Polly Toynbee is on her usual silly form today.
I won't quote the whole article, just the bits I take issue with.
The Lib Dems seem to have lost their old knack for snatching byelection seats; their share of the vote fell in both byelections this year
I wish people would stop pointing to these byelections. The comparison between these byelections and the byelections we won in Brent, and such places, is a wrong comparison to draw. There will be other Brent Easts. The fact that the byelections have happened in places where circumstances are against us, does not mean the Lib Dems are unpopular, or have lost their byelection knack.
"...the party has abandoned its opposition to fees."
Erm... no? Blatantly no. Absolutely no. Where did she get this from? Doesn't she check what's written in our own policies? Grr.
"If tax-and-spend defines a party, those policies have never mattered more as emblems of identity. The detail may escape most voters, but all parties need to declare their essential character loudly. Under Kennedy, the Lib Dems proposed a 50% top rate on earnings over £100,000. But Clegg waved a very different flag: when that 50% rate was abandoned, he promised instead to cut the basic income tax rate by a walloping 4%. That flag declared that this was now a high-tax party, but aiming for middle-ground Tory votes. But that policy was abandoned too this April, in favour of taking 4 million people earning under £10,000 out of tax altogether, raking it back from the rich by cutting relief on top-rate pensions and adding new green taxes. In truth, Lib Dem tax policies are decently redistributive, yet seem deliberately to avoid flying any symbolic flag to show which way their ship is heading."
But Polly, that's why we're the best party to vote for! Fine, our tax policies don't fit onto nice 2-word political slogans. However, look at the basic premise, which you agree with: "policies are decently redistributive". So, what you're saying, is that although our policies are actually good, we need to descend to the level of changing our tax policies to create a gimmick? We don't do gimmicks, Polly. We do tax policies that will work and help the country. Gordon Brown's 50% seemed to fly a flag, didn't it? But the detail shows it doesn't change much at all. So no, please don't say we need to use tax as a PR move. Tax is far more important than that, and you should know that.
"If he was serious, he could go for Labour's jugular with an unequivocally radical message. The empty political ground is not in the crowded centre, but out in the near-deserted radical wastelands. But Clegg looks over his shoulder, anxiously protecting those essentially conservative seats that so many of his MPs hold."
Erm... "radical" is not reserved for the left? You know what, I can't imagine a party more radical than the Lib Dems. People may laugh. But what other party in the UK actually has tried to combine the freedom of capitalism with the fairness of social democracy? What other party constantly struggles with their heart and soul to ensure that they sufficiently balance freedoms with fairness? What other party looks to the real solutions as opposed to outdated socialist thinking, or cheap populism, or masquerading vacuous spin? God, Polly. The Lib Dems are radical. And just because a socialist party doesn't exist in mainstream politics, doesn't mean the Lib Dems should just throw away their radicalism to return to defunct, assinine political theories which are based around at best a naive idealism without any attention to the world at all, and at worst a malicious barely suppressed class violence. What is radical about socialism? About clamping down on freedom at its most extreme? About reducing individual freedoms? About instituting an arbitrary measurement of equality?
No, the "radical" choice is the Lib Dems, who make the point that we should seek equality of opportunity, not enforced equality of means. That struggle is impossible. The struggle for equal opportunity however, is possible. It just means we need people to vote for us, and not the tired, old, morally-defunct two parties.
"Instead he has joined the slash-and-burn brigade, just when he should be offering the alternative voice of calm reason. It is not an idle boast for Clegg to claim he could lead his party to overtake Labour; but to do it, he has to go for it – and go radical."
Again on the radical. But he has not "joined the slash-and-burn brigade", he is being honest as to what is needed to help Britain. The areas we have outlined so far as a party are not about tearing into the NHS or schools, but about tearing into waste, nuclear weapons, and the like. That, Polly, is radical. And something you should be supporting.
The Liberal Democrats are not retreating into the political wildernesses of the Left. Nor should we. We are the only centre-ground party with a moral, philosophical and political drive to be there. We are the only centre-ground party who can make the claim that we were there first and that we are there because that's what we believe.
The Tories are invaders from the right, Labour invaders from the left. Why are you suggesting that we flee, Polly? Because we're staying put. Let Labour's empty protestations to its centre-ground credentials be revealed for the charlatan tricks they are. The Lib Dems are centrist, liberal, democratic, and socially aware. That is more than you can say for any other mainstream party.
Join us, Polly! Help us fight for the centre ground. You couldn't be amongst an intellectually richer tradition if you tried.
6 comments:
She's also forgetting that the new Lib Dem tax policies also raise more from the 'rich' than the old 50p rate. I assume she doesn't think raising the tax threshold to 10,000 is either radical or an attempt to help poorer people out.
I have lost count of the times she has written about the how the Labour party can STILL win the next election only to watch them slide further and further down the polls.
But that is what you get when you are a bitter old socialist I guess.
I reckon that 10k tax threshold could be a huge incentive for the working class to vote Lib Dem. Just stick a table on the election flyer showing how much tax you would pay on your salary vs how much you currently pay. Nothing complicated, no fancy diagrams, just the facts for 10k, 13k, 16k, 18k, etc.
I believe it amounts to £700 for the average person.
We decided at the Nuremberg Trials that planning aggressive war & bombing civilians were war crimes & massacring, ethnic cleansing, genocide & mass kidnap & rape were crimes against humanity. There is no question that the LibDem leaders, without exception, enthusiastically supported an aggressive war against Yugoslavia conducted overwhelmingly by bombing civilians. That after the occupation of Kosovo they unanimously supported the Massacres, such as Dragodan where at least 210 civilians were murdered by our police, widespread genocide, the ethnic cleansing of at least 350,000 & the kidnap & sale to brothels of thousands, probably 10s of thousands of children. It gas since become public that the British government knew & thus party leaders who are Privy Councillors would have known, that our police kidnapped at at least 1,300 Serbs & dissected them while still alive to sell the parts to our hospitals.
There is clearly a prima faci case that all those involved, including all the leaders of the party, are personally guilty of these war crimes & crimes against humanity.It seems to me that this is a serious charge yet not only have all LibDem MP's refused to defend themselves in any fact based way* but neither has any
LibDem blogger & the party has made it a condition of membership that one support this genocide. Indeed most of them (listed here http://a-place-to-stand.blogspot.com/2009/09/lib-dem-bloggers-who-censor-in-nazi.html) have also censored mention of the facts. It should be unnecessary to point out that censorship (& indeed genocide) is anathema to any real liberal.
I am therefore seeking to find if there is a single "Liberal Democrat" anywhere among the alleged 60,000 members who feels it is possible to dispute, in any factual way, the prima faci case that the entire party leadership are guilty of war crimes, genocide & worse crimes even Hitler didn't match in the Nazi cause. Alternately is there any single party member who disproves of such atrocities 7 supports the application of the rule of law to such people.
* The sole person to have been publicly willing to defend the party is Baroness Shirley Williams who admitted that we had done such things but that it was alright because "Milosevic did the same". She supported that allegation by stating that she personally had seen Yugoslav police carrying out the same atrocities as our police when she visited Belgrade in 1995. While I have to accept this as representing the absolute pinnacle of honesty of which she is capable nobody else has seen this & all other sources say that the fighting in Kosovo took place in Kosovo in 1998/9. When asked to give details of these alleged acts she has repeatedly refused. I'm afraid before accepting that there is any truth in her words I would have to see independent evidence.
It's a fundamental principal of our justice system that people don't have to prove their *innocence* - it's *guilt* that must be proven.
Keep taking the pills, dude. You a Frank Miller fan by any chance?
That is correct (& I am). That is why I said they should face trial, something wuth which you apparently are not keen. It is a fundamental principle of our, or almost any, legal system that when the authorities find that there is a case to answer against crimes more serious than mass murder they do not say "the president/PM authorised him so we never investigate". Granted there have been some societies where that is part of the legal system, such as El Salvador, Hitler's Germany & Zimbabwe, which you obviously consider your ideal.
Post a Comment