Well, that’s not a good start to their Conference for the Conservatives. Their MP for Rochester and Strood Mark Reckless lived up to his name and defected to UKIP, leaving the Tories another £100,000 out of pocket as they defend the second by-election to arise in these circumstances.
Then their Civil Society Minister Brooks Newmark resigned when it emerged that he’d sent a fairly lewd photo to a male Mirror journalist who had been posing as a female activist. When I first saw the details, I tweeted that I wondered what went on in the heads of these public figures who think that they can send photos like that over social media and not have them exposed. I mean, they might as well cut out the middleman and send them straight to the editor of every tabloid. I did also say that it wasn’t right that the picture had been publicised and that I did feel sorry for Newmark.
I was swiftly rebuked by someone who basically said that that amounted to victim-blaming. They had a point. Of course, if people send photos for private consumption, then they have a right to expect that their privacy will be respected. The people who have done wrong here work at the Mirror. What goes on between consenting adults in private is none of our business. It’s not as even as if there was a public interest defence. Newmark seems to have been fairly socially progressive for a Tory, being vociferously in support of equal marriage and being part of the Women2Win campaign to get more female Conservative MPs elected, so there’s no hypocrisy involved.
There may be a “realpolitik” angle to it. Newmark as a rich, wealthy man has a great deal of power in our society. Many female victims of revenge porn are emotionally blackmailed or coerced into taking the photos against their better judgement. While Newmark might have foreseen the consequences of his actions, that doesn’t justify the actions of someone who deliberately went out of their way to entrap him. After all, if someone absent-mindedly forgets to lock the door when they go out and are burgled as a result, we generally have sympathy with them. It could have happened to any one of us. When there’s sex or nudity involved, though, we forget to have sympathy with the victim.
I’d much rather have seen him out of office for his comments the other week that charities should keep out of politics. He said:
The important thing charities should be doing is sticking to their knitting and doing the best they can to promote their agenda, which should be about helping others.
It’s a pretty vitriolic misunderstanding of the Third Sector which should have seen him out the door. He should not have to leave office over over a late night internet photo indulgence and I would hope that if this happened to a Liberal Democrat MP, the party would stand by them. That Newmark has been so swiftly despatched speaks volumes about the Conservative party’s antiquated sense of what’s proper.
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social
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45 Comments
I disagree with you about whether the party should stand by a Lib Dem MP who did the same.
The Morrissey report seemed to me to contain a lot about power dynamics. The accusation is that Newmark sent a picture of his genitals to someone who he thought was a “young female Tory activist” who he had never met and he asked her to meet up with him at Tory conference. The fact he didn’t grab someone doesn’t make what he did right.
Publishing the pictures would also be wrong but the journalistic wrong doesn’t excuse the first wrong.
Although I would never vote UKIP in Parliamentary election. I do however have to admire Mark Reckless for his principles, along with Carswell at least they had the democratic decency to stand down as Members of Parliament and force a by-election. Something some MP’s have not had the decency to do in the past, especially dishonorable members who have been sacked from their parties and have gone on to be independent, holding on to their seat and salaries for as long as possible.
With regards to Brooks Newmark, Caron is correct in what she says, what goes on in private is none of our business and everyone has a right to privacy. The mirror is wrong setting up this kind of sting and it shows just what gutter trash our press is. There is a flip side though. Whilst we must respect peoples right to privacy, What on earth are these public figures thinking? Surely they must know they are opening themselves up to bribery, exposed sensationalist story lines and you have to ask yourself is this person really a suitable enough person to hold office.
It is not about the right or wrongs of his actions, but the stupidity of putting yourself in that kind of position in the first place.
Such recklessness I am sure would give his constituents much cause for concern
I havent read the Newmark story, did the Journalist send a message asking for the pictures or implying they might be welcome ? If so then Newmarks actions strike me as yukky & creepy but not morally wrong. If the pictures were unsolicited that amounts to assault.
On Carswell /Reckless their honesty is admirable & they have their place in History as part of the disintegration of The Labour/Tory duopoly & the opening up of British Politics. Our Party has worked for that opening since it was formed & we can take some credit for Carswell & Reckless, I doubt they would have gone this far without The Coalition.
I’m surprised about Reckless and wonder how long it’ll be before Hannan follows, he’s the only one of the “three musketeers” still remaining in the Conservative party.
I agree with Caron on feeling sorry for Newmark & wouldn’t want one of our MPs to have to go if it happened to them. I don’t see how victim-blaming comes into it, if anything it’s Newmark who is the victim of a sting surely? Admittedly I don’t know all the details but as far as I’m aware there is no suggestion that he sent the picture unsolicited. The article I read said it was part of a “series of exchanges” and given that the “activist” was an undercover journalist looking for a scoop I’d be very surprised if he didn’t actively solicit the image. Yes, yes, it’s a stupid thing to do given how likely it was to be publicised but then are we effectively saying no MP has a right to a private life? Loads of people exchange explicit images as a normal part of flirting, there’s nothing “creepy” about it provided everyone is a consenting adult.
Sorry Caron the complacency at Lib Dem Voice towers knows no end. With UKIP going into the next election on the back of at least two by-election victories and at least double the share of the LIb Dems in the polls then the real losers are the Lib Dems.
These events will only confirm the party’s replacement as the third party in the UK in voting intention and there is now every chance both UKIP and SNP will return more MPs that the Lib Dems next May.
The party faces an existential crisis caused by incomptent leadership and the arrogance and compalency of the Westminster set. Voters no longer have any truck with political insiders, so will be looking to vote for insurgent candidates, campaigns and parties – just as the powers that be in the Lib Dems have dumped their anti-establishment credetnials in favour of being ‘a party of government’ – whatever that is.
The question that the Newmark issue raises is not one of victim blaming but very simply one of judgement. We elect our politicians because we want them to show judgement over legislation, in essence the ability to think things through and reach a conclusion of whether the good intentions in an Act are worth the risk on the downside, and the ability to see that risk. An MP who sends a pictures of him/herself to a person he/she doesn’t know doesn’t seem to me to be any good at thinking things through, and really shouldn’t be an MP.
“The question that the Newmark issue raises is not one of victim blaming but very simply one of judgement.”
Absolutely. Paisley pyjamas – how could he?
The only thing I really see wrong with what Newmark did is that he is married. Although I don’t know about their relationship. It does appear to be the Mirror descending into the gutter, the week after it comes out they were involved in phone hacking too.
I’d need to see the entire correspondence between the two to make a judgement. But when is someone going to entrap a ‘newspaper’ editor with something like this and splash it all over the internet? True revenge porn!
MPs ‘risking’ their seats year before an election is hardly brave – especially when they millionaires will have many more options should their plans unexpectedly go £££s up.
As for Mark, I have no sympathy. The man is a government minister and he thinks it is OK to send those kinds of pictures to a person with whom he has never met. Ignoring the fact that I do not wish for people who are that stupid to be ‘running’ this country, I think this a grossly negligent act.
He could be sending that picture to anyone (including people who may not be ‘consenting adults’) because he never bothered to check.
Furthermore, Caron, I am sorry to say this is just another example of ‘rich’ ‘powerful’ men thinking they can use their positions of ‘privilege’ to get people (often young women) to sleep with them.
We should not be asking ‘what goes through men, such as Mr Brooks, minds’ when they do this, but ‘why do they feel confident enough that they can do this’?
I may be jumping to ‘conclusions’, but I doubt our married Mr Brooks saw this as the start of a beautiful romance, but more likely, he thought he had found a ‘young’ activist, whose ‘ambitions’ should be used for his own gain.
@liberal Al – if what you say is true then you can write off most gay men under 50, a lot of other younger people from ever seeking elected office ever.
As with all moral principles, you have to apply them equally, even to people you might otherwise dislike. It’s clearly wrong for women to have revealing pictures of themselves splashed across the internet against their wishes and it’s also wrong to have someone in Newmark’s position publicly humiliated when he hasn’t broken the law. There’s really no justification for it and it’s only a matter of time before a ‘sting’ like this ends up causing someone serious issues in terms of their mental health.
I find all this it is none of our business line a bit wishy washy – if your a Government Minister and you don’t want your actions splashed across the media – don’t do it. Isn’t From a Conservative party that preaches the mantra of personal responsibility, you can’t have it both ways – either you are personally responsible for your actions or your not. Also I think their is a huge difference between the freedom to do something or offer your opinion and freedom from being criticised about it.
I think the most amazing thing is that Newmark actually resigned. Perhaps he feels there is more revelations, or he was given no choice or perhaps he’d thought he’d done something foolish and wrong, I hope it is the last of these three,
“I think the most amazing thing is that Newmark actually resigned.”
Maybe he simply practices what he preaches, i.e. that very personal responsibility you mention…
Liberal Al,
I hear what you say about the power dynamic. However, the beauty of online communications is that it’s all tracked and documented. There’s no one person’s word against another’s, which gives a certain degree of protection to those who would otherwise be most vulnerable to abuse. I suspect Newmark is wishing he’d done a bit of good old internet stalking as a quick Google would not have revealed a worrying lack of social media presence for this woman. The whole exchange as published in today’s Mirror is instructive in that regard:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/tory-minister-brooks-newmark-quits-4335398
As an aside, I’d like to know who was in the photos the reporter sent to Newmark.
We will probably all have our own thoughts about it, but we are not the people who have the right to be angry with him.
We surely don’t want to ban all relationships between female activists and parliamentarians if they are genuine, consensual and two sided. What we want to deal with is where one powerful person has a sense of entitlement to someone in a more vulnerable situation.
I absolutely agree Caron. Whilst I find Newmark’s actions to be in bad taste it does seem from the mirror story that this was part of an exchange of photos with the reporter and so was consensual as far as Mr Newmark was aware. Perhaps his spouse would be most unhappy about his late night internet activities, but that’s down to them to work out their relationship boundaries, not us, and not the Sunday Mirror. So whilst Mr Newmark’s actions in this are perhaps somewhat tasteless they are certainly not a resignation matter.
For the Mirror reporter it is a totally different kettle of fish though. They have entrapped someone through dishonesty. They got someone to consent to share private images of themselves under false pretences and they shared nude images of a young woman (of unknown identity) presumably without that persons consent either. This really is on a journalistic par with phone-hacking in my opinion and rather than print such gutter journalism the bosses at the Mirror should have sacked the journalist on the spot!
I agree Caracatus when he says —
” I find all this it is none of our business line a bit wishy washy – if you are a Government Minister and you don’t want your actions splashed across the media – don’t do it. ”
Contrast this wishy washy response to what we were reading here a few months ago in LDV where Liberal Democrats said all sorts of things during what David Steel described as “the sex scandal without any sex”.
I do not think we should waste too many years on Brooks Newmark. As Caron says, he is a very wealthy man with a great deal of power. The fact that he is no longer the minister with responsibility for The Girl Guides is I hope something that we can all feel better about.
Should have read —
I do not think we should waste too many TEARS on Brooks Newmark.
We live in a representative democracy. Each of us, in our constituency, elects a single person to make decisions in Parliament on our behalf for a period of five years. Many of those decisions will be about issues of which we have little or no knowledge prior to the election. So, we vote very largely on the basis of who we think we can trust to make those decisions.
How do we determine who we anoint with our trust? Many politicians would like the public to adopt their own world view in that we should determine this issue almost entirely on the basis of our assessment of candidates’ adherence to manifestos we have never read about issues which we anyway may not understand or even consider to be the most important.
The people of Britain, largely take a different view. They take the view that they like to make their judgment on who they should trust according to whatever criteria suit themselves – which may vary on different issues at different times. These criteria will be very different for different individuals in any group or society. You can wish that this is different as much as you like but you will not stop an awful lot of people from taking the view that the personal is political which may or may not mean that someone who betrays his/her solemn trust to his/her spouse is not to be trusted with other important things. Moreover, if you preach to them that they are wrong, they are likely to believe that you are part of an unauthentic political class with whom they cannot personally relate and will not trust.
The challenge of progressive politics in a democratic society is to recognise how far you can challenge the bulk of society, conservative and sometimes frightened of change or the unknown, and push, pull or encourage them to move them forward to somewhere where they realise they are not screaming and hurting. To do so successfully, depends very heavily on the majority’s trust in you as an honest authentic non-threatening person even if they know they disagree with you.
We should be grateful to Mr Newmark for demonstrating to us that being rich and successful not disbar you from the sins of ego and occasionally being very foolish. I doubt whether his children will be quite as philosophical.
From BBC News website–
” The Conservative MP who stepped down as minister for civil society over a newspaper story about his private life has said he has been “a complete fool”.
Brooks Newmark told the BBC: “I have no-one to blame but myself. I have hurt those I care about most.”. ”
So there you have it from the man himself.
Do we really want “a complete fool” as a government minister?
Or indeed as MP Braintree?
MPs decide on things like going to War. Is this a decision for “a complete fool” ???
@James, your comment is clearly a ridiculous non-comparative, unless you are suggesting that all of our elected/prospective elected representatives who are gay activity looking online for activists who enough to be their children and without prompting are sending out inappropriate messages to those people and with very little prompting are sending out pictures of themselves to those young people with whom they have never met and have made no attempt to validate the identity of, Unless you have such a low opinion of that community, I suggest you re-assess your opinion. I like to think that the majority of them probably have better sense than to do that.
As for young people, well, as I young person who met his two previous partners online, I am well versed in online dating. The first thing you do is take several precautions as to validate with whom you are speaking and exactly what they want from any contact with you. Actually, that is the second or third thing you do, the first thing you do is choose an appropriate website. No offence, but I find it very willing that Tory MPs see their campaigning websites as a good ground to start pursing young women.
“We will probably all have our own thoughts about it, but we are not the people who have the right to be angry with him.”
The man is an elected representative of the people and it is completely within our rights to be angry with men such as you him who constantly undermine the system, abuse their power, and further damage public confidence.
I am not going to defend the Mirror or its culture either. However, with them, I can easily show my disdain for their culture by not buying their paper.
Though, it should be noted, this is NOT entrapment: for that, the reporter would have needed to have approached him first and to have instigated their communication. He did not, Mr Brookes did.
That is why I completely agree with John and Caracatus.
Caron, there is a world of difference between ‘relationships’ online/relationships between people in an organisation and a wealthy, powerful man sending naked pictures of himself to someone he does not know (the fact the person turned out to 100% opposite to what he thought, shows this). He clearly believed this to be a young, ambitious activist and he started (without the reporter making approach to him) to pursue them.
He then suggested they should send pictures of themselves in compromising positions.
He, without undue influence, decided to send a photograph of himself naked to a person with whom he has never met and who could be anyone. He could have been sending those images to a 14 year old girl and he would never have known. The fact the man is so stupid and reckless is reason enough to be angry with him, but this goes beyond that, it is the fact that this is just another example the sense of entrenched privilege that some elected officials think they have.
Ignoring the fact that had Mr Brookes been anything other than a privileged, white male, the response would be massively less kid gloves, the man has shown that he was willing to use his influence to get young women to sleep with him.
The fact he believes he can just start sending these kinds of messages to young Tory activists is a cause for concern. What happens if this had not been a reporter, but a young activist who did not know how to response. Caron, my reason for my angry is that I have far too many friends who want to get into politics, law… etc, but are constantly deterred from it by men such as Mr Brookes sending these kinds of unsolicited messages and people just passing it off as, well, it is not illegal. Many of these friends actually start seriously wondering if the only way for them to get on in their careers is to respond to these kinds of messages and fear blackballing if they do not respond or tell the appropriate regulatory bodies about it.
Yes, the reporter was wrong to goaded Mr Brookes further, but the fact Mr Brookes send any message at all is a cause for concern and the fact is he certainly saw himself as the leader of the affair. He kept pursuing the reporter. He escalated the situation to the point whereby such pictures were exchanged.
The complacency in people’s response is why we are where we are – and why things such as the Renard’s affair happen.
Please accept my apologises for the typos in the above message: as this is an issue close to my heart, I am bit more emotional about it, which means that my learning disability’s affects on my writing is worse.
I suppose one aspect that goes in Newmark’s favor is that at least he had the decency to accept full responsibility for his actions.
We did not get the usual Tory Guff, I was sitting on my chaise Lounge with my I phone eating crackers and cheese wearing only my paisley pajamas’s, when inadvertently I sneezed and my penis fell out of slit. a piece of cheese cracker fell out of my mouth and onto my I Phone and inadvertently took a photograph of the scene. This caused me to cough and by doing so by per accident I hit the send key to a young activist instead of the delete button.
That’s all I have to say on the matter,
Cue scene Husband and Wife Kiss.
Liberal Al – from the Mirror story “Sophie” followed him first, they had engaged in a online conversations for some time and “she” sent him the first explicit pic. There is a fair degree of “first mover” on “her” behalf.
These are BTW pretty much the tactics the police used in the Colin Stagg case
It’s probably fair to say that if there were any co-ercive type messages then the Mirror would have published them.
(Yes it could have been a 14 year old running a fake account but you could say that about any one online)
The Reckless resignation may be a blessing in disguise for the Tories.
They will lose Clacton which will give UKIP momentum.
Labour may also lose Heywood which will boost UKIP even further.
But Rochester has a different ‘feel’ to Clacton and Reckless is nowhere near as popular as Carswell.
It’s possible the Tories could hold Rochester thereby halting the UKIP juggernaut and giving the Tories themselves a very valuable pre-election fillip.
If the Liberal democrats are so exercised about press intrusion into the private lives of individuals and want to put a stop to it why didn’t they support Labour and Hacked Off’s demands for the full implementation of Leveson? Some egregious hypocrisy here.
Paisley jimjams? If only they’d been emblazoned “Newmark says NO!” this whole sorry episode could have been avoided.
Brooks Newmark.. the Bill Clinton of Braintree !!!
Peter Chegwyn wrote-
“It’s possible the Tories could hold Rochester thereby halting the UKIP juggernaut and giving the Tories themselves a very valuable pre-election fillip.”
It is also possible that Labour could win Rochester, as a result of Labour’s improved showing nationally and UKIP splitting the Tory vote. Rochester was Labour from 1997 to 2010. Labour held it by a very narrow margin in 2005. You may recall Bob Marshall-Andrews, after the verification, thinking he had lost and blaming Tony Blair and the Iraq war. When he he was asked about this at the end the count, his response was: “I’m Lazarus.” The Medway towns are heavily working-class. The naval dockyard, which boosted Tory support, has long since gone. Also, Boris Johnson’s Isle of Grain Airport is none too popular there.
A Labour win in Rochester approaching a general election is an absolute nightmare for the Tories.
“But Rochester has a different ‘feel’ to Clacton and Reckless is nowhere near as popular as Carswell.”
Wishful thinking. Check out the bookies, we are odds on. Based on our private polling so I’m told.
You guys just don’t get it. You don’t understand how much you have lost touch with the electorate on immigration. How much they hate and despise you.
But altogether now, “we, the Westminster bubble are right and the voters of Rochester and Strood are wrong.”
Simon
Is Peter chegwyn a Member of Parliament, part of the Westminster bubble? Really?
@Hywel, the reporter made the fake account and posted some stuff about Tennis on a website which Tory MPs are known to be using to make these kinds of approaches and inappropriate comments. Mark sent the reporter a private message first. The reporter made no direct messaging contract with him until he contacted them.
As for the photos. He asked for a photo first: a fake non-naked photo was sent. He then asked for a more explicit one on the promise that he would send the same kind of photo.
I will give him credit that he did not try to excuse himself, but that is because he knows what he is doing is wrong and probably does not wish for anyone to dig further.
Sorry there is a website where Tory MPs are making indecent comments and advances towards young women and THAT hasn’t been exposed by the papers?
It is hardly unknown for an MP to be followed by someone on twitter and for the MP to make the first approach in terms of a PM
I guess people can read the Mirror’s version of events (which it’s fair to see will be the least generous to Mr Newmark) for themselves but I don’t think they tally with your interpretation
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/tory-minister-brooks-newmark-quits-4335398
“mack (Not a Lib dem) 28th Sep ’14 – 2:40pm
If the Liberal democrats are so exercised about press intrusion into the private lives of individuals and want to put a stop to it why didn’t they support Labour and Hacked Off’s demands for the full implementation of Leveson? Some egregious hypocrisy here.”
I refer you to Nick Clegg’s comments after Levenson concluded…two sections of the full comment:
“A free press does not mean a press that is free to bully innocent people or free to abuse grieving families. What I want now is for us to strike a better balance between these two liberal principles so that our media can scrutinise the powers that be, but cannot destroy innocent lives. So that the journalists up in the press gallery can hold us – the politicians – to account, but we can look up to the individuals and families in the public gallery knowing they have the right protections in place.
I have always said that I would support Lord Justice Leveson’s reforms, providing they are proportionate and workable. I will come onto why – at first glance – I believe that to be the case for the report’s core proposal: for a tougher system of self-regulation, supported by new, independent checks, recognised in law.”
“The absolute worst outcome in all of this would be for nothing to happen at all.
But we mustn’t now prevaricate. I – like many people – am impatient for reform. And, bluntly, nothing I have seen so far in this debate suggests to me we will find a better solution than the one which has been proposed. Nor do I draw any hope from the repeated failure of pure self-regulation that we’ve seen over the last 60 years.
We need to get on with this without delay. We owe it to the victims of these scandals, who have already waited too long for us to do the right thing. Too long for an independent press watchdog in which they can put their trust. I am determined we do not make them wait any more.
I commend this statement to the House.”
Many in the party do disagree with Nick, but to cry hypocrisy against a quick internet search for the facts doesn’t add much weight to your position.
‘Liberal Al’ , how many Tory MPs are “known to use” a pick-up site on the internet and, more intriguingly, how do YOU know?
This gives a new angle to the theme of the current Tory Conference which appears to be “better off under the Tories. . . . .” (there is, apparently, no Coalition any more, by the way).
Given that tennis is the Tory theme, perhaps the theme should be “service with lots of spin”?
@ATF
‘The absolute worst outcome in all of this would be for nothing to happen at all’
And that’s exactly what’s happened. How many newspapers have refused to sign up to the pusillanimous royal charter designed by Cameron which with Clegg’s support has tossed the Leveson recommendations into the long grass.? Warm words from Clegg are all very we’ll but it is deeds that count. Ed Miliband called for the full implementation of Leveson but the Lib Dems are in power and they cooperated with their partners in power to produce a fudge over press regulation that has achieved nothing and not stopped the newspaper scams. That’s why all this Lib Dem hand wringing is so hypocritical.
@Mack (Not a Lib Dem)
“Cameron which with Clegg’s support has tossed the Leveson recommendations into the long grass.? Warm words from Clegg are all very we’ll but it is deeds that count. Ed Miliband called for the full implementation of Leveson but the Lib Dems are in power and they cooperated with their partners in power to produce a fudge over press regulation that has achieved nothing and not stopped the newspaper scams. That’s why all this Lib Dem hand wringing is so hypocritical.”
You do know that not only were Labour involved with the drafting of the Royal Charter but have also offered it their support?
Deary me Mack…
@ATF
Of course I know that Labour were involved in the drafting of the Royal Charter and supported it. But it was the second best option because the Coalition was in power and refused to implement Leveson in full. If the Liberal Democrats had agreed to implement Leveson in full, Labour would have wholeheartedly supported them and the Tories could have been defeated. Ed Miliband is on record as urging parliament to put its faith in all of Leveson’s recommendations. It was the Liberal Democrats and the Tories who blocked this and went for “Leveson Lite” instead odf statutory underpinning.
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/feb/13/david-cameron-leveson-labour
And now, months after the Royal Charter, the newspaper proprietors have completely ignored it and think they can just go on as before. Another great achievement in the Liberal Democrat Hall of Shame. That’s why Liberal Democrat criticism of the press over the Brooks Newmark affair is sheer hypocrisy.
Errrm, Nick Clegg is on record saying the same thing as Miliband in the same debate (the very one from which I drew the earlier quotes) and the article you link to is from before the Royal Charter agreed by Labour. So, for the sake of 2mins research, here is what happened next:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21825823
“Labour leader Ed Miliband said the agreement satisfied the demands of protection for victims and freedom of the press.”
So, Labour either a) agreed with the plans or b) they went back on what they said c) don’t know what they think.
Mr.Newmark has been the victim of what is essentially the same as revenge porn. I’d say the journalist has a case to answer, which is not answered by the claim that it was in the public interest.
@ATF
Nothing you say alters the fact that The Liberal democrats and the Tories collectively refused to legislate properly on the back of the Leveson report to restrict the media’s unacceptable oppression of individuals for profit. Of course Ed Miliband had to agree to the proposals, without power he had no choice. But the Royal Charter is toothless and cannot even compel the newspaper proprietors to sign up to it, engage in its processes or be bound by its terms. And, of course, none of them have. It was the Liberal Democrats and the Tories that opposed the legislation that would have compelled the press to behave decently, and they ducked it.
@ Richard Dean.
It is interesting that if the police are accused of entrapment there is universal abhorrence; if the press are accused of entrapment they can always use “The Public Interest” or “The Freedom of the Press” and their industry will use its massive power to speciously promote such high minded principles to justify the appalling behaviour of individual journalists. It is not “Freedom of the Press” nor “The Public Interest” that sends journalists in the pursuit of dirt: it is the vast profits that newspapers can make by exploiting human misery and turning it into entertainment.
I never thought I’d say this but here goes: I agree with Richard Dean.
mack (Not a Lib dem) 29th Sep ’14 – 1:44pm
You wrote —“Liberal Democrats and the Tories that opposed the legislation that would have compelled the press to behave decently, and they ducked it.”
The way you put it is wrong. It suggests that Liberal Democrats at government level actively went out and did something.. You might acknowledge that it is more likely that Clegg did nothing and allowed Cameron and the Tories to do whatever their chums in the media wanted.
The story of the Coalition is the story of failure to stop the Tories. From tuition fees and NHS top down reorganisation to new nuclear power stations subsidised by the consumer, from secret courts to the bedroom tax and bombing Libya the list is as long as our arm. Tories carrying on as if they had a majority and Clegg going along with it .
That is why the public hate Clegg, not because of what he has done but because of what he failed to do.
“You might acknowledge that it is more likely that Clegg did nothing and allowed Cameron and the Tories to do whatever their chums in the media wanted.”
Yes, your analysis is probably the correct one.
@JohnTilley
“The story of the Coalition is the story of failure to stop the Tories. From tuition fees and NHS top down reorganisation to new nuclear power stations subsidised by the consumer, from secret courts to the bedroom tax and bombing Libya the list is as long as our arm. Tories carrying on as if they had a majority and Clegg going along with it .
That is why the public hate Clegg, not because of what he has done but because of what he failed to do.”
With 8% of MPs and 20% of government ministers, how was he supposed to stop everything. That was a natural concequence of joining the coalition – and that was decision made by a large majority of the party. I appreciate many people didn’t support the coalition’s formation, but for the majority this is the bed we made for ourselves and any leader would have been in the same position.
The conequences of the coalition are, of course, now just counterfactual discussion, but I still worry what would have happened to country more if it hadn’t been formed than if it did. Would, in my view, have been October 1974 all over again, but with a smallTory majority and Cameron under the thumb of those MPs who are now jumping ship. In a country before party mindset, I still think it was the right decision – however painful it has proved to be.
We’ve been down before, we will be back again – so long as people like you and I still believe that Liberalism is a) worth fighting for and b) worth debating what it should constitute. I don’t see either of us, even from our different view points, not believing either of tose two things.