16 Comments

• Sal 5th Dec '08 - 10:27am

  Good.
  It’s got stitch up written all over it.

• Satnam Singh 5th Dec '08 - 10:40am

  Mick’s days as speaker are numbered.

• Bernard Salmon 5th Dec '08 - 11:16am

  While this is welcome news, should we be going further? What mechanisms are there to get rid of a Speaker – is it just a simple vote of no confidence?

• Liberal Neil 5th Dec '08 - 11:23am

  Good. Smart move.

• bishop Hill 5th Dec '08 - 12:29pm

  No confidence vote now!

• Darrell 5th Dec '08 - 12:39pm

  No confidence in the Speaker or the government?? The latter would be a waste of time and would most likely alienate the public totally….

• David Morton 5th Dec '08 - 12:44pm

  The handling of this issue has been much more astue in terms of the party’s positioning and core values than much recent behaviour. As late as the removal of Ian Blair spokespeople felt the need to avoid the major isues and focus on any minor anti tory infraction. So the welcome eparture of a man we’d been calling on to depart for years became an attack on whether Boris had done the paper work correctly. Not it was transparent out of a desire for proper paper work bt because boris is a Tory and we hadn’t quite worked out how to Come to terms with the tory recovery.

  My dread on this issue was that we would try and get some milage out of a Tory MP in truble. However that hasn’t happened.

  Apart from doing the right thing ( always an added bonus but non esential in politics) we have come across as liberal on this isue but also as part of a broader anti government movement. Whether we like it or not that is the dynamic we are now in . Labour/Anti Labour. its not easy for independent third party’s to adjust to that but tiangulation ( a plague on both your houses) works well well when you have a weak Tory party as well as a government.

  However when you have a weak government and recovered principal opposition plague on both your houses just makes you look like you are carping

  I think Gren is the first piece of proper strategic positioning the party has done since, well, Iraq.

  Unfortunately its on an issue that joe Public doesn’t care about but its a welcome start.

• bishop Hill 5th Dec '08 - 2:55pm

  Darell

  No, the speaker (nice as the alternative would be…)

• Darrell 5th Dec '08 - 5:06pm

  Bishop,

  Oh right. Well that is fair enough I think. Having said that we have to be careful with this one because as has already been noted I dont think the wider public are that interested in it to be honest…

• Satnam Singh 5th Dec '08 - 5:16pm

  How to define wider public? Everyone I spoke to are very interested and want to see the back of gorbals mick asap. And this government too.

• Darrell 5th Dec '08 - 5:22pm

  Satnam,

  I mean the people who frankly arent interested in politics…we wait on more polls after Com Res but I havent seen any significant reflection in it them…i just dont think it chimes with people other than they already motivated and interested…

• David Allen 5th Dec '08 - 6:11pm

  Now OK, I take the point that the police went over the top, there is a long tradition of leaking in the public interest that we should support, and a Government that hides inconvenient truths deserves to be vilified. I can just about applaud the anti-immigration leaks that Green has been making political use of, given that the leaks are (presumably) truthful. However, where do we draw the line on all this?

  Suppose that the Utopian Democratic Party were to pay a professional mole to join the Civil Service and leak to them like a sieve. Do we think that should be legal?

  The Tories have pointed out that none of their leaks could have damaged national security. OK, but is that the only criterion? Suppose that the fictional UDP mole were to leak it that petrol tax was going up tomorrow, and the UDP were to shout this news from the rooftops and persuade the public to rush and fill up today. Would that be legal, and should it be?

  Suppose that the ruler of Stentoria was a genocidal maniac. What if the UDP mole broke the news that when the ruler of Stentoria visits next week, our Government were going to lie to him about their support for the Stentorian rebels, in the hopes that the rebels would win and put an end to the genocide. Would that be leaking in the public interest?

  What about if the UDP mole found out about the snap general election that was planned. Would it be OK for him to leak that information, and get the UDP to buy up all the poster sites and printing facilities, leaving the Lib Dems struggling?

  There is surely a balance to be struck.

  I’m also, like Darrell, not very confident that the public sees it entirely our way. We might see it as a liberties issue. The public may spot that we are politicians, and that we make a big fuss when the police hurt politicians. There was a nice video on the News a couple of days back, showing the police gratuitously beating up some ordinary Joe who had mouthed off at them. I don’t recall a big storm of protest from politicians in support of the ordinary Joe. The public thinks it knows why not.

• Darrell 5th Dec '08 - 6:24pm

  I think Dave raises some valid points here because Labour have raised the neutrality of the civil service which I would totally agree they have violated too but to my mind that lends itself to the ‘broken politics’ line that Clegg was trying to take in his response to the Queens Speech.

  Guido over on his blog is saying this is ‘pushing us close to the Tories’ well I have said and will say again that it shouldnt be; we can support Green without being close to the Tories whose main gripe, let’s be honest, is that they are not in power wielding the offices of state to their own advantage.

  I think the public, if they care at all, probably do view this as a politician thing which yes could be seen as ‘broken politics’ ie, the badness of both parties and the executive but we wont capitalise on that unless we are saying that and have a certain amount of distance from both sides.

• Clegg's Candid Fan 6th Dec '08 - 11:20am

  It looks as though there may be an element of tactical manoeuvring in this “boycott”. Andrew Sparrow of the Guardian says:
  “Nick Clegg has said he will boycott the committee, but I’m told that threat only applies to the committee as proposed by Harman. If Harman’s motion gets defeated, and an alternative committee gets set up with a slightly different remit, then the Lib Dems are expected to take part.”
  [my emphasis]
  http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2008/dec/05/damian-green-commons

• Peter1919 6th Dec '08 - 10:25pm

  CCF did you even read the article? Clegg’s whole objection is to how the government is proposing to make up and run the committee not to the idea of the committee itself.

• Clegg's Candid Fan 7th Dec '08 - 1:31am

  Peter1919

  Please just read my post properly. Thanks.