Labour has put out a video in which it gives the Conservatives some handy tips as to how to not be the ‘nasty party’. The tongue-in-cheek clip doesn’t completely fail to amuse and is pretty accurate in what it says. Few here would doubt the Tories are still the nasty party. The Liberal Democrat leadership is quite right when it says ‘compassionate Conservatism’ has been exposed for the fraud it is. However, there is something unsettling when Labour is the one using the ‘nasty party’ stick to beat their Tory opponents with when Labour itself has clearly shown itself to have a propensity towards nastiness. To illustrate the very brazen hypocrisy, I’ve prepared a handy four-step guide that Labour may want to take heed off.
Step one. Don’t go round invading countries without a proper reason. It tends to kills lots and lots of innocent people, destabilises entire regions and heightens the threat of terror at home. Your leader publicly acknowledged that the Iraq war was wrong but he hasn’t apologised – that in itself is quite telling.
Step two. Don’t lock up innocent kids. Arbitrarily locking up anyone is bad enough but children?! Your practice of keeping the children of asylum seekers incarcerated in detention centres was truly abhorrent.
Step three. Don’t let the bankers run riot with the economy. You may have got rid of Clause IV and joined the Thatcherite economic consensus but you shouldn’t go from 0-60 just like that – restrain yourselves!
Step four. Don’t help to ensure the long term survival of the other nasty party. 1997 was a real opportunity for you. A progressive alliance with the Liberal Democrats alongside a programme of constitutional reform that you were actually bothered about implementing could have delivered a knock out blow to the Conservatives. You knew this at the time. Instead you went for short-term gain.
And not to mention mention all other nasty things Labour has done in recent history: Iraq sanctions, complicity in rendition, tuition fees (at least we apologised!), huge growth in inequality, etc.
Many of our detractors say that we, the Liberal Democrats, should feel bad about ourselves because we are in a coalition government with the ‘nasty party’. Admittedly, it’s not nice having to work with someone you don’t like. That’s true for virtually every single field of work you care to imagine. However, with Labour’s proven capacity for nastiness, we should feel equally uneasy about working with them if it comes to that. That’s not to say that in the event we shouldn’t work with them, but merely to make the point that we shouldn’t feel better/worse if we end up working with Nasty Party B rather than Nasty Party A or vice versa.
* Nicholas Pentney is a member of the Liberal Democrats in Torbay and youngest son of Ruth Pentney
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25 Comments
The writer missed ‘making thousands of vulnerable people suffer by voting for the Bedroom Tax’ nastiness
Oh, but of course, that wasn’t Labour was it ?
can someone tell me the point of this?
who is this meant to appeal to?
@Sandy. Labour had a (huge) majority government. We have 11% of MPs in this government.
@ Sandy Actually, Labour introduced the bedroom tax to privately rented properties in 2008.
See here, for example: http://johnhemming.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/labour-did-pilot-and-plan-bedroom-tax.html
I’m proud that the Lib Dems, lead by Andrew George, are seeking to fix the clearly broken policy of the withdrawal of the spare-room subsidy.
@William
The most obvious difference was that Labours policy was not retrospective but don’t let that stop you wallowing in ignorance.
Have a read of the direct comparisons between LHA & the Under-Occupancy Penalty:
http://notpaying.tumblr.com/post/55537295011/how-the-bedroom-tax-differs-from-the-local-housing
@Stuart
“can someone tell me the point of this?
who is this meant to appeal to?”
It’s for the LibDems looking for an excuse to justify settling into another cosy coalition with the Cons, that’s who.
@Nicholas
& what was the percentage of Lib Dem MPs that voted for the Bedroom Tax ?
It isn’t often these days there is much to praise about my MP but at least Mark Williams voted against it, unlike the party leadership and most Lib Dem MPs.
‘A big boy made me do it’ is not going to win many votes back.
@William Barter
That was not retrospective though was it, only for new tenancy agreements, so people were not forced to move.
‘Labour did it first, so we’ll do it worse’ again, not a good way to win back votes.
@Sandy Oh, I agree that the new rules are worse – but your initial argument was that Labour had nothing to do with the bedroom tax. Anyway, I think you’d be hard pressed to find a Lib Dem who won’t admit that the withdrawal of the spare-room subsidy, in its current form, was a mistake. Which is why I am proud that Lib Dems are legislating to remove the worst effects – and I hope Labour continue to back us in the House of Commons. https://www.libdemvoice.org/bedroom-tax-lib-dem-andrew-georges-affordable-homes-bill-wins-key-commons-vote-backed-by-lib-dem-labour-mps-42306.html
@William
It would have avoided a lot of human misery if the party had listened to all the many warnings from housing charities etc and Lib Dems had voted against it from the outset.
Nastiness indeed, when so many warnings were clearly stated about the effects of it, yet ignored.
Oh dear.
There is a point here about political tone and the impacts of policy trying to get out, but the somewhat glib policy hits this article tries to make cheapen it’s message and make it sneery and in itself an example of what it tries to argue against.
And in this context, pretending the Iraq war was a universally held Labour policy (or indeed intiated wholly by the Blair leadership) is daft. Yes, it was a stupid war, a stupid policy that led to awful consequences. But how can you tar Labour with that brush forever, then expect to get a fair hearing on for eg the bedroom tax, tuition fees, etc.???
Naieve, borderline hypocritical, childish politics.
@ matt (Bristol)
“Naieve, borderline hypocritical, childish politics.”
Actually might it not improve our politics if MPs were held to account for their actions. Every Labour MP who voted for the war in Iraq should be held to account for their actions. Every Liberal Democrat MP who broke their pledge to vote against any rise in tuition fees held to account for their actions and so forth.
If MPs knew they were going to be held to account for their actions instead of hiding behind the party label – if say Harriet Harman and Nick Clegg were kicked out at the next election – would this not lead to MPs behaving more responsibly and less hypocritically and childishly in the future.
If I have any disagreement with this article it is that, written as it is from the relatively Labour-free south coast of England, it makes no reference to the corrupt nastiness that the Labour Party in the north of England find comes so naturally to them.
Richard
Why only Labour and Lib Dems – how about the Tories?
I suggest if Iraq annoys you so much go and look back at the statements at the time and the way the voting happened. The Tories were even more gung-ho than Labour. Do you think that a Tory Government would have done anything different?
No political party is perfect but I know the ideology of which one has caused more damage to the fabric of the country than the others – and it isn’t the LD or Labour!
Richard, there is policy we don’t like, and then there is geuinely nasty politics – cynical politics, devil-take-the-hindmost politics, the-end-justifies-the-means politics, if-it-gets-us-elected-I-don’t-care-about-the-consequences politics.
All parties are guilty of the latter from time to time, and the Tories and Labour and guilty more than most. This article, however, mixes the two.
There is no guaranee under you model of accountability, laudable as it might be, or under recall, that people won’t continue to do this.
The only real guarantee against the pernicious, sapping effect of nasty politics is the moral compass, thoughtfulness and self-disicpline of both politicians and the electorate.
@Sandy…
It’s called coalition government – one party doesn’t get things all their own way. If Bedroom Tax had been introduced under a Lib Dem majority governement then your point may be valid.
@ stuart moran
“Why only Labour and Lib Dems – how about the Tories?”
My general point was “might it not improve our politics if MPs were held to account for their actions” The reference to particular groups of Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs was an example of how the principle might operate. Certainly it would be a good thing if all the Tory MPs who voted for the Iraq War were also held to account by their constituents.
However I believe we can also distinguish between voting for a war on the one hand and running a war on the other hand. The last time a conservative government invaded another country (Egypt, 1956) they at least had the good grace to undertake an assessment of how many civilian deaths their war had caused. This can be compared and contrasted with the actions of the Labour government during the Iraq invasion who were not interested in the scale of civilian casualties. Furthermore having secured Port Said during the war the conservative government took steps to maintain civilian security during their occupation and did not hand over control to sectarian militias as the Labour government did in Basra.
I despair…..are the LD still an independent party?
@ matt (Bristol) “Naive, borderline hypocritical, childish politics.”
I think that’s the whole point of this article. Labour has released this video attacking the Conservatives for still being the nasty party, but there’s surely something hypocritical about it from the party of the Iraq war, 90 days detention, banning political demonstrations outside Parliament, ID cards, civil liberties generally, trashing the country’s economy and castigating the incoming government for everything they try to fix it – even when these fixes would have been pursued by Labour themselves.
Yes I agree that not everyone in the Labour party agreed with the Iraq war but you could surely use the same argument about other parties and other policies. Should we not attack the Tories for favouring tax cuts for the rich just because some of their number don’t agree with this? No – we should recognise the honourable exceptions but rightly attack the party as a whole for their policies. Likewise, it’s fair to castigate the Labour party as a whole for the Iraq war, while recognising the honourable exceptions such as the late Robin Cook.
Labour needs to learn not to throw stones in glass houses. Their holier than thou sneering is not only distasteful, it’s also hypocritical.
Didn’t we use to say we were above all that tribal rubbish? I’m perfectly happy for Labour and the Conservatives to play the yah boo game but despair about this sort of thing (especially from within a coalition happy enough with war, restricting civil liberties, benefiting bankers and not advocating a ‘progressive alliance’).
@ Julian Tisi
You are spot-on in your representation as to why I penned this piece. Thank you.
Having spent 8 Years in Labour, 14 in The Greens & 10 in The Libdems my exprience was that Labour were definitely the nastiest & Libdems the least nasty.
D McKay – that is the point I am trying to make.
I hadn’t realized how many Labour Party supporters read Lib Dem Voice. Labour provided some of the most right wing, bigoted, uncompassionate Home Secretaries in Living Memory – Blunkett, Johnson etc. It was Alan Johnson who tried to extradite a man with Asbergers to the USA and then had the gall to criticise Theresa May for blocking it in one of her rare more humane decisions.
I am totally against personal nastiness in politics. I can and do attack the policies and actions of my opponents but I have never stooped to the sort of vile personal attacks that even some of our own colleagues have used. My wife was subjected to the most appalling personal attacks by the Leeds Labour Party and they set up a website devoted to attacking her that was so appalling that ALDC told her not to read it.
So Simon Shaw is quite right. Northern Labour are totally and utterly without shame and produce the most unbelievably nasty and vicious attacks on their opponents. They tell lies about them too.
My purpose in exposing this side of the Labour Party is just to warn those in our party who want a coalition with Labour just who they would they would be dealing with and to suggest that it would be in no way easier than the current coalition with the Conservatives.
That is in no way to suggest that I want another deal with the Tories. I want no deal at all unless it includes PR for all elections, guaranteed.