The Week in Politics
• David Cameron’s mask finally slipped this week with a deluge of stories – no doubt to the delight of Thatcher and the blue rinse – indicating the nasty party were well and truly back: un-green, mean and ready for inaction. The week began with a vitriolic attack on the prime minister – no actual policies, you understand, just sneers and insults. He even had to bus in a crowd of young Conservatives to make him look good. Can’t let those common people in, far too dangerous, unlikely to clap on cue.
And the subjust of his speech? Reform, new politics, change etc. etc… The reality? As Left Foot Forward revealed on Monday, last year his MPs voted against proposals to reform parliamentary privilege, and on Wednesday, Cameron’s MEPs voted against proposals to crack down on tax dodgers and tax havens. Now why, you might ask, would he do a thing like that? I wonder…
He also gave a particularly illiberal interview to the Express. The face may have been airbrushed changed but it’s the same old Tories. All in all, you might even describe Cameron as a “roadblock to political reform”.
• The “Robin Hood” tax campaign went live on Wednesday. A financial transactions tax, of the order of 0.05 per cent – 50p for every £1,000 spent – it could be implemented nationally, at European level or, ideally, globally. No other single measure would raise so much money or do so little harm.
Many of David Cameron’s Conservatives, however, described it as “hopelessly naive” and a “fairytale”, leading Tory bloggers seemingly enraged at the prospect of providing, in the time it takes to read this word, 9,000 children in Africa with a pencil and an exercise book. David Taylor’s excellent article earlier today exposes them and rebuts their myths.
• The week’s other main story was the vote in the Commons for a referendum on electoral reform, opposed, you guessed it, by the Conservatives, Diane Abbott and the DUP.
The defeat prompted a quite extraordinary video performance from Eric Pickles, who claimed that, in England, “under AV, despite the Conservatives polling more votes, Labour would have more MPs in Parliament” – failing to mention that, under first-past-the-post, despite the Conservatives polling more votes, Labour got 286 MPs in England while the Conservatives got 194.
The referendum bill, however, might be held up and voted down by the Lords. That’s David Cameron’s unelected, hereditary peers in the Lords. How might one best describe such a person, what was that phrase of his? Oh yes, a “roadblock to political reform”.
Progressive of the week
Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, who announced plans to create 57,000 jobs by investing £400 million upgrading disused shipyards to enable the production of off-shore wind turbines. The proposals, said Clegg, would enable firms to manufacture off-shore wind turbines in the UK, instead of seeing them built abroad due to out-of-date facilities. In an exclusive interview, he told Left Foot Forward:
“We need to remove the blockages – lack of space, access to facilities and transport to off-shore sites. Refurbishing seven of the ports will be a shot in the arm to increasing industry and manufacturing that will benefits regions like the North East.”
Regressive of the week
Leader of the hardline Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) party, Jim Allister, who sought to turn back the clock 40 years on last night’s Question Time, describing the policing and justice agreement as “appaling” and “one of the worst deals”.
Much like Nick Griffin last October, he attracted next to no support among the audience, and was ripped to shreds by his fellow panelists, particularly the DUP’s Sammy Wilson and Sinn Fein’s Gerry Kelly, who told Allister:
“I have a huge mandate i belong to a party which has a huge mandate, you do not… Now here’s the thing: we all have to live here.
“I have a mandate, it’s a very strong mandate. People pick me. I don’t try and pick the people who represent Unionism, so don’t try and pick the people who represent Republicans and nationalists. I am there as of right as is every other elected representative…
“All that you are frankly is a political dinosaur.”
Evidence of the week
The “Fair Society, Healthy Lives” report, out yesterday, which said the Government’s plan to raise the retirement age “could be stopped dead in its tracks” as three-quarters of people will be “too ill to work” into their late sixties, with “everyone except those at the top” affected.
The report, by University College London’s Sir Michael Marmot, also said that, despite life expectancy for the worst-off improving by 2.9 years in the last decade, “up to 2.5 million years of life are being lost each year in England as a result of poor people dying prematurely”.
Conor Pope’s Blog The Week
This week Conor explains the Joanne Cash in/out/in/out shake-it-all-about affair and the intricacies of electoral reform, before going #Labourdoorstep-ping:
What’s trending on Twitter
According to our friends at Tweetminster, this week’s top political stories and trends are:
1) The Robin Hood tax – more people added the RHT twibbon (over 800) than party twibbons;
2) George Osbone’s Facebook Q&A;
3) The racist Daily Mail cartoon – Liberal Conspiracy’s post was the most shared link around this story;
4) Joanne Cash resigning and then being reinstated;
5) The debate around the “death tax“; and
6) Tory MP Andrew MacKay’s signing for Burson-Marsteller’s lobbying arm.
Tweetminster today published a report asking “Which is the most talked about party on Twitter?” – looking at the past nine working days, during which time there have been slightly more tweets about the Conservatives than Labour, with the overall volume falling sharply upon recess.
There was a tidal wave of condemnation for the Daily Mail’s racist cartoon yesterday. Here’s a selection of the best:
@jasoncharlton: #MailFail Why is anyone surprised at this neo nazi arsewipe publishing this cartoon.It s always been a sewer of homophobic, racist dross.
@eloquar: @johnuren1980 I really ought to stop being surprised at just how low the Daily Mail can sink #MailFail
@chodhound: The Daily Mail really is the least popular paper on the internet and because of this cartoon: http://bit.ly/bHrDEc #MailFail
@stop_jump: Today, The Daily Mail once more demonstrated why I read The Guadian #MailFail
@BevaniteEllie: Have the Mail pulled their disgusting cartoon yet? Comparing immigrants to animals-classy journalism. Ugh. #MailFail
@campbellclaret: RT @tim_nicholls: RT @BevaniteEllie: right everyone, let’s show the Mail the power of Twitter, and decency. Let’s get #MailFail trending
@tomjamesscott: Daily Mail.Obnoxious rag-publishes homophobic,racist,pro-death penalty articles.Smears, half-truths & lies.Gutter press.I hate it. #MailFail
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23 Responses to “Look Left – The Week in Fast Forward”
Rory
Liz – I’m not really interested in where they are positioned on the political spectrum. I am concerned about parties such as Sinn Fein and the PUP that have links with paramilitary groups (who are responsible for punishment beatings and knee-cappings remember) being treated as progressives and people who are against them being derided as ‘dinosaurs.’
Shamik Das
Rory, Mr Allister is a dinosaur in that he wishes to take Northern Ireland back 40 years, to see an end to power sharing – the consequences of which you don’t need me to spell out.
Sinn Fein has a far greater mandate than the TUV, who have negligible support – I don’t think they have a single elected representative. If anything, the Ulster Unionist Party should have been on QT and not the TUV; I can only think they were there because they needed someone on create a stir and shake up the consensus.
The TUV also have close links to UKIP. “Dinosaurs” is an understatement.
Liz McShane
Rory – as I have said repeatedly without wanting to sound boring,,, there are a lot of parties in NI who have a ‘past’ – the Alliance & SDLP are ones that clearly do not.
In order to move on (and clearly this has been happening albeit at a slow rate – but that’s NI for you), the majority of people want to move forward even if that includes recognising the legitimate democratic mandate of parties that in the past and still are to some, are distasteful, but hey that’s democratic politics for you! Take it or leave it.
Those that don’t want to share power and refuse to recognise the electoral mandate of the people will take us back to where NI was in the 1960s – when there was no power sharing or mutual respect in fact there was very little democracy – hence the emergence of civil rights movements and then The Troubles.
Are you really suggesting that you want NI to return to that sort of place….? because I know that the vast majority of people there DON”T!! Basically, if you don’t talk/engage with your political ‘enemies’ there will never be any progress or peace & reconciliation.
By the way you might have heard that The IRA decommissioned their weapons a few years back and the Loyalists did the same recently.
Liz McShane
Rory
A question – do you think that NI is a better place pre or post GFA etc?
Rory
I would like NI to be a normal part of the United Kingdom. I think it is still massively divided and is likely to remain so as long as it is ‘governed’ by a completely artificial coalition of terrorists and bigots.
Here’s a question for you? Why don’t people in Northern Ireland have any say in who governs the UK? They don’t just now because Labour doesn’t field any candidates there? Why is that?