesters wouldn’t let it lie. “Sack Kay Burley! Sky News Is Shit!” – not only did they heckle her on live tv:

but before the end of the afternoon #sackkayburley became one of the top trending hashtags in the UK.

But it wasn’t just one shrieking Murdoch presenter – it was two. This wasn’t an isolated incident; cut to later the same day, and here’s Sky’s senior political reporter losing it in an interview with Blair’s former spin doctor Alistair Campbell:

(via Political Scrapbook, the best bit is at 4.00 min)

Boulton and Burley are hardly the Bill O’Reillys of UK tv, (USAnians would probably find their behaviour quite tame in comparison), but it’s clear to see that they are from the same stable.

All use the classic News Corp interview technique – shout loudly in order to drown out reasonable argument and if that doesn’t work, try to intimidate the interviewee out of challenging you further by the use of force majeure (ie turning off the camera).

But what these Murdoch employees really have in common is the whiff of panic they give off – it may be panic that they are no longer at the cutting edge of making and reporting news, or panic that any mere civilian should think they have the right to challenge them; or it could just be panic about the continuing existence of their jobs, as the news narrative (despite their blogs and online presence) slips out of their hands and into that of the public’s, via social networks and mobile devices. Or it may well be all of the above.

Whatever it is, it’s bloody good fun to watch.

UPDATE If only for completeness’ sake, here Boulton bollocks Ben Bradshaw.

Gordo To Go

Gordon Brown, UK elections, UK politics, Video
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The price for Clegg’s cooperation; the voluntary dethronement of Gordon Brown.

Dethroned

Gordon Brown says he is to step down and that a new leadership election is to be called by the Labour party.

5.06pm: Here are the main points.

• Gordon Brown is going to resign. He wants to stand down as Labour leader before the next Labour conference in the autumn. But he intends to remain as prime minister until then (if he can).

• Nick Clegg has formally opened talks with Labour. Brown said that Clegg rang him recently (presumably after the Lib Dem meeting) to say he would like to have formal talks with a Labour team.

• Brown is proposing a “progressive” government, comprising Labour, the Lib Dems, and presumably the SNP, Plaid Cymru, the SDLP and the Alliance. Electoral reform would be a priority.

5.04pm: Brown says he will “facilitate” the discussions with the Lib Dems.

5.03pm: Brown says he has “no desire” to stay in his position longer than is needed. He would be willing to stay in office until the a new government is formed. But the election was a judgment on him. He is going to ask Labour to organise a leadership election, so that a new leader can be in place by the time of the conference. He will play no part in that contest.

5.02pm: He says he has had conversations with people like the head of the IMF about the eurozone crisis.

So we’ll have yet another unelected PM. Cheers then, Cleggy.

It had better not be a Milliband. (My money’s on Alan Johnson, but you knew that.)

Mind you the whole thing makes Cameron look like the over-confident, entitled tosser he is, and that can’t be a bad thing.