It seems that we are
to write yet again on this blog about the enigma that is Chris Huhne. Deputy
Leader of the Liberal Democrats, we challenged him last week to change the name
of his party to the SDP to better reflect his illiberal views after he publicly
backed the Home Secretary in banning from the UK an elected member of the Dutch
Parliament, Gert Wilders.
Now we see that in a
show of publicity, he is back in the news launching what he calls his 'Freedom
Bill'.
Where do we begin to
look at Mr Huhne's efforts, which on the face of it are a step in the right
direction, which LPUK applaud, however, and with the LibDem's there is always an
however…
I read the 'Freedom
Bill' that was published on the LibDem
site, then I re-read it because I thought that their published version was
only a précis, but no, there it was in its entirety. Not once, not a single time
does it mention the word Liberty.
This is not repeal
being presented by Huhne, this is not winding back the injustice, this is just
tinkering for political gain.
That indeed then
prompted me to post the following comment on the presentation site: (which at
the time of writing this post was still in moderation).
A start yes, however, simply removing 1 or 2 clauses
in a number of Acts does nothing to remove the underlying evil behind much of
this primary legislation, and can easily be put back in by a subsequent
government.
I fear that this is merely window dressing in order
to catch media and voter attention rather than a genuine Liberal attempt at
restoring the Liberties to the UK
population.
It is noted that it does not once use the words
Liberty or Liberties, but Freedom. A strange choice of wording or perhaps not,
as we know full well that the Acts will never be allowed to be repealed by the
EU, of which your party is so fully
supportive.
One item that I
found both annoying and amusing was that it was so clearly obvious that the copy
of 1984 that Chris Huhne received from the Libertarian Party had struck home. It
had found its target as we had intended, as he used the very phrase that we
placed on each book in his press briefing, when he said “George Orwell’s 1984
was a warning, not a blueprint”.
I suppose we should
be flattered at the impact of the 1984 campaign, but the way in which Huhne is
exploiting that targeting by delivering such a poorly constructed Bill just
reinforces my view of him as a mercenary with statist
ambitions.
My posting on the
LPUK blog last week indicating that the Libertarian Party are leading the debate
was spot on, definitely on the money. It is clear that Huhne is only
FOLLOWING, but he is playing to the crowd with this gimmick bill, as he knows
full well that he will not be able to implement one jot of it without also
undertaking to leave the EU.
The EU will block every single item in Huhne’s
bill.
.
At this point I am happy to boast that The
Libertarian Party is the ONLY party to promise to undertake both the
full repeal of such liberty stripping laws, and to extract the UK from
the EU.
Moving on,
several things have also crossed my mind at the timing by Chris Huhne of this
particular proposal. Firstly we know that the Convention on Modern Liberty is on
in London, so Mr Huhne obviously wants to present the LibDem's as a party that
is 'doing something'. This only serves to hoodwink the voters who are starved by
Government and the media of any general knowledge of the EU and how far it now
has its tenticles into the UK and its government.
Secondly, the recent
civil war going on within the party over Liberal Vision has reached a stage
where they are losing members, so this is a sop to try to win back those
disaffected members with strong Libertarian views, and prevent them from
abandoning what is essentially a very social democratic party where their views
are neither heard nor acted upon, and he desperately needs to repair the damage
he caused to himself over the Gert Wilders affair.
Lastly, it is an
attempt at one-upmanship. David Davis will be the politician carrying the
Keynote speech of note at the Convention on Modern Liberty, therefore Huhne
wants to grab the media attention to water down whatever it is that Davis will
be delivering.
Overall, whilst I
would have hoped that the right intentions were there in the presentation of
this Bill, I cannot see it. It delivers far too little, it is much too late to
be merely tinkering, and provides no more safeguards on the Liberties of the
population of this country than the current Government have deprived us
of.
If this is the best
attempt by those purporting to be Liberal at 'Modern Liberty', if this is the
very best that is likely to come out of that Convention, then this nation still
has much to fear for its future.
