Arrogant Tosser



Seumas Milne makes me laugh these days because only last year he was pouring scorn on Scotland's independence referendum on the basis that the SNP were not left-wing enough for his liking.

So Scotland would just have to remain part of the union until we all learned to be a real socialist, just like the privately educated Guardian columnist.

The point about Seumas and his ilk is that they're great fans of democracy when it suits their own narrow politics, but they're rather less keen about popular mandates if things don't work out in their favour.

For example, at the 2010 general election when the Conservatives and Lib Dems agreed to enter a Coalition Government having won between them just over 50% of the popular vote, yet the Conservative/Lid Dem Coalition was 'illegitimate' in the eyes of people like Seumas.

But in this piece written before the election result was known Seumas manages to make a fool of himself with his ridiculous talk about 'coups' while the Conservatives and the SNP set about redrawing the electoral map of Britain.

I wonder if Seumas is any good with horse racing tips because he's useless at politics and predicting the outcome of elections. 

The Tories are plotting a coup in the name of legitimacy

By Seumas Milne - The Guardian

Every anti-democratic lever will be pulled to block a Miliband government. Labour has to turn the tables
 
David Cameron outside 10 Downing Street Photograph: Suzanne Plunkett/Reuters

It’s possible that the Tories may yet pull it off, as their Australian alchemist, Lynton Crosby, has always promised. The main parties may still be almost neck and neck. But undecided voters could break to the Conservatives. Soft Ukip supporters could finally deliver David Cameron the votes he needs to stay in Downing Street.

If so, we know what to expect. With or without Nick Clegg, it will mean even deeper austerity, harsher cuts to social security, accelerating NHS privatisation, more attacks on workers’ rights, new handouts to the wealthy, more poverty and job insecurity, and perhaps another downturn in the slowest economic recovery on record.

But so far the numbers still aren’t there. So in case Thursday’s election doesn’t deliver a parliamentary majority for Cameron – even with the support of the Liberal Democrats, Ulster unionists and Ukip – the Tories and their media cheerleaders are moving to implement Plan B. After weeks of stoking English nationalism and painting the Scottish National Party as a mortal threat, aimed at sapping Labour support north and south of the border, the Tory machine has a new focus: any government led by Ed Miliband and dependent on SNP votes, Conservative politicians and their press pack now claim, would be “illegitimate”.

The home secretary, Theresa May, declared that it would create the “worst crisis since the abdication”. Now the prime minister and his allies insist a Labour government would be a “con trick” – and, in an ominous vein, that Miliband is out to “seize power” without winning the largest number of seats.

The press onslaught on Labour now outstrips even that meted out to Neil Kinnock in the 80s and 90s. The non-dom- or tax exile-owned Mail, Express, Telegraph and Murdoch media groups have unleashed an avalanche of propaganda against Miliband, whose modest break with the political and corporate consensus has created something close to panic in parts of the establishment. His plans to tax the rich, and non-doms in particular, make it personal.
So Conservative politicians and their proprietor friends are determined to make sure that if anyone is going to seize power, it’s them. If Miliband fails to win the largest number of seats, Rupert Murdoch’s Times declared on Monday, Cameron should “occupy Downing Street”, regardless of whether he has a majority in parliament.

Cameron’s plan, he has let it be known, is to declare victory, cut another deal with Nick Clegg, and sit tight, backed by a media barrage and regardless of whether their parties are outnumbered by an anti-Conservative bloc in the Commons.

But to claim that only a party that wins the largest number of seats can form the government is to turn the parliamentary system on its head. As numerous precedents, the government’s own “Cabinet Manual” rules and common sense dictate, it’s only possible for a party leader who can command a majority in parliament to put together a government.

If, as the polls suggest, the Tories end up marginally ahead on seats and votes, Cameron can try to form an administration with the support of the defeated Liberal Democrats, the regularly homophobic Democratic Unionist party and the racially inflammatory Ukip. But if they can’t reach the effective majority of 323, then it falls to Miliband to assemble a government that can.

If it won the support of a majority of MPs, to reject that government as illegitimate and seek to bring it down would effectively be to support a constitutional coup. But that is exactly what the Conservatives and their friends have made clear they intend to do.

The idea is for Cameron to cling on to power and try to break the resolve of a Labour-led parliamentary majority to vote him down. Even the oligarch-owned Independent, now backing the Tories, claimed yesterday that Britain faced a democratic “legitimacy crisis”.

It doesn’t. If Miliband were to command a majority in parliament, it would be likely to include Labour, the SNP, the Greens, Plaid Cymru and the SDLP, among others, representing perhaps 44% of the electorate. A Labour-Lib Dem deal would take that well over 50%.

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