Liberal Economy With The Truth

A couple of months ago, I wrote a post setting out why the Liberals claims, that they only abandoned their position, of opposition to immediate,large scale Cuts, as a result of the crisis in Greece, was historically inaccurate - Liberal Re-Writing Of History. We now have confirmation of that from two unlikely sources. The first unlikely source is from Sky News, which is part of the Murdoch Evil Empire, though it has not descended yet to the depths of Murdoch's US “news” organisation, Fox News. The second unlikely source is from former Liberal Chief Secretary to the Treasury, David Laws, who apparently let the cat out of the bag to Sky News' Deputy Political Editor, Joey Jones. Hat Tip for this story goes to Left Foot Forward.

Jones says that Laws told him that, even at the time of the Coalition negotiations, the Liberals position was still that the best time to begin implementing Cuts was in the Spring of 2011, when the economy should have been recovering. Also confirming the point I have been making that the Cuts agenda was driven by political posturing rather than any actual need to make the Cuts, Laws is reported as saying that the “rhetoric on deficit reduction had been “hyped up”, that it wasn’t as important as all that”.



The Liberals have just set a dangerous precedent by involving the Courts in determining the outcome of elections rather than the voters. They used the Courts to overrule the decision of the Saddleworth electorate. The basis for them doing that was that Labour's Phil Woolas told lies during the campaign. But, it is becoming clear that the Liberals – in fact like all bourgeois politicians before during and after elections – lied on not just one thing, but on almost every aspect of their programme from Tuition Fees, to Cuts, to Benefits, to Immigration. A consistently democratic, even bourgeois democratic, system would have a solution for that, it would be the right of recall by electors of MP's, and preferably the Annual Elections that the Chartists demanded 170 years ago. It is not to allow unelected Judges to determine who our MP's should be.

I don't know the facts of the charges against Woolas, so I will not comment, but the fact also is that if the LP does want to win back support, then we have to ensure that the candidates we select to stand as our representatives are of the highest principle. It is not just Woolas on trial for the accusation of stirring up racial hatred, but the whole party, because it is the Party that selects the candidate, and which should exercise control over the material that goes out. If Woolas' is guilty of using racism then he should be drummed out of the Party as soon as possible, but it is becoming clear today with the so called “mutiny” of Labour MP's in his supportt that there is little concern to address the question of racism. The CLP's of those MP's should consider that in deciding on reselection too.