The not-so-bad side of #brexit

I'm not Pollyanna and I did not say "good side," just "not-so-bad side" of #brexit, Britain's leaving the European Union. And here are a few things.

1. The EU does suck in some ways. Beyond austerity for Greece and Ireland (noting Greece needed some sort of butt-kicking), a bloated bureaucracy in Brussels that is often arrogantly tone deaf is one problem. The Dutch are among people of member nations who hate the EU more than Britain.

1A. The related fact that, as the likes of German Chancellor Angela Merkel have noted, it's like the old U.S. Articles of Confederation government.

Maybe brexit forces Brussels to face 1, and member states to face 1A. It will take 5 years if not a full decade for even the first stirrings, but stand by ...

At a minimum, more citizen of its various members will see how illiberal it is. (Counterpunch - a grain or two of salt may be needed.)

2. David Cameron leaving office.

2A. British Conservatives imploding, with the toffs portion facing the common man portion.

Neither of these can be too bad unless Labour moves further right.

3. Britain honestly realizing what its "special relationship" with Washington is, especially with Obama's pivot to Asia.

4. Trump and the Trump Train drawing false idea for overconfidence.

5. London hypercapitalism may get kneecapped, and  the remaining EU run more away from UK-style neoliberalism, per Reuters.

I may have more later, but those are starters.

A few thoughts on the UK election blowout

With the Tories, per exit polls which appear to be accurate, gaining seats and apparently an outright majority, Labour becoming non-existent in Scotland, Liberal Democrats almost nonexistent everywhere, and the UK Independence Party underperforming, here's a few hot take initial thoughts by me.

Which now include, per results in one seat, my riff on an old British riddler poem, at left.

1. Even if it turns out that Nick Clegg has won re-election for his seat, he has to resign as LDP leader immediately, doesn't he? Even more so if David Cameron has gained enough seats to coalition with Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionists. And, he has, both held on to his seat and resigned his leadership.

2. And, what about Ed Miliband? If Labour turns out to finish as badly as projected, doesn't he have to resign as party leader? Losing every seat in Scotland, losing seats overall, and, if the prime ministership were a direct vote, being var less popular than Cameron, to me makes me think he has to go. Here's three people who have gotten talk as possible replacements before. And, some Labour muckety-mucks are already whispering. Ed has gone, too.

More seriously, does the party shift back to a New Labour focus of Milliband is turfed, or does it chalk up the loss to Milliband personally more than his ideas?

3. Cameron's 2017 EU referendum will go forward. Exactly what it will be about will probably not be discussed in detail for 3-6 months, but will get a crafting after that. The UKIP will get a respectful listening, then ignored.

4. Was the SNP's results a one-off, a result of the failed independence vote, or is this more permanent?

5. Even with the LDP's decline, and with the Tories largely quashing the UKIP, is Britain, even without Clegg getting instant runoff voting in 2011, headed toward a continental-style true multiparty system?

I think not. Eventually the SNP will fall back somewhat at it realizes that any way it comes to power is only in conjunction with Labour. The LDPs have seemingly crested and will look for new direction with Clegg out. UKIP will remain quashed.

And, if the SNP thinks another independence referendum is "inevitable," I'd invite it to think again. A Conservative government will never allow it. A would-be Labour government would never allow it as the price of coalition, certainly not for at least a generation.

6. That said, the Tories — and their American cousins — will use this as a rallying point for budget austerity.

Syria ... the more Obamiacs sounds like Bushies ...

Update, Sept. 18: The UN investigation seems to tie the attacks to senior officers of President Bashar Assad. Whether they were following orders or not may still not be final, but the linked New York Times story indicates the answer is yes.

That said, per the oft-cited piece by William Polk at the Atlantic? His "cui bono" was, and still is, a good question. And, if part of why he wrote that piece was pushback, given America's generally poor history of regime change in the Middle East, the neocons leading the charge again on this one and Obama not having a Syria exit plan, the shoot-first warmongers can still look themselves in the mirror.

Now, back to the original blog post.

The scarier any "limited intervention" gets.

First, it's a civil war. Even the best of today's cruise missiles and smart bombs aren't that accurate, especially in distinguishing between sides in urban fighting. Drones may be, but they're for surgical strikes on individuals; Obama already knows that by how many people he's killed with them.

If he doesn't know, this map makes that hugely clear. Details behind it here.

Second, contra Team Obama's blathering, we don't actually know who the hell did this. (More on that below.)

So, is Dear Leader going to be semi-indiscriminate with cruise missiles, or semi-ineffectual with drones? And, what does he plan after that.

Meanwhile, after the egg-on-face embarassment of British Prime Minister David Cameron (and various lies coming from various mouths about whether or not this was a three-line whip vote), Debbie Wasserman Schultz, an Obamiac if there ever was one, pops up about how many allies the US has. This follows on Team Obama's reference, from Secretary of State John Kerry on down, to "our oldest ally" France.

But, Kerry probably should shut up, then put down the shovel before he digs his holes any deeper.

Kind of like Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein, we have Kerry having dinner with Bashir Assad, the man he now calls Hitler. So, calling this a "Munich moment" is laughable, the farce of history made to repeat itself.

Finally, who actually did what with the sarin gas in the Damascus suburbs?

This excellent analysis by an "old Syria hand" formerly of the State Department says:

1. We don't know whether Assad or some part of the opposition planted the sarin;
2. The US deliberately tried to stall the UN investigation;
3. There's a lot of conflicting information involved;
4. Israel's doing a lot of "spinning";
5. Assad had relatively little to gain by the attack. Indeed, Polk notes that the government has been gaining ground against the rebels in recent weeks and months.

Let's also not forget, which Polk didn't mention, that, as Aum Shinrikyo showed in Tokyo, sarin is  relatively easy to produce and weaponize/distribute. This ignores other possibilities, such as rebel theft of government supplies, help from Iran or Hezbollah, etc. And, yes, such possibilities are many, if rebels did this, depending on which group of rebels. Kurd nationalists could have gotten help from their brethren in Turkey. Shi'ites, from Iran directly, or via Hezbollah. Al-Qaeda wannabes? The network in Iraq seems strong enough.


Beyond that, contra the first commenter below, even the death count is disputed.

Neither Kerry’s remarks nor the unclassified version of the U.S. intelligence he referenced explained how the U.S. reached a tally of 1,429, including 426 children. The only attribution was “a preliminary government assessment.”

Anthony Cordesman, a former senior defense official who’s now with the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, took aim at the death toll discrepancies in an essay published Sunday.

He criticized Kerry as being “sandbagged into using an absurdly over-precise number” of 1,429, and noted that the number didn’t agree with either the British assessment of “at least 350 fatalities” or other Syrian opposition sources, namely the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has confirmed 502 dead, including about 100 children and "tens" of rebel fighters, and has demanded that Kerry provide the names of the victims included in the U.S. tally.

“President Obama was then forced to round off the number at ‘well over 1,000 people’ – creating a mix of contradictions over the most basic facts,” Cordesman wrote. He added that the blunder was reminiscent of “the mistakes the U.S. made in preparing Secretary (Colin) Powell’s speech to the U.N. on Iraq in 2003.”

As usual, McClatchy, far more than other mainstream media, cuts through the bullshit of the bipartisan foreign policy establishment. That said, the link provided by said first commenter below is from the Center for a New American Security, a leading bipartisan foreign policy establishment think tank.

Add all of this up, and even if Dear Leader isn't talking about land troops, you and I can talk about red lines. We have even more "red lines" for not doing anything vis-a-vis Syria right now than we did with Iraq 13 years ago.

Also add this up, and we have a Team Obama wanting to destabilize Assad further before he can restabilize himself more. And, a Dear Leader who, assuming Polk is right, is willing to act outside the bounds of facts.

That gets me back to Polk's Point 5.

What if the rebels did do it? Even if all we are doing is launching a few cruise missiles, then Obama's drone strike murders have reached a whole new level if we're using fabricated information to deliberately target the wrong people.

And, even philosophers and humanists who are talking about whether there's a just case for intervention (that's people like you, Massimo Pigliucci and Michael DeDora) need to address THAT issue first. Or go back and address it, if you've already written something that didn't. If not, you're addressing the wrong problem, possibly.

If that's not enough, there's the fact that we created the clusterfuck that led to the rise of the Assad dynasty last time we intervened in Syria. Not to mention our Reagan-era intervention failure in Syrian-controlled Lebanon.

Meanwhile, a Team Obama that now says it needs a Congressional vote after seeking none in Libya, where Dear Leader had imposed no red lines, leads to head-scratching at the least. That said, said Congressional vote now seems anticlimatic. Agent Orange, Speaker John Boehner, says he's down with it. But it's still head-scratching. Maybe even for an American public thrilled with techno-war on the cheap, especially against Mooslims, or other pejoratives, Syria is a bridge too far.

I'm sorry, it's not Dear Leader's red line after all. According to him, it's the world's red line. I guess that, like Poppy Bush, we're supposed to read his hips instead of reading his lips. And, speaking of Bushes, Dear Leader may be surpassing Shrub in his chutzpah.

I mean, this is Bushian lying in its blatancy level:

“I didn’t set a red line,” Mr. Obama said during a news conference here in Stockholm. “The world set a red line.”

He added, “My credibility’s not on the line. The international community’s credibility’s on the line. And America and Congress’s credibility’s on the line.”

Wow.

Polk concludes that "mission creep" is likely, whether accidental or planned, and that solving the perceived problem is not. Syria's Alawites have plenty to lose if we boot Assad; they're not going quietly into the night. The civil war in general has been going on longer, and in more depth, than the anti-Gaddhafi effort in Libya before our action. And, the opposition is even less unified — but with a stronger Islamist component — than there. 

That said, per the Boehner link, the first group of CIA-trained "freedom fighters" (Dear Leader didn't use that phrase, but I am, to put the Bushie yoke tighter around his neck) is set to sneak into Syria. Wunderbar! What could possibly go wrong here?

Finally, to be blunt, given who's driving this — why should we be doing Israel's bidding? Especially when there's no definition yet of what would constitute "success" and nothing close to a guarantee of how to get there, meaning the Likud/Zionist bloc would leave us holding the bag on any failure. An "American orphan" it would be. And, as far as orphaned failures, it's also been, besides our intervention in Lebanon, 30 years since Arik Sharon's clusterfuck in Lebanon, culminating in the Sabra and Shatila camps massacre.

There's no "broad brush painting" with this. Rather, a thick accretion of historical fact.

And, back to fact No. 1: Since there's no firm proof Assad's behind the chemical weapons, and circumstantial evidence to indicate he has no need to be behind it, Team Obama's claims, while not as bad as Condoleezza Rice's "smoking mushroom cloud," may eventually wind up being in the same category.

That said, unlike the magazine Counterpunch, there's no need to engage in reflexive anti-Americanism as part of opposing us taking any military action in Syria. 

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Meanwhile, let's look at this all from Team Obama's point of view.

For most of the past two years, an ungainly coalition of rebels, linked by little but their dislike of the Assad regime, had been slowly and semi-surely rolling it back. Because no one rebel group had risen head-and-shoulders above the rest, Team Obama didn't have to worry about picking winners and losers. It could merrily train bands of "freedom fighters" to do that dirty work for it.

And, now, the rebels are faltering. Even losing ground in spots.

My theory is the chemical weapons story, especially if it's being falsely attributed to the Assad regime, makes an easy "handle" for war, a war that's desired because Assad is starting to get the upper hand on the rebels again. 

As for why he's seeking the Congressional vote, when he didn't on Libya? Several reasons.

First, Dear Leader is, in his own way, quite the politician. And, yes, he's trying to fracture the GOP on this particular foreign policy issue, at least.

Second, the more Syria gets publicized, the more that NSA snooping gets UN-publicized. Damage control, wag the dog, whatever you want to call it.

Third is another political angle. That's keeping neocons in the Democratic Party happy. And donors who often support them. To spell out what some people are guessing at, at risk of getting tarred with the anti-Semitic brush, this means keeping a certain stream of Jewish politicians and Jewish donors with similar political philosophy happy. Please note what I highlighted.

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As for the idealism claims? Take them all with a grain of salt.

If we wanted to be that idealistic, we've got spare Tomahawks to fire around the world, and with as good of reason, if we're talking morality, and against countries more defenseless.

Burmese military junta, take this! Robert Mugabe, for starving your own people, take that!

Bahrain, for ... 

Oops. They're one of our allies, no matter the amount of Shi'ite repression.

Syria? You just have the unlucky constellation of factors of never really having been our ally, having been a Soviet ally in the past, being hated by Israel (often with good reason, though), being hated by a number of Arab neighbor states, and being in the middle of the oil world without having enough oil to play a bigger game of geopolitics. 

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That all said, Obama's better than Massachusetts' newest addition to the Senate. Ed Markey, on the Foreign Relations Committee, wins the chickenshit award by voting "present" on attacking Syria.  

Unfortunately, the usually reliable Charles Pierce seems to cut Markey too much slack on this.

Based on I Tweeted to him, edited for full English reading, and expanded, here's my counterthought.

I don't buy it on Markey. First, he was in the House before the Senate. Second, Obama's "red line" was 1 year ago. If Markey was unsure of intelligence info, he should have voted "no," since, as McClatchy and Wm. Polk at Atlantic have shown, the intelligence is being manipulated. Only a "no" vote challenges the run-up to war.

Update, Sept. 13: Here's more on Obamiacs sounding like Bushies. Per this Truth-Out piece, not just John Kerry, but Vice President Joe Biden, when also in the Senate, were among Democrats who made false claims about Iraqi weapons in the run-up to the Gulf War. So did Nancy Pelosi, former Speaker of the House, now Minority Leader.

Merkel: A conservative but no neolib - good!

The European Union (minus, perhaps, London's financial sector) probably should be grateful for that, too. And, if Merkel's plans for the how and why of EU reform are correct, the rest of the developed world, including non-neoliberals/financial conservatives in the U.S., should also be grateful.

The New York Times has a good news/news analysis piece that's basically a "face off" set-up of German Chancellor Angela Merkel vs. U.S. President Barack Obama.

It's clear she, and she as representative of German thought, thinks less of financiers than does Obama (or British Prime Minister David Cameron). And, while Team Obama may be right that she's overly indulgent of traditional German fears of a repeat of 1920s hyperinflation rather than Germany's own serious hit of the Depression in the early 1930s that brought Hitler to power, Team Obama is wrong about much of the rest.

That includes the U.S. having a relatively lax attitude toward "moral hazard" of financiers. (By the way, for the biggest of the big in the U.S., that is NOT a new attitude, tea partiers, etc. It goes back a full century or more. JPMorganChase's various predecessors got nearly a dozen government bailouts of different types. In turn, in 1907, and before, old man Morgan himself led a pre-Federal Reserve "bailout" of the federal government.

Even if the likes of Merkel aren't totally right, they're right enough on this issue. We need Merkel to succeed, to be a counterweight to U.S. neolliberalism. And, if the British version of neoliberalism ultimately gets ground beneath the wheel of the new EU, in the long run, or even medium run, it might be better for Britain, too.

Given that both the U.S.and China have grown their economies through often bubbly methods, the more stereotypically stolid German way might just be the way to go more.

And, while I'm not going to deny that Krugman has legitimate concerns about austerity, I still think that calling the current situation a "depression" is probably a bit hyperbolic. The fact is that, in the better-off areas of the eurozone, unemployment is a lot lower than here. As for the PIIGS countries in Europe? Portugal's nor horrible. Italy actually has lower unemployment than the U.S. Ireland is not good, but ... let's see in the next year.

Greece? Let it leave the Eurozone. That said, it never should have been let in, to be honest. Spain? A fair amount of its housing bubble was British-caused. Strange that David Cameron doesn't talk much about that.

The UK must choose

It's clear that a 30-year period of reckoning for Great Britain vis-a-vis the EU has finally come due. Britain must choose whether to be part of a more financially integrated EU, even if it stays out of the Eurozone, or decide what it wants to do outside of that.

And, of course, this is all complicated by politics within the UK.

Assuming that financial services is that much a part of the British economy, I think Tories have to ask whether it will shrink more as part of the new EU or outside of it.

Frankly, a tighter monetary EU will, eventually, boost the Continent's role in finances, especially if any directives from Brussels are ultimately influenced by glances at Berlin. So, if Prime Minister David Cameron wants to walk around in EU purgatory, or even, as Tory backbenchers clearly want, leave the Union entirely, I think he's an idiot.

Sign on. Britain's financial sector will take some sort of hit, true. But, not immediately, and not in a way that Cameron, if he has any brains (questionable) can't actually fulfill his talk about leading a new type of Conservative Party.

The option of playing at the EU edges? Assuming Merkel and Sarkozy can pull something off, that's not a long-term option.

Cameron's stiff upper lip talk otherwise, larger EU-27 institutions will lose relative power if the narrower eurozone gets new financial strength, new financial regulations strength and, above all, is less unwieldy and more open to easier reform of governance. Eventually, the other "outsiders," even those already given tentative eurozone approval, will have to sign off on the bottom line, too. So, unless Britain can convince a minority of "outsider 10" to follow it, a two-tiered EU just doesn't sound that plausible.

So, ditching the EU entirely? Unhelpful. Despite new openness on banking, Switzerland's tight world would make it equal to an independent UK as an EU counterweight. The rest of the Commonwealth? Canada's tied to the US. Australia is largely independent. Other countries matter less.

Labour would, albeit reluctantly, surely take the plunge, also liking more of Brussels' regulatory powers and ideas.

Per Indiana Jones and the Holy Grail, choose wisely, Mr. Cameron. You may not get a second chance.

And, per U.S. conservatives, don't root for Cameron to choose to opt out. The "special relationship" will only be diminished if Britain itself is.

At least not at the head of a government.

That said, if this leads to a referendum, Labour won't be able to do any "straddling" itself.

And, whoever leads the country, if Britain winds up in financial outer darkness, does it wind up as more a "lapdog of the US"? Thoughts for all British political leaders.

It's not the choice of the EU vs. a more independent UK. That ultimate 30-year reckoning on alignment may be coming due.

Roger Cohen agrees about that and about Cameron's short-sighted stupidity.

LibDems have no balls

I'm reading The Guardian's live blogging of the annual party conference of the Liberal Democratic Party, and that's my No. 1 takeaway.

Why?

If the Lib Dems really wanted to be a third way, rather than David Cameron's lapdogs, they would fire Nick Clegg as party leader, and end coalition, either by that act alone, or having the new leader bring a no-confidence vote to the Commons.

The voting reform referendum massively failed, and had Conservatives semi-officially opposing it. Meanwhile, the Lib Dem half of the coalition, from what I see across the pond, has failed to modify or soften a single major Tory initiative.

Power corrupts, eh?

Who's the UK's biggest political toady?

It would seem the two finalists are prime minister and Conservative Party leader David Cameron and junior coalition partner and Liberal Democratic leader Nick Clegg.

As ever more of the Murdoch empire shenanigans come to light, and more and more questions arise about what Rupert and son Janes knew and when, here's where I pretty much think we're at.

Cameron basically faces Rupert Murdoch having just crapped in a commode, with Rupert then asking him, how long are you willing to stick in your head, and how deep.

Clegg, now that he knows how low Cameron has gone, yet stays in coalition, faces Cameron having just crapped in a commode, with Cameron then asking him, how long are you willing to stick in your head, and how deep.

However, these two may not be alone.

Labour leader Ed Miliband may have at least licked the rim of Murdoch's commode, it seems.

And, in the retired politician division, Tony the Pony Blair probably drank about as deep as Cameron did.

But, for my money, Clegg is the biggest toady. The alternative voting referendum failed, with Cameron doing nothing to promote it. Then, Cameron made his "let's privatize everything" comments. When News of the World melted down, Clegg had the perfect excuse to get on the moral high horse and leave the coalition.

Unless he's been drinking from Murdoch's crapper as well as Cameron's.

Murdoch spied on the Queen?

WTF? I was dumbfounded enough when I heard News of the World had snooped on then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

But, spying on Queen Elizabeth II? Murdoch, though now an American citizen, was born in a Commonwealth nation. He knows this crosses new lines.

His reporters were also accused of paying Queen Elizabeth II's bodyguards for secret information about the monarch, potentially jeopardizing her safety. ...

London's Evening Standard newspaper reported that corrupt royal protection officers sold personal details about Queen Elizabeth II — including phone numbers and tips about her movements and staff — to journalists working for the Murdoch tabloid News of the World, raising questions over a breach in national security.

And, raising new questions about just how low in the unethical gutter Murdoch will stoop. The story notes he's arrived in Britain to try to perform fire control. I'm surprised he didn't cut his staff off, stay in America, and let them sink or swiom on their own.

That said, there may be a silver lining here in the U.S.:

Legal experts said Monday it is possible Murdoch's U.S. companies might face legal actions because of the shady practices at the News of the World, his now defunct British tabloid. In the U.S., Murdoch owns Fox News, The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, among other holdings.

They said Murdoch's News Corp. might be liable to criminal prosecution under the 1977 Corrupt Foreign Practices Act, a broad act designed to prosecute executives who bribe foreign officials in exchange for large contracts.

But, because Obama's a suck-up who's "looking forward," this is unlikely. And, should such case be appealed to the Supreme Court ... how many of its members who take money from people with ties to Murdoch would recuse themselves?

Still, we can dream, can't we?

Meanwhile, how much more balls-less will British Deputy Prime Minister/Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg be? How much more balls-less will the party be, rather than break coalition with the Conservatives and Murdoch toady David Cameron? If not over this, it will be over nothing.

Whither the Lib Dems?

The electoral reform move that David Cameron and his Conservatives promised Nick Clegg and his Liberal Democrats as part of agreeing to coalition government in Britain came down to a referendum vote on whether or not to change Britain's current first-past-the-post election system, similar to America's, to an alternate vote, or instant-runoff vote, system.

And, the "reform" side was a massive fail; Britons voted for status quo by a 68-32 margin.

For the Lib Dems, add in two other facts: They got shellacked in local elections held at the same time, and that, in turn, is in part because the British public supposedly is dumping on them the majority of blame for the government's huge budget cuts. (Rightfully so, on assessing the blame, as Cameron couldn't do what he's doing if it were as a minority government.)

So, seriously, what happens next?

To me, from what I understand of parliamentary systems in general and Britain's in particular, I certainly could see the Lib Dems booting Clegg from leadership at the next party caucus. And then voting to leave coalition.

That said, would the government fall, or would the Queen bless a minority government?

O, Canada, the NDP is now on guard for you?

I hadn't blogged about the Canadian elections until now because of a mixture of forgetfulness to check the results and other things.

That said, it appears the New Democratic Party surge was real. Per the Christian Science Monitor, is Canada now a two-party system, with the Liberals serving as similar to the Liberal Democrats in Britain or the Free Democrats in Germany?

It's certainly possible.

At the same time, Stephen Harper's Conservatives were able to take an absolute majority in Parliament, for the first time in 23 years.

Even if he hadn't lost his own seat, former Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff deserved to resign over the poor timing of the no-confidence vote (why not a year ago), his party's poor run and other things.

Look for Harper to become more Bush-like, for NDP leader Jack Leyton to exploit parliamentary opportunities in opposition better than Iggy did, and for that and by-elections to force the next parliamentary ballot in about .... 30 months.

But, will it be first-past-the-post, still, like the U.S.? A CBC column wonders if, should Britain adopt alternative voting today (the "electoral reform" the Conservatives and David Cameron promised Nick Clegg and his Lib Dems) whether Canada might follow suit?

Four months and counting on Tory-Lib Dem coalition?

I'd been wondering when the "deal" on electoral reform, that was Liberal Democratic Party leader Nick Clegg's price for joining in coalition with David Cameron's Conservatives in Britain, would happen.

Guess I'd not been reading the Guardian often enough to see that a referendum on alternative voting, i.e., an instant runoff system, to replace the first past the post system, has cleared the House of Lords and is set for May 5.

Hence the four months and ticking.

British voters will go to the polls May 5 for a vote on electoral reform, the promised payout by the Conservative Party to Liberal Democrats for joining it in coalition.

Britain's biggest union has officially come out in opposition, though. That despite the fact that the Labour Party could benefit.

Labour Party leader Ed Miliband says he will campaign hard for a yes vote. But, will the party as a whole follow him? So far, 114 Labour MPs have pledged opposition. Even more, on the other side, will the Conservative rank-and-file follow Prime Minister David Cameron? For that matter, how enthusiastic and active will Cameron be in working for the measure?

Witin Labour, it appears, per the opposition of Unite and another large union, to be an Old Labour vs. New Labour split. As Miliband was elected to leadership with union support, it's surprising to see him so ardently push a yes. Could a failure in the referendum not only dissolve the governing coalition, but lead to a putsch against Miliband at the next Labour conference?

As the Guardian notes, Labour proposed IRV, also known as alternative voting, before the most recent national elections. The same editorial notes that Miliband's in his and Labour's interest to push yes, with either a win or a loss drawing Labour and LibDems closer, especially since Cameron's past record is of opposition. (That said, he seems to be honoring his pledge to LibDe's Clegg very narrowly - just putting the referendum on the ballot and not campaigning for a yes.)

Also, by Cameron insisting the referendum be put on the same day as local/regional elections, it looks like Cameron has wrong-footed Clegg pretty well. That is, unless the push for electoral reform really doesn't matter as much to Clegg as it does to the party faithful, as seems the case with other LibDem issues.

The Guardian has a webpage dedicated to the contest and its various issues.

I give the UK coalition six more months

To speak British-style, the Lib Dems have stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the Tories on the massive budget cuts in the service sectors and elsewhere in government.

But, Prime Minister David Cameron has yet to deliver to Nick Clegg on the electoral reform that was the Lib Dems price for joining coalition.

I give Cameron six months to deliver that. Why that long? I'm guessing that if it doesn't come by then, Lib Dems will sack Clegg as party leader. And, any promise he made to Cameron to see through the coalition for the full five years will not be binding on his successor.

Even now, the Guardian notes that support for the coalition, primarily within the Lib Dems but also from Conservatives, is falling sharply:

The latest Guardian/ICM poll finds that after six months of Conservative-LibDem rule just 43% think coalition government was the right decision for Britain while 47% now disagree. In May, in answer to a slightly differently worded question, 59% backed the coalition while 32% disagreed with the decision to form it.

Among LibDem voters, support is 50-50.

Meanwhile, Labour's Ed Miliband waits in the wings:

Asked about the party leaders, only 12% thought Nick Clegg's prospects would improve in 2011, against 47% who think he will have a worse year. For David Cameron, 23% think 2011 will be better and 36% worse. Only Ed Miliband can look forward to a happier new year. While 27% think the coming year will be worse for him than the one before, 29% think it will be better – the only net positive score on all the issues asked in the survey.

And, so, Labour hopes to peel off dissatisfied Lib Dem voters.

At the same time, Lib Dem and Tory ministers in government seem to be having more distance developing. (Speaking to a media roundtable where you as a politician think you're off the record and the media thinks you're not doesn't help!)

Nick Clegg officially has no balls

The head of Great Britain's Liberal Democrats, in coalition with David Cameron's Conservatives, has given official proof of that.

The vote (on tuition hikes) put Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and his Liberal Democrat party in an awkward spot. Liberal Democrats signed a pre-election pledge to oppose any such tuition hike, and reserved the right to abstain in the vote even though they are part of the governing coalition proposing the change.

Those protesting in central London were particularly incensed by the broken pledge from Clegg's party.

"I'm here because the Liberal Democrats broke their promise," said 19-year-old Kings College student Shivan David from London's Trafalgar Square. "I don't think education should be free but I do think that tripling fees doesn't make any sense. We are paying more for less."

Inside the House of Commons and to the jeers from the opposition lawmakers, Liberal Democrat Business Secretary Vince Cable insisted that the new tuition plans were "progressive" as a heated debate over the proposal began.

This in no way surprises me. And, it shows that while joining the coalition seemed like a good move in terms of political tactics, in terms of longer-term strategy, it will turn out to be horrible. Don't forget Clegg also signed a pledge to stick with the coalition through thick and thin.

Finally, Prime Minister David Cameron agreed to push forward electoral reform. Yes, it's still early, but, things move faster in parliamentary governments, especially ones that don't have a filibuster-empowered upper house, than they do in the U.S. And, we've seen nothing on this yet.

And, add this, courtesy WikiLeaks:

In March 2009, U.S. officials in England attended the spring political conference of the Liberal Democrats. The event was widely covered in the British media, but the U.S. Embassy's summary, a combination of speech excerpts and hallway chatter, was labeled classified.

Among the revelations: Liberal Democratic leader Nick Clegg and Conservative David Cameron "don't get along." Besides being politically obvious, this tidbit was available at any newsstand in England.

The British press has reported that Clegg dubbed Cameron "the con man of British politics." Cameron dismissed Clegg as a "joke" and privately called him "Calamity Clegg."