names

i feel a little abashed to admit this but i didn’t know who james cleverly was until tonight.
i should have done.
now i can’t quite make up my mind as to whether or not i like him. obviously i can’t really like him as he is a conservative (the deputy leader of the london assembly, if you must know), but i do admire him for some straight talking.
true his straight talking isn’t about tory policy, his straight talking is name calling. hey what can i say sometimes you just have to like schoolyard politics, or in different circumstances it would be called bullying?
simon hughes, the liberal democratic party deputy leader, has made the outrageous statement that backbench liberal democrat mps should have a right to veto the coalition government’s policies.
frankly the idea seems a bit silly – if the mps don’t like it they just vote against in the house. there is your veto sonny jim.
yet when you read what hughes said
"if the coalition wants to deliver [parliamentary] votes, neither party on its own has a majority, so we have to make sure everyone is brought into that.
"as a matter of practical politics... the parliamentary party on behalf of the wider party on big issues has to be able to say 'no, we can't go down this road'."

it becomes a case of him saying that if the coalition government want to get polices through then it needs to make sure that it has all the backbenchers onside at the time of a crucial vote. the best, and simplest, way to do that would be to give the backbench mps a chance to hear the plans in advance of them being announced and letting the powers that be that ‘oh dear, that is a truly bad idea and we can’t support it’. see simple. ministers can then decide if they can get the policy through or not. if not: plan vetoed. simple.
given all the bollocks the con/dems have chucked out about ‘new politics’ what simon hughes has suggested seems perfectly logical in light of the collaborative nature of the con/dem coalition.
well it would be if you weren’t james cleverly. nope for james simon is a “fool” a “bone-head” oh and: “we may be coalition partners but it doesn't stop me thinking that simon hughes is a dick.”
(now i have to admit this does warm me towards james cleverly, although i can’t help but wonder just how smart it is to go public and on your own blog with such supportive language. look it is fine for me to call people all the names under the sun on my blog for the simple reasons that very few people read it, even fewer believe it and, most importantly (and london’s loss) i am not the deputy leader of the london assembly. so i can pretty much say what i like. not sure it works that way for the deputy leader.)
james goes on to say “but, as i have said before, a lib dem who isn't prepared to enter a coalition with anyone except labour isn't a lib dem. they're labour.”
one of the reasons hughes has come out with his veto plan is obvious: liberal democratic support is disappearing down the swanee river. this is just one way for hughes to remind people that the liberal democrats are still nice people. he is not suggesting that the liberal democrats should not be in the coalition (though he doesn’t rule out a potential coalition with labour in the future, which may make hughes a political tart).
while james’ point has some validity in that there is no point in campaigning for proportional representation if there is only one party you would join with, the converse is also true that you can’t besmirch them just because they don’t join your party (i am sure that made more sense in my head than it does written down).
in the end you can’t help but feel that james may be speaking for the rest of the tories out there – they know they need the lib dems to stay in power, but they just wish they would shut the fuck up and let the tories get on with screwing the poor over and stop pretending that they are the conscience of the coalition government as no one cares what they think and we all know that the liberal democratic ministers have sold their souls to play with the big boys.
still like i say i can’t help but warm to cleverly because his website does allow for such comments as:
rob said...
james cleverly, you are a cunt.
and then he goes and loses some kudos by posting this
“..but if i have genuinely caused offence, i apologise.

to be fair name calling is a bit childish.”
sounds like someone has been told off.
perhaps a case of cleverly by name, but not by nature…