The ThunderDragon

Nick Clegg is a party-pooper. And a control-freak one at that.

Nick Clegg, the Lib Dem leader said it should be made illegal for shops to sell alcohol at a loss.

Branding big supermarkets “irresponsible” for aggressively promoting alcohol sales, Mr Clegg told the Sheffield Alcohol Conference that many big stores are selling drinks at a price that does not even cover their own costs for duty and VAT. (The Telegraph)

I have one thing to say to that: fuck off you authoritarian cunt*.

It is up the alcoholmarkets supermarkets how they price the alcohol they sell, whether it be cheap or not. The only people who have any right to object to this are their shareholders, because it matters to them how much money the company makes.

If they want to sell me alcohol at a lower price than they pay for it, and if I want to drink it, then that is our own decisions. They know that they are selling it at that price, and I know what drinking too much alcohol could do my body - and so we all make our own informed choices.

It certainly is nothing to do with politicans.

* I apologise if youy are offended by the language, but tough. But it’s how I feel - and it’s true.

Over the last week, Nick Clegg has thrown down a gauntlet of sorts to David Cameron. Proposing tax cuts - a distinctly Conservative idea - is definitely a challenge to Cameron, a blatant attempt to steal some of his support. But it’s not working, obvously.

However, what it does do is give Cameron an opportunity to, as Danny Finkelstein says, bring the Lib Dems to the right and prevent any thought of a Lib-Lab merger in the future.

But what can Cameron do to bring this around? More Lib Dem love-bombing is essential, and their good ideas should be adopted and brought on board. He must encourage bi-partisan discussion and initiatives to bring the parties closer together even when not electorally necessary.

The Conservatives need to grasp this nettle and embrace the few good ideas the Lib Dems have. Their idea of cutting tax, however poorly costed in specifics, is correct in principle and so should be adopted with those caveats.

To not take this action would be a massive missed opportunity.

Nick Clegg has had a “go back to your constituencies and prepare for government” moment in his Cameron-lite - no notes, wandering around the stage - conference speech today when he said:

I can tell you where we’re headed - government. (Full speech here)

Yeah. Right.

Somehow, I just can’t see the Lib Dems forming the next government. Or any government, come to that. At any point.

Especially considering the latest polls, which put the parties on the following figures:

• Conservatives: 52%
• Labour: 24%
• Lib Dems: 12%

Now that is a fantastic result for the Conservatives, and a devastating blow to the Lib Dems, especially just after their conference where one would normally expect a poll boost. However, one can’t help but almost feel sorry for the them as their entire conference has been almost entirely overshadowed by the City meltdown and the Labour MP revolution.

According to Electoral Calculus, a general election with this vote share would leave Parliament as follows:

• Conservative: 493 seats
• Labour: 121 seats
• Lib Dems: 8 seats

Of course, this isn’t likely to be the actual result of any election, as it ignores the impact of any SNP/Plaid Cymru vote in Scotland and Wales. And it relies on a uniform swing, without paying any attention to local issues.

However, what it does show is the Lib Dems are suffering. Seriously suffering. They simply cannot compete aginst Cameron at the moment, no matter what they say or do. Clegg is seen to be nothing more than Cameron-lite by the general public, and as they want to get rid of this failing Labour government, they are turning to the Opposition in their droves.

What it really comes down to is that as the Lib Dems are primarily a protest vote repository rather than a serious political party with a credible claim to being able to form a government. Which is why they are being shunned by the electorate at the moment.

When will the Lib Dems finally admit that they won’t ever form the government?

Nick Clegg is right that there is “insurrection in the air” and that the British people “are ready for change”. As Alice Miles explains:

An administration that everyone from backbenchers to truckers now dares to hold to ransom cannot manage a way through the next two years.

But they’ll keep on truckin’ trying.

The one thing Clegg is certainly wrong that the Lib Dems are the only party that can make change happen. If anything, the Lib Dems are the only party that couldn’t make it happen - because they will never get in to government.

Tax cutting appears to be the order of the day, with Cameron’s commitment to a “long-term tax reduction” swiftly followed by Clegg saying that he will fight against “excessive taxation”.

About bloody time!

It seems that Cameron is now satisfied that the Conservatives have been “decontaminated” enough to make any support for tax cutting in to a virtue, rather than the vice that a statist Labour have made it out to be over more than a decade.

The Lib Dems, on the other hand, appear to have finally realised that people want less tax - and so they decide to reverse all their previous tax policies and “principles” and jump on the tax-cutting bandwagon. Whoops, your poll-chasing is showing , Nick!

However, that two parties have now “come out” in favour of tax cuts cannot be anything but a good thing, as it puts pressure and the political emphasis on Labour to demonstrate why taxing and spending [and wasting] should be the way to go.

Just to be quire clear - we’re talking about cutting tax, not slashing it. State institutions will not be unfunded by a Conservative government. But useless iniatives and excessive money wasting will be curtailed - and the money left in the pockets of the people who earn it. Us, the taxpayers.

Nick Clegg proposes such a plan. Now the flippant answer to this is simple “remove the Lib Dems, then”. But this doesn’t answer the question. And besides, there never will be 150 Lib Dem MPs to remove.

On a serious note, Clegg’s justification doesn’t work. He wants to remove 150 MPs from the Commons - taking it to around 500 - to save money. Well, primarily to save political parties from having to raise money from big donors. Let’s have a little pop quiz:

So why do political parties raise money?
a) To pay MPs
b) To run the rest of the party
c) So they can swan off on holiday

So Clegg’s idea that fewer MPs equal less need for party fund-raising just doesn’t make sense… especially since he also wants more state money to go to political parties. Which would eat up the £30m savings he said would be generated by cutting the number of MPs. There is, of course, another way of saving money - cutting MPs salaries or expense allowances.

The idea of cutting the number of MPs also raises other questions - such as the potential impact on democracy. Is fewer MPs a goof thing? Not in and of itself. If anything, actually, more of a bad thing as MPs become more and more distant from their constituents. Any reduction in the numebr of MPs would have to be matched in devolution of powers to local councils, or as part of a proper devolution system - equal English, Scottish, and Welsh parliaments.

The plan to reduce the number of MPs sounds good in a press release or a speech, but in reality it isn’t much cop. The downsides of the loss of representatives simply isn’t worth the tiny amount of money that is [supposedly] to be saved.

The loser today is Nick Clegg, as about a fifth of his party vote against his orders with the Conservatives and for democracy, and three frontbenchers resign.

But, of course, the real loser today is Britain, who has pretty much just had the Lisbon Treaty ratified without the people being asked.

Nick Clegg wants a vote on EU membership but not on the EU Constitution ‘Lisbon Treaty’.

How does this make any sense?

If you consider that the British people should have vote over whether or not they stay within the European Union, surely you also think that they should have a say over the direction in which it develops? You can’t seriously believe that the people should have a choice over membership but not the direction in which that organisation develops.

If a referendum is held on the Treaty and the British people vote “yes”, then it is obvious that they want to stay within the EU. If they vote “no”, then the issue of EU membership itself becomes an issue.

I agree completely with Nigel Farage, leader of UKIP, over this when he says:

The Lib Dem leadership should either back a referendum on the Treaty or finally accept that they don’t want the British people to vote on the EU at all.

The Lib Dem membership seem to want to back a referendum on the Treaty, so why don’t the leadership? Is it because they’re chicken, and want to be able to sit on the fence? Yes, of course it is.

Nick Clegg has broken his party’s 2005 manifesto commitment to supporting a referendum on the EU Constitution Treaty. He is, however, following on from Ming Campbell, who also opposed letting the people of Britain vote on the one piece of legislation which will dictate how this country works for the foreseeable future. Clegg said:

But he is wrong - in every way. It is not “playing games with the treaty itself” or specifically ‘party politics’ to suggest that the very people who are supposed to give parliament it’s power should be allowed to vote on it, considering that all the main parties were elected with promises of a referendum on this issue in their manifestos. Since two of those parties have broken their pledges, they really don’t have that democratic right any more to decide this issue at the very least.

The “Lisbon Treaty” as it is now called is not “a series of amendments to a sort of edifice of treaties already in place” but far more than a codification of existing treaties - and even that would be subject to a referendum, just like any codification of the British constitution would have to be - since it provides the very foundations of the removal of sovereign power [even if, as some claim, that has already begun] in the creation of an EU President and Foreign Minister.

Quite simply, Clegg’s refusal to push for a referendum on this puts the lie to the very name of his party - the Liberal Democrats. Maybe that’s why there are rumours of him wanting to change to to the “Liberal Party” instead?

The idea of a referendum is not about getting the treaty voted down, but about democratic legitimacy. If a popular vote has been held, no-one who opposed the treaty can possibly argue against it being ratified and becoming law. If we the people vote for the treaty then those of us who oppose it would accept it. But if it is passed through a Parliament which promised to hold a referendum on this when it was voted in refuses to meet it’s promises, then the opposite will happen.

Such large changes as proposed by the “Lisbon Treaty” require a referendum - or at least it should in the eyes of any true believer democrat.

UPDATE: At least all Lib Dems aren’t as anti-democratic as their leaders [via DK].

UPDATE 2: Norfolk Blogger yet again shows why his blog is one of the few Lib Dem blogs I bother to read.

The calamitously close result of the Lib Dem leadership battle didn’t take long to be raised up as a comment against one of Clegg’s proposals - by a Lib Dem, no less:

If Clegg’s 511 vote majority can already - remember he was only elected less than a month ago! - be able to be described in terms of him not having a mandate, there may well be internal party/activist troubles coming along for Clegg far sooner than anyone could have realised.