Has Ming played a bit of a flanker?

We seem to have been in a bit of a spin, in the last week. It seems that Menzies will draw a line under the 'confusion' at the Welsh spring conference. Just let me check I've got the sequence of events right:

1. Menzies says last weekend what he expects from Brown in the "five tests".
2. You could say that someone (A) span (if that is the past tense of spin) this as our demands for a coalition deal, noting that PR is absent from the list. Otherwise, you could say that the speech was explicit in this regard anyway, so it was Ming's fault anyway. In the scope of that latter scenario you could also add that someone (B) span that someone (A) span the story.
   
3. That 'someone A' is suggested by Iain Dale to allegedly, conceivably, possibly and arguably be Mark Littlewood, LibDem Head of Media, although this is strongly contested in the comments of the same posting.
   
4. Said Mark Littlewood confirms his intention, first stated last November, to leave his job in two months time
   
5. Menzies takes advantage of major speech to underline that his belief in PR is 'absolute'.

You might detect that I am a mite confused. Correct. If you strip away all the arcane onion-like machinations, you are left with two basic observations:

a) It seems that in the political game, the interpretational equivalent of the width of a fag paper can separate triumph and disaster.

b)A bit of a flanker may have been played. That is, something seems to have been smuggled through into the public domain under the cover of all the smoke of the last week. Since I started supporting the Liberals while in short trousers, I always thought, and still think, that PR for Commons elections would be the price of any coalition deal. I suppose that didn't stop it not being delivered by the murky LibLab pact in the seventies. But Paddy Ashdown, using his normal florid language, still thinks it is the price of one now:

...You know the old phrase in English - 'If you dine with the Devil, you take a long spoon' - I would not dine with God if PR was not on the menu, but I would dine with the Devil if it was.

It seems that the Holy Grail of PR may have been quietly demoted to the sidelines. Goodness knows. I think I am due for a lie-down in my darkened room.

UPDATE: I thank James Graham for the illumination he has exercised on these events, which is timely and resulted in me making some late changes to this piece.

Good page for Ming in the Times

The Times carry a very positive page about Ming today, entitled "Man in the middle who may yet dictate the way forward".

The main story is accompanied by a positivish piece by Peter Riddell referring to "Dependable Ming" and his "shrewdness and experience":

He closely observed the troubles of his past leaders. He is not going to do anything daft. These could be reassuring qualities in face of the untested Mr Cameron and the dour Mr Brown.

Menzies Campbell is agreeing with the head of the army on Iraq

Iain Dale says that Menzies Campbell's proposed British withdrawal from Iraq by October would lead to a "full-scale civil war".

Hello? There is a full-scale civil war there already!

Menzies Campbell's statement on Iraq is absolutely right and I applaud his courage in making it:

Given the lack of UK influence over coalition strategy, the deepening sectarian conflict, and the increasing antipathy of the Iraqi people to the coalition forces, the time has come for a controlled exit...We have done all we can and our presence is exacerbating the situation...The process of withdrawal should begin on in May and end in October. It is time to go.

There are some key points there.

Given the lack of UK influence over coalition strategy - The United States Congress does not have any influence over coalition strategy. So what hope have we? We should not be continuing to deploy our troops in a situation where we have no say over the strategy.

The increasing antipathy of the Iraqi people to the coalition forces - We are causing much of the problem, just by being there.

This isn't a "publicity seeking" statement by Menzies. It is a courageous statement made with the best interests of British troops, and Britain, at heart.

We've been in Iraq for four years. It is time for our troops to come home.

It is worth remembering that General Sir Richard Dannatt, the head of the army, said in October 2006 "that Britain must withdraw from Iraq 'soon' or risk serious consequences for Iraqi and British society". So Menzies Campbell is remarkably consonant with the head of the army.

The madness of ID cards - "We can cut crime" campaign

The Liberal Democrat "We can cut crime" campaign, launched today, is very impressive.

Just take point one of the five-point action plan: "More police on patrol - Don't waste billions on ID cards". The point highlights that "Labour are already wasting £97,000 a day on their expensive, illiberal ID card sceme. We would scrap it and use the money to pay for more police officers."

If ever there was a prime example of New Labour madness, ID cards are it. They won't even help to fight crime, as our "10 reasons to oppose ID cards" makes clear:

The police do not generally have a problem identifying people they arrest: the problem is in catching the criminals in the first place. ID cards would not present an obstacle to most terrorists either. The terrorists who attacked New York on September 11th 2001 and Madrid on March 11th 2004 carried valid identity documents. Knowing someone’s identity does not necessarily help you to predict how they are going to behave. The government believes that one in three terrorists use multiple identities, which would be much harder to do once compulsory ID cards were introduced for everyone. However, this leaves the modus operandi of 2 out of 3 terrorists unaffected, to say nothing of the way the one third with multiple identities might change their behaviour in response to the scheme.