The Liberal Democrats seem to be in total denial about the sheer level of public anger produced by their betrayals, even though the Lib-Dems came last in this year's Barnsley Central by-election (scoring 4.2% of the vote and losing their deposit). With inimitable strategic logic the Lib-Dems set-up ex-NF member (and therefore de-facto former Nazi sympathiser) Dominic Carman to represent them in a town previously considered to be something of a BNP stronghold, but Dominic Carman not only succeeded in being beaten by a local independent, but the Lib-Dems even managed to get beaten by the post-meltdown BNP (and it's worth remembering that in the 2010 General Election, the BNP failed to achieve the much-feared breakthrough of winning their first MP, with that honour going instead to Caroline Lucas of the Green Party).

The 15th Sept by-election in the London Borough of Camden's Highgate Ward was called after former Labour councillor Michael Nicolaides quit after just 15 months in his job, but unfortunately Labour re-took the seat, winning 1178 votes (hey, don't mention anything about WMDs or half a million dead Iraqis). The good news is that the Green Party came a close second, after former Lib Dem councillor Alexis Rowell quit the liars to join the Greens. The Green Party won 947 votes, more than EIGHT TIMES the pathetic 111 votes scored by the Lib-Dems.

The local paper, the Camden New Journal, reported that Alexis Rowell's resignation letter told Nick Clegg that "I'm still shocked by the fact that you signed the bill to privatise the NHS, by the draconian front-loaded cuts to local government, by the free schools policy, by the virtual abandonment of state-funded higher education, by the lack of any action on banker bonuses... and by the decision to fully privatise the Royal Mail... and a host of other free-market policies... which I didn't vote for". Of course Nick Clegg doesn't give a flying fuck about the damage his collaboration is inflicting on his own party, because, as a former employee of hard-line Tory Leon Brittan, Clegg's real loyalties always were to the Tories anyway; and with typical hypocrisy, the winning Labour candidate Sally Grimston stressed her task is to "challenge health service reforms", despite the fact that many NHS services were cut and privatised under New Labour.

Obviously voting is no substitute for more direct forms of political activism, but it doesn't have to be, and if we're going to defeat the cuts, austerity and privatisation etc, we need to attack on several fronts, simultaneously pursuing complementary militant and liberal strategies. One of those fronts should (in my opinion) be active electoral, financial and campaign support for the Green Party. No-one, no matter how radical they are, has anything to lose by trying to help the Greens establish themselves as an alternative to the bullshit we're been forced to endure...

 http://join.greenparty.org.uk/membership/index.html