Skip to main content

Woolas: Liar and New Labour Minister... and?

Phil Woolas loathes Liberal Democrats, and the feeling is completely mutual. He has always been extremely hostile and combative towards us. It is not therefore a surprise that he overstepped the line and became the first MP in over a century to be chucked out of the House of Commons for the disgraceful way he conducted his campaign.

Except that Mr. Speaker Bercow has decided that his ejection from the House must await the outcome of his appeal. I won't speculate on why the Speaker has made such a strange decision- it seems to second guess the appeal- it shows a slight contempt for the lower court, but then Mr Speaker Bercow is not too big on legal niceties.

In any event the decision of the lower court is pretty damning- it will be exceptionally difficult for the Court of Appeal, or even the House of Lords/Supreme Court- if it comes to it- to set aside the judgement.

But then the issue is removed for the legal and returns to the political: a by-election may need to be held. Given the change in Circumstances, many commentators- such as John Rentoul- dismiss the chances of the Liberal Democrats out of hand. They may well underestimate the determination of the Lib Dems to fight this to the last vote- it is not certain that Labour can or should recover from this disgrace, should the by-election actually take place.

On the other hand, Labour have something of a track record of dishonesty and hypocrisy, so why should Woolas be punished when Harman, Blair and the rest were not? I think the answer is "pour encourager les autres", to show that there are limits and that the personal hatred of Woolas led him beyond the acceptable limits by quite some way.

If the Appeal is dismissed, then the by election is profoundly interesting. It will be an acid test after the Liberal Democrat choice of entering the coalition and the equally controversial choice of Labour for Edward Miliband.

We will see the the result, but despite the polls, I see the Liberal Democrats are attracting a lot of new members, and the loathing of Woolas by the Liberal Democrats is equally visceral- if restrained by law in a way that Labour were not.

I am not afraid of the current position, and despite the contempt of Labour, I am increasingly sure that the country at large recognises the fact that Labour in office was more divided and drastically less competent that the Coalition- and that even the Conservatives now publicly recognise that the presence of the Liberal Democrats in office has improved the administration of government. We need to take our case to the country, and in particular to take the case for electoral reform to the country. The crux of this government will depend of the strength of the Lib Dems: now we must demonstrate this. The Oldham by election will be very difficult for the Lib Dems, but it will also be crucial: the future success of the party is riding on it.

I fear it may be that simple.
Labels:

Comments

Lord Blagger said…
Interesting that its illegal to lie about an opponent.

It's not illegal to lie to the public.

Shows the priority of MPs
8:35 am
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Liberal Democrats v Conservatives: the battle in the blogosphere

It is probably fair to say that the advent of Nick Clegg, the new leader of the Liberal Democrats, has not been greeted with unalloyed joy by our Conservative opponents. Indeed, it would hardly be wrong to say that the past few weeks has seen some "pretty robust" debate between Conservative and Liberal Democrat bloggers. Even the Queen Mum of blogging, the generally genial Iain Dale seems to have been featuring as many stories as he can to try to show Liberal Democrats in as poor a light as possible. Neither, to be fair, has the traffic been all one way: I have "fisked' Mr. Cameron's rather half-baked proposals on health, and attacked several of the Conservative positions that have emerged from the fog of their policy making process. Most Liberal Democrats have attacked the Conservatives probably with more vigour even than the distrusted, discredited Labour government. So what lies behind this sharper debate, this emerging war in the blogosphere? Partly- in my ...
20 comments
Read more

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

Are the Liberal Democrats Libertarian?

A few days ago Cicero met with one of the better known figures in the Libertarian Alliance, Brian Mickelthwait . Brian writes for various blogs that I enjoy reading- including Samizdata . Ahead of our meeting Brain expressed "scepticism" about the Libertarian credentials of the Liberal Democrats: "My charge was that when you meet a Liberal Democrat you never know what he will believe. The one who talks to you is likely to say what you want to hear. But the others will simultaneously be telling other people with quite different views what they want to hear. So don't vote for these lying creeps." Political parties- all of them- are coalitions of people who quite often disagree with each other. Apparently we are not supposed to "air our dirty linen in public", but actually one of the reasons that the Liberal Democrats appealed to me was that they were prepared to talk about issues and policies amongst themselves in public. The eclipse of the Liberal Party...
18 comments
Read more