With Owen Jones! Yes, Owen Jones.
The establishment is a safety net for the shameful and the shameless. Once you’re in, you’re in: and even if you played a prominent role in plunging your country into crisis, and inflicting injustice on your fellow citizens, there are still baubles to be had.
He’s talking Nick Clegg here. His logic is the usual lefty twaddle – Clegg going into a coalition and ditching his electoral promises, for example – the Lib Dems didn’t have a parliamentary majority, so they had no choice, FFS! However, Clegg getting a knighthood cheapens an honours system that was already a disgrace. So, we are in an agreement of sorts. This man is a disgrace and he certainly is not worthy of an honour. A lamppost and a length of hempen rope, perhaps, but not a knighthood.
Didn’t Clegg take Spanish citizenship via his wife post Brexit vote?
Does that not disbar him from a Kighthood?
Lord Farage and Sir Daniel Hannan would do more to restore public faith in honours rather than demeaning it further by honouring failure yet again (Kinnock).
Quite. It tells you all you need to know about the system that gives a knighthood to a despicable traitor but denies it to a clear patriot. That Nigel Farage doesn’t have a knighthood is a fu*king travesty.
Smoking Scot. Balls. Hang, draw and quarter the scumbag – a traditional traitor’s death.
Nope. Too costly and slow. A used piano wire and any old bit of wood about 8 inches long and 1 inch diameter. Oh and if you’d prefer to avoid the usual spittal, lolling tongue and possibly an eye popping out, a used polly bag.
It is indeed a rare day when the planets align in such a way that Owen Jones agrees with me, but his article misses the point on Clegg is that (as usual) he focusses too much on the Clegg policies he detestes, rather than the man’s complete failure as a politician, the highlights of which include :
– Wrecking the LibDem representation in Westminster from 57 to just 8 MPs
– The complete U-Turn on his *written* pledge on tuition fees, which saw him ultimately to increase them!
– His embarassing and miserable loss on the AV vote for PR
– His embarassing and weak arguments on the EU debate, which consisted entirely of repeating “it’s the right thig to do”
– His becoming so irritating that even his own constituency chucked him out.
And since then, despite waddling all over the place calling the British people idiots for disagreeing with him, nobody else will give him a job, and so the Westminster boys club steps in to offer him a free seat on the Lord’s gravy train.
What an embarassment for our country that it rewards twits like him.
The first two on your list are forgivable. He was faced with a choice in 2010 and made the right decision; to form a coalition with the largest party. The tuition fees were a casualty, but as the Lib Dems did not have a parliamentary majority, they could not keep that promise. I also believe that they were punished harshly for their time in the coalition. They were, after all, junior partners so had limited scope.
It’s what has happened since that really pisses me off – the arrogance and conceit towards those of us who dared to reject the EU.
Clegg also blocked the boundary commission reforms didn’t he?
For me, Clegg epitomises almost everything that I despise in “career” politicians. He’s never had a real job, never had a policy position he wasn’t prepared to jettison when convenient, and carries a sense of self-entitlement and derision for the voters of this country which surpasses condescension.
In other words he’s a complete shit.
He is not alone in that…
Heh, I read the same article and had to check that it was actually OJ that wrote it. I then had to check that it was actually me reading it because like you I don’t think I’ve ever read anything by Jones that I’ve agreed with. Still….stopped clocks and all that…