A Liberal Dose?

With far more MPs than all smaller parties and Independents put together, the Liberal Democrats are the third largest party in the House of Commons, and all of their MPs were elected on their ticket. They also lead more councils than the Conservatives. Obviously, then, they do not need the publicity. Rather, the media blackout of them is a failure to subject them to proper scrutiny. It continued even during the five years of the Coalition. All in all, a dereliction of responsibility.

The subsequent Conservative Governments demonstrated that the Lib Dems had been the more pro-austerity and pro-war party to the Coalition. In itself, that would make them the perfect partner for Labour, perhaps even leading to a merger, a dream that has never quite died in certain minds. Tony Blair acquired it from Roy Jenkins, in both parties but of neither. If it were only about policy or even philosophy, then the leading elements of the five main parties in England, six in Scotland and six in Wales would all be in the same party. That would at least create the space for anyone else. But it is not going to happen.

The old battle of King and People against the Whig magnates has resumed, with Jacob Rees-Mogg, whose father called himself a Whig and sat in the House of Lords as a Crossbencher, siding with the Lib Dems, if not behind the latest bearer of the Spencer standard, then at least on conscription, which the Liberals introduced to this country. It does not approach Douglas Murray's overdone 1930s aristocratic Fascist leader, but Rees-Mogg's impersonation of a First World War general from Blackadder Goes Fourth would be enough to make anyone insist on Ukrainian levels of compulsion before joining up. Will he be sending any of his own five sons, or will they be spared in the manner of Blair's three? And what of Boris Johnson's vast progeny? Even more than Blair, Rees-Mogg and Johnson exemplify the injunction to ignore anyone who advocated a military intervention unless you could imagine that person as an 18-year-old in battle.

And so to the Lib Dems, who initially want "a national register of civilian volunteers" in preparation for war. As ever, the call for something like this is coming from the liberal bourgeoisie. That is the class least likely to join the Armed Forces voluntarily, or to see combat even in periods of conscription. Operationally, that is of course just as well. But if there is not a strong enough case for conscription, then there is not a strong enough case for war. Unless a country needed to mobilise its entire healthy and able-bodied male population of fighting age, then it is not under sufficient threat to justify going to war at all.

Having been born since 1995, nine Labour MPs, including a Minister, belong to the famous Generation Z. One is Nadia Whittome, and Euan Stainbank also showed Resistance potential during the Starmer Occupation, but are the others in the Reserves? Is the 27-year-old Joshua Reynolds, whose Lib Dems have only once in their 38-year history seen a war that they did not like? But if they were on this register, then that sort could claim to be doing their bit. In that spirit are the NIMBY campaigns by which the Lib Dems recruited. Piddington is in a Lib Dem ward of a Lib Dem district, it is in a Lib Dem ward of of a Lib Dem county, and it is in a Lib Dem parliamentary constituency. Not all individuals will have "voted for this", but the community certainly did. Just for somewhere else. Naturally.

Piddington also manifests one of the most important trends of our age, the radicalisation of the old. Had attendees at the Reform UK conference been lifelong political activists, then hecklers would have been par for their course. But having come to such matters late in life and having been whipped up into a frenzy of anger, they reacted by pulling hair, grabbing throats, and beating with walking sticks. At demonstrations organised by the likes of Stephen Yaxley-Lennon and Daniel Thomas, the ranting nanas are the Piddington ladies without the million pound houses. Alongside Japanese and Norwegian journalists who could not comprehend the unreliable wifi or the lack of public transport, Thomas himself has graced Piddington with his presence, so a bridging of the gap may be underway.

Yet Thomas and his Patriot Platform have been supported by Rupert Lowe, whose Restore Britain differs from Reform in supporting the abolition of the triple lock. Reform may want the pensioners whom Nigel Farage had himself done so much to rouse, but Restore clearly has its sights on the energised male youth, soon to be enfranchised from the age of 16, while conceding the female cohort to the Green Party. Quite how Suzette Watson fits into that, who knows?

Lowe and Restore are backed by John Cleese. Still ubiquitous in school RE lessons, Monty Python's Life of Brian has done more than any other single phenomenon to destroy a basically Christian culture in this and several other countries, to the point that most people would no longer get the jokes because those assumed mass familiarity with the Gospels. Such is the generation of which the male half will vote Restore if available but Reform if not, while the female half will vote Green.

It really will serve the Labour Party right when its lowering of the voting age had that effect. And in best Blairite fashion, whenever it is not trying to ban something, then it is trying to make something compulsory. People will vote if they are given anything to vote for. Indeed, with Labour now ahead of Reform, it is not clear why those agitating for compulsory voting thought that there was a problem.