Skip to main content

No power on Earth

I stayed up to watch the result from Dunfermline and West Fife. I had my spies at the count who were telling me that it was looking good, that we were ahead but that the more Labour pit villages were not in yet. Of course, when those boxes were opened, it was clear that Willie Rennie had got it.

Does this excellent result mean anything long term?

The answer is maybe.

Firstly we can say that despite the awful experiences of the last two months, the Liberal Democrats are emerging intact. The party has not gone into meltdown, and the Conservatives are still weaker than they seem. The callow and shallow David Cameron is not the saviour of the Tories on his own.

Despite the aspiration of the Cameron clique for the Conservatives to be "Liberal", they are totally unconvincing. Meanwhile across the media, it is clear that on such issues as ID cards, civil liberties, and localism and local government the arguments are headed the Lib Dem way.

There are limits to what the government should be allowed to do, and as all three leadership candidates said yesterday, there are limits to what proportion of the national income that the government is allowed to take in taxation.

Labour's permanent revolution: endless legislation and endless tinkering with the tax code and regulation is looking more played out than ever.

To misquote Victor Hugo: No power on Earth- not even ourselves- can stop an idea whose time has come. That idea is Liberalism.

Comments

Andy said…
> the more Labour pit villages were not in yet. Of course, when those boxes were opened, it was clear that Willie Rennie had got it.

It was that runner-up spot in the Scottish Coal-Carrying Championships wot won it, then!
2:57 pm
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Concert and Blues

Tallinn is full tonight... Big concerts on at the Song field The Weeknd and Bonnie Tyler (!). The place is buzzing and some sixty thousand concert goers have booked every bed for thirty miles around Tallinn. It should be a busy high summer, but it isn´t. Tourism is down sharply overall. Only 70 cruise ships calling this season, versus over 300 before Ukraine. Since no one goes to St Pete, demand has fallen, and of course people think that Estonia is not safe. We are tired. The economy is still under big pressure, and the fall of tourism is a significant part of that. The credit rating for Estonia has been downgraded as the government struggles with spending. The summer has been a little gloomy, and soon the long and slow autumn will drift into the dark of the year. Yesterday I met with more refugees: the usual horrible stories, the usual tears. I try to make myself immune, but I can´t. These people are wounded in spirit, carrying their grief in a terrible cradling. I try to project hop...
Post a Comment
Read more

One Year On

  Head vabariigi iseseisvuspäeva! Happy Estonian Independence Day! It is one year since I stood outside the Estonian Parliament for the traditional raising of the national flag from Tall Hermann tower. Looking at the young fraternities gathered with their flags, I was very sure that Estonia too would soon be facing the aggression of the criminal Russian regime. A tragic and dark day. 5 eyes intelligence had been clear: an all out invasion was going to happen, and Putin´s goals included- and still include- "restoration" of Russian imperial power across Europe, even to the Atlantic. Yet there was one Western intelligence failure: we all underestimated the guts of the Ukrainian armed forces, the ZSU, and its President and people. One year on, Estonia, and indeed all the front line states against Russia, knows that Ukraine saved us. Estonia used that time to prepare itself, should that "delayed" onslaught ever be unleashed, but equally the determination of Kaja Kallas, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Media misdirection

In the small print of the UK budget we find that the Chancellor of the Exchequer (the British Finance Minister) has allocated a further 15 billion Pounds to the funding for the UK track and trace system. This means that the cost of the UK´s track and trace system is now 37 billion Pounds.  That is approximately €43 billion or US$51 billion, which is to say that it is amount of money greater than the national GDP of over 110 countries, or if you prefer, it is roughly the same number as the combined GDP of the 34 smallest economies of the planet.  As at December 2020, 70% of the contracts for the track and trace system were awarded by the Conservative government without a competitive tender being made . The program is overseen by Dido Harding , who is not only a Conservative Life Peer, but the wife of a Conservative MP, John Penrose, and a contemporary of David Cameron and Boris Johnson at Oxford. Many of these untendered contracts have been given to companies that seem to have ...
Post a Comment
Read more