'Broken promises', and how Calamity Clegg became Mr Forgetful
When Nick Clegg petulantly threw his toys out of the pram by pledging to scupper pre-agreed boundary changes, he insisted it was because the Tories had broken their promise to agree to House of Lords reform.
‘The Conservative Party is not honouring the commitment to Lords reform — as a result, part of our contract has been broken. So I have told the Prime Minister that when Parliament votes on boundary changes for the 2015 election, I will be instructing my party to oppose them.’
But here is the definitive proof that, as recently as April, Calamity Clegg was denying there was any connection between Lords reform and the eminently sensible decision of Parliament to cut the number of MPs by 50 (if they had agreed to axe 250, Cameron’s popularity in the country at large would be transformed!).
Selective memory: Is Nick Clegg being forgetful, or just distorting the truth?
Here is the crucial exchange between Clegg and the spirited Tory MP Eleanor Laing, at April’s meeting of the Commons Political Constitutional and Reform committee. Laing said: ‘It is now being reported that the Lib Dem party will not continue to support the boundaries legislation unless Lords reform is passed . . . is that the case?’ Clegg’s reply: ‘There is no formal link between the two.’
Laing pressed on, and insisted he replied in more detail. So Clegg added: ‘There is no link. Of course there is no link.’
So which is it? Is Clegg being forgetful, or just distorting the truth to try to shore up waning support in his party after being so comprehensively mugged over the Lords?
It’s not just the Tories who are paying the price for pursuing daft policies their members don’t like.
Tucked away in the Electoral Commission’s latest report is the revelation that Lib Dem membership has fallen below 50,000 for the first time. It’s now at 49,900, down from more than 65,000 in those heady first days of the Coalition.
It’s the sharpest fall in the party’s history and a far cry from Charles Kennedy’s time in the Nineties, when membership was way above 100,000.
Kennedy was, of course, the only Lib Dem MP not to vote to support the Coalition.
Is Harriet a secret royalist now?
Harriet Harman: Royalist convert?
Harriet Harman has declared in the Commons’ Register of Interests a donation to the value of £2,790 from the All England Lawn Tennis Club. It was for two tickets to the royal box during Wimbledon.
By taking her place in the royal box, is Harman recanting her past republican leanings? When the nation rejoiced at the wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana in 1981, she was on a cross-channel ferry with Peter Mandelson for a republican awayday to France to mark their opposition to the ‘royalist orgy’.
Chief executive at Standard Chartered — accused by the U.S. authorities of secretly conniving with Iran to dodge economic sanctions— is Peter Sands. He is also lead non-executive director of the Department of Health, whose website boasts: ‘During Peter’s tenure as CEO, Standard Chartered has successfully navigated the financial crisis without any recourse to government support.’ Just don’t mention Iran.
Quote of the Week
The Tory MP Conor Burns, writing in The Spectator, notes: ‘Some of us now fear that people are more interested in leading the Coalition than leading the party they were elected to lead.’ David Cameron, take note.
At last the Government has kept a promise. Last year, the Department for International Development increased its spending, as it said it would, to £7.87 billion from £7.48 billion the year before. India, with a space and nuclear programme, was the biggest beneficiary. Don’t you just wish that was one promise they had broken?
Joke of the Week
If the gaffe-prone U.S. republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney wins the election, he will not be inaugurated to the tune of God Bless America, but God Help America.
It's not just a job, Louise
That old bruiser Lord Tebbit is not sympathetic to Louise Mensch, the Tory MP who is quitting to spend more time with her family.
Tebbit, who was injured in the Brighton bomb that left his wife in a wheelchair, said: ‘Of course it might be said that I left the Commons to care for my wife, but that was in the light of her injuries, and after 22 years in the House, having given good notice before the end of my term that I would not seek to stand again.
‘It is the apparently casual attitude of Mrs Mensch towards the obligations she had undertaken which concerns me: it is as if, these days, being an MP is no more than a job.’
