Nick Clegg is a Whore – Discuss
‘Nick Clegg is a whore – and the Conservatives were the only party who would pay for a whore.’
It’s been a depressing few weeks for all those who believe in the principles of politics. From standing on opposite ends of the Television podium and apparently seeming to represent complete polarities in most of the political spectrum, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats have somehow jumped into bed together to form a united front against the evil that was New Labour and Gordon Brown. They have formed a fellowship of previously warring factions, Cameron the would-be-king Aragorn and Clegg as his archer-in-chief Legolas, against the despotic Brown, who has been looking over them all with his great ego and his...evil eye.
Okay, so the combination may not entirely work, but it is working to the right ends, to help all us back to fiscal harmony, where hard times will lead us one day into a new, brighter world. Or perhaps the ring has tempted all of them – Cameron a wide eyed hobbit and Clegg most certainly a lascivious Gollum.
The question is, what has politics become? How can it be possible for two parties with such contracting manifestos and principles to just suddenly ditch it all for what they would describe as the ‘good of the country.’ How can this make sense? How can this happen in a democratic world?
The first point to consider if how we, the public, decide who to vote for. If we vote practically, by what we think would be the best way the country to operate, or indeed what we think we can get out if it, then can we really complain about a coalition government. After all we are doing just what the Tories and the Liberals are doing, amending our thoughts and actions based on what looks good to us at that moment. Politics isn’t based on principle, it is based on practicality. Nick Clegg would have woken up, saw a situation he was in, looked through proposals from the Tories and the Labour party and went for which he decided he thought was best. He didn’t consider ideologies, he went for pragmatic action. The Tories apparently gave him and his party a better deal, so he went for it. Principles weren’t important. He had to make this decision, so he made it. Many people vote in the same way – what are we being offered, what works for us, let’s take the best offer. For Clegg that is enough apparently. That logic is okay. He is acting for the best interests of his party and he had to take a deal. Is that right? Is that how politics should work. Is that what we think when we get to the polls?
It depends. In depends who we are and how we think. It depends if we are guided by self-interest or if we are guided by ideals, by principles.
Some might say that not having principles is precisely what the Lib Dems are all about, and this is the kind of voter that they support. After all, in a debate of ideas, the liberal is surely the one whose principle is precisely to sit on the fence – all should be allowed to express their views and all should be considered equally. Rightness or wrongness is not the liberals point, as long as they view can be expressed – and it is not professing ‘harm’ to others, then there is no problem, then the liberal has won. Essentially then, the liberals would see the way in which we a government has been formed out of dogmatic opposition as exactly the type of freedom it supports, a freedom to come to a logical conclusion without the chains of ideologies and rhetoric. This election has been a victory for the liberal way of thinking, rather than the aggressive bluster of right versus left.
If politics is about practicalities then this makes perfect sense. But being a political party is about more than that, is about the ideas and ideals – about a way of viewing the world and of finding a real way of applying this view to a community of people. The liberals have a belief in a society where we are free to act for ourselves, while the Tories have their views and Labour have theirs. Nick Clegg may like the idea of free political decision making, but he still has back to a world where this applies to the individual. This is also what his electorate voted for after all.
The question is then, if we are okay to accept Clegg and Cameron’s joint ‘vision,’ is whether it is possible for Clegg to maintain the ideals of his party whilst working with a Conservative government. If he is, then fine, Clegg is acting in the best of interest of those who have voted liberal, but if is not, then he is nothing more than a self-interested whore, selling his votes for the best price on offer.
In order to answer this we need to clarify the ideologies of the two parties, to see if they are related and interchangeable, and also consider the third party in all this, Gordon Brown’s Labour, who the Liberals so promptly rejected.
To define the difference I have always thought of three politicians walking passed a tramp lying by the side of the pavement.
The conservative tells him to get off his arse and get a job.
The Labour gives him a quid, which he then spends on more beer to get more drunk
And the Liberal supports his right to be tramp and tried to find him a bigger box.
Hmmm, it seems here that all three political parties have very different perspectives. How could they look at the Labour point of view and the Conservative point of view, and decide which one to follow, when both have very different concerns, then the tramp’s right to have a box in the first place. How did they decide to go with the Tories rather than the Labour party?
Let’s think about the Conservative’s policies, and see what that tells us.
Under David Cameron’s the Tories into a new centre right position in the political scales. They are trying to renew their previous reputation as the government of economic prudence by advocating a reduction in government spending and a resultant cut in direct taxation, although now granting that the top level of tax will have to stay at its relative high levels. They are highly eurosceptical, probably due to painful memories of Black Wednesday and against any unnecessary ‘cooperation’ with Brussels. They have maintained their position as the party of liberal economics, minimizing state intervention for business and the individual and relying on promoting social values to encourage success and rewarding it is as such.
The current Liberal Democrat party believe in basic liberal freedoms, where the state has minimal intervention with the individual, separating themselves from the more the New Labour dominated thought of social liberalism and the third way, where the government ‘encourages’ freedoms through its intervention, creating markets within government bodies, like the NHS or local councils. This is not necessarily their definitive view, but what they think at the moment. Individuals should be left free to make life for themselves, rather than be assisted by a government that defines these freedoms through policy. From this then, they believe in lower taxation and cuts in public spending.
And while we’re at it, let’s look at the other incumbents, the Labour party, operating from the centre-left, and differing from both the Tories and the Conservatives in their belief in government investment to encourage economic growth. They don’t believe in socialism these days of course, but they still support an ethic of working together, even though we are also competing. It is probably summed up best in the re-wording of their infamous Clause 4, which now reads:
"The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party. It believes that by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone, so as to create for each of us the means to realise our true potential and for all of us a community in which power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of the many, not the few, where the rights we enjoy reflect the duties we owe, and where we live together, freely, in a spirit of solidarity, tolerance and respect”
I like to think of it like England football team on a training camp, playing some small games of five-a-side. They are still competing on the day, but are thinking of much greater goal at the end of it, so although they want to win, they want to help the team improve more than anything else.
So all this seems to suggest that the Liberals would be quite right to be taken in by the fluttering of David Cameron’s eyebrows.
However, this is where the courtship starts to hit the buffers. In order for the Conservatives to remain conservative and liberals to remain liberal, they must withhold some belief in cultural and social difference. While the current centre-right position of the conservatives allows for a more liberal view of society, in relation to for instance gay marriage or abortion, this is a position that is coming from a further right position and will always maintain it. Long has it criticized the Labour policy on positive multiculturalism for instance, and it also exists very much in a sceptical position on Europe, for which the Liberal Democrats exists on completely the opposite scale with overwhelming support for the Lisbon treaty.
Okay, they are not exactly the same time. There will be some differences. This does not mean that a coalition is unworkable.
No it doesn’t. But let break this down a bit further. The Conservative, in order to maintain his or her identity as a Conservative, will always have a strong sense of the ‘right’ way to live – the family, marriage, a certain level of Christian morality – rather than supporting the autonomy of choice.
Liberal and Tories share many beliefs in fiscal matters, but the tenets of their parties are almost polar opposites. If we vote for simple, what’s in it for us, then okay, principles no longer matters, but if we vote with any kind of integrity, then this election result – of a coalition Tory and Liberal government - is something of a fraud. Here’s why.
Liberal and Labour share a similar beliefs in what humans are – blank canvases who are trying to figure who to be and what to do – and while one may believe that we need to guide them on this path and one believes that we should let them figure this out as long as they don’t harm others, but both sides are coming from the same starting point. However, the Conservative view is somewhat different. Their starting point is the ‘right’ way to live. What they will then do is give as much autonomy for those who want to live this way, but this way will always be what they think should be followed. In this respect they will support ‘the family,’ ‘the homeowner’ and the entrepreneur. What the Tories will also always reject is those who simply do not want to act in the ‘right’ way. Their form of governing is exclusive – here’s the club rules, join in if you want. For Labour and for liberals there is no such club, and herein lies a crucial similarity. Okay, the Lib Dems may feel that Labour’s policy of supporting the many does restrict the freedom of the individual by the intervention of the state, but fundamentally they still think the same individual freedom should exist. The Tories do not.
It is a question of human nature - Tories believe that there are innately correct ways to be, Lib Dems feel we should be allowed to choose our own ways as long as we don’t cause harm and Labour think we should all be able to hemp one another as a community. Two of these views are interchangeable, but one is not. One says that human existence is different to the other two, and everything they believe comes from this. How then, can a party join up with one who has a different view on what it is to be a human being, and tells us how we should live as a result?
The Liberal Democrats can negotiate on policy with Labour and Conservatives. They can collaborate on most issues, but they cannot work alongside a party who has different intrinsic view on humanity
There can be no negotiation on this because this is who the parties are and this is still how the majority of the population will vote, with who they feel they agree with, fundamentally rather than pragmatically. This may or may not be right, but this is how a democracy works – it is humans voting, rather than analytical machines, and the starting point for a human will always be their own identity and what they believe as a result. Some of us look passed this, but most of us don’t. And to all those people who have voted in this way, Nick Clegg has let them all down. He has forgotten what it means to be human, what it means to have an identity, principles and beliefs. How do we know this? Because he has forgotten his own. If he had he would have understood that he could never form a government with the Conservatives, because they are intrinsically, ideologically different. In order to do that he would have to deny what it is to be Liberal, what it is to be a Liberal human being, and selling himself to the highest bidder or his own ends.
Forgetting what it is to be human? Selling yourself?
Precisely the actions of a whore.
It’s been a depressing few weeks for all those who believe in the principles of politics. From standing on opposite ends of the Television podium and apparently seeming to represent complete polarities in most of the political spectrum, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats have somehow jumped into bed together to form a united front against the evil that was New Labour and Gordon Brown. They have formed a fellowship of previously warring factions, Cameron the would-be-king Aragorn and Clegg as his archer-in-chief Legolas, against the despotic Brown, who has been looking over them all with his great ego and his...evil eye.
Okay, so the combination may not entirely work, but it is working to the right ends, to help all us back to fiscal harmony, where hard times will lead us one day into a new, brighter world. Or perhaps the ring has tempted all of them – Cameron a wide eyed hobbit and Clegg most certainly a lascivious Gollum.
The question is, what has politics become? How can it be possible for two parties with such contracting manifestos and principles to just suddenly ditch it all for what they would describe as the ‘good of the country.’ How can this make sense? How can this happen in a democratic world?
The first point to consider if how we, the public, decide who to vote for. If we vote practically, by what we think would be the best way the country to operate, or indeed what we think we can get out if it, then can we really complain about a coalition government. After all we are doing just what the Tories and the Liberals are doing, amending our thoughts and actions based on what looks good to us at that moment. Politics isn’t based on principle, it is based on practicality. Nick Clegg would have woken up, saw a situation he was in, looked through proposals from the Tories and the Labour party and went for which he decided he thought was best. He didn’t consider ideologies, he went for pragmatic action. The Tories apparently gave him and his party a better deal, so he went for it. Principles weren’t important. He had to make this decision, so he made it. Many people vote in the same way – what are we being offered, what works for us, let’s take the best offer. For Clegg that is enough apparently. That logic is okay. He is acting for the best interests of his party and he had to take a deal. Is that right? Is that how politics should work. Is that what we think when we get to the polls?
It depends. In depends who we are and how we think. It depends if we are guided by self-interest or if we are guided by ideals, by principles.
Some might say that not having principles is precisely what the Lib Dems are all about, and this is the kind of voter that they support. After all, in a debate of ideas, the liberal is surely the one whose principle is precisely to sit on the fence – all should be allowed to express their views and all should be considered equally. Rightness or wrongness is not the liberals point, as long as they view can be expressed – and it is not professing ‘harm’ to others, then there is no problem, then the liberal has won. Essentially then, the liberals would see the way in which we a government has been formed out of dogmatic opposition as exactly the type of freedom it supports, a freedom to come to a logical conclusion without the chains of ideologies and rhetoric. This election has been a victory for the liberal way of thinking, rather than the aggressive bluster of right versus left.
If politics is about practicalities then this makes perfect sense. But being a political party is about more than that, is about the ideas and ideals – about a way of viewing the world and of finding a real way of applying this view to a community of people. The liberals have a belief in a society where we are free to act for ourselves, while the Tories have their views and Labour have theirs. Nick Clegg may like the idea of free political decision making, but he still has back to a world where this applies to the individual. This is also what his electorate voted for after all.
The question is then, if we are okay to accept Clegg and Cameron’s joint ‘vision,’ is whether it is possible for Clegg to maintain the ideals of his party whilst working with a Conservative government. If he is, then fine, Clegg is acting in the best of interest of those who have voted liberal, but if is not, then he is nothing more than a self-interested whore, selling his votes for the best price on offer.
In order to answer this we need to clarify the ideologies of the two parties, to see if they are related and interchangeable, and also consider the third party in all this, Gordon Brown’s Labour, who the Liberals so promptly rejected.
To define the difference I have always thought of three politicians walking passed a tramp lying by the side of the pavement.
The conservative tells him to get off his arse and get a job.
The Labour gives him a quid, which he then spends on more beer to get more drunk
And the Liberal supports his right to be tramp and tried to find him a bigger box.
Hmmm, it seems here that all three political parties have very different perspectives. How could they look at the Labour point of view and the Conservative point of view, and decide which one to follow, when both have very different concerns, then the tramp’s right to have a box in the first place. How did they decide to go with the Tories rather than the Labour party?
Let’s think about the Conservative’s policies, and see what that tells us.
Under David Cameron’s the Tories into a new centre right position in the political scales. They are trying to renew their previous reputation as the government of economic prudence by advocating a reduction in government spending and a resultant cut in direct taxation, although now granting that the top level of tax will have to stay at its relative high levels. They are highly eurosceptical, probably due to painful memories of Black Wednesday and against any unnecessary ‘cooperation’ with Brussels. They have maintained their position as the party of liberal economics, minimizing state intervention for business and the individual and relying on promoting social values to encourage success and rewarding it is as such.
The current Liberal Democrat party believe in basic liberal freedoms, where the state has minimal intervention with the individual, separating themselves from the more the New Labour dominated thought of social liberalism and the third way, where the government ‘encourages’ freedoms through its intervention, creating markets within government bodies, like the NHS or local councils. This is not necessarily their definitive view, but what they think at the moment. Individuals should be left free to make life for themselves, rather than be assisted by a government that defines these freedoms through policy. From this then, they believe in lower taxation and cuts in public spending.
And while we’re at it, let’s look at the other incumbents, the Labour party, operating from the centre-left, and differing from both the Tories and the Conservatives in their belief in government investment to encourage economic growth. They don’t believe in socialism these days of course, but they still support an ethic of working together, even though we are also competing. It is probably summed up best in the re-wording of their infamous Clause 4, which now reads:
"The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party. It believes that by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone, so as to create for each of us the means to realise our true potential and for all of us a community in which power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of the many, not the few, where the rights we enjoy reflect the duties we owe, and where we live together, freely, in a spirit of solidarity, tolerance and respect”
I like to think of it like England football team on a training camp, playing some small games of five-a-side. They are still competing on the day, but are thinking of much greater goal at the end of it, so although they want to win, they want to help the team improve more than anything else.
So all this seems to suggest that the Liberals would be quite right to be taken in by the fluttering of David Cameron’s eyebrows.
However, this is where the courtship starts to hit the buffers. In order for the Conservatives to remain conservative and liberals to remain liberal, they must withhold some belief in cultural and social difference. While the current centre-right position of the conservatives allows for a more liberal view of society, in relation to for instance gay marriage or abortion, this is a position that is coming from a further right position and will always maintain it. Long has it criticized the Labour policy on positive multiculturalism for instance, and it also exists very much in a sceptical position on Europe, for which the Liberal Democrats exists on completely the opposite scale with overwhelming support for the Lisbon treaty.
Okay, they are not exactly the same time. There will be some differences. This does not mean that a coalition is unworkable.
No it doesn’t. But let break this down a bit further. The Conservative, in order to maintain his or her identity as a Conservative, will always have a strong sense of the ‘right’ way to live – the family, marriage, a certain level of Christian morality – rather than supporting the autonomy of choice.
Liberal and Tories share many beliefs in fiscal matters, but the tenets of their parties are almost polar opposites. If we vote for simple, what’s in it for us, then okay, principles no longer matters, but if we vote with any kind of integrity, then this election result – of a coalition Tory and Liberal government - is something of a fraud. Here’s why.
Liberal and Labour share a similar beliefs in what humans are – blank canvases who are trying to figure who to be and what to do – and while one may believe that we need to guide them on this path and one believes that we should let them figure this out as long as they don’t harm others, but both sides are coming from the same starting point. However, the Conservative view is somewhat different. Their starting point is the ‘right’ way to live. What they will then do is give as much autonomy for those who want to live this way, but this way will always be what they think should be followed. In this respect they will support ‘the family,’ ‘the homeowner’ and the entrepreneur. What the Tories will also always reject is those who simply do not want to act in the ‘right’ way. Their form of governing is exclusive – here’s the club rules, join in if you want. For Labour and for liberals there is no such club, and herein lies a crucial similarity. Okay, the Lib Dems may feel that Labour’s policy of supporting the many does restrict the freedom of the individual by the intervention of the state, but fundamentally they still think the same individual freedom should exist. The Tories do not.
It is a question of human nature - Tories believe that there are innately correct ways to be, Lib Dems feel we should be allowed to choose our own ways as long as we don’t cause harm and Labour think we should all be able to hemp one another as a community. Two of these views are interchangeable, but one is not. One says that human existence is different to the other two, and everything they believe comes from this. How then, can a party join up with one who has a different view on what it is to be a human being, and tells us how we should live as a result?
The Liberal Democrats can negotiate on policy with Labour and Conservatives. They can collaborate on most issues, but they cannot work alongside a party who has different intrinsic view on humanity
There can be no negotiation on this because this is who the parties are and this is still how the majority of the population will vote, with who they feel they agree with, fundamentally rather than pragmatically. This may or may not be right, but this is how a democracy works – it is humans voting, rather than analytical machines, and the starting point for a human will always be their own identity and what they believe as a result. Some of us look passed this, but most of us don’t. And to all those people who have voted in this way, Nick Clegg has let them all down. He has forgotten what it means to be human, what it means to have an identity, principles and beliefs. How do we know this? Because he has forgotten his own. If he had he would have understood that he could never form a government with the Conservatives, because they are intrinsically, ideologically different. In order to do that he would have to deny what it is to be Liberal, what it is to be a Liberal human being, and selling himself to the highest bidder or his own ends.
Forgetting what it is to be human? Selling yourself?
Precisely the actions of a whore.
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