Come back John Major - all is forgiven

I never thought there would be a Prime Minister worse than John Major. But to have four ministers resigning in the 48 hours before a major election! That didn't even happen in Major's days. At least they used to wait until after the polls had closed to do their most vigorous infighting.

Ros Scott and the art of the "running commentary"

LibDem President Ros Scott has announced that she has ended her blog:

Recent events have caused me to reflect on the best way to communicate with the Party. Blogging is a great medium for recording instantaneous reaction to events, but there are times when the constraints of the Party Constitution, the legal framework and political sensibilities mean that instantaneous comment on my part is inappropriate and potentially dangerous. However, the existence of my blog seems to have led some people into thinking that it is possible to keep up a running commentary on what is going on. I wish to avoid a recurrence of that and so, with some regret, have closed down my blog. In future, minutes of FE will be published here on LDV, within the one month required by the Standing Orders, and I’ll post this monthly report as close to the end of the month as possible. Liberal Democrat News and all member e-mails will form alternative means of communication.

I am fascinated by this line:

However, the existence of my blog seems to have led some people into thinking that it is possible to keep up a running commentary on what is going on.

What did you expect, Ros? A blog is a "running commentary".

I appreciate that this is probably the right decision. But please also reflect on your own actions.

You told everyone, on your blog, that there was a crucial FE meeting happening a few days before it. If you hadn't told everyone via your blog, you wouldn't have been inundated with enquiries as to what happened in that meeting.

And you were the person who gave a Federal Executive update on your blog on 24th March 2009 the day after it happened (text below). So perhaps it might occur to you that people were expecting a running commentary because you were actually giving them one up until when the solids hit the Vent-Axia!

I appreciate you were bold enough to start a blog in the first place and, obviously, events proved that this was untenable. That is disappointing but you can't be blamed for trying. I just think it is a said day for openess (or lack of it) in the Liberal Democrat party.

Last nights meeting was a bit of a marathon, as we had a pretty packed agenda and almost a full tally of members to make contributions to the debate. Nick Clegg updated FE on some of his most recent activities, and his assessment of the current political situation before we went on to receive a strategy presentation from our new communications guru, Chris Fox. Chris and Nick took questions and responded to comments from FE in what proved to be a lively session.We looked at the regular set of performance indicators, and decided on some new ones, and worked out our forward scrutiny programme for the coming year before moving on to our two remaining significant items of business. Ros Harper, Chair of the Campaign for Gender Balance introduced a paper on the question of retention of parliamentary candidates, in which there was a thorough review of the reasons why candidates drop out, based on a series of interviews with former candidates and local parties. Their paper made a number of practical suggestions about candidate support which we will try to take forward, in conjunction with the various party bodies, over the coming year.Brian Orrell spoke to to his extensive paper on previous European elections giving us a really useful contextual background to the election in June. Part 2 of his work, on the PR elections in Scotland, Wales and London, will be discussed at our next meeting in May.I'll write a more full report of FE next week, but this does, I hope, give a flavour of last night's work.

Diane Abbott - enough to make any muesli-eating sandal wearer see red

Left to my own devices, I often gravitate towards the BBC Parliament channel. When I flicked on this evening, Kelvin Hopkins, the single homed MP for Luton was talking very engagingly about local democracy. So far so good. Until an intervention by Diane Abbott, looking particularly pleased with herself, making a smart-alec remark about PR not allowing a link between MPs and their constituencies. She obviously doesn't know what she is talking about (nor do I, by the way) and was fortunately put in her place, pronto, by Martin Horwood.

This prompted me to do a bit of self-education on proportional representation. The Electoral Reform Society web site has some excellent material on the subject, including a Myths and responses leaflet here (which includes a voluminous response to Ms Abbott's charge).

Unlock Democracy also has some excellent material and nicely sums up its view on the subject as follows:

Unlock Democracy wants all UK elections to offer real choice and real fairness. We believe that means a proportional electoral system that broadly reflects the votes cast for each party in an election, but also allows voters to support specific candidates and not just party lists.
There are several electoral systems which would satisfy these, including the Single Transferable Vote and various open list systems.

There is also Make my vote count (aka Make Votes count) from whom I receive regular updates.

The camp-bed MP

When I was trawling through the Telegraph's summaries of MPs' expensegates, my eye was caught by Laura Moffat, MP for Crawley, who now sleeps on a camp-bed in her office when she can't get home at a reasonable hour. There all sorts of critical comments under the story - proving that at the moment, as an MP, you can't do anything right. But I think this lady deserves some praise. The spirit of David Penhaligon (sleeping arrangements section only) lives on?

Old Clegg's Almanack

A sumptuous interview with the Cleggster in the Guardian. Something to bask in.

It is noticeable that Nick Clegg seems to be in the fortune telling business:

"I've got cards up my sleeve," he says coyly, but won't elaborate. Instead, he offers, "Let me spell out what I think is going to unfold. There's clearly something unsustainable about MPs saying, 'We've done something seriously wrong but we are going to hang around until the next general election.' I think for the most serious abuses, instead of having MPs adjudicated by party panels behind closed doors, the adjudication will have to transfer to independent hands such as the standards commissioner. Then I think the demand for by-elections will be overwhelming. If we don't have a general election we're going to have a war of attrition. People won't be satisfied by vague ideas. They're not going to be fobbed off with that."

And then a sentence which reveals Old Clegg at his most all-seeing and Almanackish:

I ask him why he's smiling. "I'm smiling because I know what's coming next."

Ah!

P.S. My other favourite bit of the interview is this, which should be inserted surgically somewhere in the corporate Tory blogo-body:

In all our conversations, Clegg says nothing that could have come from Cameron's mouth. There is little discernible similarity as a character either; any confusion between the two men would require, for one thing, almost total ignorance of our class system, for Clegg's Eurocentric internationalism - his mother was Dutch, his home life is bilingual, he used to work for the European commission - places him on a different planet from the sloaney Englishness of the Tory leader. He is a quintessential Liberal, and on issues from ID cards to the environment can plausibly claim to be ahead of the curve.

Economy: Reasons to be cheerful

....or at least not terminally depressed.

Etched on my memory is the big red graph line going down behind the newsreaders on the BBC with headlines like "SHARE CRISIS" and "CREDIT CRUNCH".

The media caravan has moved on with its scorched earth policy, to expenses and Susan Boyle.

But it would be nice if some attention is paid to some good news in the economy.

Honda Swindon reopened production today! Hurrah!

The Dow is up 200 points today, despite the GM bankruptcy!

The FTSE is up 2% also today - that's up 4% or 180-odd points in the last five days.

Come on - let's get a bit optimistic.

And at a local level, spending is going well. Only last Saturday my offspring came back from a shopping trip to announce: "I've been putting money back into the economy".

How the mighty have fallen

General Motors filing for bankruptcy. Some clue as to why this has happened may be gleaned from this little slide show of the "GM Junk heap". My favourite is the Hummer H2 (below) - what a disaster!

Mind you, they produced nothing as catastrophically disastrous as the Ford Edsel. Children used to point and laugh at that one in the street.