Category Archives: Op-eds

Opinion: Human Rights Reform – where the nuance could be more dangerous than the headline

By Eilidh Dickson | Wed 13th May 2015 - 8:55 am

The Conservative Majority government has recently announced the Michael Gove is to be our new justice secretary, and that part of his agenda is the Conservative manifesto promise to scrap the Human Rights Act. The Conservatives claims this would

Break the formal link between British courts and the European Court of Human Rights

in order to

imit the use of human rights laws to the most serious cases,

a promise that turns the stomach of most Liberal Democrats I know committed to universal rights.

Perhaps if the plans did not, as former Attorney General Dominic Grieve described, contain “a number of howlers” the Conservatives would be less convinced by the need for reform or even the prospect of their success. I don’t claim to be more than a law student (and a procrastinating one at that) and but here I’m going to contribute some brief comments taken from a year of public law essays.

Firstly, the Human Rights Act has been fundamentally significant. It lets us in the UK rely on our rights in the European Convention on Human Rights in UK courts for the first time, increasing human rights cases significantly including detention, immigration, privacy, voting and so much more. Until the Act, these cases had to exhaust UK courts and then if UK law prevented judges from upholding these rights they could take their case to the European Court of Human Rights – a process than took about 5 years.

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Opinion: The Liberal resurgence – a time to spread like wild flowers

By Ben Maitland | Tue 12th May 2015 - 3:47 pm

Like many Lib Dem voters, supporters and sympathisers, I spent much of the weekend lurching between disbelief and despondency, and genuinely worried whether the party could or would ever recover. In an effort to cheer myself up I went for a walk in the countryside only to encounter an ironic sea of yellow dandelions. Initially, it felt as if nature itself was mocking me, but in retrospect the vivid spring flowers seem provide a wonderful analogy of what the party needs to achieve if it is going to pick itself up and thrive again.

Traditionally, the Liberal Democrats have punched …

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Norman Lamb MP

Norman Lamb MP writes – Trust in People: Why I’m standing for party leader

By Norman Lamb MP | Tue 12th May 2015 - 1:22 pm

NormanLambThese are devastating results for the Liberal Democrats. All of us are completely shell shocked.

All party members must have a say in our future strategy and new leader. I have clear views on what we need to do and am intending to stand for leader.

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130 Comments
Rebecca Plenderleith

Opinion: This is our #LibDemFightBack

By Rebecca Plenderleith | Tue 12th May 2015 - 12:06 pm

Fightback54kAs a long-time supporter of the Liberal Democrats I decided to join the party about two weeks before polling day. I was a member of the BBC project “Generation 2015” which was giving young people aged 18 – 24 the chance to get their voices heard and put across what matters to them when it comes time to cast their – or should I say our – votes and I came across so many passionate people my age and some a lot younger than me who were members of the parties they supported. Even though those who had the most influence on me were members of the Conservatives and the Labour party their support was one of the main reasons I wanted to join my party and make a difference.

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John Pugh

John Pugh MP writes: Getting Back on Track

By John Pugh | Tue 12th May 2015 - 10:01 am

Railway trackLooking at the wreckage of our electoral hopes, the defeat of MPs of massive talent and commitment who have served their constituencies well, it is hard for all of us not to feel angry. A lot of that anger spills through in the post hoc analysis as we seek to distribute blame and identify the critical errors made.

I suspect that in years to come people will still argue about what went wrong and when, but certainly at the moment its all too raw to arrive at objective,dispassionate conclusions that all will accept.

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Paul Walter

LibLink: David Steel – Six ways Nick Clegg steered the Liberal Democrats to disaster

By Paul Walter | Mon 11th May 2015 - 9:21 pm

On the Guardian Comment is Free, David Steel has a must-read article with remarkably perspicacious observations:

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Tom Morrison

Opinion: Human Rights – A call to arms

By Tom Morrison | Mon 11th May 2015 - 6:53 pm

“David Cameron will launch a 100-day policy offensive…” states the Sunday Times, reporting on the Conservatives’ predicted assault on Europe and Human Rights just days after they secured the most surprising election victory in living memory.

While Liberal Democrat and Labour Party opinion-formers are calling for internal debates on the future of their respective parties, the Conservatives are moving in and preparing to push through legislation that is dangerous, destructive and most of all, frightening.

The Human Rights Act (HRA) should be esteemed as highly as the NHS. Receiving Royal Assent in 1998, the HRA is, in my view, the cornerstone of …

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Bernard Aris

Opinion: The LibDems will bring consistency in an unstable British political landscape

By Bernard Aris | Mon 11th May 2015 - 5:22 pm

A view from the Dutch Social Liberals (D66)

Before I dive into my analysis of the present British political instability, my commiserations with all the LibDem activists (& dogs), cadres, councillors and parliamentary candidates who got caught in the pincer of

  • Labour seeking revenge for their well-deserved ousting in 2010, and
  • the Tories repeating the betrayal of their coalition partners of the Electoral System referendum.

We in D66 got clobbered in the same way when we participated in our first government coalition (1973-’77; D66 was founded in 1966), but that was because we simultaneously attempted a realignment of Dutch progressive politics via a merger …

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Mark Blackburn

Opinion: It ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it

By Mark Blackburn | Mon 11th May 2015 - 4:29 pm

Only four days after the cataclysm, already there’s a rosy (garden?) hue about our ignominious performance – martyrs to the cause of the Coalition, country before self-interest, fallen heroes. History will be kinder to us than the electorate. If we are ever going to recover from our nemesis, this is a very dangerous mindset.

Of course it was always going to be tough being in Coalition with the Conservatives, and a price was always going to be paid. But as Lord Steel said right after Nick Clegg’s moving farewell speech, it wasn’t the Coalition itself that destroyed trust in us and …

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40 Comments
Mark Valentine

Opinion: Starting from ‘the Other Place’

By Mark Valentine | Mon 11th May 2015 - 3:50 pm

 

Where can the Liberal Democrats start to rebuild? How can they reassert their identity as a party with a distinctive philosophy? How do they remind voters that they can make a real difference? The answers can in part be found in an unexpected place.

It’s worth remembering that there are two Houses in Parliament. And, treating cross-benchers as neutral, the House of Lords now has an opposition majority of something like 90-100. Every single piece of legislation that Mr Cameron wants to introduce will not only have to negotiate his own wafer-thin majority in the Commons, but this hurdle in what MPs call “the other place” too.

Here’s where the 101 Liberal Democrat peers can make a difference. Now they are no longer shackled to the compromises of coalition, they can act entirely on the basis of liberal and social democratic principles. They can also be watchdogs for the “one nation” principle that Mr Cameron says he wants to honour.

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Gareth Giles

Hello. I am a coward

By Gareth Giles | Mon 11th May 2015 - 1:25 pm

I am one of the many who quit the party in 2010, and for what I felt were good reasons. I could not conceive that my party – who stood for true liberalism, who I believed fought for the downtrodden and the exploited – would go into a coalition with a partner who was so against my core beliefs.

I regret that now. I regret not staying and fighting what I saw as the inevitable descent. I regret not becoming one of the few party members speaking out against a coalition deal. I regret not attempting to convince our party against …

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28 Comments
Maelo Manning

Opinion: It’s my Party and I’ll cry if I want to

By Maelo Manning | Mon 11th May 2015 - 12:35 pm

 

Since 10pm on election night I have been in utter despair. I joined the party five years ago at the age of 10 and I was told that the Lib Dems would never be in Government. I was overjoyed when Nick Clegg walked into Downing Street in 2010. By contrast, I was in tears when Nick resigned. Since then I have been thinking about how the party can learn from mistakes and move on.

My starting point is what Nick said in his resignation speech, ‘Fear and grievance have won, and liberalism has lost.’ The first thing the party has to do is to rehabilitate the concept of liberalism because it has been stolen by parties of other persuasions. This can only be done by defining our core voter base. Our liberalism was not differentiated from the politics of austerity and the scare tactics of the Tories. The Tories evoked a Hobbesian scenario which seems to have worked. Nick is absolutely right in saying that liberalism is not faring well against the politics of fear.

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22 Comments
Alex Paul Shantz

Opinion: Predictions for a new Parliament

By Alex Paul Shantz | Mon 11th May 2015 - 11:45 am

 

As the dust settles from Thursday, one key question is what will David Cameron do with his unexpected Conservative majority? Here are a couple of predictions for the upcoming Parliament.

Where the £30bn of proposed cuts will fall is largely unknown until the autumn. Health spending is protected though – which means bigger cuts elsewhere, such as £12bn to welfare. The only bright spot could be the linking of the personal allowance to the national minimum wage – raising it to around £13,000 pa.

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Kirsty Burton

Opinion: What England really voted for – how we ended up here and where we’re going

By Kirsty Burton | Mon 11th May 2015 - 9:55 am

Throughout his campaign, David Cameron argued that the success of his government was evidence that voters should continue to support the Conservatives.

Want more of the same, to continue on this path? Vote Conservatives, he said.

And voting Conservative was exactly what English voters did, giving Cameron’s party a completely unexpected majority. With fear of what Labour had done to the economy in the past, and the threat of the SNP and the Greens at the extreme Left, this promise rang as hope, security and comfort in the ears of moderate-thinking voters.

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Duncan Brack

Opinion: Rebuilding the party – lessons from history

By Duncan Brack | Mon 11th May 2015 - 9:05 am

I’ve already had journalists ring me up to ask when was the last time Liberals did so badly. The answer is 1970, when the Liberal Party won six seats on the back of 2.1 million votes, 7.5 per cent of those who voted. Last week’s result was similar: eight seats from 2.4 million votes, 7.9 per cent of those who voted.

There are other parallels. The opinion polls in 1970 had pointed consistently to a victory for Harold Wilson’s outgoing Labour government; Ted Heath’s win for the Conservatives came as a considerable surprise. On the other hand, then the polls underestimated …

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Nicola Wilson

Opinion: Dear Nick…

By Nicola Wilson | Sun 10th May 2015 - 8:33 pm

Dear Nick

Can I start by saying that possibly unlike the rest of the party right now, I actually feel a surge of optimism.

I have been a LibDem voter since the last election and an active supporter for all of 18 months.

I started off sceptically. My husband had found a party that mirrored his values and so had divorced Labour and set his sights on the LibDems.

I was a little overwhelmed.  I hadn’t been indoctrinated at my mother’s knee so felt something of an outsider who didn’t know the history, in jokes, culture, or people.

However when I attended conference and actually experienced policy making first hand things started to change.  Here was genuine debate, all angles considered and joy of joys voted on by party members!  I had a voice!

So I supported my husband when he took the decision to stand against George Osborne, despite him already having a demanding full time job, 3 hour commute and not a hope in hell of winning!    

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Lauren Jones

Opinion: My post election promise

By Lauren Jones | Sun 10th May 2015 - 6:40 pm

We’re really struggling right now, and I know that. Even the sorry few who managed to keep their seats are looking at a pretty rough time over the next 5 years. 2015 has been a bad year for us, as liberals, so what can we do to fix that?

One of the best things about the Lib Dems is that we know we can bounce back in the face of adversity. Yes, it’s not been as tough as this in a long time, but we’re made of sterner stuff. We’re not going to roll over and let this be it.

I spent far too many hours out on doorsteps recently, in the gorgeous sunshine and the pouring rain, chapping on doors and persuading lovely people to vote for us. And I learned a lot. I learned that there are some die-hard supporters out there – some who will not change their vote, the vote that their fathers and even grandfathers made all their lives. And sometimes that works in our favour (yay – a life-long Lib Dem) and sometimes it doesn’t (“I’ll vote Labour like my father before me”, a favourite line from my grandmother of all people). These people are never going to change, although my gran has reliably informed me that she would vote for me if I ever stood as a candidate, even as a  liberal!

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Paul Reynolds

Opinion: It’s not about left or right

By Paul Reynolds | Sun 10th May 2015 - 5:10 pm

About an hour after Nick Clegg resigned I received a long letter by email on behalf of SLF essentially blaming the ‘Orangebookers’ for the poor Lib Dem results.

I would like to suggest that all sections of the party consider the possibility that it was not an issue of left or right. Maybe neither the left or right of the party were to blame, but that, with benefit of hindsight, there were other factors. My top 5. Other views ?

1. Obviously being in Coalition was difficult especially with our more anti-Tory supporters and Labour-facing seats…Tory ‘bedroom tax’ and ‘work-ready’ interviews for the disabled are among the most tricky on the doorstep. LD left & right had failed to counter the obvious opprobrium arising from these & other Tory policies – both in policy adjustment/veto AND in campaigning.

2. The ‘in between the two’ strategy was too negative …”vote for us because we will stop others doing stuff”, rather than what WE wanted to do post-May 2015. This was a hard sell to make pithy. ‘Stopping extremes’ was weak, since most did not see Tory or Labour as extreme.

3. We countered ‘stop Labour/SNP’ with ‘stop Tory/UKIP’ in Tory-facing seats. No-one believed however that UKIP could be coalition partners with one or two seats, on the doorstep. This strategy was a dud and left us vulnerable, and without a more credible response.

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Adam Warner

Opinion: GE2015, where did it all go wrong?

By Adam Warner | Sun 10th May 2015 - 3:30 pm

The 2015 election is certainly not one to remember for the Liberal Democrats. Losing many great MP’s like David Laws and Vince Cable will certainly take a long time to recover from, but what exactly went wrong and why did we do much worse than forecast.

Triumph of fear over hope.

There is no doubt that the Conservative tactics of pitting England against Scotland worked for them. The idea of a Labour-SNP coalition was too much for many centre ground floating voters who voted tactically for them. Instead of defending their record and talking about the real issues the Conservatives instead spent the campaign promoting English nationalism and spreading fear. This tactic did for many of our MPs in Tory-LD marginal in the southern regions of England. Whilst it has worked in the short term it will cause problems for David Cameron over the course of the next parliament as he governs a hugely divided country with little support north of the border.

SNP Success

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Let’s spark some new liberal ideas with a writing competition

By Chris Read | Sun 10th May 2015 - 1:59 pm

Like many Liberal Democrats I’ve been doing a lot of thinking today, and I’ve come up with an idea I’d like to share  – It’s something a bit different  but given the situation some ‘different thinking’ is going to be required.  So I’m sharing my idea here to see if people think it’s a go-er and maybe one or two other places, while the idea is still fresh in my mind.   Then I may write to the Party Presidents office with the idea.

I’d better start by saying that I am a wannabe writer in my spare time and have written short story and have one completed novel and a few new ones on the go!

So here is the idea – A writing competition for members and supporters. My initial idea was for a short story competition, but to open up the idea to members who are not so sure about writing fiction, I would suggest a parallel competition for non-fiction pieces.

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Julian Gregory

Opinion: We need a positive and distinct liberal identity. And then we must burn it into the consciousness of the electorate.

By Julian Gregory | Sun 10th May 2015 - 12:03 pm

Voters have rewarded parties with strong, positive messages and punished those with more equivocal positions.

The two clear winners of the election were the Tories and UKIP, which more than quadrupled its share of the national vote compared to 2010.

Most voters pay very little attention to politics, but even they knew what these two parties stood for.  Vote Tory for an economic plan that is working and to avoid instability under Labour and the SNP.  Vote UKIP to cut immigration and reclaim our national sovereignty.

Labour and the Lib Dems, the two main losers, both had messages that were in some sense equivocal.

Labour spent five years vacillating between the Blairite centre ground and being the party of the Left that Ed Miliband clearly wanted it to be.  And in the pressure of an election campaign, it settled for being an ‘austerity lite’ option, reluctant to confirm that it would spend more than the Tories.

The Lib Dems deliberately chose an equivocal message. We said that we wouldn’t focus only on the economy or on addressing inequality, but rather would do a bit of both.  And we defined ourselves by reference to the two main parties and largely negatively; we aren’t cruel like the Tories, and we won’t trash the economy like Labour.

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Nick T

Lib Dem/Tory waverers wanted continuity, but they voted Conservative to achieve it

By Nick T | Sat 9th May 2015 - 6:59 pm

It was always going to be true that the 30 or so seats where the fight was between the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives would end up delivering one of the most important stories of election night 2015. Liberal Democrats hoped, of course, that this would be for the reason that they were the hallmark of the party’s resilience. But they were newsworthy in the end because they were symbols of the Lib Dem defeat, and the vehicles of delivery of a Conservative victory.

That the tens of thousands of voters in those seats who wavered between the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives were the most important of this campaign had been known to both governing parties, of course, for months if not years. They were ruthlessly targeted from every angle: leaflets, phone-calls and visit after visit by senior politicians.

And in the end they made their decision, and they made it in David Cameron’s favour. The prime minister’s message, that only a Conservative vote could guarantee continuity and avoid the risk of a Miliband-Sturgeon government, ultimately prevailed.

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George Potter

Opinion: Time for constitutional reform..but not the way you think

By George Potter | Sat 9th May 2015 - 5:28 pm

It’s time for constitutional reform – of the Liberal Democrats. We need to redesign our party structures to make them fit for the challenges we face.

While there has to be a big debate on what needs change and what the best options are, here’s a rundown of options worth considering:

1. Either abolish membership fees or create an associate membership which costs nothing and has some of the privilege of full members. Why should you have to pay to join our movement instead of donating when you wish and are able to?

2. Reduce barriers to participation within the party. This means introducing one member, one vote everywhere in the party and should involve eliminating, or heavily reducing, the period of membership required to be able to vote in internal elections. In the Canadian Liberal’s leadership election the winning campaign signed up over 100,000 new members alone with the incentive of being able to vote for the party leader – why can’t we do something similar?

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Malcolm Bruce

Sir Malcolm Bruce writes.. We need to be a united campaigning force doing what we do best

By Malcolm Bruce | Sat 9th May 2015 - 4:31 pm

February 15th 2003 - Iraq war demo in LondonI sent this to the party’s Chief Executive Tim Gordon and thought that Liberal Democrat Voice readers would be interested in it.

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18 Comments
Phil Reilly

Opinion: The next 5 years will bring a much greater appreciation of what we did in coalition

By Phil Reilly | Sat 9th May 2015 - 3:30 pm

For the last seven years, I have had the privilege of working for Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats.

So I’m sure you can understand that the last 48 hours have been pretty tough. Whatever you think of the party, our politics or the decisions we took, there are currently thousands of individuals who have given blood, sweat and tears in the name of our cause who have been bluntly and brutally rejected at the ballot box.

It is a tragedy for the party and for the political cause we believe in: the belief that Britain is at its best when it is open-minded, open-hearted, tolerant and generous.

My job until Friday morning was to be Nick’s speechwriter. It’s the best job I have ever had and will probably ever have. I cannot begin to express my admiration for a man who did the right thing, took a vicious public lashing for it every day and took it all with good grace, good humour and the conviction to keep going because we had a vital job to do.

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Hamish Mackenzie

Opinion: Where now?

By Hamish Mackenzie | Sat 9th May 2015 - 2:15 pm

Over the last two years I have worked as a campaign organiser with Lib Dem MPs in the Highlands and Islands. However, after last night’s terrible results that is now over for me. I can’t pretend that I am not bitterly disappointed, not merely for myself but because we have lost some of the finest politicians of this generation from the Commons, at a time when experienced level headed liberals are needed most. Many excellent Constituency Organisers, who I have worked with, have now lost their jobs and many wonderful volunteers have given up their time and effort and feel like it has come to nothing in so many places. All of this is through no fault of their own and in spite of running brilliant ground campaigns as Lib Dems so often do. But, hey, that’s democracy.

As Lib Dems we are hurting; every member, activist and supporter should feel hard done by because we went into coalition because it was in the national interest and we’re being punished for it. Our opponents and the media have now written us off as a sideshow or an irrelevance, but I truly believe that we can come back, that we can once again act as a constructive alternative to the “red to blue to red to blue” politics that we’ve all campaigned against for so long.

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Sean Davey

Opinion: Where now for liberalism?

By Sean Davey | Sat 9th May 2015 - 10:43 am

Over the next few days, weeks and months there are a few grim but necessary processes which the Liberal Democrats (not to mention Labour and UKIP also) will have to go through: electing a new leader, debating the purpose and ideology that guides the party, and ultimately regrouping to lick our collective wounds.

Perhaps more important than the theatrics of these things unfolding, is the question well what’s next? The decimation of the party as a parliamentary force – following on from the sustained loss of local government Liberal Democrats over the past five years – has disrupted the status quo, and now more than ever a new generation will need to rise up to carry the torch of Liberalism.

Unlike Labour and the Conservatives with their safe seats even when relegated to the opposition benches this does not simply mean a new leader, a new direction and “rising stars”. For the Liberal Democrats we really are back to building ourselves up as a party of local and national government.

In re-building the party we have a stark choice: change versus more of the same. I suspect  this phrase will be banded about plenty in the ideological and strategic battles for the party’s soul and direction, but change must come in the ‘who’ as much as the ‘what’ and ‘why’.

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Rob Blackie

Opinion: Five quick thoughts on what we do next

By Rob Blackie | Fri 8th May 2015 - 6:58 pm

Firstly we all need to take a few days off. Losing so many of our MPs is incredibly painful – when we know how they were champions of liberalism, as well as great local representatives. It’s easy for us to post-rationalise our problems to fit our existing prejudices, but smarter to take a short break.

Secondly we shouldn’t assume that everything winners do is good, and everything losers do is stupid. There are doubtless many things we did wrong, but not everything we did was wrong. Equally while we may have been hit hard by the other parties, we shouldn’t assume that aping them is the right solution.

Thirdly we should recognise that our problems fighting Labour, the Tories and the SNP may be very different. It is unlikely that there is one message or campaign technique that will allow us to be successful against all of these opponents.

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RIchard Clifton

Opinion: where do we go from here?

By RIchard Clifton | Fri 8th May 2015 - 5:38 pm

I was a member of the Labour Party, but in the nineteen eighties joined the Social Democratic Party when it split away. In 1983 the Labour Party was committed to leaving the European Union. I saw the SDP as having the pro-European, internationalist outlook that the Labour Party had abandoned.

By 1997 I had arrived in the new Liberal Democrat Party after the SDP merged with the Liberals. The Conservative MP for the constituency I was then in, Carshalton and Wallington, produced an interesting leaflet arguing that the Lib Dems were well to the left of “new” Labour. He aimed to deter people from voting for such radicalism, but it strengthened my support for the Lib Dems. When we were the only party opposing the Iraq war, I felt the party was positioned in the right place on the political spectrum, a party espousing liberal, radical and reformist policies, concerned about the environment, the welfare state and the socially excluded, while opposed to militarism. I want us to get back there.

Since 2010 it has been events that have re-positioned the party rather than decisions to re-position ourselves. Given the election outcome in 2010 and the sense of national crisis – a hung Parliament, a failing economy – there was no responsible option but to enter coalition. Undoubtedly we did not say clearly enough that this was an alliance of people with quite different philosophies and outlooks, forged in the national interest, and that coalition means that some things not in your manifesto and not what you would have really wanted would be done.

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Paul Walter

Cameron needs to stop the BS, remember his studies and behave like a statesman/person

By Paul Walter | Thu 7th May 2015 - 10:00 pm

It’s ten o’clock and the polls have just closed all over the country. From St Agnes island hall in the south to North Unst Public Hall in the north, the presiding officers have just locked the doors and are preparing the ballot boxes for transportation to the local counting centre. I can now say what I like!

There has been much dangerous talk in the election campaign. David Cameron has implied that a government with the tacit support of Scottish MPs would somehow be illegitimate. He has accused Ed Miliband of preparing a “con trick” to enter Downing Street with the support of the SNP. Even Nick Clegg has joined in by referring to a “coalition of the losers” – being a possible bloc of MPs led by the leader of the second largest party.

All this sort of talk must now stop.

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