Nigel Rees reported a piece of graffiti in one of his very many graffiti collections of the 1980s. It went more or less like this -
Henry Kissinger should be bloody well hung
Underneath, in an attractive hand was written -
He is, my dear. He is.
Mrs Kissinger
It's an old joke. I'm not all that sure it's a good joke but I like to preserve these things.
I've been thinking about hung parliaments and coalition governments. I like it when politics is exciting and unpredictable and that's what you get in times like these. I'm sure that the City and markets aren't so keen but given the shit they've dropped us all in over the past couple of years, I don't give a toss about them.
The reason we have a hung Parliament and these indecisive and uncertain times is that no one party managed to convince enough of the electorate in enough of the country to give them a mandate. It's an infrequent by-product of the first past the post voting system. If you can persuade enough people in enough constituencies across the country to vote for your party, you can get a working majority in the House of Commons. Occasionally - very occasionally - that doesn't happen and no single party can command a majority.
I don't know what's going to come of the negotiations between the Tories and the LibDems over the weekend. I'd like to see Vince Cable in the Treasury, preferably as Chancellor but I don't think that the Tories would allow that. I heard some Tory donor on PM last night saying that perhaps LibDems could have minor ministerial positions in culture or sport but that anything else was completely unacceptable. He also wouldn't countenance any form of electoral reform and electoral reform has been a long-standing policy goal of the Liberal Democrats and the Liberals before them. The statesman-like thing for Nick Clegg to do would be to allow the Tories to form a government and get their Budget through but press them hard on every vote in the Chamber for policy concessions on key points of principle. He would then be free to work with whomever he chose on electoral reform now that the Labour leadership is so keen on it and not be tied to or identified with unpopular Conservative policies, particulary the swinging spending cuts that George Osborne is undoubtedly even now writing into his emergency Budget.
How's that - an entire post about a hung Parliament and not a single joke about stringing a politician up from the lamp posts in College Green? D'oh!
Henry Kissinger should be bloody well hung
Underneath, in an attractive hand was written -
He is, my dear. He is.
Mrs Kissinger
It's an old joke. I'm not all that sure it's a good joke but I like to preserve these things.
I've been thinking about hung parliaments and coalition governments. I like it when politics is exciting and unpredictable and that's what you get in times like these. I'm sure that the City and markets aren't so keen but given the shit they've dropped us all in over the past couple of years, I don't give a toss about them.
The reason we have a hung Parliament and these indecisive and uncertain times is that no one party managed to convince enough of the electorate in enough of the country to give them a mandate. It's an infrequent by-product of the first past the post voting system. If you can persuade enough people in enough constituencies across the country to vote for your party, you can get a working majority in the House of Commons. Occasionally - very occasionally - that doesn't happen and no single party can command a majority.
I don't know what's going to come of the negotiations between the Tories and the LibDems over the weekend. I'd like to see Vince Cable in the Treasury, preferably as Chancellor but I don't think that the Tories would allow that. I heard some Tory donor on PM last night saying that perhaps LibDems could have minor ministerial positions in culture or sport but that anything else was completely unacceptable. He also wouldn't countenance any form of electoral reform and electoral reform has been a long-standing policy goal of the Liberal Democrats and the Liberals before them. The statesman-like thing for Nick Clegg to do would be to allow the Tories to form a government and get their Budget through but press them hard on every vote in the Chamber for policy concessions on key points of principle. He would then be free to work with whomever he chose on electoral reform now that the Labour leadership is so keen on it and not be tied to or identified with unpopular Conservative policies, particulary the swinging spending cuts that George Osborne is undoubtedly even now writing into his emergency Budget.
How's that - an entire post about a hung Parliament and not a single joke about stringing a politician up from the lamp posts in College Green? D'oh!
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