The Lib Dem newly knighted as a consolation prize for his removal from Ministerial office at the Ministry of Defence. He had opposed a pre-emptive strike against Iran, even though that opposition is the position of Her Majesty's Government, Iran being, if a threat to anywhere, then certainly not a threat to the United Kingdom. And he had been insufficiently deferential to Israel, again in line with formal Government policy. So he had to go.
In the past, he has also voted against the "renewal" of Trident. And, although the present Deputy Leader, Simon Hughes, abstained, he was the only Lib Dem to vote against the Maastricht Treaty. In both, he was well and truly ahead of his time. I am not convinced that most Lib Dems are all that pro-EU, really. I
have a strong suspicion that they are more like the characters in
Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday. One by one, each of the members of an anarchist cell turns out to be an undercover policeman.
Vicious campaigners though they undeniably are, there truly are Lib Dems, doubtless clear majorities of their members and voters, and probably even of their MPs and Peers, who believe profoundly in the election of pretty much everything that exercises any sort of power. In absolute openness and freedom of information. In the highest possible degree of decentralisation and localism. In the heritage of uncompromising opposition to political extremism everywhere from Moscow to Pretoria abroad, and from the Communist Party to the Monday Club at home.
In (unlike me) the tradition of anti-protectionism against everyone from nineteenth-century agricultural Tories to 1970s industrial trade unionists. In the rural Radicalism that has always stood against the pouring of lucre into the pockets of the landlords. And in the interests of the arc of Lib Dem fishing seats from Cornwall via North Norfolk, Berwick, and North East Fife, to the Highlands and Islands of Scotland.
Mild to strong Eurosceptics, including a goodly number of the latter, probably keep quiet within the Lib Dems because they assume that they are a tiny minority. But I bet that they are not. In fact, I bet that they are not really a minority at all. And now, not only do some of them have to make legislative and executive decisions, but they also have a potential focal point for their activity freed from the confines of collective responsibility. Also a potential focal point for opposition to the "renewal" of Trident, for opposition to the bowing of the knee to the State of Israel, and for opposition to war against Iran.
Vicious campaigners though they undeniably are, there truly are Lib Dems, doubtless clear majorities of their members and voters, and probably even of their MPs and Peers, who believe profoundly in the election of pretty much everything that exercises any sort of power. In absolute openness and freedom of information. In the highest possible degree of decentralisation and localism. In the heritage of uncompromising opposition to political extremism everywhere from Moscow to Pretoria abroad, and from the Communist Party to the Monday Club at home.
In (unlike me) the tradition of anti-protectionism against everyone from nineteenth-century agricultural Tories to 1970s industrial trade unionists. In the rural Radicalism that has always stood against the pouring of lucre into the pockets of the landlords. And in the interests of the arc of Lib Dem fishing seats from Cornwall via North Norfolk, Berwick, and North East Fife, to the Highlands and Islands of Scotland.
Mild to strong Eurosceptics, including a goodly number of the latter, probably keep quiet within the Lib Dems because they assume that they are a tiny minority. But I bet that they are not. In fact, I bet that they are not really a minority at all. And now, not only do some of them have to make legislative and executive decisions, but they also have a potential focal point for their activity freed from the confines of collective responsibility. Also a potential focal point for opposition to the "renewal" of Trident, for opposition to the bowing of the knee to the State of Israel, and for opposition to war against Iran.
Arise, Sir Nick Harvey.
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