Boris On Clegg

An interesting column in the Telegraph by Boris Johnson caught my eye this morning. It was nice to finally see amongst the media someone who wasn’t swooning over “Churchill Clegg” and the Lib Dems, like a schoolgirl with a crush on the new kid at school.

In the article he contemplates the madness that has befallen the nation over the new found support for Mr Clegg. Whilst I do not share his blind optimism about the certainty of a Conservative all out victory at the forthcoming General Election, he does make some valid arguments in his dressing down of Mr Clegg. My favourite paragraphs from the column:

“Everybody treats Vince Cable as a semi-holy Mahatma Gandhi of British politics, because he is supposed in some way to have anticipated the financial crisis. Actually his most notable recommendation before the crisis was that Britain should join the euro – a move that would gravely have worsened our current position by leaving us in a Greek-style straitjacket.

What crouton of substance did Clegg offer last Thursday, in the opaque minestrone of waffle? He wants to get rid of Trident. Great! So Lib Dem foreign policy means voluntarily resigning from the UN Security Council, abandoning all pretensions to world influence, and sub-contracting our nuclear deterrent to France! They are a bunch of euro-loving road-hump fetishists who are attempting like some defective vacuum cleaner to suck and blow at the same time; and the worst of it is that if you do vote Lib Dem in the demented belief that there could ever be such a thing as a Lib Dem government, you won't get Prime Minister Clegg. You'll get Prime Minister Gordon Brown, for five more holepunch-hurling years, because the Lib Dems almost always vote with Labour, and in my years in Parliament I can't remember a single moment when they opposed a Labour measure to expand state spending or state control.”

The First Televised Debate

Much has been made of Britain’s first televised leader’s debate. It has been labelled a game changer by most of the media with the Lib Dems now enjoying a 2 point lead over Labour with 30% according to the latest YouGov poll.

Personally I’m not quite sure why the Lib Dems have risen by so much in the polls. I should first off say that I only managed to watch 30 minutes of the debate before switching off in complete boredom – and this is coming from someone who actually finds politics interesting. Of course the debate could have livened up after that but I doubt it.

Mr Brown was his usual dull self, trying to defend Labour’s record and seeking re-election on that – a bad policy considering their appalling record. Mr Cameron seemed to be giving the most sensible answers but failed to get his message across effectively. I’m not sure whether it was an attempt to act serious and Prime Ministerial or whether it was a touch of the nerves but again he seemed incredibly dull. Mr Clegg was in fact the only person who seemed energetic, enthusiastic and interesting, which can be the only reason I can think of for his rise in support because what he was actually saying was complete rubbish. His policies were vague and incredibly idealistic – Mr Cameron and Mr Brown should have been able to pick holes in his arguments easily and exposed the Lib Dems for the idealistic party they are – none of their policies would work in practice. Instead Mr Brown and Mr Cameron chose to argue with each other and ignore Mr Clegg.

Of course the easy way to have made this debate enjoyable to watch would have been to cut the constraints that all the parties signed up to – in particular the ban on applause. If this debate had been more along the lines of Prime Minister’s Questions (which I generally enjoy watching) with jeering and applause from different members of the audience then this would have livened the debate up substantially.

Instead I rather suspect that no-one will be able to remember Britain’s ‘First Great Televised Debate’ for the boredom and monotony it produced. However I shall not say that the debate was insignificant – clearly it has had an effect on the polls and certainly if it stays the way it is then this election will have turned into a 3 legged race. However if the Conservatives and Labour have any sense they will concentrate their efforts in the next two debates to taking apart Mr Clegg’s policies and showing how they are unworkable in practice.

So I shall not follow in the footsteps of most other commentators in proclaiming the rise of the Liberal Democrats, not until the dust has settled and we have seen the next two debates. After all there are still two and a half weeks of the election campaign left to run, and as we all know even one week is a long time in politics.

Constitutional Reform

There is an interesting article in The Times today by William Rees-Mogg on the need for immediate reform in The Lords and the entire constitution.

He makes the valid point that over the past 20 years the Lords has already undergone great change – most of it for the worse. He comments that the old separation of powers between the Commons and the Lords worked well, but has since been scrapped by Labour, and that the banishment of most of the hereditary peers was bad for the Lords because they were more apolitical than their life peer replacements.

Of course the perfect solution to all this would be to restore the House of Lords to its former glory and undo the demolition work undertaken by Labour. However in today’s world any party that suggested returning to a system whereby a few privileged landowners are allowed to adjust legislation from the Commons would be electoral suicide. It would be the best possible solution but is not viable.

So what of the alternatives being put forward? Labour wants a wholly elected chamber but this would cause many problems. Why should the Commons have priority over the Lords when both are elected? What if the Commons is dominated by the Conservatives and the Lords by Labour? Why should the Conservatives be able to push through legislation when both parties have equal support from the electorate as a whole?

Another alternative is a fully appointed chamber. This has the problem that those appointed to the Lords by the government would be there to push forward the government’s agenda – hardly appropriate for a revising chamber. The only other suggestions being put forward are a split between elected and appointed representatives. For me this has the combination of problems for the other two options.

Rees-Mogg continues in the article to suggest that more than just the Lords needs reform. In commenting on the poor devolution of national assemblies he says that

“Too high a proportion of recent constitutional reforms has been a reaction to events and to the political pressures of the time. We need a new constitutional convention and a written constitution.”

I’m not quite sure why everyone suddenly seems to want to change and codify what is already a very good constitution. Our constitution has evolved over the past 800 years or so, being updated and upgraded through Acts Of Parliament when required. There is absolutely no reason to change the British Constitution whatsoever – and even if there was would we really want the same people who cannot even write legislation well let alone the devolution of national assemblies to write a new British Constitution?

Codifying a constitution does not eradicate problems. Take the American Constitution for example and how it gives every American citizen the right to arm themselves – a right that was probably very useful back in 1776 but which now causes problems with excessive gun crime across America. Even if this new Constitution is absolutely perfect how are they meant to make it suitable 100 years from now or even 50? The world is constantly changing and we need a constitution which can do the same. Luckily we already have one, it’s just a shame that so many commentators want to dispose of it.