Does Sheffield Hallam MP, Clegg, wear clogs or does he prefer Ferragamo, is he one of the peeps?

[claig]

The pesky Daily Mail continues the expose
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1268436/Some-ordinary-northerner-How-Nick-Clegg-really-man-extraord inary-privilege-family-chateau.html

I am not sure that the Tory press is all that influential. The Tory press really consists of the Mail and the Telegraph. Murdoch is faux right-wing. He switches allegiance as and when it suits him, always pretending to be right-wing so that he holds his readership. He backed Blair for years when Blair followed the agenda that he was interested in. I don't believe a word of Murdoch's anti-EU stance, I think he uses it as a bargaining tool to cut deals as and when it suits him.

The left-wing has far more influential media i.e. the Guardian, Independent and BBC. The intelligentsia read the left-wing press and sneer at the Mail etc. Even on MN most posters are anti the Mail.

I think that Johann Hari's insistence on the power of the right-wing press is wrong. I agree with him that Britain has a left-wing liberal consensus, but unlike him I think it is due to the strength of the left-wing media and the weakness of the right-wing media. Even though the right-wing media appeals to the people more than the left-wing media, as shown by the economic viability of the Mail etc. in contrast to the Independent, the left-wing media is still funded by big money and is more influential than the few right-wing media outlets.

Yes, good point about Coulson (it is the same Davis though)

Surely somebody else must be outraged by Orlando Figes this morning?

Claig, I'm astonished that you claim the right wing press aren't in charge. Quite the reverse of the truth. Look at the readership figures - the best-selling paper is the Sun, and the Mail is close behind.

I'm not so sure Claig. I don't think BBC is a lefty institution actually - that there Nick Robinson, most certainly not.

Nor that the Guardian and Independent have wider circulation or more readers and influence than the Mail or the London Standard etc.

Take your point re Murdoch. Mind you, Fox are keeping on at Obama aren't they?

I was thinking last night. You know how Obama followers went around saying 'Yes, We Can'

We should all follow Clegg shouting,

"I'm not scared!'

"Oh, Atlantis, are you sure you aren't mixing up David Davis and David Davies, btw? Think the one who lost out in the leadership contest is not the civil libertarian from Haltemprice and Howden (the one who stood down to force a bye-election over detention without charge)."

What?

David Davis lost out to Cameron in the Tory leadership contest and was the MP for Haltemprice and Howden
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Davis_(British_politician)

"Claig, I'm astonished that you claim the right wing press aren't in charge. Quite the reverse of the truth. Look at the readership figures - the best-selling paper is the Sun, and the Mail is close behind. "

Isn't this sour grapes though, the papers were all supporting Labour until this election.

"David Davis lost out to Cameron in the Tory leadership contest and was the MP for Haltemprice and Howden"

I think she's trying to confuse me before I go out canvessing so I say ' a vote for GB is a vote for the conservatives".

I agree that the people of the country are naturally more right-wing, which is why sales of the Sun and Mail are always higher than their competitors. But Murdoch switches with the wind, so I am not sure you can really call him right-wing. He pretends he is right-wing and gets his success that way, but he often at the last minute betrays the right-wing, as he showed many times when he got Labour out of many tight spots, for which they were very grateful. Fox News is doing tremendously well because it is meeting the right-wing thinking of the public, but again Murdoch is prone to throw that power behind any party that will meet his needs.

I think Tories like Tebbitt have always seen the BBC as left-wing. Neil Hamilton's wife tells the story of how the upper classes since the 1950s have always referred to the BBC as "Buggers Broadcasting Communism".

I think the masses are right-wing, but the intelligentsia and the ruling elite are left-wing. I think that Thatcher was a shock to the old Tory establishment, they didn't like her and eventually stabbed her in the back. She was a commoner, a middle-class parvenue, and the Tory wets wanted to continue with their policies to the left of Thatcher. These were people like Leon Brittain, very pro-EU, and for whom Clegg worked for years at the heart of the EU. I think Clegg is much more to the liking of the old Tory guard than Thatcher ever was. Clegg, with his aristocratic banking background and his Winchester education, is one of them. Thatcher was different, daughter of a grocer and grammar-school girl, she was one of us.

Yes, I always think they find it left wing because they can't control the BBC though?

The right wing find that hugely frustrating ime, just in principle. Look at how desperate the Mail is RIGHT NOW for instance!

See, I really don't think the country is right wing. I think it is conservative (with a small c) but also surprisingly flexible. I wonder if it really is more liberal (with a small l) than right wing.

Len, it's worth reading Hari's back catalogue if you haven't done so already. He's fantastic.

I don't understand this claim that Clegg is hiding his background, or claiming to be a northerner.

I'm an active Liberal Democrat and I've known all of this for years. I knew his family had a big place in France and a skiing chalet. I've heard him joke about it openly. He's never tried to hide the fact he had a privileged background.

The gossip I heard - which may or may not be true, was that he only went to GJW because he had to wait before getting a job at the European Commission and that he hated it there. But it would be wrong of them to slag them off. I worked in public affairs when I was young and I don't know a single LibDem on that circuit who didn't know Nick had worked at GJW even before he was elected as a MEP. It's just not news, folks.

Why on earth would somebody who was a Tory fail to join the Tories with such good links as Carrington and Brittan and join the LibDems instead? You just wouldn't. If you were a careerist you would join the party that would give you the best chance of being in government.

"Why on earth would somebody who was a Tory fail to join the Tories with such good links as Carrington and Brittan and join the LibDems instead? "

But he was a tory, a fully paid up member, but again, it's not as issue, there's a history of MP's swapping sides in the house and that idiot Bercow is supposed to be a tory but loves Labour.

'he was a tory, a fully paid up member' - is there any evidence for this?

No it's not news. Even Churchill swapped parties fgs.

"Why on earth would somebody who was a Tory fail to join the Tories with such good links as Carrington and Brittan and join the LibDems instead? You just wouldn't. If you were a careerist you would join the party that would give you the best chance of being in government."

very good question. Why did Blair, the Fettes pupil, join Labour? Many left-wingers believe it was deliberate and that Blair was a Tory mole, who succeeded in dismantling many of Labour's traditional policies, continued to shaft the unions, relied on his chums, the Tories, to help push through his education bills which many of his party resisted. Look at most of his other policies and you can see why he admired Thatcher, and why Cameron wants to be the new Blair.

It works both ways - Cecil Parkinson used to have a broad Lancashire accent, grew up in a tiny terraced house & supported Labour:

wiki

where did those refined elocuted vowels come from I wonder?

"'he was a tory, a fully paid up member' - is there any evidence for this? "

"Tory MP Greg Hands, who was in the year above Clegg and in the same college, says that the Lib Dem leader was in fact a paid up member of Cambridge University's Conservative Association.
He has produced documentary evidence to back up that assertion.
Clegg, who initially denied it outright, now says that he has 'no recollection' of joining the group. "

Reminds me of the american polititians ' I have no memory of this incident at this time'.

He was not a fully paid up member of the Conservative Party. This is simply not true. His opponents allege, at most, that he went to his college tory debates. Not even his university group!

Clegg denies that he was ever a Tory in this piece

Not that it matters particularly, but this does seem to just be incorrect.

And the evidence they have is his name written on a list. It's not terribly convincing.

I always find it astonishing that so many people believe that anyone from a privileged background, or has accumulated some wealth must automatically be a Tory. It's even more bizarre when that false assumption is extrapolated into an accusation that a well off person who is not a Tory is lying.

Greg Hands's claim is that Clegg was a member of the Cambridge University Conservative Association (NB not the same as being a member of the Conservative Party). On this discussion thread, 'alexq' says: To be fair, and I am not that keen on LibDems in general, when I was at Cambridge I knew several people who belonged to CUCA who weren't Conservative supporters, and even some who were paid up members of CUCA, CULS (Labour Students) AND the LibDems... The reason was simple: the Tories were in power throughout the eighties and most of the nineties, and there were many Cambridge alumni in the Cabinet. But if you were generally interested in politics and wanted to hear these senior Cabinet ministers when they came up to, you had to join CUCA to get in to the speaker meeting.'

'OldCUCAHack' says: 'Just wanted to second what AlexQ says about CUCA membership in the 1980s and early 90s. Other reasons to join included the social events, some of which were engagingly debauched occasions, or being pressured to join in order to vote for a particular candidate or 'slate'. In other words membership of CUCA meant precisely nothing in terms of party affiliation, ideological orientation and so forth. In fact I distinctly remember that most of the prominent university Liberal and SDP organisers were CUCA members. There was no secret about any of this.'