Swinson – sanctimonious or specious or both?

Before starting this piece about Jo Swinson (and the Lib Dems in general) my first port of call was, obviously, my thesaurus, to find synonyms of hypocrisy. As the reader can see from the title, I found two alliterative corkers. At risk of insulting (most of?) any readers, these are the relevant definitions:

‘Sanctimonious’ - making a hypocritical show of righteousness etc.

‘Specious’ (my favourite) - apparently good or right though lacking real merit; superficially pleasing or plausible.

Why do I claim that these adjectives apply to the cuddly Ms. Swinson when I don’t know her or ever met her?

Well, it’s because I, along with the rest of the world, have access to her voting record as a member of the Tory/Lib Dem coalition government and have seen or heard her on our broadcast media. Not to mention the newspaper coverage when she supported the erection of a statue to Margaret Thatcher.

Ms. Swinson entered parliament in 2005, at a, to be an MP anyway, young age and gave a good impression of a progressive politician – opposing the Iraq war and the introduction of identity cards by New Labour etc. – so far, so good. Then came the fateful year of 2010 when her party jettisoned its credibility in favour of the trappings of power. They failed to take the real route to actual power, in the shape of being able to threaten the government as the DUP are doing now, by using the ‘supply and confidence’ arrangement, preferring the coalition arrangement with its ministerial posts and attendant cars etc.

Ms. S was a big player, not that the Lib Dems have a great pool of talent to draw on then, or now, in this time. She started as Parliamentary Private Secretary to Vince Cable, who a little later achieved notoriety by selling off our Post Office for about 30% of its market value. She then graduated to a ministerial post in 2012 and there she stayed until she deservedly lost her seat in 2015.

In the four and a half years of the coalition, Ms. S voted with the Tory whip, that is for the government, a startling 849 times. This is MORE than such Tory notaries as Jeremy Hunt and Michael Gove! But she was almost matched by her rival in the recent Lib Dem leadership race, Ed Davey who scored 832 with the Tory whip votes and so it seems that her dubious attitudes are quite common at the highest levels of this devious party.

These votes with the government encompassed a wide range of topics in numbers too numerous to list here but none of them were advantageous to the poorer or disadvantaged members of our citizens. They included:

• Cuts to legal aid, later found to be unlawful.

• The bedroom tax.

• A whole range of benefits freezes.

• Cuts to corporation tax.

• The ruinous Health and Social Care Act, designed to wreck the NHS as we know it.

And, of course, the pièce de resistance, massive increases in student fees and loans, breaking the solemn promise made before the election.

All this at the same time as messing up the effort to achieve their holy grail of proportional representation by choosing, or having chosen for them, the ineffective AV method.

Jo has given us a bit of the old ‘mea culpa’ as she rose to the very top of her party, which is a bit like being the chair of a stamp-collecting club but not as worthy, admitting that she thought some things the coalition got up to were wrong and some things she fought ‘tooth and nail’ to stop but not enough for her nails to slip off the ledge and resign. This does not make a good comparison with her fellow Lib Dem MP - at the time – Sarah Teather, who did vote against the government and left the party saying that she ‘no longer feels that Nick Clegg's party fights sufficiently for social justice’.

Never mind, every cut the coalition imposed was justified by the dire financial situation that was inherited…or so Jo still claims. This is despite the view, now held by pretty much every economic institution, including the IMF, that austerity was and is a disastrous policy and helps no one except the already wealthy.

This pathetic excuse for facilitating cruel, damaging and, ultimately useless policies does reflect Jo’s neo-liberal views as set out in the ‘Orange Book’, a collection of policy essays by leading Lib Dems and which pushed the Lib Dems rightwards, away from ‘soggy socialism and corporatism.’ In it, David Laws, famous for fiddling his expenses, referred to the NHS as a ‘second-rate, centralised, state monopoly service,’ and said, ‘private sector providers are more efficient than the NHS.’ As well as arguing for more competition within the NHS, the authors wanted more private prisons and Royal Mail privatisation.

These types of idea are still the very basis of Lib Dem thinking – small government, belief in competition and ‘the market’ leavened with a sprinkling of free-thinking views on social matters. And, in the case of Ms. Swinson, a cavalier attitude as to who she might accept donations from, her environmental credentials somewhat tarnished by the £12,000 given by the head of a fracking concern.

The beaming Ms. Swinson also has a handy line in false claims, notably the one that spread the lie, because that’s what is was, that Jeremy Corbyn took two weeks holiday during the EU referendum.

In fact, JC travelled over three thousand miles attending 15 rallies plus other meetings, appeared often in both the printed and transmitted media and tweeted numerous remain messages which resulted in tens of thousands shares. Even Angela Eagle, no Corbyn fan, acknowledged that his campaign schedule would have exhausted a man half his age.

What did the winsome Swinson do?

Well, in the peak month of May, leading up to the vote itself, ONE re-tweet of a call to register to vote and, no other mention of Brexit on her twitter feed at all. That’s it.

For those that dream of a ‘rainbow’ coalition to get the country out of the mess provided by the Tories, the main stream media and those who think ‘quite right wing’ means ‘moderate’, don’t forget that, behind the rainbow, the sky is always blue.

— Bob, your uncle

Before she became a minister, JS talked a good talk, opposed the I war etc but…