PJC Journal – Original

Have the LibDems taken leave of their senses? Is their leadership stark raving mad?

Peter Oborne reports today that secret talks have already begun between Labour and Liberal Democrat figures about a
possible coalition. He reports that as a sweetener to any possible deal
the Labour Whips office is already drumming up support for Ming
Campbell as the next Speaker.

Are certain senior LibDem members so bent on attaining power that they can seriously be considering a pact with the most authoritarian government this country has ever seen?.

Oborne points to an article by Vince Cable suggesting that a national government might not be a bad idea and says:

“Throughout all my years of reporting politics I have rarely
encountered such a blatant hint by a senior politician from an
opposition party that he wants a job in government  -  and all the
signs are that Gordon Brown is warming to the idea of Vince Cable as
Chancellor of the Exchequer in a government of national unity.

However, the position of Nick Clegg (Cable's boss) is much less
clear. I understand that Vince Cable's public musings about a coalition
government were emphatically not sanctioned in advance by his leader.
Furthermore, insiders speak of a growing split inside the Liberal
Democrats over the issue.”

It is apparently Cable and Ming Campbell, who
are pushing for this deal. If Clegg were to go along with it, I suspect
he would split his party.

Can the Libertarian wing of the LibDems honestly feel that they could back such a move by the power hungry Cable. I can see the logic in promoting Campbell to the role of speaker, but Cable as Chancellor?

However, there is a younger generation of LibDems who are very
hostile to this idea of a coalition with Labour. As a result, Nick
Clegg faces a very difficult few months.

As Oborne points out those in favour of an “arrangement” within the Lib Dems are “on the whole, the older and more Left-leaning members of the party.”

The Libertarian Party (LPUK) is ready to open its doors to those Libertarian minded LibDem members who finally realise that there is no room for them and reform of the LibDems is impossible.

Meanwhile, Gordon
Brown, who is being closely advised on this matter by Peter Mandelson,
is not only contemplating a grand coalition in the event of a hung
parliament after the next election, but Brown is also ready to consider
heading a national government in the coming months in the event of the
economic situation getting worse.

Indeed, as the financial crisis deteriorates, this momentous decision may come sooner than he expects, but a Churchill he is not. (we understand what all the Churchillian propaganda was for!)

Beware the Ides of March. There is much political intrigue afoot.

Hattip Coffee House

A warning for us all posted today by Raedwald

The central State is
inherently weak. Those at the centre of the State know this better than
the civil population, and this knowledge makes them fearful and
paranoid. Every shadow is a threat, every blog an enemy, each dissenter
a potential terrorist. As Willem Buiter wrote in the FT:

Every
restriction on our liberties – our right to speak, write, criticize and
offend as we please, to act and organize in opposition to the
government of the day, to embarrass it and to show it up by forcing it
to look into the mirror of its own leaked secrets – must be resisted.
We cannot afford to believe any government’s protestations that it is
acting in good faith and will safeguard the confidentiality of any
information it extracts from us. Public safety and national security
are never sufficient reasons for restricting the freedom of
the citizens. The primary duty of the state is to safeguard our freedom
against internal and external threats. The primary duty of an informed
citizenry is to limit the domain of the state – to keep the government
under control and to prevent it from becoming a threat to our liberties.

The
threat posed by our own government to our liberty and fundamental
rights is a constant one. Most of the time it is a much greater, direct
and immediate threat than that posed by foreign states (through
conquest or extortion) or by external non-government agents, the
violent NGOs like Al Qaeda.

2009
will see violent upheaval in Greece, Spain and Italy as the fall-out
from their membership of the single currency hits. The EU will be
fighting for its survival as a putative Federal State – and it will
fight. The legislation is in place for a Greek magistrate to extradite
any one of us should we be seen as adding to the threat posed by their
own people on their own streets; Europe wide jurisdiction is now a
reality. You can all forget Magna Carta.

Both France and Germany – the EU's spine – will become increasingly repressive in defence of the EU under threat. The Guardian reports today
that nine French 'anarchists' who sound more like modern hippies have
been seized by anti-terrorist police from the small Limousin village
(incredibly with a communist Mayor) that they had settled in. The
French government says they posed a threat to the State; they say they
were just being anti-State hippies and wanted to be left alone. We will
see much more of this throughout Europe during 2009 as the EU feels
threatened by its unwilling citizens. Any UK libertarian blogger who
campaigns in their defence could see themselves the subject of an
extradition warrant from the French examining magistrate; no longer can
we stand safely in our realm and comment on the excesses of mainland
Europe.

I've
mentioned before that we are going through changes of the magnitude of
those of 1830 – 1860. A period of fundamental political reform that
will be resisted by the established but dying parties, the Statist
civil service and those whom Peter Oborne calls the Political Class.
British good sense avoided the blood spilt on the continent in the 19th
century, and my most fervent wish is that we can do so again. However,
the baneful grasp of the evil fronds of the EU on our nation may
mitigate against this.

No,
I'm not wearing a tinfoil hat or hearing voices. We're so used to
political stability, so indoctrinated with the supremacy of individual
rights, that anything else is incomprehensible. Everyone forgets that
all those rights, rights of expression, of assembly, of thought and conscience, and rights of privacy are expressly caveated
so that they only exist insofar as they don't threaten the State. The
European Convention on Human Rights is actually the Convention on the
Rights of European States over the People of Europe; just read
carefully the second clauses of Articles 8, 9, 10 and 11 HERE.

And
as the nine hippies of Tarnac are finding, one doesn't actually have to
pose a real threat to the State – it's enough for the paranoid and weak
central State to believe that you might.