Five principal council by-elections were contested yesterday in England, Scotland and Wales. In Telford & Wrekin (UA), by-elections were held in Ironbridge Gorge and Newport West. The former contest resulted in a Labour hold although they saw a decrease of 8.9% in their vote from the ward’s 2011 election, after UKIP had polled 18.5% despite not fielding a candidate in 2011. In Newport West an Independent candidate gained a seat from the Conservatives to become the second Independent representative on Telford & Wrekin council. The Conservatives saw a 37% decrease in their vote finishing 85 votes adrift in second place.
There was also good news for an Independent Candidate in Castle Point who polled 39.1% to gain the seat in Canvey Island East ward from the Canvey Island Independent Party. The CIIP, who represent the second largest party on Castle Point DC after the Conservatives, saw their vote share decrease by 34.4% from the 2014 contest.
The SNP held their seat in North Coast and Cumbraes in North Ayrshire (UA) after receiving 2021 first preference votes.
In Wales, the Sandfields East contest in Neath Port Talbot (UA) saw Labour poll 41.1% in winning with a majority of 280 votes. UKIP finished second with 34.4% of the vote having not contested the ward’s 2012 election.
In the South Yorkshire PCC by-election, Labour held the post winning 50% of the vote.
No Liberal Democrat candidates were fielded in yesterday’s round of by-elections.
* ALDC is the Association of Liberal Democrat Councillors and Campaigners
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35 Comments
I can see the logic in not fielding a PCC candidate – £5k deposit you might not see back, we’ve got a policy of not supporting PCCs, and it’s a high-profile Labour-UKIP contest.
But 0 out of 5 local election candidates? Poor show. All it takes in a non-target ward is someone from the local party to knock on one road with a nomination form and ask for 10 signatures “all you’re saying is that there should be a LD candidate for voters to choose.”
tpfkar > sometimes there is no-one from the local party who wants to stand.
The low numbers of Libdem candidates in Local Byelections is terrible news, both for what it says about our morale & for the the further depressing effect. Yesterdays figure was a a statistical fluke but the typical rate is now about 40%. The “Usual Suspects” will blame The Leadership but thats missing the point, we all have to pull together & start behaving as though we believed in ourselves.
But it is the leadership, isn’t it? Personally, I don’t want to be publicly associated with the current leadership among my friends and acquaintances, because I don’t think the Liberal Democrats have done a good job, and I’m not surprised others don’t seem to want to, either. I will pull together when there is a new leader, and a change of direction away from ideological austerity and anti-public sector policies.
I fear this trend will continue with many Local Parties slipping back in terms of activist involvement because of the the way the Party is headed nationally with a near universally reviled leader.
I think we need to pull out of the coalition. The leader is fine, it’s the Conservatives abandoning compassionate conservatism that is the problem. Back benches should start agitating for it.
I agree with Paul Barker: those blaming the leadership are missing the point, eve though they may have some justifiable issues. Liberalism is at a very low ebb. The anti immigrant agenda, insularity, punitive attitudes and an authoritarian antipathy to tolerance are on the rise. In general, it is not a good time to be a public servant.
Lib Dems need to assert core principles. We do need to “pull together” and believe in ourselves. Although this does mean that we have to mount a concerted campaign for the next election, our sights also have to look beyond. There is a danger that an aftermath of a dismal result that a consequent implosion could nullify the benefits of the experience of government. The obvious mistakes should not be allowed to outweigh the tangible achievements, not the least that Lib Dems have demonstrated that in very difficult circumstances a coalition has lasted the full term and managed to curb the some of the excesses of single party dogmatism.
The rebound will be hard: those who disparagingly cry that no one is listening to the Liberal Democrats, will have to experience what it is like when the Party really is being ignored. I would argue that the irony for the Party is that one of the biggest single issues of complaint, the student fees pledge, was born of desperation to be noticed.
Inevitable result of dispirited members who have little interest in the narrow target strategy, and a clique ridden structure that prevents new blood becoming involved.
So Paul “Usual suspect” Barker continues to trumpet the “It’s not Nick’s fault” Manta. Sadly if you ask the public you will find that that it is. That is why there has been a shift to the right. Nick had our big chance and blew it.
Martin, those people no longer believe in our vision because Nick made a total mess of it in coalition. They won’t even start to return until we say sorry. A lot of councillors, activists, members and MPs are in that group. Does anyone have the bottle to do anything before May 2015, after that it will be too late for at least a generation?
As a usual suspect – what we said has been proven right – the stick with Nick and things will get better cheerleaders have been proved wrong. Some of us has been around long enough to know when campaigning is ineffective or worse counter productive. The Party has never been so unpopular – that’s not an opinion, it’s a fact. People who ignore the real problem will never come up with the right solution. Work harder, all put together, none of that will work. The party is dying and those who can’t acknowledge that are deceiving themselves but nobody else.
I feel, in all fairness, bound to point out that the wards being fought this week were not ones where we had in recent years either fought at all, or won any significant vote when we had stood. So it wasn’t really a good week for purposes of drawing firm conclusions.
However, no-one at the top has the bottle to acknowledge they pursued the wrong strategy, allowing their agenda, both in policy terms (“it’s the deficit, stupid”) and in political / positioning terms (not setting enough non-negotiables when talking about coalition or joint administration etc. It DOES need a big apology, and people to fall on their swords. The electorate will not believe we are an attractive option to vote for if these things don’t happen. I sound like a stuck record, but all the evidence points to this. We know Tories and Labour wouldn’t do this – but we represent the new politics, don’t we? Where honesty etc are the way to go.
paul barker 1st Nov ’14 – 11:07am
“.,,,,,,, start behaving as though we believed in ourselves.”
paul barker, Have you considered the possibility that this is exactly what has happened?
Those remaining as members of the party are now behaving as you suggest. Behaving as thought they believe in themselves.
They have not left the party but they have simply “downed tools”.
They have done so because they have stopped believing in the delusions and deceptions of the last 8 years and have started believing in themselves again.
Why should people who believe in themselves and in the Preamble to the Constitution work for a clique who have a different agenda?
They do not subscribe to the delusions and deceptions, so they have “downed tools”, they are not standing as candidates for a party which clings on to a discredited set of imported illiberal ideas pushed down from the top by a small clique of wealthy individuals.
These members and former activists have gone on strike, they have withdrawn their labour.
They have had enough.
The failure to put up candidates in areas where there is a functioning party and potential candidates for a local council by-election is evidence of this, but it is not the only evidence.
It has been reported in LDV that the number of Liberal Democrat registered delegates actually attending the Glasgow conference woutlets than number of journalists attending.
There is still a shortage of candidates in place for the General Election Campaign which starts in around 150 days from now.
The official line is that we have more than 40,000 members.
It will be interesting to see in a few weeks time just how many votes are cast in the election for party president.
How many votes will be cast? 30,000 ? Or will it perhaps be 25,000?
What is the paul barker prediction for a “good turnout” in the election for party president ?
When I talk to liberal-minded friends, it is clear that there is a yearning for a party which maintains the principles and policies those friends would vote for. But only if they thought voting for that party was worthwhile because there would be liberal action coming out of it. Despite the odds against them, there are gallant souls prepared to dig in and continue the liberal struggle – against the tide of ANTI which is sweeping the country – most notably seen, in my view, inside those old and emerging parties using ANTI to their advantage. Can the leadership of our own party not grasp the fact it also appears to have also set itself up to be ANTI – including against many of its own members? – bringing into our party illiberal methodologies. Many of us feel that liberal free speech is dying and ‘the grass roots’ which have always pushed the party forward in great campaigns – must wait for a new dawn. We are waiting but meanwhile might vote for other parties who are more likely to achieve the liberal policies we admire. We used to encourage voters to vote tactically for us – now we vote tactically for the best chance of liberal outcomes. When our own core vote has collapsed it is as simple as that.
Post May 2015 we will have to assess whether we continue to support the principle of coalition government. A possible conclusion is that it is incompatible with FPTP and that within the present system a coalition inevitably lacks sufficient public support.
When we committed ourselves to a coalition, the commitment was for the full term anything less would have been an abandonment of the proposition that the UK (like other European countries) can benefit from coalition government. Certainly the AV vote which strongly endorsed the FPTP system puts the proposition in doubt; 2011 was the one moment when the Lib Dem part of the government could have resigned on the basis that the vote was effectively a vote of no confidence, but coalition government, not only electoral reform, would have been shot to pieces in the process.
It is too easy, too lazy and too soon to claim that Nick Clegg or others have made a total mess. Certainly mistakes have been made and Nick Clegg’s version of Liberalism is partial and obviously less than the political tradition that has deep rooted antecedents. There have also been achievements including a demonstration that coalition government is possible and can govern at least as effectively as a single party government, but there is a real question about to what extent our brand of Social Liberalism commands support as opposed to attracting a ragbag of political discontent.
Is the future of the party to return to offering an illusory hope of radical reform, but acting as a pressure valve for FPTP in which discontents can temporarily express their frustrations?
@Martin – It isn’t a matter of whether it is “too easy, too lazy and too soon” to assess Mr. Clegg’s performance. People made up their minds about him by December 2010 and public opinion has not shifted in 4 years.
Unlike David Evans I have accepted (since June when the parliamentary party refused to grasp the nettle) that we are stuck with Clegg and the objective now must be to save as much as possible by running guerilla campaigns that ignore him and the central party’s messages.
Alea jacta est. We have crossed our Rubicon.
Terry (above) speaks for me and I suspect for hundreds of activists. Friday was for me the darkest day in forty years campaigning as Liberal and then a Liberal Democrat. Darker than the nadir of the ’77 County Elections.
Martin urges us to express core principles. The party IS expressing core principles, but they are not the ones that I value. They are not the ones that the Liberal Party on its own, then with the SDP and then as the Liberal Democrats expressed over most of the years in which I felt I belonged it its community.
He lists some of the reasons why a Liberal message might fall on stony ground at present. For instance he says ‘It is not a good time to be a public servant’. But for 7 years we have been trashing the idea of public services. We have preached and resourced the small state as a core principle.
I am not uncritical of many of the ways the state acts towards it citizens. But I see it as a huge resource, conducted properly, Liberally, as a creator of opportunity, as a defender of individual and community power from those who would steal it. It was once called the unservile state in the orange book of its day.
I do not see enough difference between the core values of Cameron’s Conservatives and those expressed by the Liberal Democrats. I suspect that there aren’t.
We are not anymore a party of Peace. We are not a party of Society. We are a party of individuals on their own rather than a party of persons living in communities.
The public see this very clearly and those who once supported us because this was their vision too are voting elsewhere. Activists ‘feel’ this and wince. One by one they stay at home and weep.
Of course that IS being critical of those who have had the direction of the Party in their trust over the last seven years. Many of them are listening to their consciences. I’ll debate with them and campaign against them.
It is possible to say, ‘well times have changed’ we have to move with those times. Or call for solidarity in tough times. But if I did so I’d be ignoring my conscience.
I hear the echoes of Mrs T when I say. “You shift with the times if you want to, this Liberal is not for shifting.”
I don’t agree with the earlier comment that the Party is “dying”, but it is in a critical situation, of which the failure to field any candidates at all in this week’s council by-elections is but one symptom. Sometimes when I get the gung-ho messages from HQ I’m reminded of the generals in the First World War who urged people on even as the poor bloody infantry were dying in their hundreds of thousands. We can be justly proud of some of the things we have achieved in government, and I still believe going into Coalition was the right thing to do for the country. However, we are now shackled to an increasingly nasty and illiberal Tory Party — not the cuddly Cameroons of the Rose Garden in 2010 — and the Government is now doing far too many things that we really cannot support as Liberals. So, yes, the time has come for an amicable divorce. That will leave us just six months to reassert our true identity in the run up to next May’s elections. Voters who have supported us in the past are not disillusioned with Liberal values, but they are no longer willing to back us while we are hitched to the rightward-drifting Conservatives.
Paul in Wokingham 2nd Nov ’14 – 9:32am
Alea iacta est
Paul
It is never too late to grasp the nettle as the recent “Let them drown” policy statement by our loser in chief showed only too well.
At any point in the next 150 days it would help the survival of some of our MPs to have the dead weight removed.
For some of our MPs who still have a chance it will be more like swimming the channel than crossing the Rubicon.
Even when they are within sight of the far shore it would still help to remove the ball and chain that is making it almost impossible to swim.
BTW Paul, we know you’re clever but not all of us are steeped in the works of Plutarch. 🙂
Some of us have to check with wiki –
for anyone as ignorant as me —
Alea iacta est (“The die is cast”) is a Latin phrase attributed by Suetonius (as iacta alea est [ˈjakta ˈaːlea est]) to Julius Caesar on January 10, 49 BC as he led his army across the River Rubicon in Northern Italy. With this step, he entered Italy at the head of his army in defiance of the Senate and began his long civil war against Pompey and the Optimates. The phrase is still used today in Italy (Il dado è tratto) to mean that events have passed a point of no return, that something inevitably will happen.
@JohnTIlley – “Alea iacta est” : Plutarch? I got it from Asterix The Gaul!
JohnTilley 2nd Nov ’14 – 8:39am
Should have said —
It has been reported in LDV that the number of Liberal Democrat registered delegates actually attending the Glasgow conference WAS LESS than number of journalists attending.
Apologies for not correcting this before but my comment of 8.39 has ony just appeared. I am not sure what words or combination of words in my comment of 8.39 could have triggered the magic censor.
Any suggestions to help me avoid such things in future would be welcome.
Plutarch in Wokngham
Fair enough, if Atserix said it – then its fine by me !
I am intrigued by ‘Pompey and the Optimates’ however. I look forward to them playing Fulham in the FA Cup.
John Tilley
To do that, they first have to beat Aldershot next week.
The Liberal Democrat vote has collapsed because those who voted for us as a protest against the Governing parties have either gone over to UKIP ( the right wing anti immigrant types) or back to Labour (those who voted LD because they disliked Blair and the Iraq war and now like Milliband ) or to the Greens ( the idealists who did not want to vote for a party of Government). The broken promises on tuition fees did not help – why did they do that ?
In Scotland many have switched to the SNP because it seems new and exciting and fun to have a different party in power instead of those boring old Tories or Socialists and the Liberal Democrats never looked like getting power and when they did they were just as boring. It is a good idea to watch TV or listen to the radio to hear what people outside our own circle are saying or thinking.
In many ways the Liberal Democrat attempts to emphasise or appear to create differences with the Conservatives while in Government with them have made us appear unreliable and disloyal which is something most people find unappealing and unpleasant.
How many voters actually knew what the party stood for anyway.? The most common remark when asked what they thought of Liberal Democrats is that they did not know what they stood for whereas they had some idea what Labour and the Conservative part stood for. The Liberals were therefore the ideal vehicle for a protest vote when vaguely left wing ideas were still popular until UKIP became more prominent with its anti immigrant stance. If you think your wages have been kept down because of competition from cheap foreign labour you are not going to vote for a party whose core beliefs seem to favour unrestricted immigration and subservience to the EU unless you feel you benefit from cheap labour like the better off who employ nannies and cleaners etc
Bill: The Party doe not express core Liberal values that often, not often enough, I would say. What you are referring to is that Lib Dem MPs have supported policies that you strongly feel do not reflect Liberal core values.
There are certainly specific disappointments, but it would be silly not to recognise the constraints of being in a coalition government. The fair comparisons have to be with other governments. On the basis of past Labour (and Conservative) governments there are few areas where we could suggest Labour would have done better and some areas where past indications suggest they would have done worse. Similarly there are areas where Lib Dems have constrained the Tories and other areas where Lib Dems have caused a rethink. Not enough you would say and it is important that you, I and others speak out and say so, I can certainly think of areas where we could have provided better support for public servants. What is important is that after May Lib Dems develop coherent policies that both start from core values that we have shared over the last 60 years and build upon the experience of government. I believe and hope that there is a combination of both that can project the Party as a serious player on the political stage.
@nvelope2003 “The Liberal Democrat vote has collapsed because those who voted for us as a protest against the Governing parties have either gone over to UKIP ( the right wing anti immigrant types) or back to Labour (those who voted LD because they disliked Blair and the Iraq war and now like Milliband ) or to the Greens ( the idealists who did not want to vote for a party of Government). The broken promises on tuition fees did not help – why did they do that ?”
Very little annoys me as much as this argument, which is traditionally deployed by Labour and the Conservatives about the votes of any other party – it’s all protest votes; it’s all people who don’t want to vote for a real party of government; it’s just voters who are Tories or Labour really.
No. A very large proportion of the people the LibDems have lost in the last 4 years are people like me : genuine committed ex-party members who very much wanted their party to be in Government, and who are not natural Labour or Conservative supporters. The problem was, we thought we were voting for a party which was not signed up to the neoliberal Thatcherite consensus, and which genuinely meant what it said when it said it wanted to do politics differently.
What we got was Clegg. Essentially a libertarian Tory with an internationalist perspective. And we got a party which enabled all sorts of policies so far to the Thatcherite right that the great she-elephant herself didn’t even try them – like selling off Royal Mail, privatising great lumps of the NHS, and marketising the state education system. And that’s before I even get to the bedroom tax, the slashing of welfare, fetishizing deficit reduction over growth, the reduction in the top rate of income tax, the utter failure to rein in the banks and the City and, of course, the tuition fees disaster.
Clegg’s line is, of course, that There Is No Alternative to such policies – they are what all parties have to do in Government. Well, (a) that’s not actually true, (b) it sounds remarkably like Thatcher, Blair and Cameron, and (c) the whole point of many of our membership of the party is that the LibDems promised a different approach, which was abandoned with indecent speed once in coalition.
Before anyone turns up to say “we were in coalition, so most of these policies are Tory policies”. Well yes, but actually that doesn’t mean they had to be voted for. There was a coalition agreement (remember that ?) which did not include many deeply unpleasant policies which the LibDems have enabled. They didn’t need to.
That’s why we left, and aren’t coming back. Not because we didn’t want to support a party of government. Which just didn’t want to support a third near-identical Thatcherite party of government.
People need to face facts. If there was ever going to be a LibDem revival, it would have happened by now. If Clegg’s bizarre idea that there were millions of soft Tory voters willing to switch to the LibDems to replace the centre-left voters he chased away, was ever going to come true, it would have happened by now.
Clegg’s clique have killed the party stone dead. It’s gone from a very strong and growing third option in the British political scene to being a very poor and shrinking fifth-placed also-ran. The parliamentary party after the election will fit into a single minibus, and there will be great swathes of the country where previously large LibDem council groups will be just a piece of ancient local history.
The party’s over.
Yes, the party is over. However, the way it ends still matters.
Britain could elect a Lib Dem group led by Clegg, say 30MPs, which would still be a more than negligible force in Parliament. Granted, they might come fifth behind UKIP and the SNP, and they might come sixth behind the Greens in terms of votes. They would not hold the balance of power, but the Tories would probably be happy to co-opt them as supporters. No doubt Cameron, or even Boris, would occasionally find their votes useful as a counter to UKIP. Most importantly, they would act as a block against the revival of a genuine centre-left social liberal party.
Alternatively, Britain could elect a single taxi load of Lib Dems, who would be under pressure to give up and join the Tories. Then our remaining Councillors would have to go independent or find new labels – and there would be scope for a real Liberal Revival.
Real centre-left liberals should therefore work against the Lib Dems in the 2015 elections. Before social liberalism can recover, this party needs to hit rock bottom.
David Allen, your comment “to give up and join the Tories” is puerile and shows ignorance of why people adhere to a Liberal party. The politicians of whom you refer could so much more easily sought comfortable political carriers in either of the two main parties. Anyone joining Lib Dems, or Liberals as was, did so more out of principle than a venial greed for high office. It is said, and I have no reason to belive to the contrary, that Nick Clegg was invited by Leon Brittan to join the Conservatives. Clearly, with such backing he would have been catapoulted into high office.
Only at local level is it possible for people to join Lib Dems with a fairly reliable aim of a local elected position. I have many issues with Nick Clegg, but to doubt the sincerity of his adherance to the Party only reflects a lazy mindset, out of touch with political reality.
Real centre-left Liberals have little choice where else to go, since their roots would be in local communities, where they have established or are trying to establish a good base, they would not work against themselves. In any case, other than the (continuing) Liberal Party what would they work for.
The puerile, neo Trot, tactic would be to push for a UKIP/Tory majority in the expectation of economic and social collapse. It would be idiotic.
Yet another reason why the Party is facing total irrelevance after 2015 – if reality is not faced soon – from the Guardian:
Labour faces losing up to 20 seats in Scotland as SNP support surges
“A key factor in many local contests will be the strength of the Lib Dem vote after the collapse in support under UK leader Nick Clegg.
While all 11 Lib Dem MPs have seats in areas that voted no in the referendum, the party came second in several key Labour seats, including the most marginal seat in Scotland, Edinburgh South. Labour will be heavily targeting Lib Dem voters to stop them switching to the SNP.”
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/datablog/2014/nov/03/labour-party-seats-scotland-snp-independence-referendum-yes-alliance
Alex Salmond said at the weekend that he is thinking of standing as an MP at the GE – and that, if his party held the balance of power [very possible] he would consider a coalition with Labour – but not the Tories.
Julian Critchley and David Allen:
The idea that by destroying the present Liberal Democrat party you could rebuild a new centre left social liberal party is not very realistic. The present leadership cannot remain forever and it is essential that a core group of Liberal MPs are elected in 2015 who can assist in rebuilding the party in a way whereby it can put forward policies which actually appeal to real voters. The problem with the Liberal Party since the end of the nineteenth century is that when it put forward its more idealistic policies either the electorate rejected them or during periods of Government it was impossible to stick to them when confronted with the realities of office. The last time Liberals put forward a truly popular policy was in the 1923 election when they opposed tariffs but the problem then was that Labour also opposed them and had gained the support of most working class voters. After 1931 tariffs were seen as one solution to the country’s economic woes and free trade was rejected by most of the electorate so the Liberals virtually disappeared.
The same thing seems to happening again . Ideals are proposed as policies but then it proves virtually impossible to implement them and so the voters become disillusioned and accuse the party of hypocrisy. The party was already failing to grow before 2010 hence the deposition of 2 leaders who were otherwise good people, possibly because some voters had become disillusioned with Liberal Democrat councils and possibly because when the party’s actual policies became more widely known the voters did not like them or thought them impractical.
In order to implement the sort of policies many of those on this site would like it would be necessary either to borrow huge sums of money or perhaps more wisely to increase taxes to the sort of levels which even Scandinavians have become concerned about. In the recent Swedish elections the Moderates (Conservatives) lost but the only party to gain was the extreme right and the Social Democrats govern as a minority because although they did not gain they are the largest single party.How many of the electorate would support such tax increase or favour huge borrowings if the consequences of doing so were fully explained to them ?
How can our country really compete if no attempt is made to limit expenditure to that which is necessary and value for money ? I am not suggesting slashing social welfare or health care but every day I see crazy schemes being implemented whose only beneficiaries seem to be those who are paid to carry them out. We all have our pet projects but there would not be enough money in the whole world to implement them all. I would love to see HS2 but would it not become an insupportable burden on the tax payer as a recent report in France seems to suggest their High Speed trains have become ?
There’s a lot of stuff about how the Lib Dems are dying and how this is because people are getting less liberal or whatever. The truth is people are more liberal than ever on some issues and have not budged an inch on others. We now have gay marriage and lots tolerant or even supportive attitudes on all sorts of things. There has been no rise in anti immigration sentiment at all. But……….,
Mass immigration has never been popular at any point ever. The British have always wanted stronger immigration controls. It just so happens that pro immigration policies were attached to wider politics in a way meant that immigration was not a deciding factor in how people vote. All that’s happened is that they can now vote in or voice their concerns without being implicated in support for advocates of fascism.
nvelope2003 3rd Nov ’14 – 2:56pm
“…… I am not suggesting slashing social welfare or health care but every day I see crazy schemes being implemented whose only beneficiaries seem to be those who are paid to carry them out. ”
I am assume that one of the crazy schemes that “nvelope2003” has in mind is the Royal Family and all its many hangers on that feed off the huge subsidies and tax breaks that the rest of us are forced to pay for?
What scheme could be crazier that one which every year pays out millions of pounds every year in direct payments to one of the richest women in the western world?
Does a woman who can afford to spend £8 million on a helicopter as a birthday present for one of her grandsons really need state aid and additional tax breaks?
Do she and her family and their very many hangers-on really need to be subsidised by working families who pay their taxes and have to visit the food bank every week to get by?
When it comes to “..crazy schemes …. whose only beneficiaries seem to be those who are paid to carry them out. “, it would be hard to beat The Duchy of Cornwall and the Duchy of Lancaster. The people who prosper from the tax breaks and special allowances that make up these crazy schemes receive public subsidies on a scale beyond the dreams of the average Euro Millions Lottery winner.
Government finances would be billions better off every year if taxpayers were not propping up the unnecessary extravagance that is the Royal Family.
It is odd that the Royals never featured in the ‘Benefits Street’ because they are pocketing far more every week than all the despised “social security scroungers” put together and featured in that TV programme.
“Julian Critchley”: I accept that many party members are sincere people and deeply unhappy about the coalition but I do not agree that in the present climate it would have been possible to implement the full Liberal Democrat manifesto. Of course many who were not just using the party for a protest vote have moved away or become inactive. Perhaps you would like to tell us what party you now support ?
Maybe it is not such a bad thing that some former supporters have moved to Labour or the Greens as they might dilute the Marxist elements in those parties, especially the Greens so that some form of partnership could be formed in the future. I thought Tim Farron’s rejection of any pact with the Greens was a bit dogmatic but there are clear differences with a party which in some way seems to be of the extreme left.
John Tilley: I guess you are a republican so even if the Monarchy cost next to nothing you would still be unhappy but according to almost every opinion survey it has the overwhelming support of the population although that does not mean that I think it should receive unlimited public money and it does not.
In one sentence you talk of millions and in another you refer to billions. What do these sums actually refer to ? If you mean the upkeep of the historic royal palaces which bring in revenue from both British and overseas tourists then there would be no saving as even a republican Government such as exists in France or Russia would not demolish them or convert them into social housing as they are part of our history as is the Monarchy itself.
We could of course dispense with a Head of State but we would be almost the only country in the world to do so. An elected President would require an election costing about £100,000,000 if the recent referendum on AV is anything to go by unless the House of Commons elected the President which most people would not like. The actual cost of maintaining a President would be about the same and probably more than the cost of supporting the Queen if the cost of the French, Italian and German presidencies are any example. The President’s family would need protection from terrorists, blackmailers and mad people and do not imagine that they would be paragons of virtue not taking any advantage from their position as that is not what happens elsewhere.
The Queen is rich but would it be a good idea to have someone as head of state who was so poor that they would be tempted to take payments from those who seek to influence the government ?
The crazy schemes I was referring to are those which could be done more cheaply and efficiently by other means if there was any will to do it but in matters of Government it is those who spend the most, however ineffectively, who get the prizes They are talking of building a tunnel for the A303 where it passes Stonehenge but no one has suggested diverting the road away from the site. Maybe the Tunnel is to stop people seeing the monument without paying. I have been there once but see it many times as I pass it. There is not a lot to see.
nvelope2003 4th Nov ’14 – 2:34pm
It is not necessary to be a republican to recognise that throwing away millions of government on one of the richest families in the world, providing them with tax breaks and funding their extravagant life-styles is not the best use of public money in a time of austerity.
As I said in my earlier comment —
Does a woman who can afford to spend £8 million on a helicopter as a birthday present for one of her grandsons really need state aid and additional tax breaks?
Do she need to be subsidised by families who pay their taxes and then have to visit the food bank every week to get by?
Your answer was that she is popular in the opinion polls. Lots of people are popular in the opinion polls. We do not however structure government expenditure and tax breaks to make the members of One Direction even wealthier than they are, why do you it is rational to do so with the Royals?
Because someone is rich does not mean that they should not receive remuneration for any work that they do. If this was the case then Messrs Milliband, Cameron and Clegg and many others in public life would not be paid. Maybe this would be a good idea but it is not current policy. I do not claim to know the precise details of the Queen’s finances but it appears that she repays from her own money the expenses paid by the state to certain of her family who carry out public duties. If this is so then she is paying us to do her job which must be a good deal for the taxpayers. Do MPs pay us to do their jobs and if not why not as they seem to love it so much and collect money from other sources because of their position ?
If the Queen can afford to give her grandson a helicopter costing £8 million then that is her right providing she does not claim it back from the taxpayers. If I was wealthy I would do what I could to help my family and most ordinary people would do so too unless there was some reason not to do so such as gambling or drug problems.
The problems of the poor would not be helped much, if at all, by removing the Queen. There is widespread poverty in the US, France, Mexico, Russia, Italy, Greece, Egypt etc and they have not had monarchies for years. There is not much poverty in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Netherlands, Belgium or Luxembourg which all have monarchies In fact you could almost say that a republic is synonomous with poverty with the possible exception of Austria and Germany which were required by the peace treaties ending the world wars to have a republican form of government which almost certainly contributed to the rise of the Nazi party in those places.