And another thing…

I’M NOT a fan of chick flicks, so I’ve not been watching Nick Clegg’’s speech to whatever conference he’s speaking to this afternoon.

But I’ll make a wild stab in the dark and guess that he’s going to be no clearer on which party he would choose to support in the event of a hung parliament. David Laws, the LibDem MP, said on Any Questions on Friday that any such decision would not be taken until after polling day.

Thank you, David. Thank you for confirming what I’ve been saying for years about the undemocratic nature, not only of the LibDems but of their most precious policy – proportional representation.

It’s entirely consistent of Laws to say that the public will not be consulted before the LibDems make a decision. That’s the essence of PR: let the little people have their vote, then ignore what they say and start bartering away the very policies they voted for behind closed doors and without reference to them.

Refusing to come clean about which of the main parties the Liberals would support if they got the chance is the opposite of transparent and democratic. But it’s entirely consistent for the Liberals.

THE LIBDEMS have unveiled their general election slogan. I rather like it. It’s pithy, catchy and down with the kids…

JOHN Kampfner’s decision to support the LibDems should come as no surprise to anyone.

I recall a truly bizarre feature in the New Statesman in the few weeks running up to the 2005 election in which readers were invited to vote tactically against Labour MPs. That’s right – against! He was one of the delicate flowers, I assume, who think large Labour majorities are just too, too fwightening, and so wanted to curb our power with an injection of opposition politicians.

(Intriguingly, almost all of the Labour MPs so targeted were on the so-called “Blairite” wing of the party – go figure!)

As Neil Kinnock rightly points out today in a letter to The Guardian, Thatcher got her best result when the SDP/Liberal vote was at its highest.

Why hasn’t Kampfner sussed the fact that any swing away from Labour and towards the Liberals can only benefit the Tories?

Or maybe he has.

NICK Clegg has reassured a completely indifferent concerned nation that he would work with one of the other parties in the interests of “fiscal stability” if the election produces a hung parliament.

There’s some lazy assumptions being made about the consequences of a hung parliament. And the laziest is the one that assumes Nick Clegg will even be consulted about anything. Why would he be? If either Labour or the Tories fall short of an overall majority, it would be entirely constitutional and practical for either GB or Dave to lead a minority government, at least for a short while, provided the other wasn’t trying to cobble together a larger coaition with the LibDems.

And it’s in neither of the main parties’ interests to invite the LibDems into government – they would only get in the way. Far better to govern as a minority, even if that means you can’t actually legislate.

WHAT  a ██████ █████ █████ .

ALWAYS completely principled, them LibDems.

They want electoral reform, not for their own good – oh, no! – but for the good of the nation. And today, as an amendment to the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill, they have helpfully tabled “New Schedule 3″ to the Bill, which list:

CONSTITUENCY BOUNDARIES FOR SINGLE TRANSFERABLE VOTE SYSTEM OF ELECTION FOR THE HOUSE OF COMMONS

For the uninitiated, the STV system means preferential voting for MPs in multi-member constituencies. So, rather than leave the drawing of the new boundaries to a politically-neutral body such as the Boundary Commission, the LibDems have helpfully done it themselves. So my own seat (electorate: 68,000) gets subsumed into a seven-member Glasgow seat (electorate 428,500). We can assume that, in an STV election, the minor parties (Conservative, Liberal, SNP, etc) would be represented among the seven MPs elected.

However, the seat of Argyll and Bute (electorate: 68,000) would, under the Liberals’ proposals, be transformed into… er, well, a single-member constituency called “Argyll and Bute” (electorate: 68,000). Likewise Orkney and Shetland (electorate: 33,400) would become a single-member constituency called “Orkney and Shetland” (electorate: 33,400).

Can anyone guess which party the MPs for these two seats are members of? Anyone? Correct! The LibDems!

“But,” I hear you say, “it wouldn’t be geographically possible to merge areas such as Argyll and Bute into bigger constituencies with four or five members.” Correct. Which is why strictly proportional electoral systems wouldn’t even be feasible in large parts of the country. Simply gerrymandering LibDem-held constituencies using the excuse that their MPs tend to represent rural areas simply isn’t honest.

Not that we expect honesty from the Liberals, of course (a prize to the first commenter or Tweeter who claims that by attacking the Liberals I’m betraying my fear of the threat they pose).

I HEAR that a Sunday Telegraph poll tomorrow will confirm the recent trend of predicting a hung parliament.

In many respects, this is good news for Labour, following so many months when our complete electoral obliteration was being predicted. Nevertheless, my blood runs cold at the very thought of a hung parliament, whoever is the largest party. The temptation and the pressure to begin horse-trading with the minority parties would be immense. And in the event of “negotiations” between the LibDems and either Labour or the Conservatives,  the party manifestos would be unceremoniously binned in favour of whatever lowest common denominators could be salvaged from the talks.

There have always been plenty “comrades” whose sole reason for campaigning to get Labour back into power after 18 years of opposition seemed to be in order to give that power away to the minor parties. They wouldn’t even need the excuse of a hung parliament to enter a coalition with the Liberals if they got the chance.

Those unfamiliar with the situation when Labour and the LibDems formed a coalition government at Holyrood should also acquaint themselves with the phrase “the tail wagging the dog”. Because that’s how democratic whatever form of proportional representation forced on the country by the Liberals would be: the party that came third dictating to the biggest party – and the whole country – how it should govern.

Things seem to be moving Labour’s way, and for me (and for the whole of the country, believe me) the best outcome will be a Labour overall majority. But if that were not achieved (and let me make it clear: I still think it can be) then it’s important that whichever party formed a minority government isn’t forced, through threats of votes of confidence by the main opposition party, into bed with Clegg (31 is an uneven number, after all – Ba-boom! I’m here all week…)

NICK Clegg has urged Gordon Brown to be “candid” and “open” when he gives his evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry.

In other news, the LibDem leader has “strongly urged” UK drivers to drive “on the left side of the road”…

It’s good to see that Clegg is actually in tune with the rest of the country on Chilcot; he made clear in his interview this morning that the conclusions the inquiry produce will have absolutely no bearing on his view of the war. Brown must “come clean”, said Clegg during Thought For The Day, thereby admitting that he believes GB has something to “come clean” about. But if Clegg thinks the inquiry is so important, why has he already decided that he will reject its conclusions unless they happen to agree with his own views?

The answer, of course, is that the LibDems and the other minor parties see Chilcot as important only in a vote-winning role. It provides copy for their election literature, nothing more. The calculation that the Liberals made in 2003 – that an anti-war stance might garner some much-needed votes – paid off and they’re hoping to pull off the same trick again. Hence his Uriah Heep-like hand-wringing at PMQs on the issue.

But by inviting the PM to attend the inquiry this side of the election, Chilcot has allowed it to become a party political football, just another soundbite in a long and drawn out general election campaign.

IS USING Photoshop or other “airbrushing” software the equivalent of lying?

Personally, I don’t go along with Jo Swinson, the LibDem MP’s campaign against airbrushing photos of models on advertisements. Yes, I accept it’s a good PR campaign for someone who’s keen to raise her media profile in advance of the general election, but as a piece of legislation, the move is nonsense. Such a law would be utterly unenforceable for a start.

There seems to be a view in this country that any attempt to remove or hide physical blemishes is intolerably vain. When Paul Potts shot to fame as the winner of Britain’s Got Talent in 2008, there was some media speculation that he had used his newfound wealth – horror of horrors! – to fix his teeth, which had previously been, shall we say, rather uneven and not exactly sparkling white. If he did have some cosmetic dental work done, good on him. Quite right too.

Witness the inevitable sneering that always takes place whenever some celebrity or other gets any cosmetic surgery (which, by definition, is nobody’s business but theirs), or if a politician is accused of dying his hair (and, for the record, no, I don’t). Women using make-up is acceptable, paying for the extra cost of white fillings likewise. But more expensive dental work, a nose job or a boob job… well, that’s just vanity, isn’t it? Yes, it is. And everyone suffers from it to a degree.

Frankly, it’s absurd to suggest that in 2010, a software package that’s been around for more than two decades should be banned from a graphic artist’s toolbox, or that any photograph created or amended using the programme has to be flagged up as such. At the root of the argument is an assumption that the public believes everything they see in adverts. Because we’re thick, see?

And what if Photoshop has been used to remove a background object in a photo of a model, but the model herself hadn’t been altered? Would that have to carry one of Ms Swinson’s “health warnings”?

And if Photoshop should now be seen as A Bad Thing, what about studio lighting which makes a model look better than in real life? What about make-up which covers a blemish or a wrinkle? Should such photographs carry a warning saying “This model has been altered using Max Factor”?

Of course, there are issues about misleading consumers if an image used in an advertisement is inaccurate or deliberately misleading. That’s why we already have safeguards, and why the Advertising Standards Agency has already decreed that they Oil of Olay ad featuring a remarkably wrinkle-free Twiggy should no longer be used.

Introducing a new law imposing ridiculous obligations on artists and businesses – obligations which could never be properly enforced – would be a complete waste of time. Better, surely, to rely on individual consumers’ judgment and on the existing safeguards.

NICK Clegg has dismissed David Cameron’s claims that their two parties are identical in all but name.

Clegg

Cameron