Friday, May 23, 2008

James Graham: 'LibDem crumbs of comfort' from Crewe and Nantwich

James Graham has written (obviously burning the 2am oil) on the Crewe and Nantwich result over at the Guardian's Comment is Free. What a star Mr Graham is! He's even gamely replied to some of the commenters.

James particularly gets the blood jolting through the veins of this old Liberal with this passage, which echoes something Nick Clegg emphasised at the recent bloggers' interview:

One other crumb of comfort: it is becoming evident that the old adage that the Liberals' fortunes are inextricably linked to Labour's is no longer the case. In the longer term, that is very good news for us. At worst, we are unlikely to ever go back to our pre-1997 level of parliamentary representation and are on track for Nick Clegg's target of doubling our MPs within two general elections. Once that happens the arithmetic is such that we will have genuine multi-party politics in this country, a phenomenon that Canada has recently gone through.

James must have drunk a particularly potent form of Horlicks as he toiled overnight. He is particularly perspicacious and, indeed, perspicuous on the subject of Labour:

If they spent the next couple of years redistributing wealth, entrenching a proper Bill of Rights and introducing a range of democratic and party funding reforms, they would leave a legacy that Cameron would struggle to unpick.

What's the alternative? Two years of the Flunking Cyst's dithering, convinced that if he just made a little change here, or a little shift in emphasis there, the public will suddenly embrace him with open arms? Why would anyone genuinely interested in progress, rather than merely the trappings of power, want that?

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