New Little Red Book in France

[Uncle Monty]

I feel you're actually taking seriously this "in the national interest" spin on a rather grubbier enterprise!

You really believe that risking, even apparently glorying in, the prospect of electoral, and perhaps actual, annihilation -- leaving decent traditional Lib Dem voters with no one to vote for -- for the sake of keeping a Tory government going on the promise of a few unimportant scraps is sensible or principled? (If my wife's continuing heated correspondence with the LD MP in our old constituency in Sussex is anything to go by, few LD MPs really think so!)

So what's it all for? So that a few MPs can say "I once had five delusional minutes of illusory power before my party sank without trace"?

[french frank]

I feel you're actually taking seriously this "in the national interest" spin on a rather grubbier enterprise!

I've never mentioned the phrase 'in the national interest'. These are policies that were in the LD manifesto and in coalition with the Conservatives, they've been introduced. If you think they are 'unimportant scraps', we'll have to differ. The fact is that whoever won the election - outright - would now be making savage cuts in public spending. Not what Labour promised, but it's what you would have got. In coalition with them the Liberal Democrats would still only have ended up with 'a few unimportant scraps'.

I'm not sure on reading your comments here whether your chief criticism is the reneging on the pledge over tuition fees or going into a coalition with this Tory party. At all. From what you say, I suspect the latter.

But many LD voters (as distinct from paid up members or MPs) are not so implacably opposed to the Tories. In fact they are implacably opposed to Labour. But, you want the party to stay clean so that you can vote for it with a clear conscience ("Don't blame me, I voted Liberal Democrat")? The party doesn't exist to give people a 'neither of the other nasty parties' option, and to keep a permanent place on the opposition benches. If that's grubby, that's politics.

I'm disappointed that you can't concede some benefits in what the LDs have achieved.

[french frank]

I have to explain something: On my view there's a small check box at the bottom of each post allowing me to close the thread. I recently discovered that if I inadvertently click anywhere along the white band on a level with the check box, it closes the thread and I don't notice because I wasn't looking at the box.

Being an epileptic, I sometimes have nervous tics which result in me clicking the mouse unintentionally, especially when agitated

As you were ....

[Edit: An explanation as to why this thread was abruptly closed about an hour ago]

[Mahlerei]

Oh Frenchie, you're a card :)

[Bryn]

Or even a card carrier.

[french frank]

Well, it certainly seems to have wrong-footed the opposition . A word about long extracts in foreign languages. The BBC also had an infrequently implemented rule that you couldn't link to a website in a foreign language either. I think, perhaps, it's better to link to a site, if you can, rather than post a long message on the forum. Though, in this case there's probably enough information in the two press articles to convey what the general discussion is about.

[Personally, I always feel horribly exposed when trying to translate the elegant prose of a French littérateur. Vinteuil's experience may have equipped him better than mine did.]


Now ... careful ........

[Uncle Monty]

I've never mentioned the phrase 'in the national interest'. These are policies that were in the LD manifesto and in coalition with the Conservatives, they've been introduced. If you think they are 'unimportant scraps', we'll have to differ. The fact is that whoever won the election - outright - would now be making savage cuts in public spending. Not what Labour promised, but it's what you would have got. In coalition with them the Liberal Democrats would still only have ended up with 'a few unimportant scraps'.

I'm not sure on reading your comments here whether your chief criticism is the reneging on the pledge over tuition fees or going into a coalition with this Tory party. At all. From what you say, I suspect the latter.

But many LD voters (as distinct from paid up members or MPs) are not so implacably opposed to the Tories. In fact they are implacably opposed to Labour. But, you want the party to stay clean so that you can vote for it with a clear conscience ("Don't blame me, I voted Liberal Democrat")? The party doesn't exist to give people a 'neither of the other nasty parties' option, and to keep a permanent place on the opposition benches. If that's grubby, that's politics.

I'm disappointed that you can't concede some benefits in what the LDs have achieved.

Well, I would just say "He who sups with the Devil should have a long spoon" Do you really think the Tories would concede anything to the Lib Dems that was important to them?

I'm not objecting to the tuition-fee stuff, because I found it enlightening and instructive! At least one had to admire their nerve in brazenly arguing black was white day after day. In the end they had to front up and say, apparently with a straight face, (I paraphrase) "Principles? Promises? But it's different now, we're in power. In the national interest".

So yes, of course I'm objecting to their doing a deal with the Tories at all. I believe political deals should only be done with people with whom you have something in common, and I don't believe the majority of Liberal people regard the Tories in this light. To do a deal with the obviously most IL-liberal party was cynical in the extreme, and I would have thought certain to end in tears. My late father-in-law was a big noise in the Liberals, and he used to reckon that 70% of the Liberal vote was anti-Tory, and 30% anti-Labour. That sounds about right to me. The Tory Weltanschauung, their Social Darwinism and elitism (in the worst sense) are simply not compatible with the principles of Liberalism as we understand the term.

As it is, I'm not sure that the LDs have actually "achieved" anything yet, except perhaps attracting derision and opprobrium from just about everyone. They may have attracted some painless concessions from an even more cynical crowd who certainly "saw them coming" (and will doubtless blame them for any bad outcomes), but I doubt if any of that can save their bacon.

[Flosshilde]

I have to explain something: On my view there's a small check box at the bottom of each post allowing me to close the thread. I recently discovered that if I inadvertently click anywhere along the white band on a level with the check box, it closes the thread and I don't notice because I wasn't looking at the box.

Being an epileptic, I sometimes have nervous tics which result in me clicking the mouse unintentionally, especially when agitated

As you were ....

[Edit: An explanation as to why this thread was abruptly closed about an hour ago]

Hi Frenchie, just seen this - perhaps you should now close (intentionally ) the thread I started?

[aeolium]

I agree with much of that, Uncle Monty. But the main problem - which the Coalition government has exposed more clearly - is that all the three main parties essentially share the same approach with only minor variations: the policies of privatisation/deregulation/PFI/retaining nuclear weapons/pursuing military campaigns overseas/cutting welfare (disgracefully, for the disabled)/a tax regime with higher indirect taxes for the poor and middling and rampant avoidance for the rich and the corporate. And bringing the topic back to the issue of the Hessel pamphlet, this is one reason why there is such widespread contempt in the general public for the political class right across Europe. It is a class which has presided over the total discrediting of an economic system and condemned a generation to immiseration - yet it behaves as though the same policies can continue to be pursued. It is not so much "Après moi le déluge" as "Voici le déluge - quel dommage!"

As to the merits of the pamphlet (which, like others here, I have not read except in the quoted extracts), I'm all in favour. There is a long tradition in Britain of powerful political pamphlets, from Milton to Swift and Cobbett - I imagine this is also the case in France. Often it is not so much a new idea that has a powerful impact but that a pamphlet encapsulates and intensifies a latent public feeling. But good though 'savage indignation' is, it needs more, and not merely the reasoned analysis of failure, such as that provided by David Harvey's illuminating lectures. It is the question 'What is to be done?' to mobilise that indignation into pressure for change: what specific actions can be taken, given that elections are largely a deckchair-rearranging exercise at present? They can be small actions such as the anti-Vodafone campaign but small campaigns can cumulatively lead to greater results; only 30 years ago the environmental movement was widely seen as the domain of fanatics and nutters but it is now mainstream.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

well put aeolium ....

[Uncle Monty]

I agree with much of that, Uncle Monty. But the main problem - which the Coalition government has exposed more clearly - is that all the three main parties essentially share the same approach with only minor variations

If that is right, we need to understand how it came about. We seem to be stuck with capitalism, partly by default -- the lack of a credible alternative, since all experiments at socialism were either smashed or starved, or were utter travesties not worthy of the name. Not surprisingly, the world has seen this sort of stuff, and says, "No thanks".

But I refuse to regard capitalism as a Good Thing (Sellar & Yeatman), and have spent most of my life impotently bewailing its selfishness, unkindness, rapacity, etc.

It seems to me that we have a situation of multiple tails wagging the political dog, rather than the other way round. My particular obsession is with de facto government by press and media, but just as illegitimate is government by the banking system and economics generally. No one elects these people, or asks them to speak for us and dictate our choices.

At least we do more or less elect our politicos, even with the imperfections of the voting system. I feel we should back them if and when they want to raise two fingers to the press, or get tough with the banks, etc., but we have allowed these and other institutions to both set and police the political agenda, and governments are running scared.

I'm all for mobilising indignation, as long as we are clear what we ought to be indignant about, and with whom. We can't rely on the media to tell us, as witness the synthetic outrage about MPs' expenses, which managed to whip the whole country into a frenzy of something or other -- arguably socialism of the "Them wot's got more than me is sods" tendency :cool2:

[Simon]

I feel we should back them if and when they want to raise two fingers to the press, or get tough with the banks, etc., but we have allowed these and other institutions to both set and police the political agenda, and governments are running scared.

I couldn't agree more with this, as a conservative.

So, what do we do then?

[Uncle Monty]

I couldn't agree more with this, as a conservative.

So, what do we do then?

Well, I'm not entirely sure, but save me a place on the front row at the barricades, Comrade

[amateur51]

I couldn't agree more with this, as a conservative.

So, what do we do then?

Well we have two perfect opportunties, both to do with the Murdoch Empire:a) We can all back the Met in its pursuit of the New of the World's hackers and the bosses who knew about it; b) we can support the Government's reining-in of New international's advance on Sky and the news monopoly.

Except, of course, that Dave has Andy Coulson, ex-NoW editor as his PR supremo and Vince has blown the best chance The Coalition had of reining-in NI.

Cynicism aside, those are the sorts of things that we should be pushing 'our' goverment to do.

Quite what this has to do with being a conservative i don't know but I do agree

A chap on this morning's Today programme calculated that the ex-Labour MP for Bury North who has just been jailed for 18 months for expenses fraud & deception may well be out in May 2011 - make you weep!

[Uncle Monty]

A chap on this morning's Today programme calculated that the ex-Labour MP for Bury North who has just been jailed for 18 months for expenses fraud & deception may well be out in May 2011 - make you weep!

This is off the main topic, but do you not feel that the sentencing in this case was at least media-influenced? Even if the fiddling was deliberate, I wouldn't have expected the sum involved to warrant much more than community service. 18 months sounds way over the top to me. This is not America