The most high-profile deceit by the ill-named Liberal Democrats was over the rebranded EU Constitution. Like the other two big parties, they had promised a referendum to the British public – quite rightly in the context of the British constitution. The fact that they followed Labour in reneging on that promise at the critical juncture is bad enough, but at least Labour did it openly, albeit under false pretences.

Instead, Nick Clegg instructed his MPs to abstain from the critical vote on ratification sans referendum. The ratification was duly authorised by a paltry margin of 63 – precisely the number of Lib Dem MPs. Clegg then piled hypocrisy on top of cowardice, by instructing Lib Dem peers actively to oppose a referendum when the matter came before the House of Lords, and claiming that the referendum the Lib Dems really wanted all along was an In/Out referendum on the EU.

That is all ancient history for some, but the Lib Dems still persist with deception, whether it’s their old habit of saying whatever they believe a particular audience want to hear or in their campaigning stratgies. In this election, as with many previously, the party tells fibs in its election literature.

In Cheltenham, the message is that the Conservatives’ mantra of ‘Vote LD, get Labour’ is only applicable in Labour-held constituencies, and that in Cheltenham the only way to get rid of Gordon Brown is to vote Lib Dem. This is a ludicrous proposition given that Martin Harwood won the seat in 2005 with a small majority of 2300, and following boundary changes is defending a notional majority as low as 300. Clearly in that seat, a vote for the Conservatives is the way to go if voters wish to see the back of Labour; voting yellow will only increase the likelihood of a hung parliament with Labour as the largest party.

In Birmingham Selly Oak, the lies are much more up-front. ‘Voting Conservative will just help Labour. Only the Lib Dems can beat Labour here. The Conservatives can’t win here. ‘  These confident statements sit along a bar chart showing LD 42%, Lab 28%, Con 19%. Now, given that it’s a Labour constituency (since 1992) these numbers seem rather incongruous. So I checked them.

The last General Election (adjusted for boundary changes):
Labour – 48%
Conservatives – 29%
Lib Dems – 18.3%

Hmm, only the Lib Dems can win? Ah well, maybe the candidate is talking about the most recent Council Elections? It would not really be appropriate, but let’s see:
Labour – 45%
Conservatives – 29%
Lib Dems – 17%

D’oh! Third place again.

For years the Lib Dems have been saying they’re the only hope to take out Labour – for years they have been lying. The figures being quoted are not provided with a reference, so unless the local candidate in Selly Oak  has been conducting some polling among his family and friends this appears to be a complete fabrication.

The problem is, I can’t help but think that residents swallow these statistics whole – though the election results don’t support that conjecture. Nevertheless, let it be known that you cannot trust the Lib Dems any more that you can trust the other main parties. Don’t let Clegg wow you just because he ‘seems’ honest. It doesn’t take much training to achieve that effect.

The most notable thing about this occasion seems to have been that Nicky Clegg managed for the first time in his political career to speak like a mature adult rather than a petulant sixth-former – and of course that means he ought to be our next Prime Minister. If that all sounds faintly reminiscent of the time when Dave Cameron ‘won’ the leadership of the Conservative party on the basis of being able to recite an unremarkable speech largely from memory (one of those things anyone can do if they can be arsed) it should come as no surprise.

In British politics, pretty much everything is pre-announced to the media these days. Thus, the day before any policy announcement or ‘keynote’ speech, the BBC tell us in the form of a couple of sentences what the politicians will be announcing tomorrow. We think, righto, no need to tune in then… and after the speech or announcement the BBC report it using exactly the same soundbites, except this time we get to hear an overpaid politician saying them rather than an overpaid reporter (sic, ‘journalist’ being wholly inaccurate). By which time, because it was reported the day before, we just think, ‘well that’s old news,’ and leave the room to put the kettle on.

As a result many people only ever learn about politics what the media has decided they ought to learn in the main news bulletins – which may be no more than a couple of bullet-points from a half-hour speech. What’s more, they hear about it 12 hours or more in advance. In short, there are for the most part no surprises left in British politics.

So when Davy Boy did alright-ish at the Tory conference and the then ‘favourite’ for the leadership, David Davis, did slightly less alright-ish, the fact that their speeches weren’t previewed by the media, and that David Cameron was an unknown quantity, meant that we got a ‘surprise’; the media were all over the story, and in all probability cost Davis the job.

Similarly the very nature of the PM Debates is that we don’t know verbatim what the leaders are going to say, nor the manner in which they will say it. Clegg is of course a deeply unimpressive figure, who before last night had roughly the same level of recognition among the general public as my mum, and most of those who did already recognise him would know what he’s like in Parliament and at Conference, know about his political lies and inconsistencies – in other words, the majority of people outside the party who DID recognise Clegg before the debate must surely have seen him as a two-faced wimp. Oh to see the Great Clunking Fist of the mighty Gorgon connect with that quivering jaw! But I digress…

So, in Clegg vs Cameron we had an echo of Cameron vs Davis; there are no expectations of the ‘unknown’, so anything beyond a meltdown is considered a success, and anything that’s on a par with the opposition is a triumph. And because the content was not released a day in advance, we actually have a scenario where there is ‘news’ involved, hence the amount of coverage increases exponentially.

But this debate really didn’t deserve all the TV coverage after the event. It was three men who want to be Prime Minister, two of whom stand a chance, talking at length without saying much to an audience who had been instructed to sit there in absolute silence. Two of them did better than expected and one (Cameron) did slightly worse; but in terms of the logic deployed and the policies enunciated he probably edged it.

One thing is for certain: Nick Clegg ain’t ever going to be PM. The bad news is, one of the other two will be.

Iain Dale reports on a poll apparently coming out in tomorrow’s Mail, giving the Tories a 10pt lead over Labour, and what Iain calls a ‘massive’ 15% of people planning to vote for smaller parties or independents (I thought for a moment that ‘massive’ was intended to be sarcastic, but no).

I realise there are rather a lot of ‘tribal’ types out there but I still find it incredible that a government of such low calibre could be attracting over a quarter of all votes cast (27% in this poll). I mean, isn’t it just ridiculous?

Having said that, I am pretty perturbed by the polls in general – this is the first I’ve seen where fewer than 89% intend to vote for one of the ‘big 2+1′. That’s an enormous number of people who are apparently content with the status quo – yet the prevailing feeling really is one of ‘a plague on all your houses’. Are the people really so stupid that they don’t realise it is within the power of the electorate – themselves – to vote for REAL change?

This post and several others like it on the superb EU Referendum blog are absolutely essential reading for anyone interested in the truly important issues we face in this new century of mediocrity and deception.

For several years now Peter Hitchens has been retailing a line about the reasons no sane person should vote for the Conservative party – which given that he is obviously a conservative has always seemed a little contrary. My exposure to this line of reasoning has been largely through hearing or seeing him make the argument, on programmes such as BBC Question Time (along with David Starkey, he is one of the few regular-ish panelists on that programme who actually provide value for money). Unfortunately though, a) The format does not allow much exposition of the underlying thought process behind the idea ‘do not vote for the repulsive Tories’; b) Peter, through no fault of his own, can come across as being rather annoying when talking – and in much the same way as Starkey he can alienate the listener without trying, by seeming arrogant even though in reality he’s just thoroughly pissed off with the status quo and unable to spend enough time explaining why.

Mr Hitchens also has an illuminating blog though – where among other things he actually interacts with the people who comment on there (not something that most high-profile bloggers can be arsed to do; indeed the only other example I know is Norman Tebbit). In the course of these interactions Hitchens has laid out the thinking behind his ‘anyone but the Tories’ strategy in some detail – and on several occasions, since many among his ‘fanbase’ seem unable to comprehend his replies on the matter (or, more likely, do not read them).

Simply put, the Hitchens Theorem says:

a) The Conservative party stopped having conservative principles and policies about a decade ago;
b) This process has reached its nexus/nadir under the rule of Dave Cameron, who is not only content to consider all Labour’s constitutional and institutional vandalism as a ‘done deal’ and thus irreversible, but seeks actively to further it;
c) Ergo no genuine conservative, upon considering the full range of Conservative policy, could vote for the party in its present guise and continue to sleep at night;
d) This election provides a once-in-a-generation opportunity to change Britain’s political landscape, since Dave cannot survive a defeat and the Conservative party itself cannot survive losing another election, particularly to the worst govenment in living memory. On the other hand, winning the election by however slim a margin gives Dave a ‘mandate’;
e) Only with the destruction of the Conservative party can a properly conservative party be built up in its place;
f) Such a party would be massively popular, bringing back millions of votes that have disappeared during the last 15 years as people have become disillusioned with the similarities between the parties;
g) If all this were to happen, Britain might just become great again, the bastion of fairness, justice and liberty that so many of us believe she once was and ought to be once more.

Put like that, it is a rather more compelling argument than 30 seconds on Question Time will allow. After all, as Mr Hitchens says, what have we really got to lose by putting Labour in for another 5 years – or rather, what have we even got left to lose?

All of the above suggests Hunt would make an excellent candidate for BBC Political Editor. But no, he’s been parachuted into the (until now) safe Labour seat of Stoke-on-Trent Central, thanks in no small part to his friendship with Peter ‘Lord’ Mandelson.

The man is clearly more of a Tristram than even I thought possible.

In the BBC comedy department though, The Daily Mail is considered singularly hilarious and peculiarly odious. Try tuning in to an episode of Mock the Week or The Now Show for example, and count the minutes until a sneering reference is made to The Daily Mail; it won’t be many. Quite why the contract ‘comedians’ who inhabit the many comedy panel shows on the Beeb want to give so much publicity to a publication which they consider akin to The Daily Hitler is bemusing; for one thing  I doubt if any of the useless twerps who pass for comedians on all the many ‘comedy’ panel shows have ever even picked up a copy of the Mail – after all they wouldn’t be seen dead reading anything so tawdry would they? No, in their perfect world we would all be reading a noble, impartial, completely unhysterical newspaper such as the Guardian (they don’t censor out expletives, dontcha know?)

Frankly it is all deeply boring – these shows plough the same furrow every single week. There will of course be the odd reference to David Cameron or Margaret Thatcher thrown in (just get over her, lads!) yet of the incompetent buffoon Gordon Brown we hear rarely a whisper. Now that really is amusing.

The subject under discussion was the recent expulsion of an Israeli diplomat from the UK at the behest of our laughable Foreign Secretary, David Miliband; the man who previously said that supporters of Israel’s military action in Gaza think that ‘Israel can kill its way out of [its] problems’ – oh and yes this is the same David Miliband who thinks “there are circumstances in which [terrorism] is justifiable, and yes, there are circumstances in which it is effective.” Quite why the man has garnered a reputation as a deep-thinker is hard to fathom. Anyway, Mr Miliband’s shortcoming and failings are manifold and a book could probably written on the subject .

 Back to the subject – which is unrelated to one’s views on Israel’s dealings with other nations,  and whether they have committed a cardinal offence in ‘allowing’ some British passports to be forged in the alleged Mossad mission to assassinate Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. The key question here, is “what is terrorism?” and the answer is quite simple – terrorism is the use of violence against civilians, in a warped attempt to influence a government or further an idealogy.

By that measure, indeed any measure I can think of, al-Mabhouth – a senior Hamas commander and founder of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades – was a terrorist. He was certainly not a random civilian, and he was certainly not killed to advance any kind of idealogy.

Some people (and I’m guessing a sizeable majority of the Question Time audience) think accusations of terrorism against Israel are justified simply by mention of the word ‘Palestine’. I respectfully submit that such black-and-white views, whilst understandable given the diet of anti-Israeli propaganda fed to us daily by the BBC, are shallow, ignorant and borderline idiotic.

Unfortunately the debate has not been particularly well thought out. On one side we have those looking for vengeance, whose argument boils down to, “He’s an animal and now deserves to lose his anonymity (which he should never have been granted), reprisals be damned”. On the other, the ‘enlightened’ (touchy-feely brigade) who think that as a 10-year-old Venables couldn’t possibly have been aware of what he was doing, and thus his punishment in the first place was unduly harsh.

An exponent of this latter viewpoint is the usually-cogent author Will Self, who appeared on BBC Question Time last week saying that Venables had probably been sent back to prison for something “very minor, [such as] non-payment of fines or smoking marijuana – and statistically speaking a high proportion of this audience probably smokes marijuana,” so what was everybody getting so upset about? This was patent nonsense when you consider the hundreds of thousands millions of pounds spent by the State in setting up lifelong anonymity for Venables; would they risk compromising that for the sake of a bag of weed or an overdue speeding ticket? No-one on the panel or in the audience provided this obvious rebuttal because they were all thinking with their hearts rather than their heads.

Mr Self has now been proven to have been talking hogwash by Jack Straw MP, the UK’s Justice Secretary, who has confirmed that Venables recent trangressions, plural, were “extremely serious”. But he maintains that it is not in the public interest to reveal any more. If the implication here is supposed to be that in due course the reasons will be revealed if Venables’ stay in custody is prolonged by the courts, there is at least a degree of logic there. But let there be no doubt that it is in the public interest for us to be told at the very least the nature of the crimes. Not for any reason related to vengeance, mob natural justice or because “he’s an animal”, but because this case potentially represents a catastrophic failure of the justice system.

Less than three months ago,  David Aaronovitch of the Times, was making a similar point to Mr Self’s, in an article where he posited that the ‘Edlington Boys’ (another pair who have been granted anonymity) did not deserve 10 rather than 5 years, as had been suggested by a leading light of a ‘child welfare charity’. He may have had a point, but that point has unravelled rather since he backed it up by saying that the fact that James Bulger’s murderers had not re-offended since their release (I could never quite understand the coincidence of both being deemed safe for release at exactly the same time) showed that ‘child offenders’ can be redeemed.  But they were not mere offenders – they were the sort of offenders who grow up to be the next Jeffrey Dahmer.

On release, Venables was said by a consultant adolescent forensic psychiatrist who had examined him to have “made exceptional progress … with personal development, acknowledgement of the enormity of his offence, understanding of his actions as a child, and in his ‘normal’ adolescent development in ‘abnormal circumstances.’”

Exceptional progress perhaps, but the decision that Venables was safe for release may yet turn out to have been yet another terrible failure of the English justice system in decided who is, or is not, a threat to the public. If convicted of the crimes he has been taken in custody for, and if those crimes are in the least part related to violence or abuse, the public has every right to be told – and Venables will surely have to be locked up for many years to come.

A couple of particularly vocal audience members wanted to know why, if there was so little demand for the product, and it wasn’t worth further investment from the government, were two new plants being built in India by the very company – Tata – that is mothballing (read ‘closing’) the Teeside facility. Nobody on the panel even seemed to know that was happening, let alone why.

One jolly good reason is that Tata stands to make an absolute bloody fortune – not, as you might think, from reduced labour costs, but through the sheer madness of ‘carbon credits’. In short, Tata will be emitting less Carbon Dioxide in the EU, and so they will get bonus points – lots of them – from the EU.

In addition, the two new plants they’re erecting in India will be ‘cleaner’ (producing less CO2) than the Indian average (though the same, each, as the mothballed UK plant) – and for that, more bonus points.

So what? Well these points – the Carbon Credits – can then be sold on to other companies or countries at a globally-agreed price. The logic is akin to planting a tree to ‘undo’ a flight you’ve taken (i.e. entirely fallacious) but in the process Tata will make hundreds of millions of dollars. Just reward for hammering the final nail into the coffin of the British steel industry and the livelihoods of thousands, eh?

The combined wisdom of the QT panel (which always contains some MP let’s not forget) couldn’t even begin to put their fingers on this.

I now learn via Biased BBC that Nigel Farage MEP (UKIP) was originally scheduled to appear on the show but his invitation was rescinded late in the day. Since Mr Farage is what the BBC would probably call a ‘raging Europhobe’ who happens to know a few things about this kind of thing, it all seems a little too coincidental doesn’t it?

Anyway, Nigel is on tonight’s show instead, when presumably we can expect questions on nothing quite so potentially damage to the public image of the EU.