Agenda 2019

  http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/aug/26/peter-hain-labour-lib-dems Peter Hain says Labour should get ready to do business with Lib Dems I have never had a great amount of time for Hain, as it seems to me that he has always tried to fill the all things to all men role, changing his position as often as he changes his socks. "Blair was a good guy, Brown was a good guy, Milliband (David) was a good guy, (oops, he lost to his brother so) Milliband (Ed) is a good guy" does not demonstrate a consistent view. Now, Hain proposes a classic rightist option of getting into bed with a bunch of hypocrites and their leader who has prostituted himself and his party for a grubby chance of power. Hain now suggests that Labour should do exactly the same thing as Cameron did after the last election, and make a sordid grab for a majority in the commons, just to gain occupation of number 10. He should remember the "Gang of 4", and probably should have followed th...

nick-clegg-shirley-williams-nhs-health-bill   It seems to me that the reason that the leadership lost the debate is that the delegates recognised that the NHS bill is a bad bill, badly drafted and conceived with the intention of privatising the NHS. The delegates of course are not alone. The vast majority of health professional bodies, the nurses, the Trade Unions, most sections of the media and perhaps most importantly of all, the general public are opposed to this vexatious piece of proposed legislation. Only Clegg and the perfidious Williams lean over backwards to placate the Tory dogma. Having lost this vote they will now presumably seek to force the parliamentary party, regardless of the opinion of conference, to join them in their duplicity to enable Clegg to retain his seat at the cabinet table

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/liberaldemocrats/9135890/Liberal-Democrats-reject-vote-on-NHS-reforms.html Shirley Williams will probably remember the times when the Conference Arrangements Committee, aided and abetted by the Compositing Committee, sought to remove any possibility of embarrassment to the Party leadership or difficulties for the Parliamentary Party, due to Party Conference passing or even debating contentious matters. It was, in part, this gagging of dissension, coupled with a number of other Party procedures, which prompted a number of us to campaign and work for changes to the Party structure and mechanisms and bring about a more democratic party. It could have been this campaign that ultimately led to Shirley, now Baroness, Williams together with initially, three of her colleagues to reach the view that the party leadership would always have a monopoly of wisdom and party activists should follow, lemming like, in whatever direction the Parliamentary part...