Maybe the wrong coloured paint from Stuart Rodger

 I did start to try and write this last night but couldn't get around to completing it until now

It is a pity that Stuart Rodger* felt he had to resort to such a cheap stunt a throwing an egg full of blue paint to try and get a message across to Nick Clegg. He is a bright and intelligent young man. Yes in his brief time in the Lib Dems I did get to know him and debate with him, both at that time and since he left.

He has the intelligence to frame an argument against what the Lib Dems did. I know me and him had that debate on Facebook in private messages. I'm all for people entering into the debate, if they can only offer an alternative. Apparently as the egg was hurled though Stuart shouted "No Shock Doctrine for Britain" in relation to Naomi Klein's book.

As an economics graduate Klein's theory that neo-cons and neo-liberals rode on the back on manufactured crisis to maintain laissez-faire economic success strikes me as ranking up there with all manner of conspiracy theories, as where is the null hypothesis. If Klein in correct the UK economic growth wouldn't have been stable for so long in the 50s. Ok it was on the back on a crisis, yet she fails to call World War II a monetarist created 'crisis'. How an intelligent politics student at one of Scotland's top universities can fall for that one sided evidence without looking at the historical context objectively is beyond me.

However, liberalism to me has always been about more economic liberalism. In my debates with Stuart since he left the party that seemed to be his only focus. He forgot that the Lib Dems were and are a party that will stand up for universal individual freedom, something that as he appears in Glasgow Sheriff's Court today he may well be thankful for. Indeed as Tim Montgomerie has written today on ConservativeHome, it is Nick and the Lib Dems who are taking the Conservatives away from some of their election pledges.

So maybe it was the wrong colour paint at the wrong leader, not that Stuart with his narrow obsession of what he thought it meant to be liberal would see that.

Read also

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* Some of the media are asking if he is a member of the party. He came to us from Labour but left again shortly after the 2010 General Election, burning his membership card.