The Masts Of Cortes' Ships

All great changes begin with the smallest flicker . The asteroid that saw off the Dinosaurs must have been glimpsed as a dot in the night sky at first . The masts of Cortes ‘ships , dismissed by Aztec children on the beach as nothing . There has been a most intriguing Poll that commentators are dismissing as a blip , ……….
The Telegraph’s ICM Poll shows Labour down to 28% and the Liberals up at 22% ;the landscape suddenly looks very different . . It is commonplace that Liberal votes are tactical, but is it possible that Liberals support has toughened while Labour are more than ever reliant on negative voting .If so Labour ,like Israel ,can only lose once

Clegg ,by re-engaging with the Gladstonian views Margaret Thatcher espoused, has moved right. He has braved the Cameron-lite jibes and stuck to his nominal tax cutting credentials during the last Brown bounce. Naturally no-one believes them but the effort counts
Any suggestion that Liberals might ally with Labour against the largest Party would be poison so , if they are serious about wishing to govern ,there is an intriguing prospect . A Conservative Liberal alliance at Cabinet level …or an unofficial sympathy such as Liberals had with New Labour , this would amount to an National government and cement the Liberal Party as the main opposition.
We know what Liberals do not like about New Labour , what do they not like about Conservatives then ? Well its hard to find much.
The extent to which the Conservative Party is ‘socially Conservative’ is now so attenuated as to scarcely allow a cigarette Paper between it and the average Liberal .Clegg is really where the Heath was , and the division is on Europe is the only real stumbling block . I think we can get round that . A lot of Liberals on the ground realise they cannot be the Party of faceless bureaucratic diktats and at the very least this needs rethinking .Conservatives on the other hand have taken a pragmatic view ,Cameron wants Europe in the long grass and Clegg must know that a score draw is the best the Euro-phile are going to get with the people of Europe losing all interest and any sympathy. Not all Liberals in any case wish to abolish the country .Furthermore if they want to get out of their middleclass white ghetto they had better stop being quite as superior about he loyalties felt by ordinary people . I think they can makes that jump but it will be a hard step for Party whose vices are conceit and Weimarism
New Labour in ten years has been a centralising tax raising law making bossy boots of party and its mystery to me that anyone calling themselves Liberal would even consider voting for it .So do Liberals continue to hang onto Labour coat-tails , as in truth many Party members do , or do they make a bid to overtake Labour . One thing they should bear in mind is this is the best chance they will ever get .
Events have tempted New labour into safe collectivist territory , they have forgotten that this philosophy has few votes in normal times. They have an old socialist Scottish leader who is personally unattractive and gutlessly did not take his best chance . They are about to get the blame for mass unemployment and debt , and they are once again paid for by the Unions .
There will always be a few oldsters , like Joe Brand and Tony Robinson who like socialist cabbage soup but it is the Liberal Party who have the credentials to be the opposition of the next century . New Labour have failed to keep socialism without the illiberality The Liberals have a far better chance of pulling a broad enough constituency together along these lines .If they act decisively now Labour may soon face the same calamity it caused the Liberals at the Khaki Election.

Extinction ... oh look , that dot in the sky is getting bigger...

Poem for the day - Recognising that no-one cares what I think about politics I am looking out much loved poems by way of a dessert when I have a good idea. Simon Armitage is well worth reading if you have not and I like this one ( again with the snowy theme)

Snow joke Simon Armitage (England, 1963 - )

Heard the one about the guy from Heaton Mersey?
Wife at home, lover in Hyde, mistress
in Newton-le-Willows and two pretty girls
in the top grade at Werneth prep. Well,

he was late and he had a good car so he snubbed
the police warning-light and tried to finesse
the last six miles of moorland blizzard,
and the story goes he was stuck within minutes.

So he sat there thinking about life and things;
what the dog does when it catches its tail
and about the snake that ate itself to death.
And he watched the windscreen filling up

with snow, and it felt good, and the whisky
from his hip-flask was warm and smooth.
And of course, there isn’t a punchline
but the ending goes something like this.

They found him slumped against the steering wheel
with VOLVO printed backwards in his frozen brow.
And they fought in the pub over hot toddies
as who was to take the most credit.

Him who took the aerial to be a hawthorn twig?
Him who figured out the contour of his car?
Or him who said he heard the horn, moaning
softly like an alarm clock under an eiderdown?