Clare Short: did she jump or was she pulled?

Peter Welch — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 09:55:08 +0100

That pillar of the Lib dem establishment, Rob Fenwick, has been fretting about the destination of Clare Short over at Liberal Democrat Voice.

I noted months ago that Clare was making a point of saying nice things about Ming.

Her objective is to promote electoral reform, balanced parliament, and thus the effective scrutiny of Parliament. This makes her a potential fellow traveller rather than member. In practice it probably leads her to the familiar Guardian position of telling people to vote Labour where this is needed to keep out the Tories, and Lib Dem, PC and SNP anywhere else.

Party members have to support their party everywhere, and work for an overall majority. So I doubt that she would ever be comfortable in Lib Dem colours.

But reading around the papers there are a few straws in the wind.

The Times has a list of her rebellions - and I was surprised to see how often I had agreed with her:

WHAT SHE HAS TOLD THE COUNTRY

In 1995 she suggested that the decriminalisation of cannabis should be discussed, a move that was condemned by other leading Labour Party figures

In July 1997 she refered to the Millennium Dome, then new Labour’s pet project, as “a silly, temporary building”

She attacked government proposals to withhold aid from countries that refuse to take back illegal immigrants as “repugnant” in June 2002

She denounced university top-up fees in November 2002 as “a really bad idea”

She accused France of a conspiracy to keep Africa in poverty while Tony Blair was attempting to gain French approval for an agreement on African development in 2002

In January 2003, she criticised government “control freakery” over target setting

In the build-up to the Iraq war she repeatedly called Tony Blair reckless and threatened to resign from the Cabinet in the event of the Government taking Britain to war with Iraq without a clear mandate from the United Nations. Unlike her Cabinet colleague Robin Cook, she did not immediately resign when British troops were sent to Iraq

She resigned over the Iraq war in May 2003

The Guardian meanwhile fingers the Lib Dems as trggering the move:

It is possible the news leaked after the Liberal Democrats tried to persuade her to follow the leftwing former Labour MP Brian Sedgemore and join them. She said pointedly in her resignation letter that she would remain a social democrat.

Interesting.

Ming Campbell

Clare Short: did she jump or was she pulled?