Another Posh Boy ?

So Farewell then Ming ....cards otherwise known as ,Nick Drew, have suggested the Liberals go further into gerontocracy by digging up Jeremy Thorpe, but sadly I think Cleggy is the boy. This will be a bit of a problem for our David . I have seen Clegg at a question time recording and he scrubs up well for a Liberal in a dull way.
He brings all the negative baggage Cameron does, he is a posh Westminster media princeling who has wastreled about in European sinecures and self congratulatory CV filling . He is stuck so far up the arse of the establishment only his feet can be seen. That’s his weakness; he’s a yes man and a creep , in fact he is David Milliband .He also has the classic achilles heel of Liberals ,opposing Trident, advocating the smoking ban and suggesting we dump America for the EU. On tax he is confused , he wishes to cut it , but typically for a liberals is unable to make hard choices about where.
A little quick to jump on Mings corpse as well. , if he accentuates his right wing modernising credentials he risks making the Liberals position entirely superfluous. His Liberalising domestic noises are somewhat undermined by his willingness to see democracy sold to Brussels. Not without admirable qualities but lacking definition , he has no discernible over arching philosophy.

Personally ,you might say posh boys are in vogue so why not another . I would say Cameron has succeeded despite the very great disadvantage of his background by his undeniable talent and bravery. If Clegg fails to match him , and he surely will , then he could be just the man to finish of this party for good . He risks appearing entirely ineffectual . On the the hand perhaps we can work with him.

The sayings of Clegg:

Moderniser


Mr Clegg, a moderniser, is one of the small group of economic liberals attempting to get the party to accept a more "credible" policy on tax and spend, as he tells us himself. The party, he says, needs to break some "taboos" on the NHS and make it more responsive to public needs.( Guardian 2005)



Libertarian

If legislation was a guarantee of greater public safety, this country would be the safest nation on earth. Since 1997, the Labour government has passed over 114,000 pages of legislation, and today's Queen's Speech offers us thousands of pages more.

The greatest burden of legislation has issued forth from the Home Office, which has produced a total of 59 bills since 1997. Undeterred by the fact that 10 years in office has led them to create over 3,000 new offences, today we learn that the Home Office is set to go into legislative overdrive once again with five more bills and the chance of another later in the year.......... More than 50 sections of the 2003 Criminal Justice Act haven't been put into effect, and yet John Reid is proposing new legislation to replace it altogether.....This is panic, push-button government at its worst. Labour uses legislation as a proxy for governing, …We also find ourselves with a country less free than before. The innocent will continue to be harassed by illiberal legislation - like identity cards and the DNA database - forced onto the statute book on little more than a ministerial whim.....


Immigration

The public debate on immigration is changing. In part, this is because of a step change in the number of economic migrants coming to the UK since the mid-1990s, and a sharp increase in those coming from central and eastern Europe following the latest enlargement of the EU…it now consistently features in the top three issues that voters say are of greatest concern to them……The government estimates this number to be up to 600,000 individuals. Do the Conservatives ….That is why the Liberal Democrats will be debating a policy proposal, at our party conference in mid-September, that a route of earned legalisation should be made available to those who have lived here unauthorised for many years.

Islam
Our aim must be to refute the medievalism of Al-Qaeda’s perverted world view, while ensuring that members of our mainstream Muslim communities feel that our liberal values of tolerance and diversity are their values too. We must combine critical engagement with the many grievances held among mainstream Muslims, without necessarily accepting them, drawing a clear red line beyond which liberal respect for other views does not exten


Europe

always tempting to believe you can have your cake and eat it, remain everyone's friend, playing one off against the other, never needing to make a choice. If only.

The EU and America are not enemies. Doctrinaire anti-Americanism is pointless. Little can be achieved on the global stage without a working partnership between Europe and the US. Nor is the EU perfect. While Blair and Bush may have committed a monumental error of judgment in Iraq, the opposition from Chirac and Schröder smacked of political opportunism. But Europe and America are different, starkly so when Washington is run by a cabal of neoconservative ideologues. Sometimes, a choice between the two is unavoidable. And membership of the EU does imply minimal standards of solidarity with its other members, and commitment to the principles of multilateralism and negotiation upon which the EU is founded.


He has voted for the smoking ban and against Trident