Well, we’re into the 101st day of the Coalition – and, still, despite the many media sightings of ‘splits’ and ‘tensions’, the Government has yet to founder on the rocks.
The latest round of media sniping was triggered by Simon Hughes’ comments yesterday, widely – but inaccurately – reported as Lib Dems ‘need backbench veto’. So let’s look at what Simon actually said, as opposed to what the news media chose to paraphrase:
If the coalition wants to deliver [parliamentary] votes, neither party on its own has a majority, so we have to make sure everyone is brought into that. It’s a matter of practical politics, the answer is therefore: yes, the parliamentary party, on behalf of the wider party, on big issues has to say, ‘No, we can’t go down this road.”
My reading of Simon’s words is this: if big proposals are brought forward by government ministers on behalf of the Coalition then the MPs of both parties are going to have to be satisfied otherwise they won’t vote for them.
All of which, to me, seems plain, obvious and utterly uncontroversial. Which isn’t good enough for the news media, hence the misleading headlines that Simon is demanding a Lib Dem veto – with rent-a-quote Tories like John Redwood and James Cleverly on hand to take the media’s bait and amp up this non-story a little further.
The media’s approach to the reporting of the Coalition’s (yawn) ‘splits’ and ‘tensions’ puts me in mind of The Day Today’s Chris Morris inciting two studio guests to declare war on each other by putting ever more inflammatory words in each other’s mouths. See what you think:
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12 Comments
Either party could bring down the government and so both have a veto. This is a fact not a demand.
Indeed – I wrote a comment on John Redwood’s blog politely pointing this out (and that he as a Tory backbencher could do the same thing) and surprise surprise it has not been approved!
As we probably all know, the media are more interested in creating a stir than reporting sensibly. Personal contact and door to door campaigning are the traditional Lib Dem ways of dealing with this and I think will remain so.
Why would he say it. Hes a politician. He knows what people will say and he did say it deliberately. Why are you trying to deny the bleedin obvious
Nick Clegg was trying to explain yesterday that there is a clear difference with the tories although h was hard pushed to find anything you disagree on. You are all tories now.
at least Simon Hughes is retaining some credibility for still believing what he said before the election. In that I think he is lonely among lib dems
First, the thread is a very lame attempt to downplay Hughes’ comments. I tend to agree with Alan. Simon Hughes is experienced enough to know that his words will be paraphrased + scrutinised if he paints a less than glowing picture of the Coalition – yet he chooses to stand apart from Cleggy. Why? The Independent is of the view that it’s a ploy of Cleggy’s – to use Hughes to separate Lib Dem thinking from that of the Tories.
My view is that it’s far more simple than that and I have a little second-hand evidence to corroborate it.
Cleggy, Cable, Alexander et al have literally distanced themselves from the Parliamentary Party, only speaking to non-ministerial colleagues as and when it suits them. There is a brewing sense of discontent that is filtering down from MPs to Councillors to the activists. Hughes is trying, through the media, to remind Cleggy that the Party has a voice – and it won’t take everything the Tory-Boy says lying down. Hughes is trying to keep the activist base with him in a last attempt to keep the Party from falling apart.
Stephen – it is simply disingenuous to claim that Simon is saying nothing. Please don’t take all of your followers for fools.
Yes, Clegg has made no attempts to keep the party united by showing a respect for all streams of opinion within it. Instead, he has shamelessly promoted his own. A good leader knows how to keep everyone together, and in doing so might have to disregard his own personal opinions for the sake of unity. A good leader of the Liberal Democrats under the current coalition situation would know many of us have had to swallow extremely hard to accept it because it certainly isn’t what we would want if there was another alternative available and would thus do all he could to reassure us that our contribution to the party was valued and that our viewpoint would not be forgotten. I know if I were the Leader of the Liberal Democrats and was leading it into a left-wing coalition, I would want to make absolutely sure I kept the right-wing “Orange book” types with me, and would seek to have amongst my advisers at least one person who was respected in the party nationally and who was in that wing of it, even though it’s notnmy wing of the party, perhaps especially because it’s not.
So, many of us are unhappy about the way Clegg is leading the party in the coalition – see yesterday Guardian where one of his advisers was reported as saying “we’re all on the right of the party” – and we’re going to have to be more vocal about it if Clegg does not mend his ways. Sure, the right-wing press wil then say we’re the ones causing damage to party unity, but that’s rubbish – Clegg’s arrogant poor leadership is doing that. And sure, the left-wing press (what little there is of it) has never loved the left of our party, strangely it always seems to support the right in our party’s internal issues, that’s mostly because it has a purely Labour background and so has the Labour mentality that Labour should dominate the left and we LibDems aren’t meant to be there.
Always remember – Clegg and Jonny Oates and co LOST us the election – they messed up the good lead we started with by the increasingly stumbling performance of Clegg as the election campaign proceeded. If Clegg had any sense, he’d have sacked Oates, not kept him on.
Matthew,
No doubt you, and a whole lot of people like you who have some idea of what democracy and human decency are all about, would have made more effort to keep the party united and to listen to all sides. Clegg, like Blair, jut isn’t like that. Blair eventually admitted that his absolute conviction that he alone knew what was “the right thing to do” sprang from a personal hotline to the Almighty. Clegg has yet to tell us why he is equally cocksure. (In the absence of reliable information, perhaps we should ask Piers Morgan!)
It seems to me that right from day one the media had decided that the coilition was doomed and were eager to print stories about its demise. As so far at least the coilition has been anoyingly successful they are forced to either make up stories, or exagerate and spin non-stories to give themselves something to write about.
David
Blair eventually admitted that his absolute conviction that he alone knew what was “the right thing to do” sprang from a personal hotline to the Almighty
Although I think Blair was wrong on that, I think this “he’s a madman who went into Iraq thanks to voices in his head” line that is continually thrown is insultingly wrong to anyone who has some sort of religious belief or practice. I don’t read the words Blair used as at all that. He was simply noting that he has a Christian belief, and that he didn’t think what he was doing was wrong according to that belief i.e. he didn’t think that what he was doing went against the principle “do unto others as you would have done to yourself”. Which under the circumstances could be read as “if I had some cruel dictator ruling over me, I wouldn’t mind some other country coming in and koncking him out”. If one actually reads the New Testament, one does not find Jesus or Paul advocating “Do some mad thing because God is a voice in your head telling you to”, though one does find plenty of talk on what is naturally right or wrong to do.
So I don’t see Blair’s comments as anything but “I think I did the right thing according to my moral sense”, and why would we judge that as so terribly wrong? What we would we think of someone who said “What I did was wrong in my sense of morals, but I did it anyway”? Atheists and secularists are very keen to tell us you don’t need to be religious to have a sense of morals, and I agree with them on that. So where’s the issue – would we have accused an atheist or secularist in the way you have Blair had that person said “I think I did the right thing according to my moral sense”? No. The attack on Balir ion this way is pure anti-religious bigotry – I’m not accusing you of it David, just suggesting that the way this line has been allowed to grow comes down to that.
Having said this, yes, Blair was horribly mistaken. All I’m saying is not evil, not mad, just didn’t think it all the way through, predicted wrongly how it would all work out. I remember thinking m,yself at the time that the invasion was obviously stupid because of what it was bound to lead to, but Blair and Bus just MUST have access to intelligence we didn’t have, so probably had already arranged a palace coup to take place quickly which wold prevent the descent into bloodbath. Then all of us who had saidf “Stop the war” would be made to look very silly, and forever after have thrown at us “if you had your way, Saddam would still be there torturing people”.
It’s only because the invasion DID turn into a bloodbath that we forget how it looked at the time, and the option of a quick blow to knock out Saddam was quite attractive so long as you supposd it would turn out to be like that.
I’ve been diverted from my main point, so I’ll start again …
David
No doubt you, and a whole lot of people like you who have some idea of what democracy and human decency are all about, would have made more effort to keep the party united and to listen to all sides. Clegg, like Blair, jut isn’t like that.
Yes, that was obvious when he was standing for election as leader. I didn’t vote for him, I wrote again and again saying what a bad choice I thought he would be and pleading with people not to vote for him. That at least is all on record here, how many people now are honest enough to say “I voted Clegg, but I wish I hadn’t”? I know plenty whose vote for Clegg astonished me, because I knew them to be the sort of person who wouldn’t go for what I thought then was obviously Clegg’s politics i.e. what we are seeing from him now.