Nick Clegg thinks Eurosceptics are "insular", "chauvinistic" and "short-sighted". Why must he insult his opponents?

By Matthew Barrett
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A video has been released (via Bloomberg's Rob Hutton), of a private dinner for businessmen held by Nick Clegg at the Lib Dem conference. In his remarks, Clegg describes Eurosceptics - or perhaps Euro-realists - as "insular", "chauvinistic" and "short-sighted". It is far from the first instance of him using childish and silly terms to describe opponents - earlier this month he called opponents of gay marriage "bigots".

Why can nobody disagree with him without them being morally suspect? Why can he not disagree with people in a civil manner? Why must he insult people and viewpoints who differ from him? This is another example of Clegg practising a deeply un-serious brand of politics.

Despite what Andy Burnham MP says, the principles of the NHS are still very much alive

By Tim Montgomerie
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Last night the NHS Bill was passed. The Lansley reforms became law. Regular ConHome readers will know that I regret that. I think nearly all that the heavily-amended-and-bureaucratised Bill set out to achieve could have been achieved by continuing with what Labour had already put in place. We should have chosen evolution rather than given the impression of revolution. Troubles in the NHS would then have been blamed fairly and squarely on the empty national coffers.

Nonetheless what is done is done and we now need to make the best out of a bad job. In that task we might be helped by the hysterical behaviour of our political opponents. The Mirror wants us to believe that the NHS is dead this morning. What absolute nonsense. The NHS remains free at the point of use. The Coalition is investing more money in the health service. It's the Labour administration in Wales that is cutting the NHS - a theme we will be developing on ConHome in the next few days with an article from Conservative MP Alun Cairns.

And it's not just the Mirror that deserves ConHome's Order of the Over-The-Top. Andy Burnham chose to piggy-back on the Queen's Jubilee speech and make political points. “On this day," he said, "in the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee year, we should be celebrating what a much-valued social ­institution has done to bind our nation together throughout the 60 years of her reign." He concluded: "Instead, we gather to dismantle it.” Labour really won't help themselves if they can't find the reasonable position on the rhetorical dial.

Eric Pickles as Mr Bumble. George Osborne as Wackford Squeers. The Dickensian world of Labour MP Chris Williamson's tweets

By Matthew Barrett
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It's Charles Dickens' 200th birthday today. To mark the occasion, each Cabinet member received a Dickens novel hand-picked by Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt this morning. 

But there is one MP who will be celebrating the great writer's birthday more than most. That MP is Chris Williamson, who represents Derby North, and acts as a Shadow Minister for Communities and Local Government. Mr Williamson's Twitter feed is so over-the-top in attacking the Conservatives as pantomime baddies (and almost always calling the Government "Dickensian") that anybody would think it was a fake account.

In the world of Mr Williamson's Twitter account, Eric Pickles is Mr Bumble, George Osborne is Wackford Squeers, and Charles Dickens would be "horrified that the poverty he fought to eradicate is being brought back by warped Tory ideology".

Polly Toynbee's opinion of the rioters? They were nearly as bad as the bankers!

By Matthew Barrett
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A fine, cut-out-and-keep column from Polly Toynbee today. She kicks off by calling this government "small-staters":

"So far, the small-staters are losing. A small state means – and Cameron has not budged – a smaller police force and shrunken social programmes, with more potential for anarchy."

Today's Order of the O.T.T: Dr Who screenwriter describes Cameron and Clegg as "savage" and "evil"

By Paul Goodman
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It is early in the morning, there's fierce daily competition for our Order of the O.T.T award, and I'm probably getting ahead of myself by pinning it on the noble breast of Russell T. Davis, Dr Who Screenwriter.

None the less, I will take the risk.  Davis, who according to the Daily Mail "led the revival of Doctor Who in 2005", has described David Cameron and Nick Clegg as "savage and evil people".  Go for it, Russell!

The Conservative Party, he added, may appear "buffonish", but is actually "as lethal as a laser".  (This helps to explain why it won the last election outright with a three-figure majority.)

You may be wondering by now what has provoked this outburst.  Military action against Gaddafi?  Changes to incapacity benefit?  Dominic Grieve's complicity in the cover-up of the David Kelly business?

No: Davis is upset by the freezing of the BBC licence fee.  Never let it be said that its screenwriters take a parochial view of the world!

But why has Davis stopped there?  Why not go further, and drag in the obligatory reference to Hitler and the nazis?

This would have allowed the Daily Mail to go even bigger on the story, however reluctant Paul Dacre is to go for that sort of thing.

The paper helpfully concludes its report as follows: "John Barrowman, the star of Torchwood, which will air on BBC1, said the new series of the sci-fi show would be raunchier than ever and include ‘man sex’."

Introducing... the Arthur Scargill of 2011... Dave Prentis of Unison

By Matthew Barrett
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Dave Prentis is the General Secretary of UNISON, one of Britain's largest unions, and one with a huge grip on public services. He is also auditioning for the position of 2011's Arthur Scargill, if this speech is anything to go by. 

In the above video, Prentis starts off with some way over-the-top rhetoric:

"Don't underestimate the outrage at the savagery of your gratuitous attack on our pensions"

He then accuses the Government of instigating some kind of class war:

"their crude efforts to set public sector against private sector, to start a new race to the bottom ... an attack on over five million workers, 20 million people could be affected and all on the false premise that our pensions are gold-plated and unaffordable, it's a tissue of lies"

Prentis finishes off with a belligerent rallying cry:

"we will strike to defend our pensions and it will be a campaign of strike action without precedent ... we plan for the worst and our preparations are well advanced, but there is more, much more to do, and today, this is our union's call to arms"

Mr Prentis also recently urged Ed Miliband to stop making "reasonable statements". 

Blinded by hatred. Deafened by the sound of its own anger. The world of the Left-wing commentariat.

By Matthew Barrett
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There are many forces inside and connected with the Labour Party that are discouraging modernisation. The unions. The lack of private sector voices in the parliamentary party. And, the subject of this post, the Left-wing pundits.

There is a thoughtful centre left commentariat but there is a much bigger section of left-wing opinion which relentlessly plays to the Guardian-reading gallery. It never challenges the prejudices of its readers. It never questions left-wing conventional wisdom. It demonises the Conservatives, attempts to frighten the poor and excuses violent protest.

"The vicious Tory determination to make the poor suffer"

By Tim Montgomerie

Yesterday morning I noted Tristram Hunt MP's belief that David Cameron wanted to take Britain back to the ethos of the Victorian workhouse.

Last night I blogged Polly Toynbee's argument that the Conservatives were planning a "final solution" for the poor.

In today's Mirror, Labour MP Jon Cruddas accuses the Tories of "social and economic cleansing".

It does appear - to use the words of Unite's Len McCluskey - that large sections of the Left really do believe in “the vicious Tory determination to make the poor suffer.”

I've written for Comment is free about this rhetorical overkill and invited the Left to join Conservatives in a sensible debate about poverty reduction:

"My motivation for being in politics is because I believe in the Conservative Party’s one nation traditions.  My political heroes are Wilberforce, Shaftesbury and Disraeli. I believe the Left has lost the war on poverty by putting too much faith in the power of the state to deliver social justice. The Left neglected the importance of incentives to work, traditional schooling and, most significantly, the two parent family. A large number of the new generation of Conservative MPs think the same. They, too, are in politics to spread wealth, opportunity and ownership. Britain's poor will benefit if public policymakers engage in a grown up argument about competing approaches to social justice. They'll lose if debate is conducted at the level of the school playground. Conservatives may be wrong about work, family and school being the best underpinnings of a compassionate society but don’t accuse us of being a cross between Fagin and Goebbels."

The full piece is here.

Tories want "final solution" for the poor says Guardian's Polly Toynbee

By Tim Montgomerie

Earlier Tristram Hunt argued that Tories wanted the poor in Victorian workhouses. Polly Toynbee thinks we want a "final solution" for the poor...

Hat-tip: Guido Fawkes.

Labour MP writes of gruel, rotten bones and putrid horseflesh in childish attack on Cameron's "workhouse ethos"

By Tim Montgomerie

It's been a while since I nominated a Labour politician for the Order of the OTT but Tristram Hunt certainly deserves recognition for his ridiculous piece in today's Daily Mirror:

"Not far from where young David Cameron went to school at Eton, there used to stand a workhouse for the poor of Victorian England. Husbands were separated from wives; mothers from children. When Elizabeth Wyse on Christmas Day 1840 tried to spend the night with her daughter, the workhouse director dragged her from the room, locked her in the workhouse cage, and left her in solitary confinement with no coat, no bedding-straw, and no chamber pot for 24 hours. The following morning, she was served her fellow inmates' cold gruel before being sent back to her soiled cage to clean it. With her hands. The Victorians disliked the poor. At Andover workhouse in Hampshire, single women with illegitimate children were forced to wear a yellow stripe across their grey gowns if they wanted to eat. Young boys were sent out to work in the tanneries and were so starved they gnawed on rotten bones and putrid horseflesh to stay alive. The cuts we are witnessing today to Britain's public services will not send us back to the worst days of the 19th century. But the approach of David Cameron and George Osborne to the welfare state reeks of the 1800s."

Hunt's garbage is in full here.