Quote of the Day: Nick Clegg on opposition to AV

When the vested interests of the old, tired, establishment of politics and the media are so opposed to a reform – turning so personal about it – you know there is something worth fighting for. It is a desperate attempt to defend the indefensible – the old politics of tribalism backed by dinosaurs on all sides of the political spectrum. It is the attack on people working together for the national good that is so dismal.

- Nick Clegg, Leader of the Liberal-Democrats (UK); Guardian newspaper

It has been nearly a year since the coalition government was formed in Britain.  The Conservative Party, lead by David Cameron, and the Liberal Democrats, lead by Nick Clegg, formed a coalition to bridge the fact that no one political party had gained sufficient seats in Westminster to hold the confidence of parliament, after the 2010 elections.  Things have not gone well amongst the ranks of Liberal Democrat supporters, and the biggest challenge advocated  by the party -alternative voting mechanism- appears to be withering.

So few people in any line of politics are willing to say the obvious fact that our current political systems are badly broken and those who talk dismissively about change, are the same persons who exploit that existing system to their maximum political advantage.  I have spoken briefly on what I think are some of the impressive qualities of Nick Clegg in previous posts.  Unlike either the corrupt Labour Party or post-Thatcherite crony-capitalists of the Conservative Party, Mr. Clegg has denounced the Iraq war (here and here), embraced environmentalism (here), and made some of the largest changes to Britain's security-state apparatus, promoted by Labour, to make government accountable to the true sovereign; the people (here).

The fact that so many voters will act with such myopic thinking in opposing the alternative voting system, in order to simply punish the Liberal Democrats for aligning themselves with the Conservatives, only proves that most people are not only unable to think rationally, but are petty to the point of being sadomasochistic.