I rarely go back to these commentaries; I don't archive or even label them as a rule, preferring to just see them as a continuous conversation, during which salient comments will re-emerge and develop - or not.
But I saw something in the Filth-O-Graph, today, which made me scour the past few months' worth of discussions.
Kenneth Baker, even when he was somebody, was nobody, an effete Tory, a collector, I seem to recall, of early cartoons - an improvement, it must be said, on collecting young boys - and the slimy slug of Spitting Image fame.
Like Portillo, of whom we have been speaking, Baker was an over-promoted, cowardly, Thatcherite lackey, put in office not for his personal strengths or qualities but for his dog-like obedience to his hideous mistress. I don't know what he's been doing in retirement but maybe he's been visiting Ishmaelia. This is what he had to say:
Like Portillo, of whom we have been speaking, Baker was an over-promoted, cowardly, Thatcherite lackey, put in office not for his personal strengths or qualities but for his dog-like obedience to his hideous mistress. I don't know what he's been doing in retirement but maybe he's been visiting Ishmaelia. This is what he had to say:
Lord Baker says Tory-Labour coalition may be needed to keep out SNP
Former Conservative chairman says deal between the two main marties could avoid the "nightmare" of a minority Labour administration depending on SNP support
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David Cameron walks with Ed Miliband through the Central Lobby towards the House of Lords to hear the Queen's Speech Photo: PA
The Conservatives may need to enter into a coalition with Labour in order to prevent the break-up of the Union, a former Tory chairman has said.
Lord Baker of Dorking said a deal between the two largest parties could
be necessary to ensure the "continuing unity" of the UK.
The former education secretary said such an agreement could avoid the
"nightmare" of a minority Labour administration depending on SNP support
to govern.
Writing in The Independent, he said a Labour-SNP pact at Westminster could "stretch the constitution of our country to breaking point".
The former Cabinet minister accepted that a deal between David Cameron
and Ed Miliband was "quite unthinkable" at the moment, but pointed out
that in Germany Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats governed with the
Social Democrats.
Lord Baker argues: "What is at risk is the
continuing unity of the United Kingdom. In order to preserve that unity
another way should be found.
"This could be a joint government of the Labour and Conservative parties: quite unthinkable at the moment, and at this time likely to be rejected by both of them - but this is what has happened in Germany."
He added: "It would be possible for this government to find areas of agreement - defence, counter-terrorism, infrastructure investment in schools, road, rail and in the reform of skills training and energy.
"The more controversial manifesto promises would have to be foregone but not abandoned; David Cameron may have to wait until 2018 for the European referendum and Ed Milliband for 2018 for the Mansion Tax.
"But this government's main purpose should be to establish a Constitutional Convention - covering not just Scotland but Wales, Northern Ireland and England - with the intention of preserving the United Kingdom and ensuring that devolution, which is the order of the day, is achieved in an orderly, fair, consistent and coherent way.
"It must not come about through a series of patchwork measures driven by just one part of the UK, the consequences of which have not been thought through."
Lord Baker's intervention follows a warning from former prime minister Sir John Major that the SNP would enter any deal with Labour with the "overriding aim" of "prising apart" the union.
In a sign of the influence the SNP hopes to wield after May 7, Alex Salmond, the former first minister, has claimed Scotland will be able to "call the tune" at Westminster.
Mr Salmond, who is standing for the Gordon constituency in May, believes a large group of SNP MPs will lead to "progress for Scotland".
SNP Westminster Leader Angus Robertson said: "Labour spent two and a half years working hand-in-glove with the Tories in the No campaign, so it's no surprise that so many Tories feel so at home with Ed Miliband's party.
"This follows Labour Lords and MPs backing working with the Tories, which only adds to the reasons why far more people in Scotland trust the SNP rather than Labour to keep the Tories out of government.
"Communities across Scotland are already hurting thanks to the austerity agenda of this Government - and another five years of cuts would have a devastating impact.
"This is exactly why the SNP - unlike senior Labour figures - has been clear that under no circumstances would we prop up a Tory government.
"The General Election in May is a huge opportunity for Scotland to have power at Westminster by electing a strong team of SNP MPs who will always work in Scotland's interests."
David Winnick, Labour MP for Walsall North, said the notion of a Conservative-Labour coalition was "totally ridiculous".
"Such an agreement would always to be to the advantage of the Tories," he said.
"The Labour Party benefited in 1931 from not going into the so-called National government and the idea now that we would even dream of joining the enemy camp is ridiculous."
Jim Murphy, the Scottish Labour leader, also dismissed the idea of a grand coalition with the Tories as "ludicrous".
When asked if he was ruling out Lord Baker's idea, Mr Murphy told BBC Scotland: "Absolutely. I don't need lessons from Tory dinosaurs about how to run Scotland.
"What a ludicrous, ludicrous idea. That's never going to happen."
The East Renfrewshire MP insisted that rejecting the deal was "a no-brainer".
(Murphy, of course, will preside over far worse than the decimation of JockLabour, may lose his own seat and may fail to win a seat in Holyrood - whistling in the dark, pissing in the wind, barking up the wrong tree, flogging a dead horse; take your pick, Murphy is a dead perpetual student walking.)
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This, below, is but the conclusion of a lengthy commentary, here, on November 12th, 2014.
Titled, Beyond The Political Event Horizon, I found it on re-reading, most amusing, as well as being a non-MediaMinster view of the post referendum situation; furthermore, nothing which has since happened - Russia, ISIL, the Euro-crisis - weakens the argument: if they have to, the filthsters, they will hang together, no sweat.
See what you think.
"This could be a joint government of the Labour and Conservative parties: quite unthinkable at the moment, and at this time likely to be rejected by both of them - but this is what has happened in Germany."
He added: "It would be possible for this government to find areas of agreement - defence, counter-terrorism, infrastructure investment in schools, road, rail and in the reform of skills training and energy.
"The more controversial manifesto promises would have to be foregone but not abandoned; David Cameron may have to wait until 2018 for the European referendum and Ed Milliband for 2018 for the Mansion Tax.
"But this government's main purpose should be to establish a Constitutional Convention - covering not just Scotland but Wales, Northern Ireland and England - with the intention of preserving the United Kingdom and ensuring that devolution, which is the order of the day, is achieved in an orderly, fair, consistent and coherent way.
"It must not come about through a series of patchwork measures driven by just one part of the UK, the consequences of which have not been thought through."
Lord Baker's intervention follows a warning from former prime minister Sir John Major that the SNP would enter any deal with Labour with the "overriding aim" of "prising apart" the union.
In a sign of the influence the SNP hopes to wield after May 7, Alex Salmond, the former first minister, has claimed Scotland will be able to "call the tune" at Westminster.
Mr Salmond, who is standing for the Gordon constituency in May, believes a large group of SNP MPs will lead to "progress for Scotland".
SNP Westminster Leader Angus Robertson said: "Labour spent two and a half years working hand-in-glove with the Tories in the No campaign, so it's no surprise that so many Tories feel so at home with Ed Miliband's party.
"This follows Labour Lords and MPs backing working with the Tories, which only adds to the reasons why far more people in Scotland trust the SNP rather than Labour to keep the Tories out of government.
"Communities across Scotland are already hurting thanks to the austerity agenda of this Government - and another five years of cuts would have a devastating impact.
"This is exactly why the SNP - unlike senior Labour figures - has been clear that under no circumstances would we prop up a Tory government.
"The General Election in May is a huge opportunity for Scotland to have power at Westminster by electing a strong team of SNP MPs who will always work in Scotland's interests."
David Winnick, Labour MP for Walsall North, said the notion of a Conservative-Labour coalition was "totally ridiculous".
"Such an agreement would always to be to the advantage of the Tories," he said.
"The Labour Party benefited in 1931 from not going into the so-called National government and the idea now that we would even dream of joining the enemy camp is ridiculous."
Jim Murphy, the Scottish Labour leader, also dismissed the idea of a grand coalition with the Tories as "ludicrous".
When asked if he was ruling out Lord Baker's idea, Mr Murphy told BBC Scotland: "Absolutely. I don't need lessons from Tory dinosaurs about how to run Scotland.
"What a ludicrous, ludicrous idea. That's never going to happen."
The East Renfrewshire MP insisted that rejecting the deal was "a no-brainer".
(Murphy, of course, will preside over far worse than the decimation of JockLabour, may lose his own seat and may fail to win a seat in Holyrood - whistling in the dark, pissing in the wind, barking up the wrong tree, flogging a dead horse; take your pick, Murphy is a dead perpetual student walking.)
-----------------------------------------------------------
This, below, is but the conclusion of a lengthy commentary, here, on November 12th, 2014.
Titled, Beyond The Political Event Horizon, I found it on re-reading, most amusing, as well as being a non-MediaMinster view of the post referendum situation; furthermore, nothing which has since happened - Russia, ISIL, the Euro-crisis - weakens the argument: if they have to, the filthsters, they will hang together, no sweat.
See what you think.
..........Conservative
and Jock in Coalition is unthinkable and considering the SNP wish to
destroy Scottish Labour, any coalition between them would be, at best,
highly problematic. With the SNP threatening the Union and with the
Poundlanders demanding Britain's exit from Europe, for the overwhelming
majority of parliamentarians a massive coalition with each other would
be, by far, the best resolution of a hung parliament.
Given the fundamentalist nature of
threats posed by both insurgent parties Miliband and Cameron could
sincerely proclaim a Government of National Emergency, could carry with
them their own party members, parliamentarians and the wider public.
Government of National Unity or National Emergency, doesn't matter
which.
I could write the speech now,
I could write the speech now,
world is facing another recession; country is facing unprecedented, head-chopping terror; minority parties are threatening, all over again, to tear the country apart, presenting a threat to our currency, our borders, our security.
The right honourable gentleman and myself have decided to put country first, suspend our differences, govern in the national interest, doing what's best for the nation, as we face these perils together. Lessbeclear, it is simply the right thing to do.
As so many bemoan, there is no difference between Labour and Tory, and the surely to be annihilated LibDems are but an exrescence, migrating from one party anus to another, as the foetid arse-wind blows.
Junky George Osborne
is indistinguishable from Ed Balls,
both committed to the idea that bank debt be nationalised, bank profit - or state hand-outs - be privatised; both believe that what they call Austerity - the punishment of the poor by the rich - is the only viable fiscal instrument. Both parties oppose the nationalisation of state assets, both oppose a realistic and sensible and inevitable rise in income tax to fund decent public services; both believe in a belligerent and entirely illegal, amoral and unprincipled foreign policy, one dictated by whichever stooge occupies the White House; both parties insist that there is no contradiction between nation-stateism and membership of the European Union, that we can be in Europe but not part of it or that out of it we can exert more influence than within it; both parties believe, primarily, in their need to rule, in its unavoidability, that there simply must be political parties comprising the very people most unsuitable to govern, bouyed up by people who either hope that, for them, Buggins' Turn will arrive or are just too stupid to perceive how they are being exploited, party activists, I believe they are called.
Faced with threats to their monopoly from either Fat Salmond or BarrowBoy Farage, from the Greens, the Taffies, the Orangemen or any combinbation of such jackanapeses what better might Cameron and Miliband do than make common cause against all and form a coalition with each other.
They could simply take it in turns to be PM, their mates could revolve between ministries, enjoying well-paid private appointments when out of office but still in parliament; rather, in fact, just as happens now. But with no need to accommodate much less embrace the likes of Salmond,
is indistinguishable from Ed Balls,
both committed to the idea that bank debt be nationalised, bank profit - or state hand-outs - be privatised; both believe that what they call Austerity - the punishment of the poor by the rich - is the only viable fiscal instrument. Both parties oppose the nationalisation of state assets, both oppose a realistic and sensible and inevitable rise in income tax to fund decent public services; both believe in a belligerent and entirely illegal, amoral and unprincipled foreign policy, one dictated by whichever stooge occupies the White House; both parties insist that there is no contradiction between nation-stateism and membership of the European Union, that we can be in Europe but not part of it or that out of it we can exert more influence than within it; both parties believe, primarily, in their need to rule, in its unavoidability, that there simply must be political parties comprising the very people most unsuitable to govern, bouyed up by people who either hope that, for them, Buggins' Turn will arrive or are just too stupid to perceive how they are being exploited, party activists, I believe they are called.
Faced with threats to their monopoly from either Fat Salmond or BarrowBoy Farage, from the Greens, the Taffies, the Orangemen or any combinbation of such jackanapeses what better might Cameron and Miliband do than make common cause against all and form a coalition with each other.
They could simply take it in turns to be PM, their mates could revolve between ministries, enjoying well-paid private appointments when out of office but still in parliament; rather, in fact, just as happens now. But with no need to accommodate much less embrace the likes of Salmond,
Farage and their noisesome supporters.
An end then, to the inconstancy of an electoral cycle, an end to uncertainty, an end to the old party politics; instead, we, your representatives, your tribunes, will simply allow you to vote for us, each in our respective constituencies and return us to joint power over your affairs but with your interests very close to our hearts. Although not as close as our own. The very best of all coalitions. And since you never elected it, you can never dismiss it.
A Government of National Unity; makes sense and it has a forever sort of sound.
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18 comments:
I remember Quintin Hogg in a Reith lecture over 30 years ago coined the term "elective dictatorship" to describe the UK's so-called democracy; for me at the time quite an eye opening deconstruction.
Add into the mix as well the civil service whose views form a continuum irrespective of party.
I suspect this present testing of the water by the old Tory wets is more to do with staying in the EU.
But who would have thunk that the Luvvies could be so stupid, and so short-sighted, to risk everything forever on a bunk up with Wee Eck? But, of course, if one realises that New Labour isn't Labour at all - well, then nothing of value is at risk. Which is a dark thought but one worth having, especially if your name is Milliband. Cameron will take a loss to a Lab/SNP break-up of the UK as a price more than worth paying. He'll go down as the architect of a thousand year English Tory Reich starting in 2020, or even sooner depending on lunacy in the East.
The Kippers are rightly keeping their powder dry for the nightmare of a thumping that they are going to get in the media - fairly or unfairly, it matters not. Let the Greens take the strain. "Our policy is that we will ban private motor cars. But one doesn't need a car in Town, after all, Darling, does one? We'll get a cab to Trixie's!" Yes, thank-you. "And I didn't mention that our other policy is to make energy so expensive that lots of those poor people - who don't earn six-figure salaries in the SE - will die and this will reduce our carbon footprint - not just by reducing the carbon, you understand, but also by reducing the feet, Mein Fuhrer."
Cameron's though is the game to lose. regardless of what you think of the oily bastard he has got to the end of a slash-and-burn administration in much better shape than he could possibly have foreseen. A little war in the Ukraine and he is saved for sure. (Putin v Milliband? Nah.) Greece looks timed well for him too.
The seductive logic, for the filthsters, of a GNU will slowly work on them. They might deny it now but give it until May and it will seem perfect.
The Scots must be fucking mad. How can they think longer term that this will work well for them? I agree with Mr Mongoose that Cameron has the edge. Horrible whichever way you look at it and if the election results in a mess, which is likely, then it could all turn very nasty indeed.
Problem is that no-one really has the constitutional intelligence to deal with any of this, as Dave showed in the independence campaign.
Our body-politic is sick Mr I and nowhere sicker than in Scotland. I managed to endure a bit of the PBC's Question Time from Glasgow this evening (repeated on the Parliament channel). The 'I agree with Humza' show if you saw it. They really should retire Dimbleby as a matter of urgency - I'd even be willing to see him receive a handsome pay off to get him off air at the price of future silence. The only member of the panel with an ounce of sense or integrity was Ruth 'Boy' Davidson but she was given almost no opportunity to speak. Instead we had to listen to the real 'hate-preachers' on the panel while the 'centre-right' perspective was represented by the windmilling Toby Young (another one of the 'underpants' generation I seem to recall - his hand and fist gestures made Mussolini look like a model of restraint). The demonisation of the Tories in Scotland has reached the point where it is beyond reason and undemocratic. The way things are going I wouldn't be surprised to see their offices and general presence in Scotland subjected to some sort of Kristallnacht. The best thing the Tories could do in Scotland now would be to disband themselves and create a new moderate centre right party independent of the Conservative Party. Davidson would be the right person to do this and could, if positioned well, create a political force that in time might give the SNP a run for their money.
Another candidate for JockTory leader based his campaign on a breakaway; instead they chose heir second lesbian leader.
I did see QT and I am still reeling; it was, as you say, more the gathering of a cult than a serious programme, Humza and Co seem to have brainwashed a significant section of the populace and Dimbleby was useless and Toby Young was laughable and Ruth Boy Davidson was the only sane person on the panel. I wonder why none of MediaMinster can say to the Tribesmen - You lost the referendum, you do not speak for Scotland. It is as though we, who won the referendum actually lost it because that is the better story. Let us see what happens, mr sg when the whole i country speaks, rather than just the cultists.
As I said to mr sg, mr bungalow bill, psepholologcally speaking I am a Scot, and I and two and a half million other Scots voted down the Tribesmen, just a few months ago and I simply do not see how all these people will, in May, vote SNP and I do foresee a deal of tactical voting; I, for instance, would vote for anyone, I mean anyone, in order to deny Gnasher a rout and I suspect that many others would, too.
Your own logic, mr mongoose -Labour is not Labour - foreshadows my notion of a GNU. But I differ from you regarding CallHimDavd, among his traditional voters, the phoney EU Referendum, immigration and gay marriage will have sunk him, have sunk him, tired and sceptical former Labour voters will, nevertheless, enraged by Austerity, return to the fold, students and other former LibDemmers will vote Labour.
Denied a majority for the second time, how could Cameron not fabricate a reason for coalition with Labour? It is either that or walk the plank.
As mr yardarm says, the same people, people like mr elby, as cheered the current Coalition because it was not Gordon Brown will cheer a GNU. because it is not Alex and Gnasher. Betcha any money.
There is a Hailsham clip on youtube, mr mike, which, I believe, prompted the Eye front page; Is Hailsham Mad?
And of course he was. I read his autobiography, mad as a fucking hatter. The door wherein I went, something like that.
Yes, that's the only rational response to the McDisappointed - they lost after all. The SNP gets to shrivel and have a bout of infighting up there in the wilderness. Scottish Labour recovers over the next few years - maybe, if they stop appointing dicks to lead them - and we all carry on as normal. The loss of ScotLab seats this time around is a transient, and it doesn't matter to anyone else anyway. But if Milliband taints Labour by a stitch up, the English will crucify them and the anti-EU would be solidified - all those white vans trundling shame-faced back up Maggie's drive. It would be a stupidity to even think about it and Wee Eck would run rings around the Millidweeb in any negotiations. The whole plan is to keep the issue alive and in the news so that the loss of the referendum does not kill it for a generation, and with it all those careers.
The sensible option is for Cameron to deal with UKIP, deliver the EU referendum and take his victory. An expelled Greece replete with Stavros starving in the street will keep the voters onside.
If you missed it, mr mongoose, have a look at last week's QT, it is exactly as mr sg describes it, but until you see the Tribesmen's Pavlovian dogs, conflating Thatcher with Culloden, as if both were yesterday, you don't know what stupidity is, how loud its cawing, how feeble its mind.
As to Ukip-Cameron, hasn't Lord Poundland rejected any deal while Cameron still leads the Tories?
On Scottish matters, Dave -or Gideon - has a ruse currently whereby they stick a Union Flag on national projects, fair enough, I think, if a bit cynical. Up here, last week, I saw some Tribesman professor from some joke university pontificating that Here, in Scotland, we Scots won't fall for that, here, in Scotland, we Scots call the Union flag the Butcher's Apron, here, in Scotland, we Scots recall that it was the Butcher's Apron flew over the Highland Clearances. A smug, stupid and unread buffoon, I wanted to reach into the telly, grab him by the beard, pull him out, punch his face repeatedly and tell him, Aye, and it was the one flag which represented defiance of fascism and totalitarianism, just seventy years ago, you fucking gabshite, cocksucking, inebriate, child-molesting, wife-beating, cross-dressing, shit-eating degenerate brain-dead moron. After that I would have punched him some more, reminding him that the Scottish Duke of Sutherland and his doxy ordered th Clearances, and not Maggie Thatcher. Trouble is, this cunt has students. And they let him on TeeVee.
I did miss it, Mr Ishmael, but then I have missed every edition this last three years. I can't bear that bollocks anymore. And, yes, Fagash Nige has, of course he has, excluded the notion of a deal with the Tories. As the lady said, he would say that, wouldn't he?
The SNP is really an anti-English party. Just as my fenian jokers across the Irish Sea are anti-British rather than pro-anything (and they mean anti-English by that too). It is the perception of being small and less, less important and less powerful, that makes them yatter so and get their knickers in a twist (twists?) over things that should have been consigned to the dustbin decades ago.
I have spent a few hours this weekend watching the Clark man and his Civilisation. It is of its time, as is he, smug bastard, but he says at one point that almost everything worth keeping that has come out of civilisation has come about in a period of internationalism - looking out rather than looking in. I think that he might very well be right too. Nationalists of all shades would do well to think on it. That the vilely corrupt EU is making such a good case for aggressive independence, turning now before our very eyes into a renewal of insularity, well this should be a cause of regret to us all.
(Gotta keep talking; the cricket doesn't start for two-and-half hours!)
I listened to it, once, the cricket, a bit stoned, and there was a lull in play and these old geezers were talking about a bump in the field, out towards the boundary and how it could make the ball bounce a shade differently and how it could unfoot a careless fielder, seemed like about half an hour they were talking about this bump at Headingley and a light went on. This is what cricket's about, I thought, dazzled, harmless chit-chat, passing the time.
This was in the early nineties, I expect that these days it is much more McEnroed, Murrayed and Hamiltoned, stars and sponsorships and tantrums. I cannot tell you how much I detest professional sportspersons. Murdoch, again, that rotten old cunt has ruined everything he approached.
I sometimes go months without watching QT or TW and then I dip back in, often, even then, turning-off, mid-way but the Humza show was revealing, even if you just watch his answers you will agree, this isn't politics, it is cultism.Every word, every gesture and expression rehearsed and rehearsed to appear spontaneous and virtuous, every trite, pseudo egalitarian phrase triggering IdiotCheers. Go on, hsve a look. This is the New Politics.
Well I would have been better off watching QT than the cricket. It's a cross we have to bear though. The principal advantage of God's own game btw, Mr I, is that one spends an average of 9/22ths of it sitting on one's arse drinking beer in the sunshine.
I couldn't stomach much of the Humza person - self-satisfied, lying, openly contemptuous of everybody else, obviously more clever and more cunning than anyone else he has ever met. A grade A, card-carrying dick, in fact.
Val McDermid was a disappointment too - somewhat shallower than her books. What is it with the prosperous Left that convinces them that they are uniquely moral among men? And good grief, Dimbleby is a tedious twat. The Mcseals too in the audience who have been trained to clap like Primary School children at assembly. Yeck! They all deserve each other.
And I see that Mr Bollocks is doing his best today to lose the election campaign even before it has begun. Clueless nerk.
Well, I am glad you joined in the CommunitySuffer, mr mongoose. Val is someone of whom we see far too much, up here, her and Mrs Rab C Nesbitt, Elaine Smith. One of those ferocious looking lesbians, Val, unlike Ruth Boy Davidson, who isn't. The show, apart from RuthBoy, was a hymn to grievance, even Young PornoParent, Toby Young, fully clad and with a fresh ElectionBeard was aggrieved that no-one present shared his view of the Tories' achievements on our behalf.
Humza, though, probably to his ultimate disadvantage, stole the show. I am glad he had an English audience, as well as his brainwashed acolytes.
JockLabour too, has an entirely non-contradictory McMuslim, Anwar Something, he inherited, literally inherited his seat from his Da'. Scotland, eh, best part of England.
You mentioned somewhere back up the road, not far back I think, that a friend had sent you a PKD to read. Which one Mr I?
It is The Man In The High Castle; proper writing by a proper writer,just stops one in one's tracks, has me,anyway. A re-imagiing of WW 2, in which the Axis powers have won, Germany running Eurasia and the Nips occupying the US and the rest. I think it is the sort of imaginative leap which drives what I believe is called Steam Punk but mr verge is the resident lit-crit, he would know. I have read other, probably post-PKD stories about the Confederacy having won the Civil War and the guy who writes the Shardlake novels has done one about the Nazis occupying the UK, Dominion, I think it's called.
I guess that once you start inverting history things just fall into place but PKD as well as doing that has or feigns an understanding, too, of Oriental thinking-the Tao, the Ching, the obsession with status and face which may also have coloured so much subsequent Western fiction. Every page is humbling.
Thanks Mr I. Sounds like something I should add to my reading list. I read some of his work as a teenager but can't recall that one. However, from what I do recall, PKD is (or I suppose was) a real mind expander...
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