Has there ever been a Government more “economic with the truth”?  Not only has this Labour administration now descended into the realms of pure deceit, but it seeks to browbeat those armed with the real facts who dare to publish them.

No matter how you look at it, Gail Trimble and her Corpus Christi College, Oxford team won the 2009 University Challenge competition.  That the BBC stripped the champions of the official title and physical trophy is neither here nor there.  It is not surprising that the Manchester University team was reluctant to accept the champion's mantle, because its members knew that they had not earned that accolade.

The rules contrived an unfair outcome, the disqualification of the winning team, as a direct result of the competition now being run across two academic years, in effect barring final year students and one year course postgraduates from taking part.  Everyone save the BBC and its acolytes saw the strict application of the rules as being grossly unfair and wrong.  In the light of the latest revelations that earlier winning teams also comprised disqualified members, the BBC’s decision to disqualify Corpus Christi appears increasingly perverse as well as ridiculous.

As with another great champion who was stripped of his title on trumped up and dubious grounds, Gail Trimble and her Corpus Christi team remain the people’s champions.

According to Vernon Bogdanor, Fellow of Brasenose College and Professor of Politics and Government at Oxford University,

“Why should Gordon Brown not seek a coalition government, a government of national recovery, to bring all social democrats under one roof? That would revive the new Labour project of realignment that collapsed only because it won by a landslide in 1997; and it would transform the economic psychology of an electorate coming to believe that Britain's economic problems are too serious to be resolved by any one party alone…

 

...There are, of course, deep differences between Labour and the Liberal Democrats. Yet a government of national recovery would not be a mere coalition of convenience. The two parties have been able to work together perfectly well in the devolved parliaments in Scotland and Wales, to the benefit of progressive government. They could surely agree measures to stimulate the economy, combat the collapse of the housing market, achieve greater control over the banks and reform the regulatory system.”

and finally,

“It was because the forces of progress were so often divided that the 20th century was a Conservative century. If the Left can unite on an agreed programme of economic reform and electoral reform, the Conservative century could be succeeded by the progressive century.”

I cannot imagine anything that would be guaranteed to enrage the electorate more, than a centre-left coalition maintaining in power the most inept, unprincipled and ability challenged British administration of modern history. A political misjudgement of this magnitude on the part of the Liberal Democrats must surely ensure Conservative hegemony for many years to come.