Cash for access and influence–don’t forget the LibDems–the ‘squeaky clean’ party!

This is the party most distrusted by the electorate, reduced to a pathetic rump in Holyrood by the Scottish electorate last May, and who would be obliterated by the UK electorate if the Coalition fell tomorrow.

But they see themselves as squeaky clean …

This is the party that accepted “in good faith” a £2.4m donation from a convicted fraudster, Michael Brown, which they refused to repay to the people who had been defrauded when the facts became known because “the money was already spent”. (BBC report)

But they see themselves as squeaky clean …

Here they are at their conference in September 2011, allowing access for cash - £800 a head for lunch – with influential LibDem ministers to tobacco companies and God know who else. Here they are trying to prevent Channel Four News reporter Michael Crick from gaining access for truth.

Meanwhile, Tavish Scott bleated bitterly last year about how his party, not to mention his career, was blighted by the LibDem pact with the Tories. Tavish, throughout his feeble leadership of the Scottish LibDems conspicuously failed to distance himself from the UK party because of his pro-Union and virulently anti-SNP views. He now favours remaining in the UK for Orkney and Shetland - or UDI from an independent Scotland.

We have a LibDem, Danny Alexander as a member of the notorious Coalition sofa government cabal, the Quad, and Michael Moore, a LibDem, as Scottish Colonial Governor – and in Scotland, Willie Rennie …

They are all – needless to say – deeply committed to remaining within the UK, and implacably hostile to their country’s independence …

THE TORY CASH FOR ACCESS SCANDAL

ALEX SALMOND - Letter to DAVID CAMERON

"Yesterday’s Sunday Times report regarding Peter Cruddas is a matter of substantial public concern.

One important aspect is that Mr Cruddas is reported to have discussed the issue of Scottish independence with you, in somewhat pejorative terms. I would like to know directly from you the details of this discussion.

The paper reports that Mr Cruddas personally was a major donor to the “No to AV” campaign, reportedly funding the campaign to the tune of £1.2 million.

You will also have noted that Mr Cruddas was willing to discuss accepting political donations with persons purporting to represent an overseas wealth fund, which of course is prohibited by law from making a donation to a political party in the United Kingdom.

As you know, the Scottish Government’s proposals for a referendum on independence in autumn 2014 set out clear rules about donations to the campaigning groups for the referendum. These rules are based on established electoral law, and our consultation document proposes that they would be rigorously enforced by the Electoral Commission.

Given the revelations in the Sunday Times and subsequent resignation of Mr Cruddas, I am asking you to agree that there is now even more reason to ensure that the terms governing the conduct of the referendum are determined by the Scottish Parliament, and are not dictated by Westminster – a threat that was discussed by senior Conservative Party representatives as recently as last weekend at your Scottish Party conference.

You will realise the importance we attach to holding a referendum which is beyond reproach and free of the sort of impropriety which is so clearly pointed to in the Sunday Times report."

Liberal? Democratic?–what does their future hold?

“Here is one man … selling Liberal opinions with his left hand and Conservative opinions with his right hand … That is an extraordinary spectacle …

“If such conduct were developed in private life or by politicians in public life every man and woman in the country would say ‘That is very double-faced. You cannot believe the two.’ …  He would be regarded as coming perilously near a rogue.”

These extracts from a 1922 speech come perilously near describing the behaviour of the Liberal Democrats in 2011. They were made by Winston Churchill, MP for Dundee, in a speech to constituents at Broughty Ferry. It was directed at one D.C. Thomson, the proprietor of twelve newspapers, who had been attacking him in print. (Oor Wullie and the Broons were still a long way off in 1922).

It didn’t do Churchill much good – he lost the election to a teetotal candidate, which must have been the ultimate insult to Winston, who could bend an elbow with the best of them.

I have a shameful confession to make at this point. I was a lifetime supporter - but never a member – of the Labour Party until Iraq, and then spent four years in a political vacuum until voting SNP in 2007. I then joined the SNP. But they were the second political party I had been a member of, because I joined the newly-formed Social Democratic Party – the forerunner of the LibDems – in March 1981, as a founder member. I was into the middle of a major strike in the Newcastle Breweries in Newcastle, and I joined in a mood of frustration with Labour and with organised labour, so to speak.

My membership lasted a matter of weeks, with question marks forming after attending my first branch meeting in Durham, then dealt a terminal blow to my choice by attending a meeting at which David Owen was the speaker. The entire feel was one of expediency, and of a middle-class group with zero understanding of working people, and precious little concern for them, except as voting fodder. I never in my wildest nightmare thought that the Labour Party, especially the Scottish Labour Party, would reach the same point. I was still locked in cognitive dissonance over Labour’s proclaimed values versus the sordid reality of Labour in power as I had experienced it in Glasgow throughout my life there up till 1974.

The future is now a bleak one for ordinary LibDem voters who mistakenly placed their trust in this party. The politicians they elected have traded integrity and values for ministerial salaries, cars, and the illusion of power, and by God, what a hollow illusion it has been!

They cannot bring the Coalition down because they would face electoral oblivion in a general election. They have taken the toxic shilling, and they must play the game out to the bitter end – bitter for the people of England, and deeply damaging for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – but not for Clegg and his team. If they can hold out for another three and a half years, the directorship, the consultancies and even the Lordships beckon – they’ll be OK.

So Clegg (already rich) and Huhne, and Hughes, and Cable, et al will be alright financially. The noble Lords Steele, Ashdown and Campbell, et al have already made their escape  to the unelected, undemocratic, lucrative  bolthole of the ermine. Only poor, bemused Danny Alexander, and the last Scottish Colonial Governor, Michael Moore, might have cause to regret flying too close to the Westminster flame

Of course, a membership revolt could change things, but LibDem grassroots members are not the revolting kind. But their leaders are utterly revolting, indeed truly disgusting in their betrayal of all that LibDems held dear, if indeed they ever held anything dear …

Thank God, Scotland had a choice, made it decisively, and now has an infinitely greater choice to prepare for, and to make equally decisively.

Two men who claim to speak for Scotland–but only one does …

LibDems - the failed, bitter, vengeful UK party that attacks the SNP

This is the failed, discredited party that attacks the most successful party in Britain - the Scottish National Party.

It has five - yes, 5 - MSPs in the Scottish Parliament. It would be obliterated if a UK general election was called now. It has lied to the electorate. It has failed to deliver in Coalition. It is now Tory in all but name.

Its former Scottish leader, Tavish Scott, is now bitter, vengeful towards the SNP, and blames his own UK party for wrecking his political career. Well, they helped, Tavish, but you did a pretty good job of wrecking it yourself ....

And the Colonial Governor of Scotland, Michael Moore, a LibDem, attacks the SNP. the decisively elected government of Scotland, and in doing so, attacks the Scottish people.

Adjectives for LibDems - ineffectual, naive, expedient - and vicious in failure ...

LibDemmery

Michael Moore, Colonial Governor and representative of nothing but a failed and discredited political party, will attack the SNP today. We don’t need to know anything else, because he and his party don’t matter to Scotland or Scots. I thought of saying more, but Ian Bell has said most of it today in the Herald, as have others, including letter writers.

I occasionally get correspondents saying that I don’t have enough discussion and comment on my blog, and that this is a factor of my moderation constraints, .i.e. Google or other ID required for comment. No such requirement exists on my YouTube channel, TAofMoridura, and that’s YouTube’s lack of constraint, not mine. So a lively debate rages on some of my YouTube videos, sometimes for months or even years after they have been posted, and believe me, there’s a helluva lot of work involved screening out – by pre-moderation - the incoherent, incomprehensible, obscene, obsessive, libellous, repetitive, irrelevant and sometimes just plain vicious comments that come in my inbox each day. I can of course, block all comment, but it is something I’m reluctant to do because there’s so much good stuff.

I posted a video clip of Michael Moore three months ago. The comments keep coming, and I have screened out at least as many – from all sides of the argument – that were unacceptable in any civilised discourse. As for my older clip on David Starkey and Brian Cox – well, I could fill a week’s blogs with those …

 

A lot of postulation and conjecture in this unionist litany

Alex462047 6 hours ago

A parcel of rogues in a nation.

Does anyone in Scotland still vote for the Lib Dems?

Thumbs up for Scottish independence.

scotsskier 3 weeks ago

Michael Moore, like most unionists, is an enemy to Scotland.

segano1 1 month ago

Michael Moore is better known as The Secretary of State AGAINST Scotland, he just stands by while his Tory Hatchett man colleague Danny Alexander lays into Scotland. SNP, SDA, Solidarity, SSP and Scottish Greens are all working to free us from the shackles of this union, good on them.

iamtehmunkie 1 month ago

Inertia in people is much the same as inertia in objects, as the body in motion will tend to stay in motion, the old thought process and habits will continue without a good reason, or a “safe” way to ensure change.

segano1 1 month ago

The SNP argument is that it’s just a natural step to take. The Unionists argue it’s a chasm. The conservative voter, for the most part, will not step. That is a fundamental definition of conservatism. The Union argument is more fear and scare tactics, these will often work with the more conservative voter.

segano1 1 month ago

Support on union is based on negativity simply because there's not much positives for Scotland to stay in the union from a Scottish perspective. Scotland paying it's neighbours to speak on it's behalf while claiming in public that Scotland contributes nothing and is a 'subsidy junkie' nation.

Britain is an ailing bankrupt state.

Time this rancid Union parasite was removed once and for all from the body of Scotland. Only with this parasite cleansed from Scotland, can we as a nation succeed.

segano1 2 months ago

Maddening! Westminsters approach each week, each year, each decade, is to tell Scotland that we're getting an, unfairly, good deal from the union, that our economy is not strong enough to support ourselves and to promise that London is on the case to make that economy stronger in the future. Within the UK Scotland will never be able or allowed to fulfill it's potential and all the double talk from London won't change that.

Westminster also allows our most popular party to be called neo fascist

mesmiths 2 months ago

A Lib Dumb and a Tory as colonial governors for Scotland, could you have any other two figures who are less representative of the Scottish people?

BonnieBlueFlag1314 2 months ago

RBS Successful = British. RBS Unsuccessful = Scottish. Bailing out a bank with more English employees than Scottish was a wise move for the UK. Making themselves sound so generous to Scotland for doing it, is simply ludicrous.

dauntless111 2 months ago

Cash for access – the LibDems are at it again …

Yesterday, a trio of LibDems attacked the SNP, they were at it again in their conference yesterday at Birmingham and Michael Moore will be at it again today. This is the party most distrusted by the electorate, reduced to a pathetic rump in Holyrood by the Scottish electorate last May, and who would be obliterated by the UK electorate if the Coalition fell tomorrow.

But they see themselves as squeaky clean …

This is the party that accepted “in good faith” a £2.4m donation from a convicted fraudster, Michael Brown, which they refused to repay to the people who had been defrauded when the facts became known because “the money was already spent”. BBC report

But they see themselves as squeaky clean …

Here they are again yesterday, at their conference, allowing access for cash - £800 a head for lunch – with influential LibDem ministers to tobacco companies and God know who else. Here they are trying to prevent Channel Four News reporter Michael Crick from gaining access for truth.

Meanwhile, Tavish Scott bleats bitterly about how his party, not to mention his career, was blighted by the LibDem pact with the Tories. Tavish, throughout his feeble leadership of the Scottish LibDems conspicuously failed to distance himself from the UK party because of his pro-Union and virulently anti-SNP views.

And now we have a LibDem, Danny Alexander as a member of the notorious Coalition sofa government cabal, the Quad, and Michael Moore, a LibDem, as Scottish Colonial Governor – and in Scotland, Willie Rennie, who is not only squeaky clean, but squeaky …

What have you got to say about all this, Willie?

Long Live the Union? Long Live the Dirty Money?

Inverclyde - UK and Scottish politics

Despite the inclusive blog title above on these topics today, I have virtually nothing to say, since Ian Bell has said everything I want to say in today’s Herald, and infinitely better than I could ever have said it.

Pyrrhic victory for Labour 

His piece illustrates the real difference between a truly professional political journalist and a blogger like me. Regrettably, his depth of analysis, prescience and perceptiveness is rarely matched by other Scottish political commentators, with one or two exceptions.

I take issue with Ian Bell only on his closing remarks on the death of the Scottish Labour Party, that “we (I take him to mean all Scots) do not yet own an alternative.”

If he means a party of the left that is internationalist in outlook and values, yet deeply committed to all the people of Scotland, especially to the poor, the sick and the disadvantaged, we do own such a party - it is the Scottish National Party, and he is wrong.

If  he means a party that is all of the above things, but that is also committed to the Union and hostile to the independence of the people of Scotland, then he is right.

And there will never again be such a party, because its time has irretrievably passed.

Senior LibDem endorses Alex Salmond for First Minister

The message couldn't be clearer - any disillusioned LibDems thinking of voting Labour - Don't!

Things are bad enough without finding Iain Gray as FM of Scotland. Your core values are safer with Alex Salmond and the SNP than with the nuclear, anti-renewables, expedient, warmongering  Labour nonentities.

Their Government destroyed the British economy - don't let them ruin Scotland.

Judge carefully how you vote, depending on your constituency - John Farquhar Munro's message doesn't need much decoding ...

Vote tactically if that's how you see it, but for God's sake, don't vote Labour.

Vote for Scotland and what you believe in.

‘The Politics Show’ Scotland with Isabel Fraser and Alex Salmond

Scotland is at the crossroads on May 5th - make the right decision, Scots voters - your world will unravel unless you do.

This is a pivotal election for Scotland - don't let your distaste for the contemptible ConLib Coalition push you back into the incompetent, uncaring hands of the Labour Party, who compounded the global banking crisis by their ineptitude and short-termism.

Labour is the party of Iraq, of Afghanistan, of WMDs and of poverty, degradation and death for for the lives and hopes of Scots.

Disenchanted LibDems! - don't let your disappointment with your party push you into the hands of Labour - it's the SNP that shares your values, not the Labour Party.

Vote for the SNP on May 5th – the party of Scotland and the Scottish people.

LibDems and Clegg in denial at Scottish Conference

After managing to avoid the demonstrators, Clegg manages to avoid the real issues, and gets a quaich for his pains. Party claims new members, but little evidence of them in the vacant seats in the hall.

If the Coalition survives, Clegg and his Westminster gang have four more years of ministerial salaries and cars. No such hope for Tavish's ragged band, facing meltdown on May 5th. Desperate to pretend that they are different from their benighted Westminster party bosses, they belatedly take the SNP position on tuition fees, promising to fund this by penalising Scotland's pensioners and the sick, by removing free bus travel and re-instituitng prescription charges.
.
The Westminster party, faced with the nightmare of a general election if they withdraw from coalition, are unlikely to show any courage or spirit. Only the membership can force withdrawal from the doomed alliance.

LibDems - face the truth - bring this poisoned coalition down now, and recover your self-respect and some shreds of LibDem values and principles.

The Scottish Secretary of State – a colonial governor in an ignoble role

Another sordid chapter in the history of Scottish Secretaries of State - a sad procession of men who, with a very few remarkable exceptions, consistently betrayed the interests of Scotland in favour of the Union, but benefited personally from having held this colonial governors post, even if only briefly.

In the period of the closures of companies and the destruction of entire Scottish industries in the video, three Tory Scottish Secretaries were in post -

Malcom Rifkind, now Sir Malcom Rifkind, now cosily ensconced in the safe Tory seat of Kensington, as far as possible from his electoral failures in Scotland

Ian Lang, now Baron Lang of Monkton, safely ensconced in the House of Lords.

Michael Forsyth, now Baron Forsyth of Drumlean, a sworn enemy of Scottish devolution and the Scottish Parliament, also safely ensconced in the House of Lords

The Labour Scottish Secretaries, with a couple of notable exceptions - exceptions that prove the rule - have been as bad as the Tories, and have tended to have a close, sometimes intimate association with defence matters and defence companies.

Why? Because the UK exists to perpetuate the concept of war as the operating principle of the state, and war and armaments are very profitable businesses.

(Jim Murphy, last Labour SSforS but one (the brief Danny Alexander), is now predictably Shadow Minister of Defence, following the template closely.)

And what of Michael Moore, the current incumbent? He is quoted as saying -

"I've just done (sic) the worst crime a politician can commit. It's one of the reasons most folks distrust us as a breed"

Brian Taylor, BBC, asked him today what on earth he was doing in coalition with the Tories in the light of Moore's previous criticisms of them?  Moore glibly replies that he was talking about the situation 30 years ago. Will he resign? Of course not - there's the ministerial salary car, the illusion of status and the guarantee of reward at the end of it all.

Join the ancient and contemptible club, Michael - you deserve the perks. But Scotland doesn't deserve you or your ilk.

Liberal to Labour–an appeal to disaffected LibDems by Ed Miliband

Echoes of Pope Benedict inviting disaffected Anglicans to join the Roman Catholic Church. Why not go the whole hog, Ed Miliband?

My suggested script, David – no charge …

ED MILIBAND:  Democrats - forget the heady days of 1981 and the SDP! Abandon the Liberals to their fate and return to the one true faith! Try to ignore what we've been up to since you've been away - our mortal sins have been washed away by confessing to the Iraq crime (some of us, anyway) - you can easily be forgiven for tuition fees - a venial sin, except in the minds of the youth of Britain, and what do they know?

If you can’t come back right now, keep in touch with Labour doctrine until you’re ready.

PUZZLED LIBDEM:

Why have you not confessed to wrecking the British economy and dismantling civil rights?

What about WMDs?

What about the fallen angel  - Blair?

What about the Prince of Darkness, Mandelson?

He’s still around, isn’t he?

What about the man who wrecked the economy, Gordon Brown? Isn’t he skulking in the wings, waiting to make his second coming? Is Kirkcaldy the Labour Limbo?

ED MILIBAND: You are in error, comrade- this is an example of, at best, distorted perception, at worse, false memory syndrome. You’ve been reading old newspapers. Once you recover your faith and accept the infallible authority of the Party, these doubts, these scruples, this heresy will be swept away. Join us in our collective amnesia – 13 years is as nothing to an institution as ancient as the Labour Party.

By the way, is there something I should know about Gordon Brown’s intentions? Is John Rentoul of The Independent trying to rehabilitate him as well as Blair? (What is Limbo, by the way? Something to do with dancing under a bar?)

PMQs, FIFA, tuition fees - and Nick Clegg's reputation - what's left of it ...

Oh, Danny Boy – The Cuts, the Cuts are coming …

 

Bye-Bye, Gordon Brown

LibDems ready to press the self-destruct button …

Sir Menzies Campbell - Ming the Unionist - a very parfit gentil knight, a British establishment figure, waffles on about the national interest (by national, he doesn't mean the country of his birth, Scotland - he means the UK, the political entity that knighted him) dances around Jon Sopel's questions, but the reality of the present situation is all too clear - Nick Clegg is set to do a deal with Cameron, abandoning cherished LibDem principles along the way, and putting in power a Tory government that is anathema to Scottish voters.

If such a deal is done, the LibDems are dead as a political force, especially in Scotland. The feeble Tavish Scott is unlikely to stand up for the interests of Scots - after all, he rejected a coalition with the party he had most in common with - the SNP - because of his blinkered unionism.

There's still time not to press the self-destruct button, Nick ...

The Daily Torygraph gets desperate over Clegg

Well, it was forecast and it had to happen after the Clegg Effect – the Tories say they are not getting desperate, but their media mouthpieces are.

Today’s headline in The Daily Telegraph -

Nick Clegg, the Lib Dem donors and payments into his private account

The headline typeface is only a little smaller than the masthead, the kind of thing normally reserved for the death of the Queen or the outbreak of World War III.

In the words of the old song, Nick’s fans, old and new, are singing Say It isn’t So! and Nick has duly responded to attempt to reassure them and minimise the damage. But there may be Blue Skies, then again it could be Here Comes That Rainy Day.

Sir Alistair Graham, former chairman of the committee of standards in public life has weighed with a rather odd comment - “Given that he’s been very holier than thou about these things, it would seem he has some explaining to do to the his party and the electorate …”

That sounds a bit like guilty until proven innocent, Sir Alistair, but surely you couldn’t have meant that? By “holier than thou” do you mean that he has pointed out the appalling scale of the corruption and greed - criminal in several cases - in the Labour Party and the Tory Party, beside which the LibDems minor antics (leaving aside the big fraudster donation) have been relatively minor?

I note that one of the alleged donors is Ian Wright of Diageo – the giant drinks company, with major facilities in Scotland – who may just be an individual LibDem supporter.

Now individuals and companies don’t donate to political parties unless they expect something in return. At the most altruistic level, they want to support a party whose social policies they agree with. At the normal commercial level – if the donations came, not from the individuals as a personal contribution, but from their company – then a commercial tradeoff, one way or another, is expected – access to government, influence over relevant policy, or just general rapport with the party’s business policies.

It is clear from the newly-minted LibDem manifesto that the booze companies have failed to stop Nick Clegg and his party from supporting minimum pricing for alcohol, or rather, they have failed to do it in England, but Scotland, as Tavish Scott tried to explain last night, is a different case. Now if only there were a broadsheet or a tabloid to lay out their biggest headline typeface to examine donations to Labour and the Tories by the alcohol companies and the supermarkets, especially the Scottish dimension of any such donations.

Nick must be relieved that tonight’s debate is about foreign policy, not domestic matters. But will Brown and Cameron be able to resist such a tempting low blow?

© Copyright Peter Curran 2010

© Copyright Peter Curran 2010