One of the more enjoyable games over the next years and more will be “Who are the strangest bedfellows?” – people who really won’t have expected to be on the same side.
I have the following initial suggestions
Passionara?: Margaret Thatcher and Shirley Williams will be on the same benches in the Lords.
Troublemakers: Norman Tebbitt and Brian Sedgemore will be uneasy partners in allied parties.
The Fabulous Baker boys: Norman Baker (who astonishingly, is a government minister) and Kenneth Baker.
Defectors and Deserters: Emma Nicholson defected from the Tories to the Lib Dems. Richard Balfe from Labour to the Tories. Now they’re on the same side.
Sui Generis, as ever: The Lord Owen, perhaps the ideological father of this coalition, somehow manages to stay out of power again.
Isn`t the fact that New Labour is so homogenously against everyone else its problem ?I gather Compass invited a deputation from Cuba and one from Venezuala to launch red little ted`s bid for power , is that am odd ally ?
I am as astonished as you seem to be by Mr Bun’s elevation, he’s a strange bedfellow for anyone.
I live in hope, though, that he and many of his LibDem will emerge at least a little chastened by their brush with Realpolitik. Some of them might even develop a little sympathy for some of the things that Labour did or didn’t do when it had its hands on the slippery levers of power.
I can’t image, for example, that the Hon Mem for Lewes will, once he’s endured a few meetings with the skinflints from the Treasury, be campaigning quite so vigorously to reopen, at huge expense and disruption (including, in at least one case, to many of his own constituents), quite so many railways, which were, for very sound reasons, long ago abandoned…
Why is it astonishing that Norman Baker should be Minister for Transport ? He shadowed Transport . I was at a local event where he spoke convincingly about the problem and solutions only recently .
He has a reputation for pragmatic greenery , a lot of experience and an appetite for work and detail. What is your problem ?Is it that he isn`t someone’s brother /wife /flat mate /relative or came from local councils and not the Oxbridge fast track of Hopi and the like ?
Incidentally there is hardly anyone in Lewes and the constituency who has not got a tale of his help or the help he gave a friend. I was campaigning against him (a thankless task) and while I certainly do not like some of his views it is gross arrogance to suggest he cannot be taken seriously
I see him commuting at the same platform I wait at ,whilst others renovate serial second homes , sorry but that impresses me . When I think that we have just had the Nations Defence in the hands of a vagrant left locked in a broom cupboard ..(or was it Bob Ainsworth ) I do wonder how swiveled your eyes have become
What is it Hopi that you think puts you in a position to sneer at a man who has made his poltical life from the bottom and was elected rather than chosen ?I am curious .
Norman Baker famously published a particularly loopy book, an amalgam of tabloid style sensationalism and wild conjecture, in which he asserted that Dr David Kelly was murdered and hinted that Robin Cook was also bumped off ‘shortly afterwards’. PUSS at the DoT – I look forward to some novel ideas about transport: teleportation perhaps?
…Got £50,000 from the Daily Mail for it and wasted endless Parliamentary questions which are not cheap either. We know , we know .
Alistair Campell was scathing, but to him any work of fiction that is not used to send British troops to get their head blown off probably looks a bit parochial. I`d shut`cha gob if I were you Fred.
Here is my prediction , Norman Baker will be a tireless and clear thinking transport minister who will be another Cable by the time he is finished . I will say this though , if he continues to ignore the cottage pre school float ( which is always the best) when it comes to prizes at the Lewes Carnival then he may lose my provisional support yet.
Thanks for the gracious and intelligent response Newmania, I wasn’t aware that this thread was a discussion about Iraqi WMD (which I do know something about, thanks).
My vote for strange bedfellows goes to Gordon and Sarah Brown, how soon before the amicable separation?
You are Robert Harris and I claim my five pounds.
Now how about some more of those lovely Roman books and less of the contemporary conspiracy theories and fantasising about the wives of politicians you don’t like, huh?
That comment about Mr and Mrs Brown was just so depressingly puerile and unfunny.
Newmania and Norman Baker make pretty odd bedfellows if this http://iznewmania.blogspot.com/2008/07/norman-baker-on-politics-show.html
or many other similar postings are anything to go by.
Must be one of the most startling conversions since Paul on the road to Damascus.
Big help, big help. And superlative news of corsue.
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