Just when you think life can’t get any worse, it suddenly does.
There we all were, public and politicos alike, positively howling for the cessation of the madness on 6th May, only to return a hung Parliament. Now we learn that the result not only means that the news media are promising to camp outside an empty House of Commons indefinitely, speculating on what Vince Cable’s tie indicates about the willingness of Tories and Liberals to co-operate on fisheries policy, but worse: that we might be re-running the electoral fun in about 18 months time. Or less.
The papers this Sunday are a pale reflection the kind of limbo-induced ennui that teenagers in Broken Britain must feel whilst whiling away the dead hours before they can get to the park bench and the Diamond White, as they attempt to fill the empty pages between now and, you know, something actually happening. For the sanity of the nation, we can only hope that Cameron and Clegg get their shit on, PDQ.
Putting a brave face on it is Observer commentator Nick Cohen who argues that all this could have a beneficial effect on the political landscape. In the less sanguine manner for which we all love him, the Mail on Sunday’s Peter Hitchens calls Cameron’s Conservatives a “cynical fake” and calls for a split between them and “traditional” Tories. The Sunday Times front page has a useful “… as established earlier in the plot” piece with the new information that chief whip, or former chief whip as we now must call him, Nick Brown has informed the Gord that the Parliamentary Labour Party will not wear a deal with the Liberal Democrats.
As various MPs call for Brown to quit, the News of the World has the gen on the leadership bids that are being planned by David Miliboy and Ed Balls, as soon as the PM decides to shuffle off this political coil. And, of course, now we know who both the candidates are, we’re expecting nothing less than a good, clean fight.
Meanwhile, both the Sunday Mirror and the Observer are reporting trouble up t’mill, as they almost certainly don’t say in the Conservative Party. Lord Ashcroft has apparently been complaining that Cameron’s decision to win the Murdoch endorsement by getting behind the Sky campaign for leaders’ debates, in his view, cost the Tories an overall majority. Other offenders fingered for the Conservatives not ruling Britannia as nature intended are Michael Gove, Oliver Letwin and, inevitably, groovy guru Steve Hilton.
Finally, the first potential expenses scandal of the new Parliament is revealed by the Sunday Times. Go on, you’ll never guess …
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19 Responses to “What we’ve learned from the Sundays”
sally edwards
“Make no mistake the first act of a Tory/Lib government might be to stop the unions funding Labour with big donations – let’s see how the party pays off it’s £29.5 million overdraft then….”
So the small govt, get the state off our backs tory party would pass a bill to use the said state to decide who can and can’t give money to a political party?
You just can’t make this stuff up. You have no philosophy at all except what is the best for the tory party. You want small govt, until you want to use the govt to crush your opponents you hate the nanny state until you want to hide behind nanny’s aprons.
You went into the last election with 80% of the media giving you a fee ride, you had all Ashcroft’s money in the marginal’s, you had a tired govt and a disliked Prime Minister and you managed to scrape 36% of the vote. What a bunch of failures.
Anon E Mouse
Mary Newsham – Oh please. Grow up. This tribal nonsense is partly the reason Labour lost the election – you need to move on.
As I have said before, Anthony Charles Linton Blair was our PM (following on from John Major council house / comprehensive school) – and the countesses niece Harriet Harman was educated at the same school as Osbourne. At least his family earned their own money legitimately.
Labour doesn’t represent the working class when it cripples them with high taxes and forces unelected idiots on them like Gordon Brown. More council houses and comprehensive schools were built under the last Tory government.
The last 13 years have brought numerous laws in this country that no one asked for by this outgoing control freak government. The Lib Dems and the Tories are actually close on loads of things like that and if your view of not despising the working classes, which Labour clearly do by the way they sucked up to big business, then they wouldn’t have been beaten in the popular vote last Thursday.
It’s over – get used to it.
John Shields
People have got to get over the whole Ashcroft thing – it’s no better or worse than the funding arrangements for the Labour, and the only reason that the Lib Dems are able to lecture everyone is that no one gives them any money. The reason Lib/Lab don’t like him is very different to the reason that the public don’t like him. The latter don’t like him because he’s rich. Lib/Lab don’t like him because he’s a sneaky Tory version of Peter Mandelson.
sally edwards
The Labour party are funded by unions who are made up of millions of British workers. Every union is open about what it stands for and what policy changes it would like made. You can easily find out exactly how much each union has given to a political party.
CONTRAST
The tory party is funded by a handful of dubious wealthy individuals, many of which don’t even pay tax in this country. And none of these people have to declare what their political agenda is.
It is not that difficult to see which is the most democratic. The reason the tories are obsessed by the union money is they want to stamp out any challenge to their belief that they should rule. Tories are like most capitalists. They hate competition, but pretend that they like it.
paulstpancras
RT @leftfootfwd: What we've learned from the Sundays https://www.leftfootforward.org/2010/05/what-weve-learned-from-the-sundays-3/