Author Archives: Dan Schmeising

Dan Schmeising

Coalition

By Dan Schmeising | Fri 3rd July 2020 - 7:30 pm

Friends, Lib Dems, countryfolk, lend me your ears. I come to bury the coalition, not to praise it.

But I’m not here to damn it either. I just want to move on.

Same-sex marriage. The Green Investment Bank. The tripling of our renewable energy usage. All Lib Dem policies that we should be fiercely proud of. But, if we’re going to celebrate them, we need to acknowledge that they came at a human cost – and that we voted for that.

As a party, we are too quick to brush off these people who we hurt as collateral. We shrug and say compromises had to be made. But those “compromises” were human beings – some of them within our own party. I have nothing but respect and admiration for their resilience and their faith in our movement. However, their forgiveness does not absolve us.

I don’t think it has to be a mark of shame on us forever. But too many people just don’t trust us to not jump back in bed with the Tories. It’s why our refusal to back Jeremy Corbyn at the General Election, whilst electorally wise and the right thing to do, was met with such anger.

By expending all that energy defending the coalition, voters hear “we think working with the Tories was a good thing”. That puts us a step back when we’re trying to convince people we’re not going to do it again.

Furthermore, we cannot expect the public to move on when we refuse to do so ourselves.

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , and | 59 Comments
Advert

Recent Comments

  • Mick Taylor
    @DavidRaw. To be strictly accurate, the Church in Wales and the Church in Scotland play no state role since they were disestablished by the 1906-14 Liberal Gove...
  • Jonah Weisz
    Hi Paul, I thought you might be interested to know that we have an ME/LC Lib Dems group where we discuss and coordinate our advocacy efforts - just drop me a li...
  • Judy Abel
    @Geoff thank you for your comments. Unfortunately those experiences sound familiar. Because the NHS is free at the point of use we maybe don’t think we can ex...
  • David Evans
    Mick I'm not at all sure that the Lib Dems sold out in 2010 over student fees. The leadership did, and carried on in that vein whenever it deemed it necessary ...
  • Tristan Ward
    @ David Raw "I’m glad to see you say that the opposition to abolishing slavery was bought off" One interpretation is that majority opinion in 19th cen...