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Political grown-ups
May. 12th, 2010 04:49 pmI woke up feeling oddly empty this morning. I've been a Liberal/LibDem member/supporter since I reached my majority and it's always been the Tories who were the enemy. It's always been Labour that I felt were muddleheaded but persuadable. I've despaired along with Labour-supporting friends at the way the bright new dawn of '97 dissolved into a murky pea-souper in Iraq, on id cards and many other issues. This morning I found it difficult to believe that we could work with the successors to Thatcher. And yet...
The agreement hammered out has a lot in it that I am very happy to see. On civil liberties, on political reform, on the environment (high-speed rail in particular), on banking regulation and (whisper it) progressive taxation there are commitments I can wholeheartedly agree with. Some of our own wilder promises have been ditched along with some of those the Tories had in to pander to their right wing. There are a few things I'm less happy with, but there would be things I'd be unhappy with if it was a LibLab deal - particularly on civil liberties. Vince Cable at Business is a good appointment, as is Ken Clarke as Lord Chancellor to work with Nick Clegg on reform issues.
It's not yet a brave new dawn. I'll be reserving judgement a while yet until we see how things work in practice and whether the Rabid Right can be kept in check, but I'm now guardedly optimistic. I've talked for years about the need for cross-party cooperation and the removal of the yah boo tendencies in politics. Just maybe we're reaching a point where British politics is looking at the rest of the world, particularly Europe, and realising it's time to ditch the knee-jerk tribalism and grow up.
The agreement hammered out has a lot in it that I am very happy to see. On civil liberties, on political reform, on the environment (high-speed rail in particular), on banking regulation and (whisper it) progressive taxation there are commitments I can wholeheartedly agree with. Some of our own wilder promises have been ditched along with some of those the Tories had in to pander to their right wing. There are a few things I'm less happy with, but there would be things I'd be unhappy with if it was a LibLab deal - particularly on civil liberties. Vince Cable at Business is a good appointment, as is Ken Clarke as Lord Chancellor to work with Nick Clegg on reform issues.
It's not yet a brave new dawn. I'll be reserving judgement a while yet until we see how things work in practice and whether the Rabid Right can be kept in check, but I'm now guardedly optimistic. I've talked for years about the need for cross-party cooperation and the removal of the yah boo tendencies in politics. Just maybe we're reaching a point where British politics is looking at the rest of the world, particularly Europe, and realising it's time to ditch the knee-jerk tribalism and grow up.
