Paddy Passesdown

[Prester John]

Paddy Ashdown has died, aged 77. Always enjoyed listening to him when he was being interviewed.

He was, apparently, one of the select group of Westminster MPs who could kill a man with one hand, thanks to his time with the Royal Marines.


https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-46662546

[Satchmo Distel]

I'm surprised he was older than Kinnock and only three years younger than Steel and Owen.

[Satchmo Distel]

Favourite pun so far - Liberal Deadocrat (from Cookdandbombd).

[Jah Womble]

Ashes to Ashdown?

[MsD]

I’m surprised to see genuine tributes from John Major, I thought they hated each other. JM used to reply to him with gritted teeth and a withering tone in the HoC, which he didn’t do to others.

Anyway, yes, he was OK, on the side of social justice and human rights, and I suppose had earned the right to be a bit cocky.

[ursus arctos]

He claimed to be the first person elected to Parliament while on long term unemployment benefit.

[Duncan Gardner]

Ashes to Ashdown?

Eternal Slumber
His farmstead home
Was closer to Comber

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

RIP. A great party leader, and would have made a great Prime Minister.

[Prester John]

It's no secret that Paddy Ashdown and Charles Kennedy his successor didn't really get on, in fact Ashdown was supposed to have remarked,

"Why is he so lazy?"

But then again most of us are probably lazy by Paddy Ashdown's standards.

[Del Usory]

Shame he didn't retain the same disdain for any of theother of his successors.

With the possible exception of Ming Campbell

[Disco Child Ballads]

The good performance of the Lib Dems in the 1997 Election was probably the high point of his political career. The Lib Dem manifesto of that year contained a commitment to raising the basic rate of income tax in order to increase funding of education. Imagine even the Labour party of today doing that.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The good performance of the Lib Dems in the 1997 Election was probably the high point of his political career. The Lib Dem manifesto of that year contained a commitment to raising the basic rate of income tax in order to increase funding of education. Imagine even the Labour party of today doing that.

The Labour party of Back then didn't do it either

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Ashdown was convinced Labour needed the Lib Dems for a coalition. So were Labour, to be fair. When they won a landslide - thanks in part to all the votes and seats the Lib Dems took off the Tories in the south - they jolted straight back to the right and started selling off the hospitals to PFI and introducing tuition fees.

[Lang Spoon]

I’ll never understand why fucking Brown felt the need to match Tory spending freeze. They’d have won anyway and it meant so much of spending needed bullshit financing like PFI and the greasy influence of outsource vampires Serco and Capita et al getting further into Govt.

[DCI Harry Batt]

I always had the impression that he was a horrible git. On a personal level, I mean. Obviously his politics were terrible.

But then there's this outpouring of "oh what a lovely man" from other politicians, and I wonder if...no, no I don't.

"Paddy Pantsdown" remains one of the finest headlines ever in the world ever.

[Snake Plissken]

I’ll never understand why fucking Brown felt the need to match Tory spending freeze. They’d have won anyway and it meant so much of spending needed bullshit financing like PFI and the greasy influence of outsource vampires Serco and Capita et al getting further into Govt.

Because even back then they were shit scared of Murdoch and the Daily Heil. Even though, in hindsight, Labour were going to win that election no matter what they did. Again, in hindsight, if that landslide hadn't happened then as you say, we probably wouldn't have had the PFI bullshit, would have got PR (I believe agreed with the Lib Dems prior to the election) and not gone into Iraq with such gusto. Such a wasted opportunity.

[Satchmo Distel]

It's possible OTOH that PR would have given UKIP even more power in a potential Tory coalition at some point, although one would hope that Lab and Lib voters would ensure the Tories were kept out using the 2nd preference vote or tactical voting, and thus Brexit would have been impossible and probably austerity would also have been off the table.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

If you had some variation of PR in the UK you wouldn't have anything like the Tory party or the Labour party. All the various constituent parties in each of them would have separated out. You'd have coalitions all the time like everyone else.

[Snake Plissken]

Using UKIP as the argument against PR is the usual scare tactic.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Well if FPTP didn't force people into two broad tent parties, the Eurosceptic tories would have had their own openly fascist party all along, which would be dealt with on its own terms rather than being part of the broader Tory coalition, and we'd have had much fewer news stories about internal tory divisions over europe.