Naked trading

The Guardian reports, "Germany bans naked short-selling". Years ago I asked fellow Liberal and a stockbroker, Chris Wilding, what a financial headline meant. He responded, "Oh that means you're going uncovered bears". I was suitably enlightened. Now uncovered has become naked. It's selling stocks you don't own. If you sold someone a car you didn't own, you'd be guilty of an offence under the Theft Act for "dishonestly appropriating property belonging to another" and it would be no excuse that you planned to buy it before you handed it over. But of course the financial markets are a law unto themselves. High time they weren't. Good on the Germans, I say.

Coalition: Special Conference speech

What do we think of this coalition ? Some will say with Wordsworth, "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven". Others with Browning, "Never glad confident morning again". I go with Longfellow, "Life is real and life is earnest". Sadly however, while we campaign in poetry, we govern in prose. I wanted a progressive alliance but there were two problems, quantity and quality. There weren't enough Labour MPs and Labour wasn't progressive.

This is a Westminster coalition, not a merger. We know that Liberal ministers will be bound by collective cabinet responsibility and that the whips will try to restrain Liberal MPs, but Liberal MEPs in Strasbourg will not be restrained, Liberal councillors in Birmingham, Sheffield, Edinburgh and Cardiff will not be restrained and above all our party will not be restrained.

Charlie Kennedy is afraid of being swallowed up. Well I'm not. The Liberal Democrats are not. Paddy says he's confused. I'm not confused. Paddy was at my wedding at a Quaker meeting. One of the elders addressed the congregation and invited them all to stand and speak if they wished to. I looked at the crowd of Liberals and thought, "We'll be here all night". You cannot shut Liberals up and you shouldn't try.

As Liberals grasp the reigns of power, they should continue to reach for their ideals. I hope Robert Browning will forgive me when I say, "A man's reach should exceed his grasp or what are the Liberal Democrats for ?"

I think we should be told

Has anyone noticed the extraordinary resemblance between the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, David Laws, and the new Dr Who, Matt Smith ? I wonder if by any chance they are related ? I think we should be told.

Shoot the dogs - says Toby

Canvassing and leafleting during elections, one learns to be careful about sticking fingers through letterboxes, but even after being barked and growled at and attacked in front gardens, I don't agree with Lord Harris's stand on dogs. Toby Harris, another old Labour dinosaur, says we should shoot dangerous dogs to save money.

Labour dinosaurs

The antediluvians of the Labour Party have wrecked any chance of a progressive alliance, confirming what an archaic, conservative force Labour is. David Blunkett and Jack Straw, two of the worst Home Secretaries ever, can't cope with the idea of a government that actually represents the majority of people instead of their own prejudices.

Riding Two horses

A famous left-wing MP called Jimmy Maxton once said, "If you can't ride two horses at once, you should get out of the bloody circus". It appears that Nick Clegg can.

Don't sell out on electoral reform !

Any deal with the Conservatives will be worthless if it doesn’t deliver electoral reform. I don’t expect Cameron to offer it and, if he did, his party would never deliver it. Nor would a so-called confidence-and-supply deal be any good. It would reap for us the opprobrium of all those voters who supported us to stop the Tories but would gain nothing in return. To update Jeremy Thorpe, “6,827,938 people did not vote Liberal to put a Conservative government into power”

I do not understand those who fear a referendum on PR, as already offered by Labour. The public mood is strong for constitutional reform. Whenever before did we see demonstrations for fair votes across Britain ? I marched in Bristol with several hundred and shoppers applauded and cars hooted their support. Many Labour activists also support PR. If we do not have the courage to seize the chance for fair votes, we don’t deserve to be in politics at all.

There is a tide in the affairs of men

One or two people of my acquaintance have expressed the opinion that we would lose a referendum on electoral reform and that therefore Liberal Democrats should do a deal with the Conservatives.

I do not understand this view. All the polls on the subject show that the public support it. If we are not prepared to take the risk, we should just get out of politics. This is the best chance we have ever had to change the voting system and the only chance we will have for many, many years. A deal with Cameron would be utterly worthless. We would share the blame for his disastrous economic policy and fail to achieve any of our own basic policies and, when Cameron felt the time was right, he would pull the plug and go for a new election, at which he could win a majority. Under the current system the public would feel even less inclined to vote for a third party and the Tories would have more money to fight the campaign than anyone else.

“There is a tide in the affairs of men” and we don’t take it at the flood, we deserve to drown.

Cameron offers nothing

1. We did NOT promise to work with the party with the most support. Nick Clegg said before and after the election that that party (the Conservatives of course) had the right TO SEEK to form a government.

2. The Conservatives did NOT win the election either by the discredited first-post-the-post system nor by any proportional test.

3. The great prize of this election can be electoral reform. We will never have a better chance of getting it.

4. I have never had any doctrinaire opposition to co-operation with Conservatives or Labour, being pragmatic and basing my view on whatever they offer. It seems to me that Cameron is NOT offering and will not offer anything worth having and that Brown is pretty desperate and ready to offer more.

5. I believe an arrangement with Labour can be presented as a crisis measure for constitutional reform (PR, elected Lords and fixed-term parliaments) and economic stability in exceptional circumstances. There is a popular mandate for both and the Tories offer neither.

Nick Clegg - be yourself ! (An open letter)

Dear Nick,

Your interview this morning on the Today Programme was disappointing. OK, James Naughtie, in the worst tradition of Today, interrupted almost every answer before you had completed one sentence. But, Nick, you know that's going to happen.

I nominated you for leader. I defend you against your detractors. I think you are a gut Liberal. But since you became leader, you have often appeared to be the prisoner of your advisors. They pull you back, they hold you in, they make you keep your guard up when you should be throwing a punch. Your message on the economy this morning was "Responsibility and Radicalism". You sounded responsible except that Naughtie had to take you through the figures three times. It made you sound like you were trying to hide something. You did NOT sound radical.

We can't convince the electorate that we are different by naked assertion of difference. We have to be different and unafraid to be different. We also need to be brief. Liberal positions are usually realistic and therefore nuanced. It's hard to condense these into soundbites but the media demands it. The disillusioned public won't wait for the end of a long sentence - it's just another politician covering his arse. We have good policies but people don't know them and they will be lost in the noise of battle unless they ring true and clear.

The economy - Labservatives would make the poorest people pay for the blunders of the richest. We won't. You made the points about fair taxation and controlling the banks but they needed to be up-front at the start of the interview before Naughtie led you into his mire.

Trident - the only party in Britain that won't replace it. That should be the message. Vince said it in the Chancellor's debate, Sarah Teather said it on Question Time. Naughtie led you into the smoke and mirrors of Ming's review of options and the message was the Liberal Democrats haven't made up their minds yet, the same message as Ming's policy three years ago. I warned then and I repeat now - you can't say to the voters, "We'll let you know our policy after the election".

Broadly, our policies are right and radical, but they won't sound it if we sound uncertain.

Nick, I beg you, let's have a lot more emphasis on the radicalism and a little less on the responsibility.

Craig Murray returns !

Great news ! Craig Murray, Britain's former ambassador in Uzbekistan and author of Murder in Samarkand, has rejoined the Liberal Democrats. Welcome back, Craig !

Real Liberal not Fake Tory

Bad news about Fraser Nelson’s interview with Nick Clegg in the Spectator Daniel Hannan and others have spun it to link Nick with Thatcher. In the interview Nick was claiming that Liberalism requires standing up to vested interests and that just as Thatcher stood up to the Trade Unions, so he will stand up to the banks. I can see that the comparison may have appeal to older Middle England Tory voters but of course it will be spun all over the place by hostile journalists in the mass media while few of the Spectator’s rather small readership will vote anything but Tory, so perhaps not the best strategy. Anyway I well remember Margaret Thatcher borrowing Liberal rhetoric on the economy but her government’s conduct of the economy was not genuinely Liberal as she only stood up to vested interests which opposed her and did nothing about those which supported her like the defence industry (notably BAe) and the brewers. I fear that Nick’s trying to sound tough again. As Liberator has often said, “Give people a choice between a real Tory and an imitation Tory and they will always chose the real one.” Much better to offer a real Liberal, which I believe Nick is.

I have been trying to listen to Obama's healthcare summit but like everything else on the lousy connection provided by Orange, I keep losing the signal. I switched to Orange last October and have spent hours on the telephone to Bombay ever since. I have finally given up on Orange in despair and with high blood pressure and am switching to another provider. Orange now want to charge me a cancellation fee of over £200 and a disconnection fee of £28. They have been charging me for months for failing to provide a decent service. They'll have to sue if they want to charge me for leaving as well.

Rather an interesting interview ????

After the Today programme's interview with Andrew Lansley this morning, James Naughtie commented,"Rather an interesting interview". Actually it barely kept me awake, but it did illustrate the two worst problems with British politics and British media. The story is how spokesmen of three parties tried and failed to reach concensus on care for the elderly.

The politics problem is a classic example of how useless the House of Commons is at improving legislation. Party point-scoring always takes precedence over writing better laws, not just when an election is approaching. The media problem is the preoccupation with process over substance, so as usual we learn nothing of the policy issues but everything about who said what to whom first. The BBC couples this with an insistence on devoting only a few nano-seconds to each subject and the interviewer's usual refusal to allow the interviewee to complete a single sentence.

How can we ever have a grown-up political debate in Britain ?

Did Blair lie to the Inquiry ? (1) Regime Change

The inquiry panel asked Tony Blair if regime change was a valid objective. He replied, "No,the absolute key issue was WMD", but almost every other answer showed that the answer should have been "Yes". He conflated the two issues of WMD and regime change, saying that they were "...two ways of saying the same thing". He told the inquiry that the only commitment he had given Bush at Crawford was "...to deal with Saddam". The panel suggested that he and Bush had been agreed on ends but not means and he responded, "Agreed on both...".

At the end when infamously Blair refused to admit any regrets, he said, "Responsibility but no regrets at removing Saddam Hussein. He threatened not just a region but the world." The inquiry tackled him on the Fern Britton interview where he said that despite the lack of WMD, "I would still have thought it right to remove him. I mean obviously you would have had to use and deploy different arguments about the nature of the threat." His disingenuous response was to pretend that despite his experience he had been tricked.

LIARS: Truth was a casualty even before the Iraq War

It may be that listening to the pathetic excuses and Jesuitical wriggling of a succession of Labour ministers at the Iraq Inquiry has left me more than usually disgusted and angry with New Labour even before Blair's testimony. I know there were honourable exceptions like Robin Cook and Chris Smith but too many self-serving apologists allowed Tony Blair to take us to war. Rarely has a war been wrong on so many levels - legal, moral and even the realpolitik of self-interest.

My disgust boiled over today after hours of Goldsmith so that when I heard Denis MacShane on the news, I sent him the following message:

I have just heard your comments on the World at One. You should be ashamed of yourself. You showed your well-established contempt for international law because it gives a voice to foreigners, including the French ! You also made clear by your cheap attack on the Liberal Democrats that you think regime change is a legitimate reason for the use of force. Thank goodness you will never serve in the Foreign Office or any ministry again.

Are they related ?

Has anyone noticed the amazing resemblance between Cllr Roger Hayes from Kingston and Jonathan Pryce in "Sweeney Todd" at the Whitehall Theatre. I wonder if by any chance they are related. Perhaps we should be told.

Comediana -trivia about comedians 2

I saw a face I thought I knew in a television trailer. It was Hugh Lloyd, who used to appear in Hancock's Half Hour. I looked him up and discovered, to my delight, that he was a lifelong Liberal. Asked to appear in a Conservative PPB, he responded, "I rather jump off Beachy Head". His Liberalism began at the age of five when Lloyd George patted him on the head.

Comediana -trivia about comedians 1

The University of Chard offers the post of Reader in History of Comedy to the first person to respond with Sid James' middle name, which is most unexpected.

Ban the ban

The Home Secretary, wishing to appear tough (Don't they all ?), has banned Islam4UK under the Terrorism Act 2000. This legislation which originated in Roy Jenkins' original and "temporary" Prevention of Terrorism Act should be repealed. The state backed by whatever majority should not ban groups of people, however small or unpopular a minority. It's called Freedom of Association. The state should only ban activities such as terrorism, whoever commits them.

Alan Johnson said, "We are clear that an organisation should not be able to circumvent proscription by simply changing its name." Be as clear as you like, old son. You have hit upon the other argument against this legislation. It doesn't work ! Any group will simply evade the sanction by reforming under a new name, every time you ban an old one.