Having recently blogged about why I think the coalition is most likely going to last the best part of a whole term of Parliament. It is now time for the companion piece about why I am not even sure it would be desirable to bring down the government quickly. On balance, I really want to see the back of the coalition as soon as possible and if they fail quickly, proving my last blog wrong then I would be delighted. But if that doesn’t happen here are a few reasons
Continue reading Some silver linings if the coalition does last.
My recent blog on why I think it is a mistake for the left to be focussing so much on the Liberal Democrats generated some interesting debate, on the blog, on Facebook and on Twitter.
Much of this debate focussed on the need to attack the coalition to try and bring it down as quickly as possible. Now I cant say that this would be anything other than a hot damn good thang! But I feel the need to write a couple of quick blogs about firstly how likely I think
Continue reading 5 reasons why the Coalition will last.
A significant trick will have been missed by the left if we focus all or our ire with the coalition on the Liberal Democrats. The sense of almost visceral hatred, at the alleged betrayal is for my money misplaced and is meaning that the left are missing a trick in respect of who the enemy really are.
For my money the Liberal Democrats really didn’t have too much choice after the election given the mathematics of the parliament. There really wasn’t a credible possibility of a workable Lib/Lab coalition and for
Continue reading Time to stop wasting time hating the Lib Dems.
I am a long standing and passionate supporter of electoral reform. I feel that our current system of voting is manifestly unfair and skews our public policy agenda in favour of the few and not the many. The alternative vote is far from perfect, it isn’t the system I would chose but it is better than the status quo.
So I was delighted when the Labour promised to back AV in the manifesto. And whilst I was devastated to see the Tories back in power a small crumb of comfort for
Continue reading Yes to AV, Yes to Equal Constituencies, but not like this.
Some time ago in my “5 reasons to be optimistic…” blog I suggested that it was possible that there might be some elements of the con-dem agenda that we would (whisper it) actually be quite pleased with on the left.
Not the economic class warfare on the poor that the con-dems are engaging in, nor the attempt to deconstruct universal education, nor for that matter most of their public policy agenda. But where they do seem to have stolen a march is in terms of the Liberty agenda.
I agree whole heartedly
Continue reading Crime and Punishment
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