The Tories are indeed running true to form.
The Public Whip (via Charlie Brooker on Twitter) reveals that Theresa May, Britain’s new Home Secretary and Secretary for Women and Equal Rights (including gay rights) has voted ‘moderately against’ gay rights during her career as an MP.
Is it even possible to be ‘moderately’ homophobic? Homophobia strikes me as the height of immoderateness, in and of itself, whatever qualifiers are appended.
(*In the voice of Marcus Brigstocke)
Theresa May gets Home Secretary, making her most powerful woman in the country after the Queen.
The Tories run true to form. They do like a firm hand…
Mark Thomas via Twitter:
Cable expected to get business/ banking role in cabinet, how wonderfully Etonian that Osbourne should bring in a private tutor.
UPDATE: Brown is currently announcing he’s going to see the Queen to resign and to recommend that she ask the leader of the opposition, ie Cameron, to form a government. But still, my post makes some valid points, not least that Nick Robinson should be sacked.
It ain’t over till the Queen lady sings…
The BBC are now performing a complete volte face and promoting a Lib Dem/Conservative coalition to the skies.
This is because, according to their ‘sources’, namely Charles ‘safety elephant’ Clarke, greedy backbench philanderer David Blunkett, that walking piece of unpleasantry John Reid and Bambi-eyed Andy Burnham (who must’ve been inhaling too much of his Maybelline mascara), that any Lib/Lab pact is dead.
The politicoliterati are still trying to turn this negotiating period into a two party adversarial contest (I blame Nick Robinson) – but that’s not what forming a coalition is about.
Take the Dutch model:
In the UK a party’s manifesto is its manifesto for government. In the Netherlands manifestoes exist to be melted during post-election negotiations, and fused together.
The process takes time. To do it in a week would be completely impossible in Holland. It cannot be done in days – or rather it can, but then Dutch people would strongly suspect that the job had not been done properly, and that the deal had not been well thought-out.
It’s understandable that the British newspapers are eager for a resolution, but it’s not correct that the UK is without leadership.
There is a caretaker government. The chancellor of the exchequer can continue to take part in discussions of the global economic crisis. Day-to-day decisions will continue to be made.
It’s absolutely normal, from a Dutch perspective, for parties to drive a hard bargain to get as many of their policies as possible into the programme of the new coalition government.
Dutch coalitions usually last for years… though one in 2002 fell after 87 days.
What is less normal is to have a party, like the Liberal Democrats in this case, in a position of so much power that it can make the difference between stable government and chaos. That is because, in the Dutch political system, there are always several coalition possibilities.
There is also less likelihood of a party holding simultaneous negotiations with the two biggest parties – so less scope for allegations of double-crossing.
This whole mess is a ridiculous media-driven one and it’s been talked up by the likes of Nick Robinson in order to fit his own preferred preconceived narrative.
This isn’t democracy, it’s government by media and the rumour mill, and in no way does it reflect the will of the voters.
If this latest rumour turns out to be true, the LibDems will, unsurprisingly, implode in acrimony and worst of all we’ll have a Tory government. The only upside is there’ll be another election along soon when it all falls apart as it’s bound to.
The downside is it’ll again be run under FPTP, and once again the voters will be robbed.
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.