Why are Labour such unprincipled, reckless bastards ?

Not content with wrecking electoral reform and democratising the House of Lords, Labour now plans to reduce the EU budget.    Is Ed Miliband even capable of thinking beyond the next Commons vote ?  Today they plan to vote with Tory rebels to support the aptly named Reckless Amendment to cut the EU budget, not because as a party they want to undermine Britain's position in the EU even further but because they have a chance of defeating the government.   Even Tory eurosceptic Andrea Leadsom can see that the amendment is wrong.  When the inevitable referendum on EU membership comes, Labour may rediscover the virtues of being in the EU but it may be too late.  Labour will have done its bit to feed the widespread scepticism about Europe.    If their opportunistic games help them to get elected again, they may find themselves presiding over Britain's withdrawal from the EU and the disastrous economic consequences, not to mention the political ones - isolation in world affairs or worse, further dependence upon the United States as it too declines.

We already know the perils of coalition with the Tories.  Don't imagine that coalition with these unprincipled bastards would be any easier !

Amazing Resemblance No.324

Has anyone noticed the amazing resemblance between Ed Miliband and Ginger, the escapist chicken in Chicken Run ? I wonder if perhaps they are related or move in the same closed circles.

What will Ed say today ?

Party positions seem to be hardening ahead of today's parliamentary debate on the riots. The government - both coalition parties - seems to be focusing on punishment, including the nutty idea of making people homeless. The Labour Party is trying to blame the government's cuts whilst simultaneously condemning the rioters. This won't work as Harriet Harman found out on Newsnight. The media will simply headline Labour's party political point-scoring and ignore the ritual condemnation.

If Ed Miliband has any sense - and he has shown some in the past - he will of course condemn the rioters but he will add that the entire political class has lost touch with a section of society, the often-labelled underclass. He could quote J K Galbraith's "The Culture of Contentment" which contends that society is divided into two classes. One class has material goods and comfort and votes. The other has little or nothing and doesn't bother to vote. Of course, politicians compete for the voters and ignore the rest.

Yes or no ? Is that democracy ?

The BBC has this graphic for its summing up of the arguments on the AV Referendum. Clearly the pencil has more than two faces but only two are available to the voter - yes or no. The graphic so neatly sums up the problem with First Past the Post that I'm surprised the Director-General Mark Thomson didn't ban it as the BBC banned the use of the word "Reform".

Caroline Lucas was of course right in seeking to amend the referendum into a preferendum with a choice of voting systems. She was wrong to blame Liberal Democrat MPs for not supporting her, as she know that the combined weight of the Tory and Labour dinosaurs would not have permitted such a choice to the electorate. LibDem MPs were confined to the AV option by the coalition agreement. Could we have got more from the Tories ? I wonder. What about Labour ? With the exception of Ed Miliband (who gave a remarkably honest interview to the trivial, point-scoring, ever interrupting Humphries this morning) and a few other Labour politicians, the Labour Party has once again shown itself dishonest and opportunistic. Blair's first broken promise was his refusal to put the Jenkins Commission's report to a referendum. Now many Labour politicians led by the despicable Reid, Prescott, Blunkett and Beckett are campaigning against AV, which they promised in their own General Election manifesto. Make no mistake. If the answer tomorrow is "NO" they will bear the blame as much as any self-seeking Tory.

The conclusion: you can't trust politicians to set the rules by which we are governed. The UK needs a Constitutional Convention, just as the Scots had before.