Idiotic Tweet
When I heard the news that Douglas Carswell was resigning his parliamentary, leaving the Conservative Party, joining UKIP and forcing a by-election in Clacton, I said to myself "Well the chap might be more than bonkers in some ways, especially over Europe and the European Union, but you've got to admire the strength of his convictions."
But not everyone agreed with me apparently and the Labour leader, Ed Miliband, tweeted one of the dumbest comments I've heard in a long time, as follows:
Now Douglas Carswell is one of the few Conservative MPs to champion proportional representation (PR), he's also in favour of modernising politics and making MPs more accountable by introducing an effective power of recall, for example.
Not surprisingly, Douglas Carswell is a believer in more direct democracy such as the referendum we're having at the moment on Scottish independence which is why he feels so strongly about putting the issue of the UK's membership of the European Union (EU) to a popular vote.
So to my mind Douglas Carswell is no mug and while I disagree strongly with him on a wide range of political issues, I absolutely support his view about letting the people have their say.
Whereas politicians like Ed Miliband have denied people that choice for years because the truth is that Labour is sceptical of its ability to win the popular vote and because the political establishment at Westminster has run away from the issue for so long, UKIP has managed to tap into a great well of public discontent.
So much so that I think that voters in England would now vote to come out of the EU if the question were put to them 'fair and square' in a referendum.
And if things keep going the way they are now, I suspect people like Douglas Carswell will have the last laugh because Labour and Ed Miliband are failing to provide the country with effective political leadership.
