Six of the Best 756

"If the Conservatives care about the future of their party they would do well to ignore the squeals coming from the swivel eyed ideologues and listen to the warning Lord Heseltine is trying to give his colleagues." George Turner believes Brexit may yet destroy the Conservative Party.

Phil Wainewright says the Remain campaign in the referendum let Britain down by its complacency.

Will plans to divert Metropolitan Line trains into Watford Junction hit the buffers? And if they do will it be Boris Johnson's fault? A fascinating post from London Reconnections.

Passing football began in working-class Lancashire according to Conor Pope.

John Fleming argues that the BBC drama Eric, Ernie and Me rewrote history by pretending the BBC made Morecambe and Wise famous and writing-out their giant success on ITV before they joined the BBC.

As an archaeologist well used to looking at bones, Francis Pryor was interested to handle his own hip joint,

Hatred of the old is the last respectable prejudice

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Gerontophobia unites Borisites concerned for Davis’s wellbeing and Brexit-minded haters of “senile dinosaur” Michael Heseltine, with progressive young humorists and their below-the-line supporters, for whom ("fat" and "ugly" being trickier to deploy these days) the insult that cannot be improved by the prefix "old" has yet to be invented.

says Catherine Bennett in a rambling defence of the idea that Vince Cable should stand for the Liberal Democrat leadership.

Or as I wrote in Liberal Democrat News after the resignation of Ming Campbell from that post:

It must also be admitted that Ming could sometimes appear a rather elderly 66 - quite understandably, in view of his illness a few years ago. But the way he was ridiculed for his age tells us something unpleasant about modern British society. It suggests we no longer have any respect for age, wisdom or dignity. 

I think in particular of the Mock the Week show that went out in September just after our Conference. This is the BBC2 programme where five leading comedians and Russell Howard improvise comedy based on the week‘s headlines. 

For 10 or 15 minutes they unleashed a tirade against Ming, all of it based on the assumption there is something inherently funny about being old. If they had attacked a woman or someone who was gay or black in the same way they would never have worked for the BBC again.

All of which is a way of saying that I am very happy that Vince is standing for the party leadership.

Preventing the Tories' worst excesses is not enough

Some Lib Dem bloggers are taking comfort from a post by on Politics Home by Paul Waugh. On Friday he wrote:

judging from today's evidence, it's clear that the Lib Dem brakes on the Tories are as effective today as they were back in the distant days of May 2010. 

In just three hours, we've had three different examples today of the way the Libs are constraining Tory ambitions.

Those examples were the abolition of the 50p tax rate, the passing of more laws against strikes and the implementation of Lord Beecroft's proposals to make it easier for employers to sack people.

Now don't get me wrong. I love upsetting the Tory right. Seeing my party stopping its cherished plans being put into practice gives me great pleasure.

But there are two reasons why the Liberal Democrats need ambitions beyond this.

The first is that by thwarting their right wing we are helping the Conservatives.

The right, of course, are convinced that their ideas would be wildly popular. It is one of the paradoxes of politics that the more extreme people's views are the more inclined they are to think that the bulk of voters support them. This is why Conservative Home has called its campaign against Cameronism "majority Conservatism".

But, as Michael Heseltine observed of Beecroft's ideas, "You don't want to make life rougher and tougher for large numbers of people you want to vote for you."

So by blocking the loonier ideas of his right wing we are helping Cameron's popularity with the voters and thus his chances of winning the next election.

The second reason why blocking the Tory right is not enough is that the Lib Dems should have positive achievements of which to boast from five years in government.

So let's point to the taking out of tax of low earners, extra funding for poor pupils or some of the other policies from our manifesto that we have been told are being put into practice.

Because if the voters are that keen on stopping the Tories doing too much come the next election, they may decide that the simplest way to bring that about is to vote Labour.