James Graham has been making much noise proclaiming the end of Equi-distance thanks to a pamphlet written by Nick Clegg that’s been published by Demos. He might be right, but it doesn’t seem that way to me from what I’ve seen so far. Then again, I wasn’t able to listen in to the briefing given to us bloggers, so perhaps this is why I’ve not yet put it into the proper ‘context’ so to speak.

It’s the most overt appeal to disillusioned Labour voters I’ve yet seen – specifically those ‘New Labour’ voters that fell to the charms of Tony Blair, rather than the hardcore collectivists that consider loyalty to Labour a virtue in and of itself. It looks like part of a strategy, not *the* strategy. The talk of “progressivism” I blame, entirely, on Obama-mania – but I seriously doubt anyone but political anoraks talk about a ‘progressive future’ anyway. This is not aimed at the general public. It’s aimed squarely at Polly Toynbee and other left wing opinion formers.

Of course, I can mostly agree with stuff like this*:

As I will argue below, liberalism’s starting point is the fairer dispersal and distribution of power. From a fairer tax system to the protection of civil liberties, from the reform of our clapped out Westminster politics to the break up of monopolistic banks, from devolved public services to a new concept of green citizenship, from social radicalism in education to a more accountable and effective European Union, dispersing power more fairly and holding the powerful to account runs as a thread through all of my ownliberal beliefs.

… except for the bit about Green Citizenship as you can possibly guess. The only environmental issues that really concern me are those relating to polluting the water supply, polluting the air with chemicals that cause breathing problems, etc. You know, the quality of our environment.

But I’ve digressed. See, Nick’s biggest problem is the Green issue, for me. If you accept that action needs to be taken, then the only real way to achieve that is co-ordinated international action, because we all know that anything we do is pure token gesture for the benefit of sending ‘a message’ – crippling token gestures at that, too. The danger is that in demanding devolution of power with your right hand whilst centralising other powers – in fact much more important powers – with your left confuses everyone and makes people doubt you’re sincere about either.

Sadly for everyone, this pamphlet is 92 pages long without an executive summary so the odds of being able to read this properly are quite low. I certainly can’t do it before I head off to work.

So far I’ve not been able to find the bit where he rules out propping up the Conservatives (as claimed by James), but I have found a bit where he says he refuses to ‘even contemplate’ doing the same for Labour. In other words… nothing’s really changed there. We’re not going to prop up either.

Hopefully more on this soon… if I can get time to read it. Where’s the executive summary for those of us not able to listen in to the briefing call? Think of the churnalists! Please, won’t someone think of the churnalists?!

*With the caveat that this is clearly in language not aimed at me. If you actually look at the principles expressed then yes, I can see some seeds of common ground.