The Party's over for 'Ridiculous Nicholas' @ No 10

"The party's over
It's time to call it a day
They've burst your
pretty balloon"

http://www.mp3lyrics.org/s/shirley-bassey/the-partys-over/

Arturo was caterwauling the lyrics right in my ear! It was awful! But I knew what he meant.

The fiasco of the LibDem Spring Conference was over and done with. 'Ridiculous Nicholas' Clegg thought he had won the vote on the Health and Social Care Bill only to discover that you cannot have your way all the time. No matter what a 'pretty boy' you think you are!

A Guardian article by Patrick Wintour and Nicholas Watt had the headline:

Nick Clegg isolated after party splits on health and tax

They went on to write:

Nick Clegg's 's leadership came under its most severe challenge since the coalition was formed when the Liberal Democrat conference at the weekend refused to endorse the health bill, and he faced a damaging public split in his party over his plans to force the rich to pay a minimum proportion of their earnings in tax.

After extraordinary manoeuvring, the Lib Dem spring conference in Gateshead voted by 314 to 270 to delete a call for the party's peers to vote for the health bill's third reading, the nearest the delegates could get to outright rejection of the legislation. Clegg and his frontbench were left voting in the minority after a passionate 45-minute debate.

What a surprise that must have been for 'Ridiculous Nicholas' who suffers from the same syndrome as his pal 'Boy David' Cameron. The syndrome of 'What I say is law round here'.

Wintour and Watt continued:

Earlier in the weekend Clegg had urged delegates to endorse the parliamentary party's approach, and told them to support Lady Williams, their senior peer, rather than Andy Burnham, Labour's shadow health secretary.

However, senior party figures said they will now be privately telling Clegg he has to show he is listening to his party and that further substantial changes should be sought, even though the bill has nearly completed its tortuous parliamentary passage.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/mar/11/nick-clegg-health-bill-tax-lib-dem

But will this ridiculous fellow really stoop so low as to listen to anyone else? Past behaviour indicates that he will not.

There were many other accounts of the LibDem conference. Twitter was awash with disillusioned health workers tweeting their alarm. However, the compulsive read, of the moment, is the article written by Polly Toynbee in the 'Guardian' in which she refutes Baroness Williams' defence of the Lords' amendments to the Health and Social Care Bill. The headline for Toynbee's article is:

Sorry, Shirley Williams, but I have to nail your health bill myths. The evidence suggests that if anyone is guilty of trumping truth with tribalism on privatisation and the NHS, it's Williams

The article proceeds to investigate, with clinical precision, one of the main points in Baroness Williams' claim that she had been mis-represented about:

* the 49% private provision for NHS foundation trusts

Toynbee ends her article in the following way:

A flurry of minor concessions seems to have blinded Shirley Williams to this bill's unchanged nature. Its purpose remains what it always was: the Conservative charter for commercialising the NHS; the end of the NHS as a national service. The Lords' last chance to amend and delay it is next Monday, while the government resists legal orders to publish its Risk Register. If anyone doubts the scale of change, a second NHS hospital this week put itself up for takeover or private sale, after Hinchingbrooke was called a "one-off". That's just the start..

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/mar/12/sorry-shirley-williams-nail-health-bill-myths

On Twitter disapponted Tweeters gave vent to their feelings:

shane So #Clegg wants his party to move on from #nhs argument. Ok Nick try brush this one under the carpet and you look the bigger fool then u are

Phil Bryant ‏Nick Clegg says his party should be "shouting their achievements from the rooftops." Least he won't take up too much of our time #clegg

Clive Peedell Doctors must consider standing against #libdems MPs at next election if Shirley Williams motion is passed. I'll take on Redcar #LDConf

GeorgeMonbiot The cowardice & craven surrender of the #LibDems over the #NHS will not be quickly forgotten: bbc.in/AsTIWc

So - Arturo was right:

"The party's over
It's time to call it a day
They've burst your
pretty balloon"

'It's time to call it a day' on the LibDems as a party! Come 2015 - that is if the Coalition lasts that long - there probably won't be a single LibDem MP left standing. So I say:

Will the last LibDem, kindly switch off the lights, please.

And, it could all have been so very different if they'd had a Leader who really did have some principles.

Arturo and I are off for our nosh. No good crying over spilt milk!

'Bye'