Labservatives

Lib Dems started a tongue in cheek campaign this week about the two old parties. Amalgamating the two, we have the Labservatives. As they have done a pretty good job of looking and sounding the same - tired and short of ideas - this is a fun way of raising a serious issue. For 65 years the government of our country has been handed from Labour to the Conservatives and back again like a game of pass the parcel. Red-blue, blue-red politics – and look what it has got us: corrupt politics, recession, inequality , time and again. They just take turns at making the same mistakes. It has to end. It’s the same story wherever you look: together David Cameron and Gordon Brown have blocked political reform, including our plan to allow people to sack corrupt MPs. The Labservatives compete to sound tough on crime instead of doing what works to actually catch criminals and stop them committing more crimes. And the Labservatives have made UK foreign policy subservient to the interests of the United States, from the illegal invasion of Iraq to the decision to waste £100bn on replacing, like for like, the cold war era Trident nuclear submarines. Only a vote for the Liberal Democrats will move us to a point where we can break up the old status quo and deliver fresh, exciting politics for a new century. To bring real change for the better vote Lib Dem!

PMQ's

For the first time in ages, something was actually revealed at Prime Minister's Questions. Gordon Brown owned up to getting it wrong at the Iraq Inquiry. In fact, the central plank of his evidence was that he had raised spending on defence in real terms every year as chancellor. In fact for at least three years he didn't. Now, did he forget, did he make a mistake, or did he deliberately mislead the inquiry? Perhaps we should be generous and say he forgot. He was after all dealing with a lot of budgets. But fundamentally, Gordon has now undermined his role in the war. Looking at it from the troops point of view, they did not get the support of the man who is now Prime Minister. These are men and women who already get a raw deal, and deserve better pay and equipment. Lib Dems have pledged to raise the starting salary of an infantryman to that of a policeman starting out. It is only right and fair that those risking their lives for our country are given decent pay. But to send them to war and then reduce their funding, as Gordon did most certainly in 2004, is scandalous.

Beyond These Shores

Nick Clegg made a key speech today about foreign policy and Britain's relations with the rest of the world. He was keen to emphasise that whilst our friendship with the US is important, we need to take back decisions on foreign policy rather than blindly following the White House as we have for the last 50 years. He is right to point out that we need to cultivate good relationships across the globe independent of the US.
"Gordon Brown does not want to remind voters of the disastrous decision to go to war in Iraq." Nick told the Royal Institute of International Affairs.
"David Cameron does not want to remind voters that he is friendless in Europe. The real truth is the future of British foreign policy is as much in the balance as the future of our economy or our political system."
History is littered with our foreign policy mistakes. Many of them we seem hell bent on repeating. We created Iraq after the first world war, and went back with troops twice more recently. Afganistan has been a 200 year obsession. It is time we started making pragmatic foreign policy decisions that will bring us a better standing in the world for the future.

WMD?

So, the Iraq inquiry has barely begun, and already we are told that the Government had intelligence reports that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction. 10 days later we went to war on the premise that we were stopping the deployment of these weapons. I did not think that we would get this sort of detail this early, but sadly I am not surprised that Tony Blair had had this sort of intel in advance of invasion. I am in no doubt there will be many serious pieces of information uncovered in this inquiry, although I am not so sure it will be as full and frank as we need it to be. What we do know is that the Labour Government sent our troops into combat under false pretences.