I stopped taking the Guardian many years ago, and the Observer some years later.
While my political views are generally on the progressive left I got utterly fed up with the paper's ability to agree with pretty much every position the Lib Dems took, but then belittle us anyway.
Today has seen yet another example of their willingness to cause trouble for the Lib Dems.
First they run a story on their website with a headline that suggests that Ming Campbell is about to jump into bed with Gordon Brown.
When you read the detail of the story you find out that a) Campbell has said nothing of the sort and b) it is all based on the usual unnamed sources anyway.
They have now put up a follow up story headlined "Campbell rules out Lib Dems serving in Brown cabinet" - fair enough - but includes the astonishing line: "But Sir Menzies was today forced to admit: "There is no prospect of any Liberal Democrat joining the government."
"Forced to admit"! He wasn't 'forced' to 'admit' anything. He simply made clear that the earlier Guardian headline was utter tripe.
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Why did Brown bother asking in advance? He should just have announced his full list of Ministers once he got in, including both a Lib Dem and a Tory in each department, and said that people who didn't want the job were free to resign.
Those approached need to ask themselves what it is about them that Brown found so attractive politically. The Lib Dems also need to ask this about each of them, as well as what the point of their own party is if it is going to pass up offers of Ministerial office, even including at Cabinet level. Everyone needs to ask what the reply from Ashdown, never over-troubled by self-doubt, would have been if Brown had offered to make him Foreign Secretary; also, to consider that, just as Sarkozy gave the Foreign Ministry to Kouchner, the only prominent French Socialist to support the Iraq War, so Brown has tried to bring in Ashdown, a pioneering neocon cheerleader from the Yugoslavia days, and who recently surprised no one by coming out as holding the same views on Iraq.
The Tories need to ask themselves why nobody bothered to do try and do a deal with them (although I suspect that that would have been Phase Two, and might yet be Phase One And Only instead). Labour Party members need to ask themselves why not one of their number - MP, Peer, or able to be raised to the Peerage for the purpose - was deemed capable of doing any of the Ministerial jobs in question, including one at Bevan's NHS. Labour MPs, in particular, need to ask why, at least where these particular positions (and how many more after this?) are concerned, the man whom they gave a clear run for Leader would rather have a Lib Dem Peer than ANY of them.
And we all need to ask ourselves and each other what we are doing to replace this whole sorry lot with proper parties and proper politicians, speaking and acting for us.
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