CHATTERING CLASSES OF THE WORLD UNITE – YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT YOUR ARUGULA!!!!
Is it possible that Kathleen Parker and David Brooks were in the Guardian’s London offices a few days ago? Or maybe that’s just my febrile imagination. But there certainly is a waft of the Parker/Brooks perfume in this Guardian piece telling us all to vote Liberal Democrat – and be “clear and proud” about it!
The Liberal Democrats were green before the other parties and remain so. Their commitment to education is bred in the bone. So is their comfort with a European project which, for all its flaws, remains central to this country’s destiny. They are willing to contemplate a British defence policy without Trident renewal. They were right about Iraq, the biggest foreign policy judgment call of the past half-century, when Labour and the Tories were both catastrophically and stupidly wrong. They have resisted the rush to the overmighty centralised state when others have not. At key moments, when tough issues of press freedom have been at stake, they have been the first to rally in support. Above all, they believe in and stand for full, not semi-skimmed, electoral reform. And they have had a revelatory campaign. Trapped in the arid, name-calling two-party politics of the House of Commons, Nick Clegg has seldom had the chance to shine. Released into the daylight of equal debate, he has given the other two parties the fright of their lives.
A newspaper that is proudly rooted in the liberal as well as the labour tradition – and whose advocacy of constitutional reform stretches back to the debates of 1831-32 – cannot ignore such a record. If not now, when? The answer is clear and proud. Now.
Whatever…..at least they left out a reference to Clegg’s perfectly creased pants.
BTW – ignore that stuff about the Lib Dems and education and decentralising the state. By definition any group of people so closely sold on the EU is committed to a bossy, interfering and bureaucratic style of government constantly telling us what we must do for our own good.
Sorry, Guardianistas, but your declaration succinctly encapsulates every reason why I would rather shove my hands into a wasps nest than vote Liberal Democrat….
