Why Nick Clegg must not buy the
New Labour moral compass

To quite rightly assert their right to govern (a right described by The Independent’s Steve Richards this morning as ‘seizing power’) the Tories have been reading their own script ad nauseam: best result since 1931, lower Labour vote share since the days of Foot, bigger swing than that achieved against Thatcher etc etc). It’s another example of Big Party inability to grasp how irritating they sound, and what prats they look – but doubtless the virals have told them that this way they’ll get more Google hits.

With its customary ability to display breathtaking hypocrisy, Nude Labour (and they really are naked now) is using the ownership of power, elector ignorance, media manipulation and good old lies to suggest that the two losers in this election have a right based on precedent to form a Government – and carry on as if nothing had happened. They do not.

The Tories under Heath in February1974 had two constitutional practices on their side: Heath was the PM, and his opponent Wilson was ahead by only four seats. The Liberals had done better than expected in the popular vote. Even then, he couldn’t make an agreement with the 14 Liberals work. Wilson took over as a minority Government with tacit Liberal support.

Today, the Labour Party stands nearly 50 seats behind the Conservatives, and the LibDems have both lost seats, and disappointed with their final popular vote. With precisely the popular vote achieved by the Tories last Thursday, Tony Blair won a landslide victory in 1997. The idea that ‘constitutional precedent’ is on the Government’s side is a polemic sieve – and as such, worthy of the carefree way in which this thoroughly nasty Government has been lying to the nation pretty much non-stop since Things Could only get Better.

From the exit poll and early results onwards, my interest as a researcher and analyst co-existed uneasily with a profound sense of depression. As the night wore on, this turned to anger. For it had dawned on me that the cabal which dare not feel its shame was about to try yet another gigantic reality alteration in its attempt to cling on to control. Not power – they have no right to power, and will anyway be powerless to stem the tide of events in due course. Control: that’s what these awful people suck unto themselves with ever-increasing ruthlessness. Control for them is the means and the end. They haven’t lost the plot: this is the only one they ever had.

During the course of the election build-up and then the campaign itself, I had forgotten about most of them. They were mainly fighting amongst themselves anyway, taking time off occasionally to lie on television about everything from Chilcot to human cabs for hire. Before Nick’s surge, it had always been my assumption that their days of influence were over anyway. But then the debates changed everything. After the third, utterly disastrous Brown performance, there were Mandelson and Campbell in Spin Alley, surrounded by scribbling pillocks taking down every word of drivel about barnstorming to victory. With Mandy, it’s not that he finds things for idle hacks to do: he says it and writes it so they don’t have to do anything.

Campbell I think is like Brown in one major way: he’s not quite right in the head. His job isn’t bending the truth and cajoling the media, it’s inventing the truth and bullying anyone in his way – be that a senior civil servant or a top-ranking army officer. Mandelson by comparison is odd in a different way: more than just degenerate, he’s hungry for the limelight – but never satiated no matter how much position or how many titles he’s amassed. Ed Balls – well, beyond observing that he is a dangerously anti-libertarian man, let’s draw a discreet veil over Ed Balls. Or perhaps a shroud.

There is Tessa Jowell (“We’re not stupid you know”) and her strangely estranged hubby, the chum of Berlusconi. Harriet Harman, the truly deserving recipient of any witch-hunt, and propagator of the bonkers Longford gene. Knitting enthusiast Ben Bradshaw, and his plaintive “but it’s all lies” when the truth about Brown began to ooze out last year. He too was on another sofa this morning, saying how The People had voted for a progressive Britain.

And of course, of late, the men of Unite – successfully cloned from a hair follicle of Arthur Scargill, – and orchestrated by the grinning Charlie Whelan. What a magnificently repellent specimen Charlie is…in looks, utterance and intent, he is every inch the ugly truth about the contemporary Labour Party.

A cliche which deserves to be buried fairly soon is that of the ‘lack of moral compass’. However, what makes the senior ranks and power-brokers in Labour so unpleasant (even when compared to other British politicians) is that not only does each one of them have a moral compass, they want to sell us all their moral compass. But like the used-car shark winding the mileometer back to nought, their ethical direction-finders come with factory-fitted magnets which allow the arrow to point in any way they want.

This whole, grubby post-election adventure puts me in a quandary. I realise that the best way to get a fair voting system is via a LibLab pact; but I know only too well that Labour will divert the debate away from real PR. And I know far too well that this combination is the very last thing the UK needs right now. So one is forced (according to my moral compass) to put off PR for an election or two – and put the national interest first.

We’ve had The Surge, and it came to nought. Now we need to purge Westminster and Whitehall of the Brown-to-Whelan conglomerate of evil masquerading as The Labour Party.