DEM not gonna CON dis NATION: Rolling UK politics in the short-lived Cleggeron era

toby young, loathsome human being, tries and fails to make cameron seem likeable:

At a recent college gaudy I sat next to a contemporary of Dave’s who told me about the the moment he was told he might be rusticated after letting off a fire extinguisher in the offices of Cherwell, the university newspaper. He was sitting in Old Quad, feeling a bit down in the dumps, when Dave wandered up and asked him what the matter was. After he told him, Dave insisted on driving this forlorn 21-year-old to his family home in Berkshire where they spent the afternoon lounging by his swimming pool and eating chocolate cake.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tobyyoung/100039418/david-cameron-the-brasenose-years/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=facebook#*x119x97x115

assume that's how he won over clegg too.

Dave insisted on driving this forlorn 21-year-old to his family home in Berkshire where they spent the afternoon lounging by his swimming pool and eating chocolate cake bumping enormous lines of coke.

haha, if cameron took this approach individually to solve the Deep Social Problems facing broken britain it wld be the dawn of an infinitely superior generation of tory clown

I'm pretty sure universal access to etonian's to lift yr spirits at their houses of inherited furniture is the most common definition of equality of opportunity

We need to hit up a certain music critic for contemporaneous Brasenose stories.

But can Broken Britain provide enough chocolate cake in these economically challenged times? (xp)

Let them eat chocolate cake, by the pool.

oh god dealin with tory apologists for this on twitter is infuriating. it's only day 1, ffs.

Awesome I've just remembered we've got fruit cake in the bread bin

wow looks like David Macaroon was right, I feel better already

^^^ i'm all right jack

George Young...my best friend (who is not a Tory) interned for him in '92. I will go ask for some kind of character study.

We don't have a swimming pool so I filled a bucket to lounge by.

It doesn't really add anything tbh

'vince cable to appease bankers' fears on bonuses' : /

Sterling work in less than 12 hours, eh?

thank fuck for that, last thing this country needs is some worried bankers

maybe he shd send them bonus cake

worried bankers = the world's most powerful concern trolls

Console yourself with some class was schadenfreude here: Post photos of worried/agonized stock exchange traders here

no 'was' but class 'war', obv.

Adonis makes it sound like the 55% idea was one of the LDs' negotiation points:

I was shocked by the Lib Dem proposal, in our negotiating session with them, that the alternative vote should be introduced before a referendum, as "a big down-payment we need to go in with you" (in the words of one Lib Dem negotiator). The commitment in their coalition agreement with the Tories to gerrymander the fundamental basis of parliamentary legitimacy – proposing that votes of confidence will henceforth require the support of 55% of MPs – is presumably another such unprincipled "down-payment".

I supported the last cabinet's decision to open discussions with the Lib Dems, at the point at which senior Lib Dems told us (misleadingly, as is now clear) they did not wish to sustain a Tory government. However, what then happened was an attempt by the Lib Dem leadership to conduct a dutch auction, inviting Labour to outbid the Tories on a shopping list of demands. Although I believe it might have been possible to form a principled Lab-Lib coalition supported on "confidence and supply" by minor parties, it was not on the basis of such an auction.

The Lib Dems are attempting to blame their Tory coalition on our failure to negotiate "seriously". More comically, "negative body language" is said to have been at fault. We were perfectly serious, but we were not prepared to engage in constitutional gerrymandering.

No idea whether the LDs thought of it first, or the Tories brought it to them as a bargaining chip.

The wholly reasonable argument in favour is that this was actually designed to give parliament the power to dissolve itself, instead of just the PM having it. Moving the bar to 55% was probably just icing.

sry that's total nonsense -- is meaningless power with fixed terms.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/may/12/fixed-five-year-parliamentary-term?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

and the public being given the right to have a particular issue debated in the Commons.

Can't wait to hear Miliband vs Clegg on which download we should all gang up and buy to stop X Factor being the Christmas number one.

55 making my head hurt.
1. It protects Clegg from Cameron calling snap election.
2. It protects Cameron from Lib-Lab calling an election (which they previously couldn't do anyway)

But

3. Lib-Lab could still win a vote of no confidence, forcing Cameron to resign and forming a govt themselves.
4. Only protects fixed-terms in a narrow range of hung parliaments: party w/more than 55% can still call one.
5. No Holyrood-style automatic election if no stable govt forms after 28 days. So wrangling cld go on right up until term.

Seems a very ad hoc and un-mandated change just to protect Clegg. If it also changes no-confidence votes in order to protect Cameron too, it's outrageous. Confusin.

(Growing storm about it does show how little honeymoon period these guys are going to get. Day 1 and everyone's already on the lookout for antics)

Did find this:

http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1998/ukpga_19980046_en_2#pt1-pb2-l1g3

The pecedent in British politics seems to have been set by the Labour Party when they set up the Scottish Paliament, with a whopping 66% needed to call no confidence.

Jack Straw had a good point this morning, in his fumbling, whiny way - the only time that the difference between 51% and 55% matters is when the government has already lost the confidence of the majority of the Commons. It appears purely designed to keep such a government in power, and would appear to make the actual passing of legislation unworkable.

It's true that it protects Cameron from LD defection but am coming around to the view that it is really designed to stop Cameron from calling a snap election and wiping out the LDs.

But he wouldn't be able to do that at 50% without the support of other parties, and he will still be able to do that at 50% *with* the support of other parties. Or am I missing something?

Sorry, that should read "will still be able to do that at 55% with the support of other parties" - can't see how this meaningfully adds any constraints to the tories

Hmm yes. Head = hurts.

ppl predicting a VAT rise

can't even be bothered to check whether it was in the manifesto of either party

VAT is super-regressive

a brief interlude

GIS david cameron side profile (no quotes)

VAT was always predicted to be increased to 20% at the least, whatever the promise.

You can call no confidence at Holyrood with 51% -- but there's a 28-day cooling-off period to allow a new govt to form.

66% is just for dissolution votes, and if you're going to allow them the barrier needs to be v high in a PR body to stop them calling elections all the time. But there's no point in it at Westminster.

ppl predicting a VAT rise

can't even be bothered to check whether it was in the manifesto of either party

VAT is super-regressive

― Greatest contributor: (history mayne), Thursday, 13 May 2010 10:18 Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Former Liberal Democrat Nick Clegg warned us about this Tory tax bombshell only a few weeks ago.

http://www.libdemvoice.org/nick-clegg-reveals-tories-13bn-vat-bombshell-18755.html

http://www.libdemvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/LibDem_Tory_Bombshell-300x150.jpg

The bombshell being that it wasn't enough I suppose

I'm sorry, but when I saw

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/01632/clegg-and-cameron_1632536c.jpg

I couldn't help thinking:

http://celebrity-pics.movieeye.com/celebrity_pictures/Ant_&_Dec_929470.jpg

+ 20 years

Was reading the Daily Mail over somebody's shoulder on the bus just now, and they made the same comparison. (not implying that you're a Daily Mail journo, obvs.)

Letter in Metro the other day compared Sam Cam with Nic Cage which made sense to me in my head but I can't find good photos to show it.

The "Dave and Nick show" article on the BBC site reminded me of it, tbh (xpost)

this one: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/8678370.stm

I had them more as Gilbert and George, but hey.

guys it's over you lost can we please get somebody back into the football threads now?

xp Two shits, certainly.

afaict the actual first thing this govt did was to take down the signs at the dept for children schools and families and change it to dept for education, even though that doesn't make sense because it's only responsible for schools and children's care not universities and colleges. can only assume that this was done out of visceral hatred for ed balls, like when brian clough in the damned utd gets don revie's desk and chops it up and burns it.

http://www.edie.net/news/news_story.asp?id=18111&channel=0&title=Green+Party+councillor+dies+in+accident+

Obviously wasn't hugging it hard enough.

xpost

I thought the Libby Demmies had persuaded them to keep the DCSF?

I thought this government wasn't going to do these cash-wasting ego-strokin' departmental name changes? HMSO bills will mount up.