Links on Sunday - 16/12/2007

To start this week with some positive news, the Green Party won a resounding victory in a council by-election in Brighton that was seen as a crucial test in the town where there are high hopes of Britain's first Green MP. More information on the Green Party of England and Wales site here.

Returning to last week's Climate demo in London, Simon from Swindon posted a good range of video and audio clips on Indymedia yesterday.

Meanwhile, if more confirmation were needed of the rightward drift of the Lib Dems and the likely orientation of their new leader (whether Huhne or Clegg - Orange Bookers both) we see David Cameron setting out his stall for a "progressive" (cough!) alliance between the Tories and the Lib Dems. He even (choke!) mentions the Greens. (No thanks Dave - even limited local dealings with the Tories in a few areas have been ill-advised and largely counter-productive) Now this may just be dodgy Dave trying to spoil the Lib Dems' party and cause rows, but he would not be able to play the card if the "progressive" alliance was unthinkable. Mind you, with the Tories leaning towards a reversion to 19th Century protectionism and the Lib Dems becoming ever more enamoured of German FDP style economic neo-liberalism the two parties appear to be swapping economic clothes. It is an unequal and patchy process with sizeable groups of resisters, but the Tories seem keen to leave behind (at least in terms of language and presentation) the Thatcherite laissez-faire economics that are growing in popularity with the Lib-Dems, who for their part want to bury the Social Democratic legacy of Charlie Kennedy, possibly the last representative in LD high office of the Limehouse tendency. Of course, Huhne has rejected the Cameron approach - but this is probably mostly to do with him needing to keep what passes for the Lib Dem "left" onside with his leadership campaign. The main demand "progressives" should make to the Tories and the other establishment parties - whoever is in power - should be a proportional voting system as soon as possible. Without this the British people are just going to have more of the same old neo-liberal dish, with different rhetorical side salads.

Moving to blogs, the Lenin's Tomb blog hosted a good guest post by Gareth Dale on the Bali summit this week.

Just in, the Socialist Unity Blog reports on developments in Scotland around Tommy Sheridan. S.U.B. have also been covering the split in the main British far-right party, the BNP.

Overseas, Renegade Eye has been covering the developing situations in Bolivia and Argentina.

Molly at Gaian Economics blogged on the "Credit Crunch" this week. Congratulations to Molly on coming top in Jim Jay's Green Blogs poll (in which my humble efforts also appeared in the top twenty). I will get round to reviewing Molly's book Market Schmarket eventually!

Finally this week, Derek Wall has been blogging on Vegetarian and Vegan Christmas recipes and posts his recipe for vegan Xmas pudding!