Congratulations to the Liberals in Bavaria

News from Bavaria where results from the State elections there show the FDP, the Liberal Democrats’ sister party in Germany, have been elected to the State Parliament for the first time in 14 years. As the governing party and the Bavarian party, the CSU, seem to have taken a beating other parties have benefited and the FDP look to end up with about 7.5% of the total vote.

 

Not such good news from neighbouring Austria where the Liberals there, the LiF, seemed to have failed to make the 4% needed to send MPs to the Parliament. There the right wing populist parties seem to have been the main beneficiaries.

Who’s got it in for Tory MEP Timothy Kirkhope?

Tory MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber, Timothy Kirkhope, has been in the news quite a bit recently as he comments on his near death experiences.

Firstly, when the ceiling in the hemicycle in the European Parliament in Strasbourg collapsed over his seat in the room, he was inches several hundred miles away from it falling on his head.

Secondly, he was apparently on a train which was just about to enter the Channel Tunnels as that fire started in one of the bores.

So if I were conspiracy theorist I would start to think these incidents were not coincidental. In which case who could be responsible?

One could look back to the general fall-out he had with members of the Tory group in the European Parliament which saw him being dumped as leader about 10 months ago. Still a few people with grudges? Unlikely as he was replaced as leader after all.

Then there is the rivalry between Tim and his Tory colleague in the Yorkshire and the Humber region Edward McMillan-Scott. But given that the selection for the Tory list for next year’s Euros is now completed, I think there would be no reason for Ed to express his dislike in such a way.

No, I think Tim should be looking behind him on the Euro list to their number 3 candidate. After all there is every reason to suspect that two Tories would be elected in this region in June, but three would be pushing it.

So, he won’t want to be ballooning over London in the future – you just never know!*

* You can guess the cinematic reference here I’m sure

We just miss out in Leeds but the Tories finish fifth

The Farnley and Wortley by-election ended in a near run thing for the Liberal Democrats as their candidate, Rosie Spencer, finished a tantalising 32 votes behind the Greens who hung onto this ward in Leeds. It represented an increase of 22.2% for the Liberal Democrats. Perhaps, unsurprisingly, the Conservative candidate who ran a bizarre campaign (I have commented on this in previous posts below) finished a long way behind in fifth place. Evidence, as if any was needed, that the Conservatives still have mountains to climb to make any impact in our northern cities.

Leeds City MBC, Farnley and Wortley

Green 1183 (27.1, -17.5)
LD Rosie Spencer 1151 (26.3, +22.2)
Lab 1009 (23.1, +1.1)
BNP 556 (12.7,-1.1)
Con 428 (9.8, -5.2)
Alliance of Green Socialists 45 (1.0, -0.5)

Majority 32
Turnout 24.8%
Green hold
Percentage change is since May 2008

The European campaign is going to need a lot more fizz than the enervated policy paper provides

Well done to those who attempted to engender a bit of passion into this afternoon’s debate on the Europe policy paper. I say well done because they had little to work with given the nature of the paper best described as was worthy but dull. (I can’t really see myself campaigning along the lines of: What do we want? A new Sustainable Land Use and Rural Development policy! When do we want it? Would 2013 be possible please?) Its comatose nature was probably a deliberate attempt to sap the passions of the party’s enthusiasts on both saides of the European debate. And in that it had a touch of the Jim Murphys about it!

 

Two things struck me when watching the debate was the rather timid nature of the interventions when it came to contrasting life outside the EU and the Euro.

 

Firstly, I have worked quite a lot with Switzerland, Iceland and Norway. I remember the 1975 EEC referendum which had been fought by the ‘Yes’ campaign on the issue of peace, until suddenly, when the ‘Nos’ were still ahead the focus switched to the economy. Somebody (was it Mrs Thatcher?) went to Norway and brought back a shopping basket of basic foods and compared the prices to the same products in the UK. Of course, the Norwegian shopping was more expensive and thus was born the key argument about membership of the EU – we can’t afford not to be in. After all it is no coincidence that the three most expensive countries in Europe (and indeed some of the most expensive in the world) are the three which are not members of the EU. (You need to take out a mortgage to buy a round in Oslo!)

 

The second thing is the Euro. When did the Liberal Democrats decide that it wasn’t a good idea to join and that it should remain off the agenda for years? I would like to see us ask the question. After all, HM Treasury doesn’t seem to have made any study (at least not one that’s published on their website) since 2003, so we can’t take a lead from them. I don’t think it would have been beyond the expertise of those in the Liberal Democrats for a small group to be set up to consider Euro entry. Unless, of course, the political decision has already been made in the party.

Good debate – but where were the women?

So the Liberal Democrats have just debated their visions and values paper ‘Make it Happen’ which will underpin the party’s manifesto into the next General Election. It is good stuff and I thought the debate too was of a pretty high standard. Except – where were the women? In over an hour and a half of debating time, just one woman speaker was called to the rostrum. Pretty scandalous really – unless women didn’t feel they had a voice in the shaping of the party’s core ideas. This, of course, is a preposterous idea. Perhaps somebody could enlighten me what on earth happened!

Now the Tory candidate himself is an embarrassment

I have posted already about the strange leaflet put out by the Conservative candidate in the upcoming by-election in the Farnley and Wortley ward in Leeds which in fact did not mention he was a Conservative until the bottom of the back page. I put it down to embarrasment of the Tory brand, but now, in an ironic twist, it is the Conservatives who have reason to be embarrassed by the Candidate!

The Yorkshire Evening Post reported yesterday that Glenn Broadbent, the Tory candidate  in the by-election, has been forced to apologise after he said, on Facebook, he was sick of paying tax to support “imported spongers”.  The paper said: ‘He also ranted against “lazy people” and subsidising the “Scots and Welsh”. 

Full story here:

www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/news/Spongerjibe-Tory-forced-to-say.4465569.jp

I also said in an earlier blog that Mr. Broadbent didn’t actually say what he did for a living, despite his leaflet carrying his ‘c.v.’. Wouldn’t it be doubly ironic if he was unemployed!

To Alaska via Yorkshire’s Olympic success – well, this blog at least!

In its only a bit of fun, as they say, but I did a quick tally on where Yorkshire would appear on the table of medals won per million population at the Beijing Olympics (www.swivel.com/graphs/show/29429895). That’s eight medals and a population of around 4.96 million. Which places us an excellent 11th! I was very pleased to see that individual towns and cities such as Sheffield and Doncaster had special celebrations for their own local Olympic heroes. Just a pity Yorkshire didn’t get the opportunity as a whole to celebrate in the same way the Scots and Welsh were able to.

On a not entirely unrelated matter it seems new Republican VP candidate, Sarah Palin, (who, coincidentally, my wife met at conference in Fairbanks recently – but more of that another time) has been ‘exposed’ as a member of something called the ‘Alaskan Independence Party’.  I was therefore encouraged to look up their website to see what sort of group could be causing such embarrassment.

It says on the front page as a sort of definition of where they are:

The Alaskan Independence Party can be summed up in just two words:

ALASKA FIRST!

Until we as Alaskans receive our Ultimate Goal, the AIP will continue to strive to make Alaska a better place to live with less government interference in our everyday lives.

The Alaskan Independence Party’s goal is the vote we were entitled to in 1958, one choice from among the following four alternatives:

1) Remain a Territory.
2) Become a separate and Independent Nation.
3) Accept Commonwealth status.
4) Become a State.

The call for this vote is in furtherance of the dream of the Alaskan Independence Party’s founding father, Joe Vogler, which was for Alaskans to achieve independence under a minimal government, fully responsive to the people, promoting a peaceful and lawful means of resolving differences.

Personally, I can’t see a lot wrong with this. It suggests to me that they want to give the Alaskan people the opportunity to consider if there are better ways of being governed. It’s good democracy isn’t it? I would rather like that sort of choice in Yorkshire. We nearly got a referendum but it was snatched way from us by Tony Blair. I’ve said it before but I have never liked the idea of referendums being in the gift of Government. It seems to me that they are used only if governments have difficult decisions to make. What is missing from all of this is the ability of the people themselves to start a process for a national plebiscite. It is just this lack of process that is causing such a problem in Scotland on the issue of a vote on Scottish independence. So we really need to give power back to the people. That is why I am supporting the motion at Liberal Democrat Conference: Giving Citizens a Voice in Parliament, the provision of which would empower both individuals and communities.  The full motion can be found at: www.libdems.org.uk/media/conference/A08motions.pdf. In my opinion the motion could go further in the provision of referendums but we have to start somewhere and it is certainly a good start. Will the party agree to it? I suspect it could go either way at this stage.

That ‘Tory’ leaflet

tory-leaflet-farnley-wortley0001

Dave, in the post below, was somewhat disbelieving so here is the front page of the Conservative candidate’s leaflet in the Farnley and Wortley by-election.