Following a General Election in which Labour won a 66-seat majority with just 35% of the popular vote, Mr Kennedy made clear that he is ready to return to the attack on voting reform, telling delegates: “This argument just won’t go away, and we’re not going to let it go away.” The Prime Minister “may have a working majority but he cannot claim any moral mandate” after winning power with the support of just one in five of registered voters, he said. In an unusually personal speech, Mr Kennedy spoke of his experience growing up in the Scottish Highlands and his hopes that his son Donald – born earlier this year – will be able to grow up in a country whose environment is unspoilt. The controversial policy motions on the EU and Royal Mail were “not left, not right, but liberal”. In a biting critique of Labour’s handling of Iraq and terror, Mr Kennedy made clear that he believes that the response to the July 7 bombings in London will be a dominant issue of the current Parliament. The “war on terror” declared by Tony Blair and US President George Bush has been “so badly implemented that it has actually boosted the terror threat not diminished it”, he said. Accusing Mr Blair of being “in denial” over the scale and nature of problems in Iraq, he demanded a clear exit strategy to bring UK troops home. And he put the Government on notice that the Lib Dems will not accept counter-terrorism measures such as detention without charge for three months – which “undermine our most basic rights and eat into our most cherished freedoms”.
It’s my ambition to lead the first government in the liberal tradition of the 21st century.” Mr Kennedy spelt out the fundamental principles behind the liberal philosophy as the championing of the individual and communities, defence of human rights and civil liberties, fairness, social justice and environmentalism. And he took a side-swipe at critics within the party who accuse him of steering the Lib Dems away from their historic values by insisting: “There is absolutely no contradiction between economic liberalism and financial discipline on the one hand and fairness and social justice on the other.” Totemic leaders from liberal history like Asquith and Lloyd George would have found their argument “utterly ludicrous”. “I will lead this party into the next election as the clear alternative to a discredited Labour Government. Two key “modernising” motions backed by Mr Kennedy on part-privatisation of the Royal Mail and capping EU spending were rebuffed by members.
And one of the leading figures on the left of the party, president Simon Hughes, was forced to state publicly that he was not planning a leadership coup. Today, Mr Kennedy dismissed the labels of right and left as “out of date and out of time”, insisting that the true divide in British politics today was between conservatives and liberals. “When this Labour Government fails – which one day it surely will – the party that is ready for the challenge of government will be ours,” he said. Labour and the Tories were “two essentially conservative parties”, while the liberal tradition was “the growing force in politics”, he said. At the end of an annual conference which has witnessed rumblings of discontent about Mr Kennedy’s leadership style, he used his keynote address to spell out his personal vision of liberalism.
And he reassured activists concerned that he is planning to shift the party to the right, saying: “I did not enter public life with the ambition of leading yet another conservative party in British politics.” The week-long gathering in Blackpool has been dominated by tussles between a rising group of “modernising” MPs who want the Lib Dems to shed their high-tax, high-spending image and grassroots activists who suspect them of wanting to dump the party’s progressive traditions.
The Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy today sought to bring a halt to speculation over his position with a speech in which he declared his determination to lead the party into the next general election. Is it an aberration? They speak highly of Connolly’s other stuff, and around town he’s considered the prince of good fellows, so perhaps it is.. The blurb talks of darkly English humour, but it would, wouldn’t it? There are heavily engineered comic scenes, but grubby rather than dark. Maybe it’s symbolic?Annette returns to England and becomes a dominatrix madam while her mother, previously a meek housewife, takes a gangster-pimp lover and throws herself into the sex industry. Clifford, incestuously enslaved to mother and sister, tricks an Irish virgin into a false marriage, starts on his own slide downhill and is soon augmenting his earnings as a tailor with whore’s gold. Could it be a portrait of England in decline, or just Joseph Connolly, like the coves in reception, getting his rocks off? Perhaps it’s all a parody.The style is distinctly odd.
Each main character gets a chance to talk in the first person, but the narrative often switches to the third The tenses are all over the place. Terrible things, as is so often the way, go on beneath the suburban veneer.Clifford’s father falls off the roof and his sister Annette is sent to a convent of chastisement in Ireland, where there’s much flogging and spanking and scrubbing down in cold showers and a gang-rape, (detailed with unpleasant enthusiasm) by priests. Then comes this novel.
Clifford Coyle is a dreary little drip we first encounter, as he lies dying, on his wedding day. We flash back to his childhood where prissy Cliff spends his time doing jigsaws, listening to Cliff (Richard) and trying to avoid the beastly boys at school. Home is a catalogue of brand names: Spontex, Dairy Box , Tizer, Brylcreem, Airfix, TCP, Dinky and Nesquik.
