By Stuart Littlewood – London
Britain is left dangling by an indecisive general election while horse trading goes on behind closed doors.
The Liberal Democrats hold the balance of power and their leader Nick Clegg is running around meeting negotiators from David "I’m-a-Zionist" Cameron’s Conservatives and trying to reach a collaborative agreement so that a new era of government can begin. At the same time he’s having telephone conversations with sad loser Gordon Brown.
While waiting for a result I began drawing up my own parliamentary ‘dream team’. This is not easy as many people, myself included, regard the top Tory and Labour figures – Hague, Osborne, Balls, Miliband – as just as much a pain in the fundament as their respective leaders.
Supposing Clegg resists overtures from the Conservatives and tries for a ‘rainbow’ coalition with Labour under a caretaker Prime Minister such as Alan Johnson. My fantasy team would likely include the sunny and sensible Caroline Lucas of the Green Party, with Alistair Darling and Vince Cable roped together as a chancellor duo – that job being far too big and important for one man – and somebody sensible (perhaps Ed Davey if Labour won’t bring their rebels in from the cold) as foreign secretary.
Clegg may well feel the hand of Destiny momentarily on his shoulder. He has an unprecedented opportunity to stop Britain’s slide into the abyss and save us from the idiots who have run our country into the ground. Or he could try to save us from the alternative idiots eager to wreck it completely if unadulterated Toryism is allowed to take over.
But can he save us from both? We can only hope Clegg plays the cards Destiny has dealt him with sufficient skill and daring.
Labour, beaten and discredited, could at least be re-moulded into something halfway acceptable. The Tories, however, are arrogant and belligerent and will not be diverted from their insane values and disreputable purpose, which apparently is to act as a preservation society for the privileged and a recruiting ground for those who are willing to stooge for foreign (US and Israeli) exploitative interests.
Would Cameron declare the Foreign Office a Zionist-free zone if Clegg demanded it? Fat chance.
On past performance the Conservatives will back any war, any destruction, as long as it’s not their own. The hypocrites want to promote family values and mollycoddle family life with taxpayer funds while they are happy to see innocent families elsewhere – in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine – vaporised, shredded or terribly maimed, or starved into submission by sanctions and blockades.
The upper echelons of Labour too are devoted to war and cover-up, as they’ve demonstrated in spades. All those who were party to the Iraq slaughter, in my view, are not fit to govern and shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the levers of power again. It’s no use their saying "We were misled". Plenty of ordinary citizens were not misled. And there was ample information freely available to contradict the lies the war-crimes scum were telling us.
It was the business of all MPs, in such a serious and irreversible matter, to exercise due diligence and go the extra mile if necessary to make sure of the facts before taking this nation to war against people who posed no threat. If they can’t be trusted to do that, there’s no place for them on any credible team.
Labour and Conservatives are now allowing themselves to be whipped into another lethal frenzy by the same neo-con gang, this time over Iran. How dumb is that?
Such is the poor caliber of the present crop of players that any team, fantasy or real, is almost certain to turn into a nightmare. Besides, I have just checked Alan Johnson’s voting record on theyworkforyou.com. No, don’t look, it’ll make you ill. Johnson, you’re fired.
So Clegg is left with an awkward choice. Which of the two will he jump into bed with? Or should he remain celibate, avoid the political pox, stay home, carry out urgent repairs to his own party and plan for another election in the near future?
The Liberal Democrats. remember, have their own hill to climb. They sold out to the EU and if given the chance will go even further down that road to perdition. They are feeble on immigration. They opposed the war against Iraq, to their credit, but now seem happy to string along with the Afghan fiasco and back sanctions against Iran. None of that goes down well with voters and it’s why Clegg’s heady surge in popularity didn’t last long enough to translate into more seats in Parliament.
Never before in electoral history were the British public presented with such a rubbish choice. Is there no-one ‘clean’ enough, honourable enough and Britain-first enough to take the helm?
– Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. For further information please visit www.radiofreepalestine.co.uk. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.
