Ming Pensioned Off

Well, it looks as though the backstabbing, backwater Lib Dems have finally pensioned Ming Campbell off to the twilight home for incompetent party leaders. Not much of a surprise I suppose after a string of consistently bad poll ratings.

The media, obsessed as they are with their cult of youth, never really took to the elderly Sir Menzies, despite his left-wing liberal credentials – and I suspect this lack of media coverage, endorsement and appraisal played a significant role in his eventual downfall.

So, who will rise up to clasp the soiled Lib Dem leadership crown in their grubby hands in any forthcoming leadership elections? In many respects, does it really matter, and frankly who cares? Whoever takes over will be as useless as those that preceded them – just a little more youthful, which in today’s image rather policy driven media age will probably make all the difference.

With that in mind, I suspect the early running will be made by Chris Huhne and Nick Clegg, who, laughably, Jon Snow on Channel Four news just a while ago referred to as the most ‘right wing’ of the candidates likely to throw their hat into the ring. I assume that means the extremely socially liberal, and economically socialist Mr Clegg is left-wing rather than very left-wing then?

As for Ming, it very much appears that he was surplus to requirement and obsolete technology in the party that supposedly prides itself on being in no way discriminatory.

Kaplinsky Offloaded

Joy of joys; that toweringly great moral and intellectual authority otherwise known to many as BBC News presenter Natasha Kaplinsky, is reportedly set to leave her post at the BBC for Channel Five and three million pound contract.

She takes her over-inflated celebrity chasing ego with her to Channel Five where I cannot imagine her new colleagues will be particularly impressed with her ludicrously over the top salary for simply reading an auto-cue.

Since hardly anyone bothers to watch Channel Five news, few people will have to suffer seeing much of her for the foreseeable future. Now, all the BBC need do is let go a few more of their highly overpaid celeb stars such as Dermot Murnaghan, Terry Wogan and Jonathan Ross.

Nothing Has Changed So Why The Fuss?

Yesterday, Gordon Brown ended months of constant media speculation by informing the BBC that he would not call an early General Election this year or next, unless extraordinary circumstances arose.

Personally I thought that Mr Brown would call an early election. If I was him, I would have wanted to secure a mandate to do things differently to the previous manifesto I had been elected under.

However, that said, I am not Gordon Brown, and since he will not be doing anything substantially different to his predecessor Tony Blair (just trying desperately to appear different,) and it’s not as though he’s sticking that closely to the current Labour manifesto anyway by refusing to hold a Referendum on the EU Constitution – it therefore can be assumed he probably does not need a new mandate after all.

Today, Gordon Brown claimed that even if he had chosen to call an early election, he would have won it. While he is probably right of course, in his assumption there is an underlying arrogance – believing and naturally assuming that he and his party would win. But then, as has been pointed out many times before, the underlying electoral system favours Labour maintaining power, and there is very little sign of that irregularity changing any time in the foreseeable future.

It does however seem extremely dubious that just the day after two opinions polls were released in national papers showing the Conservatives neck and neck with, or ahead of Labour, Gordon Brown announces that he wishes to give the British people a chance to experience his ‘vision’ for the country and cancels out an early poll. Coincidence? I think not.

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Disunited Unity

With the Conservative Conference in Blackpool now at an end and the ever fickle opinion polls claiming that the party is on a level footing with Labour, David Cameron knows that he really has to capitalise on this short-term boost.

As we know, unless the Conservative party does exceptionally well in all its target seat marginals, or is around 4-6% ahead of Labour at the time of a general election (based upon a uniform national swing) Labour will most likely still form another lacklustre Government.

Despite this, a number of interesting and perhaps slightly unexpected proposals did actually come out of Blackpool this week. For instance, William Hague announced that a Conservative Government would introduce legislation meaning that any future powers transferred to the EU (of which there are a lot already) would require a referendum.

This proposal would be very welcome news if the Conservative party did not still cling on to its ‘In Europe, not run by Europe’ mantra – thus meaning that the party is at heart still in favour of increasing EU integration, though just at a slightly slower rate (if even that).

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