The Bewilderness

Greenest Greatest Green Deal ever in the world ever

Chris Huhne's speech at the Liberal Democrat conference is reported as a fall from innocence by the Grauniad rag. The tests for the speech are considered to be the green lobby, the previous statements of Huhne (before the compromise of coalition) and how far ideals are abandoned before the

Tory beast and the Treasury's ravenous appetite for cuts.

It is rare that we can read analysis masquerading as sentiment. The opposite: shallow wallowing of faux indignation by sanctimonious hypocrites more guilty of contempt than any politician. The better test of a politician rests upon how far their policies can deal with the real; an awareness of their own impotence, and a modest acceptance that the actions of millions obtain a better outcome than the decision of one. Alas, Huhne has stood up and claimed unemployment benefit: his policies will create jobs, supposedly...

The "green deal" will lead to thousands of workers modernising some 26 million homes to make them more energy efficient as part of the coalition's ambition to be the "greenest government ever".

When I sit back, I think of what will actually be achieved: hundreds of workers will obtain a heavily subsidised position and will manage to reduce the energy efficiency of the British home through incompetence and waste. 

Still, if we had hyperinflation, we could burn the notes and lots of accompanying statutory instruments.

 

 

The coalition is preferable to what came before

There is a strange reversal of fortune in economic policymaking as we hear the left-wing party in Britain make common cause with the President of the United States. Tying themselves to Obama's coattails has become the leitmotif of the budget response. More public spending is required to stave off a potential recession. Isn't that the medicine which got us into this mess in the first place?

The faces that have spun this line include Blanchflower, Labour and Keynes's biographer, Skidelsky? But does not the record of the Brown government undermine these arguments on Keynesian terms? Did he not argue that deficit expenditure during a recession should be offset by a primary surplus during periods of growth? We will pass over the practical absurdity of this requirement, demonstrating a naive faith in the managerial class within the UK Treasury. And minor pundits will list these disciples as authorities in their own response.

These annoyances and citations pale at the heinous omission of responsibility. Labour politicians speak as if they have a monopoly on the ethics of justice, using a rhetoric of value checking, dropping "fairness", "social justice" and "progressive" into soundbites as if they were lovestruck fans namedropping the X Factor. The category least favoured to opine on our present predicament is the crop of mediocrities masquerading as leadership candidates.

Mendacity haunts their claim on mass unemployment (just as US statistics are also worthless). The number of unemployed can be extended to the economically inactive. Take the wider definition and full unemployment becomes a temporary phenomenon of the mid 20th century. Labour was happy to fund and subsidise this inactivity: trading dignity for votes.

Whatever the shortcomings of the Coalition, they are preferable to what came before.

Call in the IMF now

I watched the Chancellors debate with some unease; the unease that one always feels when the statists get round a table. Why am I not surprised that they did more to agree than disagree? When George Osborne robbed New Labour of its rhetoric, clothing himself in the guise of the "many" rather than the "few", I knew that the cycle of crossdressng was complete.

A faint echo of fiduciary duty is not the same as a debate about liberty and the size of government. The ideological roots of popular capitalism had been replaced by token managerialism. And was the populist Vince Cable, his stance redolent of the shallow roots within the Liberal Democrats, channel MacMillan in his reference to the "family silver"?

On reflection, he annoyed me most of all. For he was the most reactionary, perhaps due to his age, harking back to some golden era of Butskellite consensus: the last time we got into this farce.

But we sat three statists who have to cut the state back. A crisis seems inevitable.

Labour opts for a 'political' budget

Labour attacks the Tories for not providing detail in their proposed fiscal policy or spending plans. And if they do, they are attacked as inconsistent. But Darling will present a budget, the “most important” for decades without details of tax or expenditure. Then why have a budget?

''Crucially we have got to plan now to ensure we get growth for the future because growth is what brings jobs, jobs is what will bring rising living standards.''

Darling will stand up in Parliament and concentrate on goodies without spelling their cost or how they will be paid. Another debased and mendacious set of lies from these scoundrels, a low and dishonest party unwilling to square with the electorate.

This is a dangerous game. A political budget may do more than dismay the markets. Their patience may snap and damage could ensue. I would like to see what the Liberal Democrats will guarantee then.

Labour's new Senate will lock in groupthink

Another day, another dividing line. Labour wishes to set out new proposals, without a crossparty consensus, replacing the House of Lords with a Senate. The new upper Chamber would have the same revising powers. In shades of corporatism, there is a move afoot to ensure that representation for groups is guaranteed. Labour's PC agenda would be 'locked in' with the upper house.

One wonders if the Liberal Democrats have been involved in these discussions: a signal of the underhand horsetrading that is rumoured to be underway in the event of a hung Parliament.

Ministers are ready to announce their plans, which follow years of fruitless cross-party discussions and several votes in the House of Commons, in a bid to wrong-foot the Tories with polling day less than two months away.

Labour's plan is to provoke elements inside the Conservative Party to object to the reforms – which would allow it to paint David Cameron as wedded to old ideas of privilege.

No doubt we will hear voices stating that constitutional change should be apolitical and based upon a consensus. Rubbish! It will be partisan and fixed by party interests, but what will emerge may rise out of compromise and negotiation.

This 'rotten' Parliament ends in gerrymandering

The government and the palace are preparing for a hung Parliament: just in case. For this rotten Parliament and this 'rotten election' is defined by three gerrymandering parties, two of whose policies have some residual merit.

The Liberal Democrats favour a proportional system that would provide them with more seats and perhaps a 'kingmaker' role. The Tories aim for a reduction of seats within a first past the post system, redressing the imbalance that favours the Labour Party.

The prize for rotten behaviour is handed to Brown and the Labour Party. Masquerading as reformer, they adopt the only electoral system that will extend their predominance in Parliament by accentuating their voting strength.

A hung Parliament may be the worse outcome, offering the opportunity to perpetuate this political class, all of whom deserve to be turfed out. The scum wish to alter the keys in favour of incumbency.

Clegg's progressivism heralds an aggressive secularism

Nick Clegg gave an interview, highlighted in the Independent, about Liberal Democrat policies on gays. Policies that in contemporary vernacular are labelled progressive, and yet are deeply illiberal in their consequences.

Force all schools – including faith schools – to implement anti-homophobia bullying policies and teach that homosexuality is "normal and harmless".

This unwillingness to respect the values of different communities was justified by Clegg in one of the most disturbing quotations from a political leader:

But last night Mr Clegg asked: “If we don’t want to discriminate, why do we make differences in language? Language is a hugely important signifier of how we segment society and how you seek to create differences between people. Since we don’t want to make differences on this and the law has moved a great deal to do that, we should be linguistically the same too.”

Standing foursquare in the postmodern forum, Clegg identifies language as the key to meaning, power and discrimination. To avoid discrimination, law, language and education should all seamlessly reinforce each other. The unspoken inference is that multicultural Britain is gradually being replaced by a set of values, labelled 'progressive'. Relativism was a respectable position in the last century but an aggressive, secular ideology has gradually been coming to the fore, with overtly anti-clerical consequences. Clegg is the latest unwitting representative of this trend.

The new progressivism is an illiberal doctrine. It does not respect the space required for freedom of conscience and promotes a system of values that must be indoctrinated through education, relying upon the state to inculcate these in the country's youth. The intolerance of self-styled progressives has been mounting in recent years: and it is unclear if they can maintain an incoherent programme incorporating identity politics and progress. It works for gays but not for religion.

We have already seen a parting of the ways in other countries: such aggressive secularism has rapidly moved towards populist stances, as the Pim Fortuyn phenomenon in the Netherland demonstrated. Eyebrows are raised that Clegg's statement implicitly heralds such a realignment in British politics. Do we hear echoes in Labour?

No party seals the deal in 2009

The Times today reports that the Tory high command are unsure how to deal with the narrowing of their lead in the polls. The narrative (and how accurate is that?) tells us that Labour is focusing on their core vote, whilst the Tories have not 'sealed the deal'. But is it clear that a lack of confidence in the Tories is turning voters away from them? Do we know that Labour is just appealing to its core voters?

The dip in the Tory lead commenced when they dropped their promise of a referendum on the Lisbon treaty. Whilst the Eurosceptic wing within the party was disciplined and remained quiet, wider commentary portrayed this decision as a betrayal of trust. The advantage that the Tories had over Labour was one of honesty; whether that was true of not is immaterial, that was the perception. Cameron squandered that advantage with his 'realist' withdrawal from the pledge.

The belief that they are all the same is corroded further with the accusations over Lord Ashcroft and Coulson's reheating of policy announcements:

Andy Coulson, the party’s director of communications, has asked Shadow Cabinet ministers to “find new angles” on existing policies to generate media coverage, according to insiders.

How does this differ from Labour? Tory handicaps aside, the leading party may face another hurdle. Whilst the leaders of the Liberal democrats may entertain a coalition with the Tories, their activists lean leftwards and dislike this trend. Rightwards at the top may be countered by activist co-operation with Labour at the bottom: Liberal Democrat support countering Labour's collapse in membership.

There is no deal to seal: there is only fractious squabbling as political parties battle over the crumbs. The election that will set the seal on Britain in the first half of the twentieth century is still some years away.

Facing down the critics at the Lib Dem funny farm

The Liberal Democrat conference has begun to unravel, as the lack of a collegiate style shows the flaws in Clegg's leadership. Just as his wheeze over the referendum led to a fiasco in the Commons, now his co-operation with Vince Cable has fallen apart under a hail of criticism. And, in an echo of Macavity, the leader visits a nearby farm, leaving his deputy to face the music, over his “mansions tax”.

Whatever the flaws of a policy that was not costed or detailed, this has proven very damaging for the Liberal Democrat leadership. When the main rival, Chris Huhne, confirms that he was not consulted, can one avoid contrasting this mess with what might have been?

Nevertheless, the third party is not holding the headlines. When they attempt to ridicule the Tories, they sound by Mandelson's puppets, thinking of nothing more original than the inexperience of Osborne. Or they attempt to distinguish themselves from a foreign policy consensus by opposing the war in Afghanistan. Now that they are signed up to 'tea with the Taliban', will they detail how we do this without undermining our allies, assuring Afghani security and preventing a resurgence of jihadist training.

Mr Davey told delegates at the party conference in Bournemouth that his call to sit down with the enemy had caused consternation but denied it was an insult to British troops.

“The real insult to our armed forces is not talking about a more realistic strategy in Afghanistan,” he said. “Anyone who has studied the last 30 years of war in Afghanistan will know that battles tend to be decided by defections not fighting.”

Mr Davey said the motion recognised that “time is running out but rightly does not call for an immediate withdrawal, as that would be disastrous for Afghanistan and Pakistan”.

In reality, this is posturing. Symbolic abasement to diplomacy without dealing with the nitty-gritty of campaign failure in Afghanistan. Trying not to appear undermining the troops, the Lib Dems wish to have their cake and eat it, face the critics and visit the farm at the same time. From this vantage, it appears to be the funny farm. 

Soak the rich, save the state, help the planet.

The one word that we should despise when applied to politics is libertarian. For, Peter Riddell describes the Liberal Democrats thus, when they are anything but.

Let us look at their policies: taxes based on economic illiteracy and populist gain, designed to tap into the current theme of 'hang the rich' and damn the poor. And they describe this stance as courage. If only they had written a book on this virtue to clarify their hypocrisy.

Even Riddell, centre-left, recognises that the LDs are radiating the zeitgeist but have no coherent voice, conflicted between liberty and equality.

Soak the rich, save the state, help the planet. Sums up all three parties actually.