The Magical Mathematics of Jo Swinson

If he could talk to the Liberals...

Back in the 1980s, the mythical two-headed psuhmi-pull-u creature from Doctor Doolittle was used as an allegory to lampoon the "Two Davids" leadership of the Liberal-SDP Alliance, referencing the not rare instances when Owen and Steel contradicted each other over the centrist parties' policies.

Times change, and this morning on Radio 4 Today, the now long-merged Liberal Democrats have only one head in charge, but several different faces on show.

Party leader Jo Swinson, walking, talking proof that there is nothing more irksome than an incompetent narcissist, held forth, chuntering on her party's latest "bold" decision - to cancel the UK's withdrawal from the European Union without even bothering with the fig-leaf of holding a referendum.

After all, she hubristically declared, if the country elects a majority Liberal Democrat government with cancelling Brexit as its major (some might say only) policy, "then that's what they'll get." PM Swinson would have a mandate to cancel.

It may seem a fanciful scenario, to say the least, but nonetheless galling coming as it does from the party that has spent decades decrying how our first-past-the-post voting system routinely returns parliaments that do not represent the views of voters. As she well knows, and must be banking on in her delusions of grandeur, if the other parties' votes split fairly evenly, a lead party can win outright power with as little as one in three of the votes cast - Tony Bliar achieved his third and final win in 2005 with just 35% of the poll.

So Ms Swinson has somehow executed a mathematical miracle whereby something slightly less that 35% could conceivably count for more than the 52% vote to Leave in the 2016 referendum.

Not so democratic Democrats, it would seem to most rational observers, though with Swinson somehow squaring this with her party supposedly championing liberalism against authoritarianism, reason may not be a word to lightly associate with this band of chancers.

Swinson was not finished though. As the BBC's Justin Webb asked her to confirm in that case that she was now against a so-called People's Vote rerun of the referendum, she changed tack. Not at all - it is party policy after all the have a new vote (perhaps with only one box to tick to approve Remain) before any General Election. It would only be different afterwards and meantime, shame on Jeremy Corbyn, just because... well, shame on him!

So, if you don't want a second referendum, vote Lib Dem.
And if you do want a second referendum, vote Lib Dem.

Ok, said Webb - his eyes rolling even on the radio - what about Scotland? Why is she against a second referendum on Scottish independence but apparently in favour of a second one on Brexit?

Ah, totally different, she opined. The best way forward for Britain was to be united but in the European Union.

Fine, so if she wins power at Westminster and that is a mandate to cancel Brexit without a referendum, presumably if the SNP win at Holyrood, that is a mandate for them to declare independence without a referendum.

Of course, you already know her answer was "No."
Essentially, a referendum is only a good thing if you promise to agree with Jo.

And so what we are left with is what we have always known - liberals are not democratic. Their idea of democracy is that the great unwashed turn up every few years and confirm their right to govern at their patronising best. Public votes are fine as long as they go the right way. If they don't, well, time for some of Jo's incredible, liberally illiberal Magical Mathematics.

These are testing times for our society. It was the market-liberal consensus, developed on from Thatcherite monetarism in Nu-Labour and accepted by the wider Political Class, that created the conditions for the Leave vote: the inequality, the competition between marginalised domestic labour and vulnerable migrant workers, the plundering of the state through PFI and financial deregulation that triggered the 2008 recession. The evident self-entitlement of so many MPs in the expenses scandal at the same time did nothing to reconcile growing numbers of disaffected voters with our political leaders. Not the worst by far, Swinson still didn't forget to keep her receipts for a 29p pack of dusters and 78p for a can of Mr Sheen: Lib Dems are nothing if not shiny.

And it was the continuation of this disaster capitalism by the Coalition Government that Swinson was a fairly senior member of that sealed it. And of course the referendum itself was a response by David Cameron to divisions in his own party, one backed by Swinson's party when it was voted on in the Commons in 2015 (she herself to be fair had lost her seat and wasn't in parliament at the time)  - our liberal masters assumed of course a comfortable victory would ensue.

That it didn't, as we know, has been met by furious rebuttals that Leave voters didn't know what they were doing and should effectively be disenfranchised. While some Remainers and People's Voters would protest, the Lib Dems' enthusiastic adoption of Swinson's pledge to scrap Article 50 without a vote confirms that people who claim to be democrats and who have campaigned repeatedly for equal votes are in truth not democrats and are in fact perfectly happy for their own votes to count somewhat more heavily than those of their opponents.

As so many times in history, liberals (of all party hues) proclaim their superior knowledge of the facts and through that assert an informed knowing that eludes ordinary punters but entitles them to govern. The recent resort to the Courts over both the referendum and more recently the proroguing of Parliament betrays an almost naive if arrogant take that they can prove their opponents wrong and if so, everything will go back to meritocratic normality. In doing so, whatever their technical skills level may well be, what is clearly absent is any degree of emotional intelligence.

As we saw with the tick-boxing of Lib Dem policies through the austerity of the Coalition, these people will trumpet getting a deal on introducing a plastic bag tax in exchange for agreeing benefits cuts to the poorest and most vulnerable in society. They will claim that getting some extra funding for mental health counselling somehow makes up for all the suicides caused by introducing arduous tests for disability that were designed to fail vulnerable claimants. They are either clueless or callous, or both.

They will even try to excuse the most execrable decisions by promising to review their procedures to get it right next time, as Chief Whip Alastair Carmichael assured conference doubters over worries about the influx of expelled Tory MPs into their parliamentary ranks. Apparently, each of them was subjected to a 90 minute "grilling" by him to see if they shared the party's values. In spite of this undoubted Ordeal, perhaps via trial-by-lunch, former Tory MP Philip Lee, who opposed gay marriage and introduced legislation to ban migrants with HIV, ticked the relevant boxes.
So illiberal, but so job done...

They are of course playing with fire and are dreadfully ill-equipped to do so. Their actions do nothing to reconcile the deep division in our country, quite the contrary. And with their latest wheeze, they may well have already overplayed a hand they are viewing through a centrist magnifying glass.

The polls suggest that they have already plateaued and started to fall back from their May upsurge in the local and European elections. Swinson's smug style and twisted logic are unlikely to yield many more votes from rival parties. Yet what the polls do show is that her relentless focus on misrepresenting Labour and denouncing Jeremy Corbyn opens up the path to a potentially overwhelming victory for Johnson's Tories, especially if as is not entirely unlikely, they do come to some accommodation with Farage's Brexit Party. Combined, the Tory-BP vote in the current rolling average of polls is 46% to 25% Labour, 18% Lib Dem, 5% Green and 5% Nationalists. Repeated at a General Election, this would produce a Commons with somewhere over 470 hard right MPs out of a total of 650.

Now by Jo Swinson's logic that would be quite a mandate. Even although it might still be the choice of less than half the voters, No Deal would be a dead cert. But perhaps by then Jo will have defaulted to wanting a referendum.

Or maybe not. Maybe she'll be down at the ranch looking for a new pushmi-pull-u.

Illiberal and undemocratic - Swinson and Carmichael

Despatches from the Dustbin of History

This will be a brief post as the Lib Dems are barely worth a mention now. But the last few days have seen a smattering of risible press notices as they gather for their first conference since their near wipe out at the General Election where, after five years of enthusiastic collusion with the most extreme rightwing government we have ever had, they ended up with their lowest vote share since the 1950s and just 8 MPs. Their new leader, the rather inconsequential Tim Farron, promised a more progressive left of centre, anti-austerity strategy, claiming this was the natural ground for his battered party.

However, a month and a bit on from his election, this shifty character has shifted his politics distinctly to the right. With Jeremy Corbyn installed as Labour leader after one of the largest democratic exercises in British political history outside of legislative elections, hysterical Lib Dems are claiming a "gap in the market" is opening for their party to "fightback".

1981 - rightwing Labour MPs set up the SDP, which merged with the Liberals

Apparently, this is the yawning chasm between the Corbynite Labour Party and the Cameron Tories. Timmy apparently has fallen for the Daily Mail/BBC line that Corbyn is Stalin's angrier cousin and is preparing to impose a reign of red terror in spite of one analysis showing his economic policies are very close to those of the 1980s SDP-Liberal Alliance.

And so, we have Farron's former deputy boss, Vince Cable, the slayer of employment rights and the defeated MP for Twickenham, declaring that a veritable avalanche of anti-Corbyn Labour MPs are about to defect to the tattered banners of the House of Farron. Timmy himself said that he had "distressed" Labour MPs texting him (they apparently didn't feel like actually calling him) expressing how upset they are at the hundreds of thousands of new members who have joined the Labour Party.

The Labour rightwing have unsurprisingly dismissed the Lib Dems' claims. Yet perhaps it would make sense - our party system is no longer fit for purpose, reflecting neither voters nor even the politics of the respective parties members. We have been governed in a neoliberal consensus for so long that, like the old "front parties" in the Soviet bloc, many of the allegedly democratic choices we are given are devoid of all content, never mind differentiation.

As previously blogged here and across the Left, a realignment is needed and is indeed coming. Corbyn's election is the latest and perhaps most evident stage in it, but it is far from complete. Much sweat and tears will flow before any conclusion is reached - but just as Corbynites and others on the Left like the Greens need to work together, the Labour Right needs a new repository for its band of chancers, warmongers, privateers and dinosaurs. Where better than the apparently welcoming arms of the Lib Dems, whose twisting and weaving rootlessness would be ideal for the pro-austerity Blairites to find some modicum of machinery, however modest or even theoretical it might be in many parts of the country? They might even set up some sort of alliance and promise to break the mould of British politics.

80s revival or a has-beens' tour?

For now it probably is just dreaming on the part of Farron and Cable, a kickback to the 1980s with its perennial false dawns of centrist SDP/Liberal advance in their younger days. As  former New Romantic Timmy's more successful musical contemporaries China Crisis trilled, a case of Wishful Thinking.

For as he surveys the Bournemouth conference hall this weekend, this desperate would-be political gadfly might do well to reflect that the political divide is no longer along some sort of 1980's slide rule with a big soppy, soggy centre segment. In our broken nation, with its ever-growing extremes of rich and poor, the dividing line between progressive and neoliberal is growing ever sharper and deeper. Answers will be found in conviction and commitment to deep-seated change, not spin and dissimulation in some dilatory defence of a slightly softer status quo. Britain and politics have moved on from the vacuum of centrist opportunism.

Timmy may well see a great gap in front of his party. Indeed, it may even be a chasm - the wide, yawning dark mouth of the dustbin of history, beckoning him to jump in.

A Kick up the 80's - Wishful Thinking
 

The Walking Clegg

In Liverpool, the Lib Dem conference has today voted to rule out going into any future Coalition with itself.

The baffling but meaningless decision came as local police cordoned off the meeting following reports of zombies on the Mersey waterfront. On closer inspection it turned out that it was just a group of Lib Dem canvassers wandering aimlessly, clutching faded yellow leaflets mysteriously depicting two jockeys in a race. Although many appeared fairly docile, a number were seen to be behaving aggressively, threatening passers by with benefits reassessments and forcing them to accept invoices for their education.

An expert said, "It is a tragedy, but possibly self-inflicted. The evidence suggests some of them used to be mildly nice. But they appear to have come into contact with something nasty, perhaps from people they were mixing with. Whatever it was, it has left them devoid of both empathy and judgement."

Although the scenes, which were being filmed for the final installments of the horror series The Walking Clegg, were faintly upsetting to the point of being vaguely perplexing, the authorities concluded the lost group is likely to be officially harmless within a matter of weeks.

Secrecy surrounds how it will all end but there is speculation that the horde leader is likely to face a dreadful showdown somewhere in South Yorkshire, after which the remnants are expected to quietly fade away.

From the Green Surge to the Green Challenge

Vote for Policies - when people take a "blind" test on the policies they favour, they choose the Green Party

Over the last few months, initially quietly but surely picking up pace, the Green party saw its poll ratings for the 2015 General Election rising.

Back in the midst of the European election campaign, where the Greens were polling well for the P.R. elections, their UK election ratings were still stuck around 2%, with the odd jump up to 4% or 5% seen as a bit of an aberration. But one sticks out in my mind - on 14 May, Ipsos Mori reported a Green vote of 9% for the Euros AND 8% for Westminster.

It was such a leap, such an apparent "outlier", that few believed it, and some other polls just after took us back down to 3% or so. But, in the weeks after a creditable if disappointing Euro-result, Green membership rose steadily and by August was nudging up to 20,000 from 12,000 or so a year before. Then, after the Scottish referendum, with politically empowered Scots leading the way with joining up to anti-establishment parties, further south the Greens began to see not a flow but a surge of new members seeking to join a radical left of centre option as opposed to the rightwing UKIP. And when both the broadcasters and the established parties initially refused to include the Greens in the leadership debates for the 2015 General Election two things happened - party membership rocketed, at one point with one person joining every 14 seconds and the membership site repeatedly crashing from over-subscription. By early February, there were 52,000 members of the Greens in England & Wales, with a further 8,000 in Scotland and several hundred in Northern Ireland. With a combined UK total in excess of 60,000, Greens far outnumber now the 42,000 UKIP-ers and 44,000 official Lib Dem members.

The second thing that happened was a steady rise in the polls so that by the end of the year the Green Party reached 11% in one and is now regularly polling ahead of the Lib Dems. The UK polling report average poll of polls now stands at 7% for the Greens compared to 2% a year ago. 

And this last week, we saw yet another breakthrough - tentative, a figure within a figure, but perhaps like that poll of 14 May last year a sign of the times to come.

Ipsos Mori published a poll on 10 February with a headline figure of 7% for the Greens, who were in fourth place ahead of the Lib Dems with UKIP on 9%. But that was a figure for those absolutely certain to vote. Among those in the slightly less emphatic category of intending to vote, it was a different story: the Greens were on 9%, in third place nationally. UKIP had 8% and the Lib Dems 7%.

Not a massive lead, and within any margin of error. Yet ten months back, with UKIP polling at 27% in the Euros and the Greens still viewed as a minor party for Westminster elections, who could have imagined that it might even be possible?

As the voteforpolicies website shows, when people vote for policies blind to which party they are from, the largest number choose the policies of the Green Party. And in spite of the rubbish thrown at us in recent weeks by the rightwing commentariat and the Labour Party Anti-Green Party Unit, our ratings have consolidated and continued to grow. People want change - but not the fear-driven change promoted by UKIP and the Tories, or the continuing austerity endorsed by Labour and the Lib Dems. They want a fairer society, one where people look after each other, accept and enjoy difference rather than fear it, and where we work with nature rather than constantly damage and destroy it.

That is the task for the Greens now: to turn the Green Surge into the full-on Green Challenge - the challenge to the politics of despair; the challenge to the politics of vested interests; the challenge to show that another world is possible. And so possible too is a very different election result.

Poll Position - Greens move into third place?

GreenAid: The Video

Employing some humour to make a point has often been the most effective way of make a message stick. And so, as covered in the last blog piece, last weekend found the Liberal Democrats' federal conference in York being offered the services of a group of enthusiastic volunteer medics from the Green Party. Styling themselves on the 1970s M*A*S*H* satire, the Greens offered a range of support to the Lib Dems, whom they assumed would by now be riddled with guilt and disoriented from nearly four years of Coalition with the Tories.

Green Eurocandidates for Yorkshire and the Humber region were on hand to offer sympathy and remedies including an organic detox centre to get clean from the Coalition. However, after engaging with a number of Lib Dems, the Greens' lead candidate, Cllr Andrew Cooper, concluded that it was a hopeless case - those who remain in the Lib Dems apparently are either in deep denial about what they have done (and even what is happening to their collapsing party) or simply have no conscience in terms of the impact of their doings on society.

York is often portrayed as a "chocolate box" city, the epitome of what England should look like (or even does look like in American TV shows). But scratch the surface and the story is very different. Over a century ago, Seebohm Rowntree's groundbreaking report exposed the widespread poverty in what, even then, was regarded as a successful town. A century later and many statistics show that very little has changed - tens of thousands of people in the city, as elsewhere, remain mired in poverty. That the Lib Dems felt it was acceptable to turn up and proclaim the supposed success of the Coalition demonstrates their detachment from the reality of Britain today. But, as the video shows, the crowds of trade unionists, Greens, socialists, physiotherapists, actors, Labrador dogs and others who rallied outside the Barbican did their best to put them right.

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Death Wish Lib Dems

Registering now regularly below 10% in the national polls, the Lib Dems are showing increasingly frayed nerves as The Reckoning of the 2015 General Election gradually draws into sight. And looming large between now and then, the Slaughterhouse of the Euro-elections also beckons so very terrifyingly - even their own President, Tim Farron, concedes they may be completely wiped out in the Euros. Hurriedly, northern Lib Dem MPs have issued a report attacking austerity a mere four years and hundreds of Commons votes too late. Meanwhile, shaken by the rise of UKIP in the polls, Eurofanatic leader Nick Clegg is to face his opposite number among the Eurosceptics, Nigel Farage, in a debate that is likely to be about as compellingly memorable viewing as the final episode of BBC Eurosoap El Dorado. (remember?)

Against all this, they remain unapologetic for their years enabling the Tories to change Britain perhaps for a generation if not forever: in the stealth privatisation of the health service, the emasculation of local government via death by a million cuts, the stigmatising of disabled people as a drain on society and a host of tax cuts and regulatory changes to support big corporate business. They've made tough decisions, they claim - all too often rather too eagerly and proudly to sustain their facade of reluctance for long.

And now, today, their hubris, their delusion and their death wish stand naked before us all.

The Green Party received a leaked memo from the Lib Dem Head of Campaigns setting out their plans to target the Greens at the Euroelections.

First of all, it is a perhaps sound acknowledgement of the very real threat the Greens pose to the Lib Dems in the elections: with 2 sitting MEPs and strong chances of adding at least a further 4 or more to their total, they stand poised to overtake the junior Coalition partner in both seats and votes, making in effect as big a story as any rise in UKIP support. The Lib Dems nervousness is well founded here.

Less well founded is their target for their "smearing" of the Greens as "dinosaur left-wingers that are more red than green." It seems that the Lib Dems (whose constitutional name is still the Social & Liberal Democrats) view the Greens commitment to social justice and a more equal society as Jurassic age communism. So be it. It is far less of a commentary on the Greens than on just how far the Lib Dems have travelled in their power-seeking odyssey and how pathetically desperate they are to cling onto the privileges and office-troughs they have their snouts so firmly stuck in.

For the appalling truth the Lib Dems plan to reveal about the Greens is the party's opposition to TTIP; the Trans-Atlantic Trade & Investment Partnership currently being (secretly) negotiated between the EU and the USA. This treaty sets up a free-trade zone between these two areas, allegedly to help harmonise commercial standards on each side of the Pond, but also to facilitate the accumulation of wealth by large business corporations. Not only will trade duties be relaxed (denuding public treasuries of much needed tax revenue) but large American companies will be able to participate in public procurement in Europe (including the UK). Crucially, if the Governments of any European countries impose any restrictions through public policy that might reduce the profits of these predators, they will be able to sue that country for damages. Secret abritrators rather than public courts will decide such cases, making the whole process ever more opaque and undemocratic.

India and Australia have already come unstuck with similar treaties where companies have successfully sued over public health regulations at a cost of hundreds of millions and even billions of dollars to the taxpayer. Meanwhile, under its free trade treaty with Canada, Costa Rica faces paying out to Canadian gold mining interests for stopping them prospecting in environmentally sensitive areas of its country - no wonder some call the TTIP the BAD law: Business Against Democracy.

So this is what the Lib Dems will stand for against the Greens: they will plant their flags firmly in the dung heap of corporate capital. Pitching themselves against a party that stands for the interests of ordinary citizens and communities,  they will claim that the TTIP will create some jobs generously brought to us by here-today-gone-tomorrow multinationals chasing the lowest paid round the planet (even although most of the evidence of such deals points quite clearly in the opposite direction). Clegg and his Orcs think this will stir up such resentment that the public will turn away from the Greens' ideas for a living wage, a transaction tax, clampdowns on tax avoidance and extension of the public sector.  Judging the electorate by their own standards, they apparently believe voters will prefer their own slavish adherence to corporate Europe over the Greens' aspiration for a transformed social Europe working for people not profit.

Fine. Let them. The sooner they do, the better. It's getting boring now watching the long, lingering demise of this hubristic ragbag of puffed-up careerists: let's get it over with in time for the next season of The Walking Dead. Please.

Green Party Eurocandidates offered help for Lib Dem conference delegates troubled by their guilty consciences at a special Field Hospital in York last week. There were no takers.

Lib Dems and Sexism: Rennard Isn't the Real Issue

It would be easy to dismiss the Lib Dems' tribulations over Chris Rennard's alleged misdemeanours as simply another example of a rootless party in terminal decline with Nick Clegg's vacillation over how to react as little more than another example of middle-ground muddle. Yet to do so would be to miss an important point - and this is precisely what much of the media is indeed doing, focusing its concerns on either printing semi-salacious articles about what the former party Chief Executive is accused of doing or alternatively broadcasting a blow by blow account of arguments between Clegg and time-servers in the Lords, many of whom most of the public have never heard of.

But there is a deeper issue here, and that is what some of the Lib Dems apparently feel is acceptable behaviour and how seriously, or not, the party has set out to challenge and change it. Read former MP and Rennard ally Alex Carlile in today's Daily Mail (what else!) and you find him caustically diminishing the complaints of four women against his friend. Meanwhile on BBC Radio 4, Lib Dem MEP Chris Davies suggested that the allegations were equivalent to "an Italian man pinching a woman's bottom" a few years ago - with one swift step adding a dash of racial stereotyping to the stew of alleged sexism.

The Lib Dems' problem though is not simply that their byzantine disciplinary rules use bizarre levels of proof - beyond reasonable doubt is normally reserved for criminal cases investigated and tested by the police and CPS. Non-court cases such as workplace conduct hearings normally use the more realistic test of determining what occurred on the balance of probabilities. To insist on a criminal-level of proof for in-house cases of alleged harassment, which will very often involve one person's word against another, is in effect to make it impossible for victims to pursue a complaint with any real prospect of success. It potentially protects the culprits to the detriment of the victims and is completely out of place in any modern organisation. This is the culture of 1950's offices like the male-dominated one in Madmen rather than a supposedly progressive 21st century political party.

It might not greatly matter beyond the confines of the Lib Dems were it not for the fact that this party and the people involved in this argument, including Clegg, Rennard and Carlile, have been responsible for passing legislation which now makes it much harder for women (and men) to pursue claims of sexual harassment in the workplace via employment tribunals. For the first time, it now costs to go to an employment tribunal hearing - £1,200 for a sex discrimination case (compared to £390 for unfair dismissal claims). Driven forward by Lib Dem Vince Cable's department, significant new obstacles have been erected against anyone challenging workplace sexism.

The Lib Dems have got themselves into a dreadful mess over this. Yet the real tragedy is that the vagaries of the electoral system that delivered us the Coalition Government have already allowed their muddled and ignorant thinking to drive a coach and horses through years of progress towards ending sexism in the workplace. Watching all this unfold though, it isn't in the least surprising.

Lib Dems & Fracking - Having It Both Ways

"I love shale gas" - Lib Dem Energy Secretary Ed Davey, 10 July at the APPG on unconventional gas and oil."It is fantastic for energy security...and the environment."

"In recent years, shale gas production has transformed the energy market in the US, though at the cost of significant local environmental damage and pollution of water tables...(Because of different geology and fiscal policy)there is no realistic prospect, therefore, of a 'shale gas revolution' in the UK." - Lib Dem official policy paper, Green Growth & Green Jobs, 24 August.

The fracking controversy in the UK is driven by one key factor - after some years of refusal or at least prevaricating on a decision, late last year the Government decided to permit it to go ahead, and it has increasingly featured as a key component of planning for future enrgy supplies. As blogged before, the Coalition's claim to seek to be the "greenest Government in history" has long since fallen by the wayside as it cut the renewable energy feed-in tariff and virtually abolished community-owned clean energy schemes. Using vast quantities of water to force shale gas and oil out of the ground beneath our feet has become a major objective of Government energy policy as we follow the United States in seeking out yet more carbon fuel, seemingly oblivious to the environmental impact.

To date, the only significant UK-wide political party to oppose fracking has been the Greens - the Green MP, Caroline Lucas, was arrested for blocking the road during a peaceful protest at the Balcombe test site earlier this week. Green leader, Natalie Bennett, has also spoken at the site and Greens across the country have been involved in arguing against fracking. By contrast, with a few, largely self-interested local exceptions, Tories, Labour and UKIP have welcomed the process, awed by the massive development of it in the USA and dismissive of the impact of both extraction and use of yet more global warming gases.

And as for the once supposedly "greener-than-the-Greens" Liberal Democrats?

Well, today, as a poll shows massive public opposition to fracking (with three times as many preferring wind farms to those supporting fracking), the Lib Dems have finally issued a statement condemning fracking. It turns out that, although they are part of the Coalition, they are opposed to this particular policy.

Now, at least. They didn't say anything earlier, perhaps waiting to see which way the wind blew in terms of popular opinion.

As for tomorrow, who knows where they will stand? Presumably, we will get a clearer idea of what they actually think after they have expelled the Energy Secretary Ed Davey from their party. After all, it was Mr Ed (Lib Dem) who gave the go-ahead for fracking, just as his predecessor, Chris Huhne (Lib Dem), approved new nuclear power stations after years of saying they didn't work, were too expensive and too dangerous. Mr Davey sees fracking as "useful" and thinks it it is "fantastic for energy security...and the climate." Although he has said the environment should be protected, it isn't clear how and he has signed up to trying to bribe local communities with a share of fracking revenues to try to stymie opposition.

What, they aren't going to expel Mr Davey? And they're not going to change the Government's policy? No, because, in spite of the rhetoric, the Lib Dems continue to support "limited" fracking - but of course, do nothing to explain what limited means. Watch this space, depending on where you are in the country.

Surely the Lib Dems aren't trying to have it both ways by pretending to be in Government and in Opposition at the same time?

The Froth of Deception

Some years ago, sitting in a Starbucks outlet in a northern city (well, it was a long time ago!), I heard an elderly gentleman remonstrating with the "barrista" that his cappuccino needed topping up.
"Look," he complained, "It's half empty and I've not even had a sip!"
"Ah, sir," the barrista responded, trying seriously to blame the customer,"You've let it stand too long. It has settled. You see sir, 50% of the product is hot air."
The customer's reply was unprintable, even here, and he immediately became an ex-customer.

Apparently, Starbucks seem to be masters of deception, a trait never more in evidence than when two of its senior executives haltingly tried to explain to British MPs earlier this week how in 15 years operating and expanding in Britain, they have made losses in all but one year and have consequently paid virtually no corporation tax at all. On sales of £3,100,000,000, it has paid just £8,600,000 in corporation tax - that's a meagre 0.2 (yes, zero-point-two) per cent. Along with Amazon and Google, who have similar records, it was criticised for failing to pay its "fair" share of tax - and so now it is likely that tomorrow it will make a pledge to pay more tax in the future.

Well, sorry if I am not partying, but how generous of them... They pledge to pay more in future. What does that mean? What about this pledge instead - they declare their true profits rather than hide them behind a charade of in house cross-charging and pay their proper whack. Starbucks had briefed their shareholders that their UK operation was making a 15% profit on turnover - very broadly, if that was the case over all 15 years, it would have generated around £450 millions profit with around £100 millions due to be paid in Corporation tax; not a mere £8.6 million. But of course the story they have given the HMRC and now MPs was rather different.

We hear endlessly from the giant corporations and their mouthpieces in the Lib Dem and Tory parties about the need for Britain to cut its already near worldwide low corporation taxes - even though it seems most of them pay a fraction of their dues (if indeed anything at all). A further reduction is pending for the next tax year. Otherwise, apparently they might go elsewhere and we would lose the alleged benefits of their presence on our shores.

Benefits? Tell that to the the countless perfectly good local coffee shops put out of business by Starbucks' undercutting them; or the bookstores - independents and even the once powerful Borders UK shops - put out of business by the march of Amazon.

And just this week, as Starbucks was finally caving into the bad publicity about its tax record, it implemented a fine wheeze to appear to be contributing to the community that succours it with one hand, while taking away with the other. The fig-leaf of its already piss poor corporate social responsibility record has never been more precariously worn.

On Monday, all its staff - mainly low paid, part-time barristas (their employment protection rights slashed since April by the Lib Dem Ministers of the Coalition), were told to sign away their contractual rights to a 30 minute paid lunch break and to some of their sick pay or face the sack. Rubbing salt in the wounds, they also told their pregnant staff no longer to expect a complimentary food hamper when their babies are born - instead they can look forward to a handy, Starbucks branded baby-gro and bib. Useful for wiping away all that deceptively frothy baby sick.

The Indian Parliament is currently debating whether to open up the third largest economy in the world to foreign direct investment (FDI).  This would open the doors to overseas corporations - with supermarket giants Walmart, Tesco and Carrefour leading the charge - to open up and start undercutting and destroying an economy currently 97% owned by small businesses, families and self-employed people. The western neoliberals and bankers claim that this will unleash a wave of creative competition in India; but the track record elsewhere shows the lie of these claims. India beware.

We can only hope that India resists the threats and charms of the multinationals; and, though sadly very much more in vain hope than genuine expectation, we can dream of the day that Britain's HMRC clamps down sufficiently on the tax games of the corporations that they do indeed depart. Because, whilst some of these mega-multinationals use their proxies in the popular press to peddle lies about immigrants, the EU and even political correctness having wrecked our way of life, it is in truth large, state-less corporations that have destroyed whole local economies, emptied our high streets and plundered our national wealth. As their tax and employment records show, they are totally self-serving and without conscience - the psychopaths of Joel Bakan's opus magnus - and we continue to treat with them at our own risk.

We have lived well without them before; we can easily and happily do so again. Just imagine if they were indeed gone, and all we had left were...bookshops, local cafes, and independent music stores.

And no more hot air in our mugs.

Police Alert: Nick Clegg for Wasting Time

And so the Police & Crime Commissioners elections roar into the record books: as the ones with the lowest turnout in modern British history. With less than 15% of the electorate voting - and one polling station in Wales having a remarkable turnout of precisely zero - the validity of the entire process has fallen into question. Record numbers of spolit papers - many deliberately so - have turned up as the citizens of England and Wales give, in effect, a decisive thumbs down to the whole farcical process.

Over £100 million of taxpayers' money has been wasted on holding this exercise in the middle of November - totally out of time with the normal voting cycle in early winter, in the dark. An additional £25 million was wasted on moving it from the original plan of coinciding with the local elections in May.

So who is responsible for this mess? Who has wasted taxpayers money and a lot of people's time? And left us with the policing system in a total mess with Commissioners formally elected but without any mandate or legitimacy at all?

Step forward our old friend, Deputy Prime Minister and Chancer in Chief Nick Clegg.

Yes, that one - whose Lib Dem Party sunk into fifth place behind UKIP and the English Democrats in Nick's own home territory of South Yorkshire, only just keeping their deposit. As brazen as ever, the Lib Dems pushed and pushed for these elections to be held in mid-November rather than the previously agreed time of May when their costs could have been reduced and (whatever your view about the posts themselves) more voters would have participated.

Why?

Quite simply, though laughably, they thought this would help them hold seats at the council elections As the BBC trailed a year ago, Lib Dem high command thought that if the police elections were held in May, they would both distract Lib Dem efforts to hold onto council seats contested at the same time and buoy up the Tory vote by creating a focus on law and order.

So, after confronting David Cameron with threats to vote down the Police & Social Responsibility Bill if he did not concede on the timetable, the Lib Dems achieved the change and, in spite of the additional £25 millions in  costs, the vote was moved to yesterday. At the time, they claimed it was an altruistic move to depoliticise the elections, but a BBC investigation found otherwise - and unlike the recent Newsnight farago, no one denied this one's findings. And besides, the refusal to provide a freepost facility as normal with this level of election effectively removed the chance for independents to seriously participate unless they were wealthy - leading in fact to very highly politicised elections.

It is therefore touchingly and wonderfully ironic that the Lib Dems' results have been relentlessly pisspoor - not only did they fail to field candidates in half the country, but where they did they were frequently beaten out of sight. With most results in, their national vote total barely reaches 7% and they have been overtaken by UKIP even although that party was also only standing in half the contests.

Clegg and his party have a lot to answer for - and a big bill to pay.

Umm..err...umm..oh, gosh.....it wasn't me, officer!

Positively Spoiling - Police Commissioner Ballot Today

So the most low key election in British history apparently takes place today as 41 Police & Crime Commissioners are elected for the first time across England and Wales. In an election that has cost £100 millions of taxpayers' money to hold in the dark of early winter, with little or no publicity, a combination of near-total voter lack of awareness combined with disillusion with the whole idea is likely to drive turnout down - one survey suggesting a turnout of just 15% may yet be over-optimistic.

No one asked for these posts, and only the Lib Dem wing of the Coalition wanted them at this time - apparently banking on the idea they could mobilise proportionately more supporters at this time of year than Tory or Labour. This is a strategy that has manifestly backfired as they now lack any significant support - recent polls have them hovering at 8%, often in fourth place and sometimes with the Greens withing spitting distance of driving them into fifth.

So we have elections no one wants for posts no one wants and candidates no one knows anything about. But 41 of them will be the lucky winners of annual salaries of £100,000 - nearly 50% more than MPs get and 9 times what local authority councillors receive for working 30 hours per week. As blogged before, they represent an unwelcome centralisation of scrutiny of the police in the hands of one person rather than the cross section of councillors, experts and community representatives in the current Police Authorities. This could lead at one extreme to an overly cosy relationship with the local Chief Constable through to populist grandstanding on complex issues that could compromise the police and divide communities.

What to do then? One group is advocating that rather than voting for any of the would-be Commissioners, voters opposed to the idea should not stay at home but rather should turn up at polling stations and spoil their ballot papers. They are recommending writing a statement along the lines of "No to Police Commissioners, Yes to Democracy" or something similar that makes clear it is a deliberate spoiling of the paper to make a point rather than a simple mistake. The group was established on Facebook by Greens and others following a debate in Leeds. It has a Facebook Page, Spoil Your Ballot Papers for the Police Elections, and a Twitter hashtag of #spoilpoliceballot. It's not too late to join up or comment.

Spoilt papers are separated and counted - often, they are shared with the election candidates and their agents and typically include mistakes like people voting for all the candidates or signing their names on the paper. Some put comments like "None of the above" or often more, shall we say, colourful statements of their views on the process. Spoiled ballots are not counted towards turnout however, so taking part will not increase the figures for the elections' turnout.

Some countries, like Australia, allow this option as a right, while other countries, such as Russia, require minimum turnouts of 50% before a candidate can be elected. Sadly Britain does neither, but it is perfectly legal to go and spoil your ballot paper and make a point. It shows you care enough to turnout and show your opposition - and its better than daytime TV.

Go on, take a walk, and spoil your ballot paper - you know it makes sense!

Et Tu, Davey?

Cassius Cable and  Praetorian Davey - yond men hath a lean and hungry look! 

Nick Clegg's beleaguered Lib Dems gather in Green Party-run Brighton this week for their annual Federal Party Conference, their third since they entered the Coalition Government with the Tories and began to implement perhaps the most right wing fiscal and social reform agenda in British history - much to the chagrin of many of their members and the likely permanent alienation of swathes of their former voters.

Clegg's personal ratings are at an all-time low and the party's have plunged by two-thirds since the 2010 election - today, two opinion polls (Opinium & Survations) have them on just 8% and 10% of popular support, in fourth place nationally behind the UK Independence Party - others are a little kinder, but still show UKIP breathing down the Lib Dems necks close enough to raise the hackles of fear. With hundreds of councillors culled at the local elections last May and more losses likely in spring 2013, Clegg's own position is increasingly rumoured to be at risk, at least in the longer-run. As leading pollster Peter Kellner of YouGov has warned, on current trends, the party will lose 80% of its MPs in the 2015 election.

For now, the party rank-and-file have shown an almost lemming-like willingness to follow Clegg over the cliff, but cracks are beginning to show as the leader's desperate strategy of trying to emphasise differences with his Tory partners fails to make any electoral impact. Likewise his attempt to apologise for voting to raise student fees in full defiance of a pledge to vote against any such thing (note, "vote against" - whether in Government or not) has fallen on deaf ears.

Mr Clegg is facing two potential challengers - interestingly both from former SDP members who may be seen to represent a slightly less full-on charge to the right by Clegg and his Orange Book ally David Laws (now returned to the Cabinet table in a rather odd arrangement as he is not a full-member).

The first is the Secretary of State for Business and Enterprise, Vince Cable. Cable, a former apologist for the Shell Oil company, has enacted some pretty right wing changes to employment law while in office, but he still laughingly tries to pass himself off as the "Marx of the Lib Dems" - though he could do with clarifying whether he means Karl or Groucho. His hubris is boundless, and fuelled by a finding that Lib Dem ratings could soar to as high as..12%!, he has told the Sunday Times that he does not rule out being leader of the party - one day. Soon, we might imagine him whisper under his impatient breath.

The other rumoured challenger is Ed Davey, the Energy Secretary. He is closer to Clegg politically, but views himself as a credible challenger to Cable. The Mail on Sunday produced an article today covering his ambitions to succeed Clegg. On Channel 4 News this evening, he hotly denied the article's veracity - he is, he claimed "one of the Praetorian Guard surrounding Nick Clegg".

Now, Mr Davey could either be being opaquely clever here or alternatively betraying his lack of historical knowledge: for over two and a half centuries, the Praetorians were the bodyguards of the Roman Emperors. So he might be suggesting that he would take a political bullet for Emperor Cleggie, so deep is his belief in him. Alternatively, given the Praetorians' propensity for bumping off Emperors (on one occasion even putting the throne up for auction), he could instead be giving a coded signal that he may bury the knife in Caesar's shoulder-blades any day soon. Notably, when invited several times by the C4 interviewer, Davey repeatedly avoided saying "No" to the question of whether he wants to be leader.

Either way, the third-going-on-fourth party, faces a dismal time ahead - yet doggedly still clinging to the belief that nuanced changes to party pronouncements (the latest being that parents can use their pensions towards their kids mortgages!) will somehow win their lost legions of followers back. If Vince Cable is all their "left-wing" has to offer, they may as well shut up shop and follow their National Liberal ancestors in the smothering bosom of their Tory Masters.

A third candidate for the leadership is rumoured to be Lurcio, currently the MP for Westmoreland and Lonsdale. Oh don't ye titter!

Sacking with CONfidence (Part 5)

Yet another update on the right-wing populist and often ignorantly uninformed slaughter of employment law and protection of employees in Britain.

So yesterday we were treated to the spectacle of Mrs Windsor, who has never attended a job interview in her life but who has a pretty mean track record when it comes to maltreatment of her staff in the low wage Royal Household, informing us how her Government intends to create more flexibility for employers. This will give them even more opportunities to rip off customers and staff alike by making it even easier for people to be dismissed without any chance of recompense. Lizzie's family has already got form in trying to break employment tribunal rules and withhold legal evidence, so it seems she is happy for her Ministers to make life a bit easier for the likes of her son in future employment disputes.

Get to work and be grateful, peasants!

Not content with doubling from one to two years the period of time employees new to a company can be dismissed for absolutely no reason at all, the Con Dem Government has brought forward  a series of measures to make it much harder for people who have been dismissed to raise any complaint at an Employment Tribunal. the quality of the legislation mooted in the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill betrays the fact that the legislation is pretty much about Tory prejudice against all employment rights rather than a serious attempt to reform the law.

For example, in the name of reducing the number of tribunals, people pursuing a complaint will have to first lodge their complaint with ACAS in an attempt to reach a conciliated settlement. This appears to be in total ignorance of the fact that this already happens - all tribunal claims are automatically lodged with ACAS and a conciliation officer is appointed to try to broker a solution. If what is perhaps implied here is that there is a new stage of conciliation via ACAS before you can even lodge a claim to a tribunal, this suggests a number of inbuilt flaws, which probably combine hostility towards employees with a lack of understanding of how the current system works.

1. If the conciliation stage is a separate phase to the tribunal complaint, this seems to be adding to red tape rather than reducing it.

2. Tribunal awards usually pay compensation for loss of earnings to successful complainants for the period of time from the end of employment to the conclusion of the tribunal process. An additional phase of conciliation will extend this period of time, which means either employers face higher costs at the end if an employee is successful OR the Government is going to reduce the amount of compensation available even when a claim of unfair dismissal is successful - any ideas which option this Government might take?

3. Nearly two-thirds of employment tribunal complaints are already conciliated - half by ACAS and the rest privately. Few people enjoy taking their employer to a tribunal - I know, having been involved on both sides often enough - so the conciliation process is already pretty effective. Dragging things out when conciliation is not possible will simply make the process much harder on many levels for both sides - but perhaps the Government calculation is that this will deter people from asserting their rights even when they have been bullied or harassed out of their livelihoods - so much for justice.

4. The tribunal system is in much need of reform: it works essentially for two groups alone - lawyers and people with tenuous claims. People who have genuinely lost their jobs unfairly get piss poor awards averaging less than £9,000 - the fantastic six figure sums touted with some furious fanfare in the likes of the Daily Mail are news precisely because they are few and far between. However, the current round of so-called reform will do little to change this. Instead, it will simply deter yet further people in vulnerable situations from asserting what tiny amount of power they have in the employment relationship, which remains even now governed at its core by the ancient laws of Master and Servant.

In the despair of the Lib Dem wing of the Coalition, a few of their number have suggested that they might not be so enthusiastic about these new proposals, but let it not be forgotten that the most pernicious changes to employment rights so far have been driven forward by Lib Dem Ministers in the name of cutting red tape, and even their adjustments to existing laws on family leave (actually a confirmation of plans put in place by the Labour Government pre-2010) include a reduction in maternity leave rights for expectant mothers.

But then, the Lib Dems have been weak on employment rights for people for a long time now, ignoring the fact that over 85% of the workforce are employees and so the protections afforded against arbitrary dismissal are important to a large number of us ordinary mortals. In 2005, Clegg's predecessor, the supposedly social democratic Charles Kennedy fought the General Election on a platform of seeking "a bonfire of the red tape" that allegedly stifles employment in the UK.

Seven years ago, in my final days of Lib Dem membership, I was irate about reading that their MEPs were supporting the continuation of the British opt-out of the European Working Time Directive, which has prevented workers from having to work excessive hours across the Continent - apart from in Britain thanks to the opt-out negotiated by the Tories in 1992. I wrote to the then leader of the Lib Dem MEPs, Chris Davies. His reply could easily have come from any Tory backbencher, so packed it was with prejudice against workers - and it was the final thing, of many, which tipped me into leaving and joining the Greens.

The text is below: so, don't let anyone fool you - the legislative drive to weaken our employment security in the middle of a recession is very much the offspring of both parts of this most poisonous regime, which seems to view its own citizens as its enemy.

(bold italics are my emphases)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sent: 13 May 2005 14:54
To: chrisdaviesmep@cix.co.uk
Subject: Working time regulations

Dear Chris Davies,

I have been a member of the Liberal Democrats and our predecessor parties for 27 years and am writing to you after reading about our MEP's vote against the proposed changes to the EU working time regulations this week, including your own criticisms on your website about the vote to end the 48 hours maximum average working week opt-out.

I am surprised and disappointed by the Lib Dem MEPs approach to the proposed changes. I am also quite baffled by your comments that most people work a 37 hour week in the UK, but as a point of principle, people should be able to choose to work longer.

The fact is that most recent surveys indicate the averge working week in Britain is actually around 42 hours and, as I am sure you must be aware of, a "long hours culture" exists in many industries, especially among lower paid workers. While, since slavery is illegal, as a legal technicality they may "choose" to work longer than their contracted hours, the fact is that very often they have no realistic choice if they wish to avoid punitive action against them by their employer. A recent TUC survey found that less than 1-in-3 people who regularly work more than 48 hours per week have ever been asked to sign the legally required opt-out and there have been instances of people being told they had to sign the opt-out a a condition of their employment. To suggest therefore that "choice" enters into the equation for the vast majority of people who are expected to work long hours is quite frankly misguided.

The regulations as proposed would average the working week over an entire year - it is not as if people could never work more than 48 hours in any one week, or even for quite prolonged periods. It simply requires that over a full year, people do not work more than this on average. I don't know about you, but if I had a relative requiring care, or was myself being driven on a bus or train, I would feel very concerned if the person administering drugs or driving the bus/train had really been working more than 48 hours that week and had been doing so routinely. In addition, regular long hours of work make the worker more prone to both short-term illnesses such as flu or colds from a reduced immune system and longer terms diseases such as diabetes and heart condtions, which can be of little good to the worker, or, for that matter, their employer in the long run.

I am quite astonished that Lib Dems are taking such a stance - where is the care about people that we have campaigned on for years (remember "People First"?)? Liberals were among the first, decades ago, to introduce health and safety requirements to the workplace, tackling both moral and productivity issues at the same time. I regret deeply that this no longer seems to be the case - as additionally evidenced last autumn when the federal conference voted against holding mulitinationals to ILO standards in the employment of some of the most vulnerable people on this planet.

You may argue that you agree with all that I have said, but that the core of your argument is about subsidiarity. However, given that Britain is widely seen as a low wage, low regulated economy, is it little surprise that other EU states might want our opt-out to be ended given the unfair competitive advantage this gives to our corporate shareholders over those in other countries in what is meant to be a single market? What happened to our long trumpeted call on the Major Government to sign up to the Social Chapter with all the labour protection that envisaged? Was it our policy to sign up as long as we could opt out? I don't remember it being so and I fail to see what has changed.

I implore you and the other MEPs to revise your view on this and similar employment protection measures. Seeking to protect our people from the demands of employers who in most cases have as their sole objective profit maximisation is well within the long traditions of both liberalism and social democracy. It is also one, given that most people are employees, which would not be electorally damaging as long as you do not portray this as something which limits people's ability to act for themselves, which in all truth it is not.

I must stress I write as  a Personnel & Training Manager who has worked in the residential care industry for 15 years now. I do not find complying with these regulations, including the end of the opt-out, as a difficulty and any company that did struggle with them would quite frankly be one which was not functioning effectively at all.

I hope to hear from you.

Friday, 20 May 2005, 10:53

Chris Davies MEP  wrote:

As am MP in 1996 I introduced a Bill in to the House of Commons calling for greater employee protection within the UK.

My reason for supporting the British opt-out of the EU Working Time Directive is entirely on subsidiarity grounds.

If people want strict controls over working hours at the risk of loss of competivity then they should vote for Government to introduce it. I do not believe that measures of this kind should be set as EU standard.

It would be hard to find a more pro-European politician than myself, but if Liberal Democrats do not respect our own belief that decisions should always be taken at the lowest practicable level then we will have no hope in convincing others of the merits of the European case.

The Working Time Directive was introduced using the Health and Safety legal basis. We have supported its application where this is relevant (lorry drivers, doctors etc) but it's application in other instances is I believe illegitimate.

Yours Sincerely

Chris Davies MEP.