This one is a little bit late – I meant to write about it on the day it was in the news, but there’s just been so many reasons jostling for my intention that it got sidelined. But really, DC, what were you thinking when you hit the campaign trail with Gary Barlow, promising a national schools singing competition to promote musical talent?

A desperate attempt to gain the “X-Factor” vote? Or those of the young adults who were teeny boppers when Barlow et al were asking us all to relight their fire? However I look at it, it seems like a hollow bid to widen their appeal without having any substance behind their policies.

And the funny thing is that Barlow himself was pretty equivocal about his support. When asked if he was supporting Cameron, he avoided a direct answer, instead making do with “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t”, saying further that he didn’t want to talk about politics, as the day was to launch “School Stars” and was about music, not politics.

Reason #12: In the middle of a general election, Cameron managed to come out with a “policy” so fatuous it makes Simon Cowell look sophisticated and intelligent.

A man is known by the company he keeps. Part 2.

Dave and BoJo at the Bullingdon Club. This is a painting of the photo, as following wide-spread press use of the image, the photographers, Gillman and Soame, withdrew it.

So, we all know about The Bullingdon Club – the “posh” Oxford drinking society – of which Cameron, Osborne and Boris Johnson were members at the same time. We know that Osborne, having only been to the relatively minor public school of St Paul’s, was named “oik”. We know that they were involved in a drunken fracas in a restaurant, breaking a window.  That when booking their annual meal, they would lie about who they were booking for, as Oxford restaurants would not knowingly serve them.

I have to declare at this point that I went to Oxford, and attended a couple of drinking society events (I wasn’t a member of such a club – women simply weren’t, and I am also nowhere near posh or connected enough). They were both hosted by the Piers Gaveston club, were very debauched, and probably full of wealthy, blue-blooded people. One of the years I went, a News of the World reporter managed to infiltrate the party and the headline the next day “Camilla’s son makes a right charlie of himself” was accompanied by a description of the “live sex show” and the drugs being liberally taken.

Cameron’s membership of the Bullingdon Club casts some interesting light on him. Firstly, this club routinely trashed local restaurants, and then paid for the damage. This posh yobbishness shows they had no sense of reality – of how a small business would suffer from even having one night where they have to close (as they must have done, on the infamous night when Dave et al broke the window), but that they did have a very good  sense of entitlement – it’s fine to kick off, and mummy and daddy will pay for the damage.

The next conclusion I draw from the whole episode is this.  Dave correctly points out that we all made mistakes at University. I know that if I were ever to lose my senses and stand for political office, I would have a whole host of skeletons to push back into the closet. But what is worrying about it is the cronyism that it betrays in him. Far from being a man of the people, he still exists in his bubble of privelege. He moved effortlessly from Eton to Oxford to politics with these friends, who he has surrounded himself with since being leader of the opposition. People who wonder how Osborne has survived in the second most senior shadow cabinet role despite being clearly incapable of performing the office, need only remind themselves of the long friendship which exists between the two.

Recent headlines show the final illuminating point. The FT is carrying an article with information taken from a source who was present on the night of the restaurant being trashed.  He says that a “policy of omerta has descended on the Cameron episode”, but far from having gone to bed early that night, Cameron was involved in the violence, and that he, Osborne, and Boris Johnson ran off down a side-street while their friends were being arrested. Strangely, this account shows that Johnson had also lied about the night, as he has vividly recalled his arrest and night in the cells. The full article makes interesting reading, and I for one would like to know how much honour a man who leaves his friends to take the blame for his own misdemeanours can have.

Reason #11: Cameron is demonstrably dishonest, and dishonourable.

Apart from the raft of personal attacks on Clegg in the papers last week, there were the warning bells that Ken Clarke, a Tory of many many years standing, and an experienced politician, sounded about the economy.  A hung parliament, he said, would be a disaster for the economy.  He quoted acclaimed economist and journalist Hamish McRae.

McRae, an associate editor of The Independent, (which is backing the Lib Dems) wrote in today’s Indy that he was misquoted in the Newsnight interview.

He says that he “had warned that there was a popular perception that this might be bad news for the economy but that actually things might turn out rather differently.”

Unfortunately, the headlines have made their impact now, and of course the public’s understanding of the matter is that the economy will suffer under a coalition.

Reason #10: the Tories will do anything, including lying, to get into power, and specifically, to stop other parties getting into power.

Now I’m a Labour voter (you may have noticed), and I will admit that they have deep and troubling links with the Murdoch family too.  So just file this post under #anythingbuttories.

The Sun has been bragging recently about being the paper which wins elections, and since they switched support to Cameron last year it has seemed as though this had indeed sealed the deal.

Last night, after the leader’s debate, the god-awful Kay Burley revealed just moments after the debate had finished, that a poll had shown Cameron to be the winner.  I don’t know how many people The Sun/YouGov had to draft in to get their poll out first, but they were clearly trying to claim victory early (reminds me of Fox calling the US 2000 elections). The rest of the polls show all three pretty much neck-and-neck, with Cameron and Clegg tied slightly in front of Brown. Yet this morning, The Sun is still trumpeting: “Cam’s the man (Tory leader toasts TV debate victory)… The lies and fall of PM (Cameron blasts Brown over campaign smears… Clegg nuked over Trident (Lib Dem leader in defence shambles).”

It is illuminating to see the raft of allegations across the front pages of the Right-wing press against Clegg yesterday ahead of the crucial second leader’s debate. These include allegations of expenses fiddling, a Nazi slur on Britain, and accepting donations from a convicted fraudster.  (For this, and other allegations, the Indy have today published a list of the truth behind them.  You can read it at the end of this post.)

This prompted a slew of comments on Twitter with the tag #nickcleggsfault satirising the full-scale attack. Top examples include (list courtesy of The Mirror):

Kennedy assassination: new footage confirms gunman on grassy knoll was Nick Clegg #nickcleggsfault

Nick Clegg was seen two weeks ago poking Icelandic volcano with a stick #nickcleggsfault

Nick Clegg lived in same town as a seriously ill man and never visited him, though he knows he has a spare kidney #nickcleggsfault

The San Andreas Fault has also now been renamed the #NickCleggsFault

Samantha Cameron is pregnant #nickcleggsfault

When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s #nickcleggsfault

Nick Robinson, the BBC’s political editor, yesterday challenged Lord Mandelson’s claim that the allegations in the papers were “straight out of the Tory Party dirty-tricks manual”, and said that in effect Labour were just counter-smearing the Tories. He later updated this same post, with the news that “political reporters from the Tory-backing papers were called in one by one to discuss how Team Cameron would deal with “Cleggmania” and to be offered Tory HQ’s favourite titbits about the Lib Dems – much of which appears in [yesterday's] papers.”

On Wednesday The Independent carried the headline “Rupert Murdock will not decide the outcome of the election. You will”. Allegations are now flying that Rebekah Brooks (ex-Wade) and James Murdoch burst into the offices of the Independent’s editor, Simon Kellner, and berated him for the sin of being “a newspaper editor slagging of another newspaper editor”. Sources claim that “the high point of the screaming match was Wade/Brooks, in a fit of apoplexy and high drama, neck muscles straining, saying to Kelner: “And I invited you to Blenheim in the first place!” Blenheim being the Murdoch family retreat and the highest social destination for all Murdoch loyalists and ambitious Brits in the media.”

And in other news, it has emerged in The Independent today that The Sun censored a YouGov poll (the same pollsters which they were so quick to wheel out last night) which showed that voters find the idea of a Liberal Democrat government the least frightening of the three main choices, and crucially that if the electorate thought there was a good chance of them winning, the Lib Dems would take 49% of the total vote.

From the Independent, Friday 23 April 2010

The truth about those smears against Clegg

Claim: Liberal Democrat donors paid up to £250 a month into Nick Clegg’s personal bank account (The Daily Telegraph, yesterday).

Truth: Despite the front page headline Mr Clegg did not break any parliamentary rules, and the cash – which the party said helped pay for a researcher in Mr Clegg’s office – was declared in the Commons register of members’ interests. The Daily Telegraph says he made separate claims under his office allowances budget to cover staffing. The Liberal Democrats say the story is “wrong in fact” and have produced paperwork to back up their assertion.

Claim: Clegg lobbied for “lax” EU bank laws (The Daily Telegraph, yesterday).

Truth: Before becoming an MP, Mr Clegg had a brief spell as a lobbyist for GPlus. Its clients included the Royal Bank of Scotland, which was attempting to amend EU directives. Mr Clegg did work on the RBS account, but did not lobby “externally” on its behalf. GPlus said last night that Mr Clegg worked for it two days a week for about eight and a half months.

Claim: Clegg made a “Nazi slur on Britain” and said the British have a “more insidious cross to bear” than Germans over the Second World War (Daily Mail, yesterday).

Truth: The comments were made in a newspaper article by Mr Clegg in 2002 when he was a Euro MP. Written after two Germans working in a call centre in Swindon went to an industrial tribunal to protest about the abuse they suffered, it argued the British still laboured from “anti-German mania”. He concluded: “All nations have a cross to bear, and none more so than Germany with its memories of Nazism. But the British cross is more insidious still. A misplaced sense of superiority, sustained by delusions of grandeur and a tenacious obsession with the last war, is much harder to shake off.”

Claim: “Clegg refused to return a £2.4m donation to the party from convicted fraudster Michael Brown” (The Sun, Tuesday).

Truth: Brown’s donations in 2004 – the biggest in the party’s history – have hung over the Liberal Democrats for years. First, there were questions whether Brown’s company, 5th Avenue Partners, was a genuine UK business. Then in 2008 Brown was charged with fraud and money-laundering and fled bail. He was convicted in his absence and sentenced to seven years in jail. Despite the conviction, the Electoral Commission has concluded the donations were permissible because the firm “was carrying on business in the UK” at the time and the Liberal Democrats had no need to return the money.

Claim: The Liberal Democrats have “flip-flopped shamelessly” on Afghanistan (The Sun, yesterday).

Truth: This is based on a party conference motion last year which said ministers should focus on “concluding the Afghanistan mission” and called on the UK to end the “military first” approach to the country. However, motions passed at party conferences are not binding and the party’s foreign affairs spokesman, Ed Davey, told delegates the party supported the war. Its manifesto stops short of setting a timetable for withdrawal and says the Liberal Democrats will be “critical supporters of the Afghanistan mission”.

Claim: Britain’s security would be risked by Liberal Democrat policy to scrap our Trident nuclear defence (The Sun, yesterday).

Truth: The Liberal Democrats’ manifesto does say they would “rule out the like-for-like replacement of the Trident nuclear weapons system” to save £100m. However, they also say they are multilateralist, not unilateralist. Former leader Sir Menzies Campbell favours replacing Trident with cheaper, nuclear-tipped cruise missiles which could be stationed on smaller Astute-class subs. This would mean Britain would remain a nuclear power with a seat at the UN Security Council.

Claim: Liberal Democrats’ “crazy” immigration policy would give jobs to asylum seekers (Daily Express, yesterday).

Truth: The Liberal Democrats propose an amnesty for failed asylum seekers and illegal immigrants who have been here for 10 years and not committed any crimes. This is controversial because of fears it could encourage illegal immigrants to try their luck in Britain in the hope of triggering a further amnesty in the future. The Liberal Democrats would also introduce a regional points-based system to allow migrants to work only where they are needed. It would be backed up by “rigorous checks on businesses and a crackdown on rogue employers who profit from illegal labour”.

Claim: The Liberal Democrats would free 60,000 convicts (Daily Mail, Wednesday).

Truth: The Liberal Democrat manifesto does promise to “introduce a presumption against short-term sentences of less than six months – replaced by rigorously enforced community sentences which evidence shows are better at cutting reoffending”. The Daily Mail claimed that in 2008 “no fewer than 58,076 people were sentenced to a prison term of six months or less”. The Ministry of Justice said the real figure was 55,333. The Liberal Democrat policy would spare offenders from going into prison; it would not “free” prisoners.

Claim: Clegg is posh (The Sun yesterday).

Truth: His half-Russian banker father sent him to one of Britain’s smartest prep schools, Caldicott; he went on to Westminster School and Cambridge. A friend is quoted as saying: “His father was an incredibly wealthy banker with loads of houses – in London, in the Chilterns, a French chateau, a ski chalet in Switzerland… I think.” So true – but then so is David Cameron.

Reason #9: It would piss the Murdoch family right off.

Duplicity

Tonight is the leader’s debate mark 2. Foreign policy is under scrutiny, and so it seems a good time to look at this little quirk of Tory behaviour:

A bill was passed a couple of weeks ago in the wash-up, which will stop so called vulture funds.

These are defined by the International Monetary Fund as companies which buy up the debt of poor nations cheaply when it is about to be written off and then sue for the full value of the debt plus interest – which might be ten times what they paid for it.

Proposed by a backbencher, the bill gained wide public support, including with Cameron and the Tory party. But on the first attempt to pass it, a group of three Tory MPs went into a huddle, and one of them shouted “objection”, thus scuppering the bill.  This caused frustration as there had been plenty of time to object before the voting stage, all concerns raised had been dealt with, and based on some Conservative objections, the bill had already been watered down. The frustration was exacerbated by the duplicitous way in which the MPs registered the objection, meaning that no one person could be identified.

Cameron, would-be defender of the world’s poor, who as part of his “big Society” bunkum has pledged support to the developing nations, declined to name the MP despite mounting pressure prior to the bill finally being passed.

Talking about global poverty, he mentions health and education, maternal and infant mortality, and says “we will not stand by while …. poverty continues to blight our world”.

Strange then that he didn’t feel the need to speak out on the objector to this bill.  One of the consequences of vulture funds is that when countries are forced to pay back the inflated bills, their health and education budgets are inevitably one of the few reserves that these poor countries have to ransack, in order to line the pockets of wealthy Western bankers.

Reason #8 Indifference to the suffering of the world’s poor.