From today’s Times (£):
The string of problems hitting the Tories could save the Liberal Democrats from a catastrophic meltdown in this Thursday’s local elections, party chiefs claimed yesterday. The Lib Dems are still expecting to lose up to half their 650 council seats in England and Wales as voters continue to blame Nick Clegg for joining the coalition. They could do even worse in Scottish local elections. But Gerald Vernon-Jackson, leader of Liberal Democrat councillors in England and Wales, said that in the past two weeks there had been signs on the doorstep that voters were blaming the coalition’s current woes on the Conservatives rather than their partners.
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7 Comments
Surely even more reason to abandon the Tories to their self-inflicted wounds?
The incumbent is bound to be hit in difficult economic times. Opting out of government because our polls are slipping is opting out of responsibility: if won’t do it, who will? Labour? The Greens?
I did not mean abandon government, just the related issues that are purely Tory created problems – like the Hunt episode that is concerned with the Tories being too close to Murdoch. This is not a Lib/Dem problem and the fact that it is not should help the Party’s poll ratings.
What is required are solid benefits felt by the poorest members in the community as a direct result of Liberal Democrats in government.The excellent leadership from our DPM, in the most important task of rescuing the British Economy where confidence had fallen to an all time low under Labour`s profligate spending, is the cause celebre.
Simon Hughes and Lorely Burt have tried to distance the party from this Tory problem. However, Clegg’s ‘parroting’ of Cameron’s line puts us back alongside the Tories.
I wonder what it will take for Clegg to show some ‘gumption’ and realise that there are times when a moral stand is not just the ‘right thing’ but the ‘political thing’ to do.
It does seem that NC has lost all objectivity. Perhaps a way of resolving the issue would be to have a’Coalition Watchdog’ made up of the non-Coalition MPs plus another 20 or so of the most respected Party members who, independently, considered the best course of action at each new stage of the Coalition agreement and, when there was a mismatch of view, took a poll of the Party members. Presumably NC would not defy the will of the Party membership!
Quite frankly, the amount of leverage the Party would have in negotiating policy by policy – if it did withdraw from the agreement – would be immense, given the failure of the policies so far and the weak position of Cameron.
Withdrawal would be completely justified purely on the failure of the financial strategy, let alone the fact that Cameron and other Tories obviously are/were far to close to Murdoch.
@Patrick Smith
“the most important task of rescuing the British Economy where confidence had fallen to an all time low under Labour`s profligate spending, is the cause celebre.”
This is the same profligate spending that in 2007 George Osborne promised to match (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/6975536.stm).
This is the same profligate spending that in 2005 we agreed with (https://www.libdemvoice.org/labour-ed-balls-lib-dems-economy-austerity-spending-cuts-26614.html).
Labour made a lot of bad decisions but we cannot keep harping back to the mess we inherited in 2010. I am not convinced that a Conservative government in the years before 2010 would have protected us from what happened: would they have imposed tight regulation of the banking sector? We need to demonstrate why our plan is the best one for the economy. Failing to achieve our forecasts for growth and going into a double-dip recession that we said would not happen; this damages our credibility regardless of who created the mess. Maybe we do need a Plan B.