LIBERALS IN LIBERAL VOTE SHOCK!

The cosy love-in betwixt New Labour (with their trademark policies of draconian slashing of hundreds of years of civil liberties and tacit support for torture) and their Liberal Democrat chums (with their trademark policies of, well, liberalism and democracy and stuff like that, oh and proportional representation!!!) looks doomed after a Holyrood mix-up yesterday.

People often ask – what good is the Scottish Parliament?

Well at this rate it’s greatest service to mankind may be to cause schisms and embarrassing splits between tweedle-dum and tweedle-dummer. Yesterday the Scottish Parliament backed the Greens attack on the ID cards scheme, rodgering New Labours plans for us all to be beholden to police checks.

This of course was only possible because the Lib-Dems found their conscience at the back of a briefing pack somewhere and simultaneously also managed to retrieved a shred of political courage, enough anyway to vote against New Labour’s civil liberties onslaught.

Poor Charles Kennedy will be sooking on his ciggies and wheezing out an explanantion over a bottle of scotch as we speak, and ole Jim Wallace will be going all red-faced and stammering away.

The problem with the Lib-Dems is that they're a bunch of hoors. They'll clamber into bed with anyone that offers them a sniff of power. This political opportunism has its limits and as New Labour veer off to the right can they stick with them? Just how important is Ross Finnie's contribution to the environmental debate?

All of which leaves the Labour Party in a bit of a pickle because it exposes the giant flaw at the heart of devolution...no real power. Because, as the Greens are breaking open the organic raspberry vino and the liberals are basking in the unaccustomed warm glow of liberalism it may just register that ID cards will be imposed by the Britiush State when and how they like. In this sense, the Holyrood parliament is little more than an annoying pluke on a remote limb of British democracy.

Defy ID group here.
Liberty here.