Wilful provocation or political naivety? Both.

Two comments have caused much consternation this weekend. The first was from Enterprise Tsar Lord Young on Thursday evening, and led to his resignation on Friday afternoon. The second was from Vince Cable on Sunday morning. Both showed a combination of political naivety and wilful provocation.

It has been pointed out by many (see here and here for starters) that Lord Young's comments that people have 'never had it so good' during this 'so-called recession' contained an element of truth. Low interest rates are good news if you've got a mortgage and still have your job. But that doesn't mean he was right to say it.

Lord Young was probably fed up with generalised comments about the recession and how it was affecting people. So he sought to tell it as he saw it. But in doing so he made a sweeping, generalised comment of his own which undermined the government's narrative that its deficit reduction plan - and the job losses that will accompany it - is the only responsible way to deal with the effects of the recession. They also play in to people's ill-founded yet genuine concerns that the Tory party is the party of the rich, and that it doesn't care - or won't even notice - if they suffer. Any comment that undermines the government, however economically accurate it may be, is a foolish comment to make. It is right that he has resigned.

Vince Cable has also made comments that are totally accurate and completely foolish. Speaking to the BBC's Politics Show, he said that, on tuition fees, the Lib Dems 'didn't break a promise. We made a commitment in our manifesto, we didn't win the election. We then entered into a coalition agreement, and it's the coalition agreement that's binding upon us and which I'm trying to honour.' Spot on; but what on earth is he thinking?

The Lib Dems need the debate about tuition fees to go away. As quickly as possible. It is turning voters against them. So why would one of the most senior Lib Dems come out and deliberately provoke their (very noisy) opponents on this issue? Last week the CCHQ building was trashed by part of a 50,000 strong demonstration against this legislation. All he's done is start another round of media interest in the subject. NUS President Aaron Porter is back on the airwaves, calling the comments 'insulting'. Cable gains nothing from this. Neither does his party - in fact it just highlights the same 'broken promises' that Clegg talked about (see below) before the election. Sometimes, even if you know you're right about something, you should just bite your tongue and shut up about it. 

Left-wing blogs silent on CCHQ violence

The left wing of the political blogosphere has let itself down today. Almost every blog has either ignored or glossed over the violence seen yesterday at CCHQ's Millbank Office as the work of a few or as a distraction, and most seek to absolve the demonstration and the NUS of any responsibility for it. 

Political Scrapbook's runs with 'What you didn't see on Sky News: student protesters booing those who threw fire extinguisher'. Thus the site's only mention of the violence is an attack on Sky, accusing the broadcaster of misleading reporting because it failed to show footage of protesters booing the student who dropped a fire extinguisher on the police. It makes no criticism of the violence, only calling the guy on the roof an 'idiot'. 

Labour List's Mark Ferguson says 'Young people are angry, do you blame them?' His first paragraph contains some criticism of the violence as 'Inexcusable, self-defeating and plain wrong' before quickly absolving the protest of any responsibility for it. It's clear from this and the rest of his article that he's more concerned about the damage done to the image of the protest than he is about the attack on CCHQ. 

Left Foot Forward manages to call the violent protesters 'idiots' and link to NUS President Aaron Porter's tweeted criticism of the violence before, like Labour List, launching into a paddy about how this will distract from the real issues at stake. And like Labour List, this is a blog post about the fee increase with a cursory mention of the violence, rather than a flat condemnation of it. 

Sunny Hundal on Liberal Conspiracy goes so far as to urge his fellow lefties to stop 'self-flagellating' about the violence (I'm not sure what he's been reading because I can't find any such 'self-flagellation'). Deciding not to offer any criticism, he instead sounds giddy as he contemplates the beginning of a nationwide campaign of local protests against the coalition. Then, in this astonishing comment, he laughs off the violence and describes the media, police and Tories as 'wusses'.

Dave Osler on the same site gets nostalgic for the glory days of the 1980s and again offers absolutely no condemnation of the violence, instead postulating that some of the protesters might be the children of the miner's strike and poll tax. As he says: 'You only need a couple of hundred of us and - let the state be in no illusion about this! - we are more than capable of organising civil disobedience.' 

Next Left has absolutely no mention of the protest, just like prominent MP blogger Tom Harris and former spinner Alistair Campbell. Maybe they've got better things to write about, or perhaps they decided that if they couldn't write anything criticising the violence then they'd better not write anything at all. 

Only James Forsyth over at Coffee House, the Spectator's blog, manages any outright criticism of the violence. He unambiguously states that 'It's essential that those responsible for today's violence feel the full force of the law.' Good on him. 

It has been noted that this year left wing sites have risen in prominence and, according to the Total Politics Blog Awards 2010, now occupy 4 top ten places, compared to to one last year. Yet these blogs seem to be far less critical of their own side than blogs on the right. Leading right wing bloggers Iain Dale and Guido Fawkes are totally unafraid of attacking the right when they see fit. Conservative Home is similarly unafraid of saying what it thinks about the Tories. Why is this so hard for those on the left? It should be pretty easy for them to find the courage to openly and unambiguously condemn this violence, but for some reason it isn't.