Opinion: Hard-headed realism should guide our dealings with the Conservatives

I’m an unreserved coalition enthusiast.

The coalition means Lib Dems in government; something which, in turn, means the implementation of many Lib Dem policies, the likes of which I have campaigned and voted for over the years, believing said policies to be long overdue and beneficial for the country.

But, despite what our critics say, that doesn’t make me a Tory; and I have very little interest in seeing the Conservatives have an easy ride, in helping them implement their policies, or in keeping their members happy.

The embrace them closely strategy of the first coalition year now looks naive, and most Lib Dems will be buoyed that the battles and arguments within the government can now occur in public, with voters more able to see the differences in our parties’ respective principles and positions.

Whenever the Lib Dems win and our policies become law, there are angry reactions from the Tory members so memorably monikered by John Major and embodied by the ‘traditionalists’ of the 1922 committee.

The cult of Boris, as the media discuss openly and enthusiastically, now threatens to become a Conservative leadership challenge, with the ‘true blues’ demanding a ‘proper Tory’ and not some ‘Lib Dem appeasing, liberal apologist’.

Make no mistake, because of Lib Dem successes, David Cameron is fighting for his political future. The bookies now make him favourite to go as party leader, ahead of Nick Clegg. It is because he feels threatened, and seriously so, that his conference threw a bit of red meat to his stalking predators; why he lurched to the right in a reactionary fashion; and why he is now giving up on half a decade of attempted brand detoxification.

For the Lib Dems this represents an opportunity – fertile ground laid open, for a party, like ours, of moderate, evidence based policy making, to put forward new ideas for how the country would be better with more Lib Dems elected. It provides a number of popular red lines where we can restrain the Tories’ unsavoury instincts. It lets us show the public that the Lib Dem party in parliament is the party on their side.

That’s why I’ll be helping us win many more arguments in future – on equal marriage, on the mansion tax, and political reform.

As we fight to anchor the government in the centre ground, the Tory voices urging policies way off to right, seem ever more extreme, out of touch, and unelectable.

But we must be pragmatic and never nostalgic – we owe neither Cameron nor the Tories any gratitude or loyalty for our involvement in government. When we’ve got all that we can out of the coalition arrangement; perhaps not far from now when his critics stab Cameron in the front as much as in the back, or when he goes native in a futile act of self-preservation; we shouldn’t hesitate to say ‘It’s you, not me – this isn’t working anymore. Pack up your stuff and get out of the house”.

If the Tories aren’t delivering the policies we want and need to see, we should call for an election and show the electorate that only we as a party have the instincts and policies they can trust to do what’s right by them and right for the country.

* Andrew Tennant is a Lib Dem member in Loughborough.

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107 Comments

  • Nigel Quinton 25th Oct '12 - 5:31pm

    Well said Andrew, I may be a critic of our leadership’s performance in coalition, but like you I saw no alternative in 2010 and see little practical alternative now. As you say, the key priority is to stand up for our values and make it obvious that we are “in government, on your side” by having the debates in public, not behind closed doors. This is why I cannot fathom on what planet our leaders are on when they don’t stand up and say that Osborne’s shares for rights proposals are dangerous nonsense, and use the opportunity to parade our own excellent policies passed at conference only last month.

  • I like your stance, and we could take it further… whilst the right whingers are considering ‘packing their bags and getting out’ we could be inviting the Cameroons to join us.
    We could throw a similar message in the opposite direction, with Balls Labour exposed as being on another planet, there are many liberal Labour who do agree with what we are doing.

  • Andrew Tennant 26th Oct '12 - 10:52am

    Thanks for both comments so far!

    @Nigel
    I agree with you. Frank and open debate on policy differences makes the Liberal Democrats stronger, and it could make the country stronger too if used more widely. In the era of coalition, collective cabinet responsibility, and its pretence that the cabinet think and speak as one, seems like an unjustifiable anachronism.

    @Peter
    Oh how I wish I’d thought of ‘right whingers’ – genius!

    I agree with your suggestion that we should be building bridges with like minded liberals, and their voters, who have been misplaced and frustrated trying to reform other parties. The Lib Dem tent shouls be getting bigger as more people look at us as a viable option to get what they want done. We should work with anyone who will help deliver our policies and make use whatever parliamentary processes and arithmetic that will help with this. You change the world through taking people with you, not by pushing them away.

  • Nick (not Clegg) 26th Oct '12 - 12:16pm

    Cliche alert: “red meat” and “red lines” in consecutive paragraphs.

  • Andrew Tennant 26th Oct '12 - 12:27pm

    @Nick(not Clegg)
    Odd that you oppose the use of ‘red’, I’d have had you down as a Labour member…

  • Nick (not Clegg) 26th Oct '12 - 1:13pm

    @ Andrew

    I have never been a member of any Party other than the Liberal Party (1962-1983) and the Liberal Democrats (1994-2011).

    I now have no political home or allegiance.

  • Andrew Tennant 26th Oct '12 - 1:38pm

    @Nick(not Clegg)
    Can I ask what it would take for you to be a member again (2012-)?

  • David Allen 26th Oct '12 - 2:28pm

    “Because of Lib Dem successes, David Cameron is fighting for his political future.”

    Hardly. Cameron’s problems are due to his own failings, Osborne’s budget, Pastygate, Mitchellgate, etc etc.

    It is true that the Tory Right would like to exploit this weakness by bulling up the Lib Dems, exaggerating what we have achieved, and hence calling on Boris to save them from all their bogymen (the EU, the ECHR, immigrants, etc.). They want to see policies shift in their direction.

    That presents Lib Dems with a bit of a dilemma. If we boast that we have had a huge influence on coalition policy, what will it actually achieve? Will it just mean that the Right gain ground, and convince more of their Tory colleagues that those pesky LDs are too powerful, and really must be slapped down?

  • Andrew, the problem is that some of us are proud to be Social Democrats within the Liberal Democrat s. There is an increasing tendency to brandish the LIBERAL label as though it is all we are about. I don’t want us to withdraw from the coalition, I prefer that the Tories should. Mike Hancock reckons that Tories are mean nasty people, they must be, otherwise they wouldn’t be Tories. Thus if you are like minded i.e. cutting benefits, punishing the poor rewarding the affluent,maintaining unneded benefits to affluen pensioners like me whilst cutting EMA your path is clear.

  • Oh not this lionising of social democracy again – if it’s so good, why doesn’t the Labour right form its own party and see if it can get anyone elected actually as social democrats …..? oh yes, sorry, it did try that once, Didn’t go so well, huh?

  • Nick (not Clegg) 26th Oct '12 - 3:21pm

    @ Andrew

    I can fore-see no circumstance that would make me wish to rejoin.

  • Andrew Tennant 26th Oct '12 - 5:14pm

    @David Allen

    David Cameron’s style, as well as the ineptitude and misconduct of his party colleagues, is certainly causing the Conservatives issues – I won’t deny that on their behalf.

    But how would you characterise a £10k personal allowance, the pupil premium, expansion of childcare, the highest pension rise ever & a triple lock for the future, economic & banking reform, more apprenticeships than ever, a green investment bank, uprating of benefits, no more subsidies for nuclear, no renewal of Trident, a doubling in new house building, a scrapping of ID cards, an end to child detention, a block on unfair extraditions, and an ethical approach to foreign policy and international development, if not Lib Dem wins that wouldn’t have happened without us?

    I don’t understand, given the number of Lib Dem seats that face the Tories, why you’d talk them up at our expense? Or is it a cunning strategy to help them win a majority?

    Our appeal needs to be made to the public to justify our election, not to the Tory backbenchers.

    @BrianD

    I’m a social liberal if not a Social Democrat, so we share aims if not a methodological approach for how best to achieve them. We are however stronger as a party together, debating our different views on methodology to ensure what is adopted and enacted is that which can stand up to scrutiny and win numbers to support it. That’s democracy ultimately. That’s why we’re Liberal Democrats.

  • @John mc Idon’t recall a grand Liberal revival before the formation of the Lib dems. What I do see is former soggies like me enjoying Liberator rathere than the orange Book

  • Matthew Huntbach 26th Oct '12 - 5:57pm

    BrianD

    Andrew, the problem is that some of us are proud to be Social Democrats within the Liberal Democrat s. There is an increasing tendency to brandish the LIBERAL label as though it is all we are about.

    Yes, but the “Liberal” label is being used by those brandishing it to mean something quite different from what it meant back in the 1980s.

  • Andrew Tennant 26th Oct '12 - 6:10pm

    *sigh*
    We can fight together as a party or we can bicker amongst one another. I know which an think will win us more seats.

  • Matthew Huntbach 26th Oct '12 - 6:21pm

    Andrew Tennant

    The embrace them closely strategy of the first coalition year now looks naive

    What do you mean “now looks naive”? It looked naive then. It gave the impression we had given up what we believe in and embraced Conservative Party policies. When you write “the implementation of many Lib Dem policies, the likes of which I have campaigned and voted for over the years”, what do you mean? The government we have now is quite clearly very far from what most of us have campaigned and voted for over the years. So when you write things like that you are simply confirming what our ex-voters are saying “These people lied to us – they were Tories in disguise, all they wanted was power, now they have it their true colours are showing”.

    The reality was we were placed in a difficult situation following the last election. Our relative power to the Tories in this situation was greatly diminished due to the imbalance caused by the electoral system, the fact that there was no alternative viable coalition, and the fact that we ended the election with our vote going down so we would be the biggest losers if there was another general election soon afterwards.

    We have been able to have a little effect on softening the worst of Tory policies, and getting through a few things we would like – in nearly all cases though, only when they are things that don’t bother the Tories. We ought to have been honest about this and said “thanks to the distortion of the electoral system we have a mainly Tory government, if you don’t like what you see, make sure it’s different next time by putting in more LibDems and changing the electroal system so it isn’t so biased”. By exaggerating our influence, making out we were almost equal in power to them, going on about how so much of what this government is doing is “Liberal Democrat policy”, we’ve lost that message. We’ve given the impression that we are very happy with the mainly Tory policies this government is pushing through, many of them things we’ve campaigned against and voted against over the years. We needn’t have done this – we could have accepted the reality of the coalition while making quite clear it was very far from our ideal. And some of us said this back when the coalition was formed, so please don’t play the “Now we know better game” as if this has all come as a great surprise and nobody could have predicted it.

    Wouldn’t it be nice if some of those responsible for the mistakes in presentation, from the Rose Garden love-in through to the “75% of our manifesto implemented” had the decency to say “Sorry, we got it wrong – you who said so at the time got it right” – and did the decent thing and resigned?

  • Matthew Huntbach 26th Oct '12 - 6:27pm

    Andrew Tennant

    We can fight together as a party or we can bicker amongst one another. I know which an think will win us more seats.

    Bickering goes both ways. When the outgoing Director of Strategy to the Leader of the party writes an article on the eve of our conference essentially saying to half our membership “You aren’t welcome in the party, get out”, that’s not even bickering – it’s much more, it’s open warfare. What you really seem to be saying is that those of us who see the party being led to disaster by an inept leadership (it would be worse if it were not inept – if it actually were doing what it is doing knowing what the results would be) should just shut up and sit on our seats as they drive the lot of us off the cliff.

  • Andrew Tennant 26th Oct '12 - 6:38pm

    @Matthew Huntbach
    Not at all Matthew. What I would encourage is for those who think they have policies that would benefit the country to argue the case and to bring them to conference so that we can scrutinise and vote on them as a party, then start campaigning for them to be part of the government programme. At best such an action will let us make the most of our time in coalition, at worst it will give us the strongest possible platform to take to the country and ask for as many votes and seats as possible when it’s time for the next election.

    To use your analogy, we want a proper destination, not parts ripped off the car and fighting amongst the passengers.

  • Matthew Huntbach 27th Oct '12 - 1:29am

    Andrew Tennant

    To use your analogy, we want a proper destination, not parts ripped off the car and fighting amongst the passengers

    So what do you mean by this? Who were you getting at when you wrote “We can fight together as a party or we can bicker amongst one another”? Who is it exactly that you are accusing of ripping parts off the car? When this sort of language is used it usually means “shut up and do what your leader tells you”. If you mean something else, please clarify. I actually see remarkably little bickering in the party. What I do see, however, is a slow dropping away from activity and membership of people unhappy with where it is being taken by its leader and those advising him.

  • Andrew Tennant 27th Oct '12 - 5:09am

    @Matthew Huntbach
    It means I want as many people as possible to join, campaign for, and to call themselves Liberal Democrats.

    It means I believe the party is strengthened by diversity, by debate, and by democracy.

    It means the party is and should be whatever its members want it to be, whatever they vote for, whatever they believe in, and wherever they want to take it.

    That makes sense to me because it’s liberal and democratic.

  • >Oh how I wish I’d thought of ‘right whingers’ – genius!

    That one’s copyright Methuselah :-).

    eg Here’s a whinger whinging in 1995 in the TES about right-whingers whinging about Grade Inflation.

    “Each August a load of bath-chair right-wingers, (or “right whingers”), are wheeled out to do theirspeaking-clock act. The message is always the same and the actual exam results for that particular year are irrelevant. Standards are going to the dogs.

    This annual farce enrages the teaching profession and ruins the quite reasonable pleasure of thousands of hard-working and successful pupils and their families.”

    http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=96680

  • @ Andrew Tennant.

    If Clegg is against bickering why did he attack libertarians as ‘the tinny sound of freedom’ (a blatant insult) in the conference speech ? Are libertarians expected to ignore this ? If we argue back we could be accused of you of bickering . If the leadership don’t want bickering they should not openly attack sections of the party.

  • As an ex-voter I find Matthew’s analysis of the situation very incisive. Thanks for that

  • Nick (not Clegg) 27th Oct '12 - 1:28pm

    “To use your analogy, we want a proper destination, not parts ripped off the car and fighting amongst the passengers”

    Is that , perhaps, the nub of the problem? The leadership has been treating the members as passengers: and taking them on a magical mystery tour. There was a time when I was prepared to get out and push (i.e. deliver lots of leaflets). Not any more; when the bus lurched to the right I realised that the steering was faulty and decided to alight.

  • Matthew Huntbach 27th Oct '12 - 6:35pm

    Andrew Tennant

    It means I want as many people as possible to join, campaign for, and to call themselves Liberal Democrats

    etc.

    Sorry, but just how does “We can fight together as a party or we can bicker amongst one another” mean that?

    Can you please ANSWER my question? Just WHO are you accusing of “bickering”? And what do you mean by “bickering”? And what would it involve for those you accuse of doing this for you to say they are no longer “bickering”?

    What is happening at the moment is the opposite of what you say you want – we have people posting here saying they have left the party. Who do you blame for that? In what way do you suppose whoever it is you accuse of “bickering” stopping doing whatever you mean by that would bring back these people who have stopped supporting the party?

  • Andrew Tennant 27th Oct '12 - 6:43pm

    @Matthew Huntbach
    The short answer would be anyone attacking fellow Liberal Democrats or suggesting it would be better for some to leave, leaving a narrow range of voices and opinions within the party.

    The obvious benefit of all feeling welcome within the party would be that more would choose to continue or start their participation.

  • Matthew Huntbach 27th Oct '12 - 8:33pm

    @Andrew Tennant

    So when you wrote “We can fight together as a party or we can bicker amongst one another” who were you aiming it at? It implies there are some people “bickering”. Who?

  • Andrew Tennant 27th Oct '12 - 8:42pm

    @Matthew Huntbach
    *sigh*
    Anyone accusing any other member of not being a proper Liberal Democrat. Particularly on a post highlighting how we should work together to effectively fight against the Tories who don’t share our aims and principles.

  • Andrew Tennant

    “If the Tories aren’t delivering the policies we want and need to see, we should call for an election and show the electorate that only we as a party have the instincts and policies they can trust to do what’s right by them and right for the country.”

    Unfortunately it is very hard to regain trust when you have lost it once already. Liberal Democrats have already told the country their policies and then reneged on many of them as soon as they are in government. Why should the country ever trust them again? And here’s the thing – even many Lib Dem members don’t agree with or trust their own leadership. So why should the rest of us?

  • Richard Dean 27th Oct '12 - 10:20pm

    Would anyone like a mirror? I have several available. And they all tell the truth. 🙂

  • Andrew Tennant said:

    How would you characterise a £10k personal allowance, the pupil premium, expansion of childcare, the highest pension rise ever & a triple lock for the future, economic & banking reform, more apprenticeships than ever, a green investment bank, uprating of benefits, no more subsidies for nuclear, no renewal of Trident, a doubling in new house building, a scrapping of ID cards, an end to child detention, a block on unfair extraditions, and an ethical approach to foreign policy and international development, if not Lib Dem wins that wouldn’t have happened without us?

    OK, here goes:

    a £10k personal allowance – not yet achieved, mildly redistributive, but outweighed by other tax changes

    the pupil premium – a figleaf to cover marketisation and increasing inequality of provision in education

    expansion of childcare – don’t know the details here, but what about cuts to Surestart?

    the highest pension rise ever & a triple lock for the future – is it true? might be, we are biased toward older electors who vote Tory

    economic & banking reform – er what exactly?

    more apprenticeships than ever – this sounds like playing with statistics

    a green investment bank – words words words

    uprating of benefits – WTF? Do we see Osborne boasting about how much easier he has made it for all those benefit “scroungers” out there? Do we?

    no more subsidies for nuclear – well not yet, but there will have to be subsidies if it is to be built, so, in the end we will probably stop dithering and grant the subsidies

    no renewal of Trident – postponed six months

    a doubling in new house building – WTF? Clearly fiddled statistics

    a scrapping of ID cards – OK fair point, but it was also Tory policy anyway

    an end to child detention – no that hasn’t happened, though to be fair we have tried

    a block on unfair extraditions – do these words have any real meaning?

    an ethical approach to foreign policy and international development – these words have very little real meaning!

    if not “Lib Dem wins that wouldn’t have happened without us?” – Dreary, largely bogus, not very credible propaganda.

  • @Phyllis – Considering the fact that they are junior partners in a Coalition Government, at a time when economic and international circumstances indicate significant harm if we do not maintain stability, I am quite baffled by people who feel so disappointed with the Lib Dems. The tuition fees debacle is disappointing, but I would not have expected the smaller party in any coalition to be able to dominate economic policy, and I am seeing the Lib Dems working very hard for their values for the position they are in. As far as I know, they are still trying to decentralise power, still working for an electoral system that works for UK elections, still aiming to protect the poorest, and still trying to increase freedom. I know I do not have an ID card, and Trident is not going to be replaced before 2015…on those two alone I am over the moon.

  • “I’d have had you down as a Labour member…”

    Tedious. You must realise that many people who formerly supported the Lib Dems no longer do so, and that includes many former members and many former activists.

    I don’t suppose every party member who supports the coalition is a closet Tory, but if you’re going to accuse former party members who oppose the coalition of being “Labour”, then why shouldn’t we respond in kind?

    In any case, I don’t think it will get you very far. I should think a rather large proportion of the electorate is now disillusioned with politicians of all parties and their infantile name-calling.

  • “The tuition fees debacle is disappointing, but I would not have expected the smaller party in any coalition to be able to dominate economic policy …”

    No one expected you to “dominate economic policy”. But if you made a written promise to the electorate, you should have kept it, that’s all. (I write as someone who doesn’t think you should have made the promise in the first place.)

  • Missomole

    Junior partners whose votes are required to get their legislation through. Look at what happens when there are rebellions such as HoL reform. The Government has to think again.

    You can think they are doing a god job if you want – polls, and recent elections suggest a lot of voters disagree with you. Clegg has managed this coalition appallingly and it is that which is the biggest issue, not a coalition per se.

    Stay baffled – perhaps when your party is reduced to a rump at the next election you will still be baffled..

    Oh, and by the way, any party that brings back a cheat like Laws has, in my view, lost any moral high ground

  • Bazzasc, you imply we held the moral high ground peviously. And yet you didnt vote for the party with the moral high ground. Clearly morality or lack of it doesnt play a big role in your voting behaviour.

  • Missomole – there are several contributors who prefer the impotent purity of permanent opposition to the messy coitus of being in coalition.

  • Alistair

    I don’t understand your post?

    I have voted LD in every election since 87 apart from 97. I did vote for a party I thought was better than it has turned out to be! The case of Laws shows that your leadership is just as bad as the other parties.

    Tabman, I rarely agree with you but accept your arguments and can see where you come from. You must, however, see that most of the disappointment is with the way that the leadership has managed this coalition. Some people want to have their cake and eat it. On one hand you are implementing your policies when something good is done (a rare event) but want to have no blame for the bad.

    I am on the same page as Matthew Huntbach when it comes to this.

  • Bazzasc – you seem to fail to understand the nature of coalition government; voting for things you disagree with is part of the deal. Happens all the time within parties too.

  • Bazzasc – that’s not an inconsistent position to take; its pointing out the difference between a coalition andno coalition. Clearly the difference between a conservative (or labour) government and a coalition is the things liberals have brought along; the other bitswould have happened anyway.

  • Tabman

    Well we will have to agree to disagree – the things would not have happened anyway because they have not got the votes to do that. We have LD voting against what we thought were their policies and so they lose the respect and support from those who have voted for them and see themselves on the left.

    It may well have happened with a Labour coalition as well and shows how damaged our electoral system is as coalitions are unstable. I remember seeing and interview with AJP Taylor when he said that coalitions only work in Britain during wartime. At other times the system has too many imbalances to cope (23% of votes should give the influence of 23% not 7%).

  • Peter Watson 28th Oct '12 - 10:24am

    @Missomole
    “I would not have expected the smaller party in any coalition to be able to dominate economic policy”
    The problem for me is the way that the Lib Dem leadership has given the impression that they have dominated policy – economic and otherwise. We were told nonsense about 75% of our manifesto in the coalition agreement, and our leaders come out to promote and support coalition policies that they previously opposed. There is no impression of reluctance or compromise. This may be the inevitable result of collective cabinet responsibility, which may itself be incompatible with coalition government.
    It is the dissent from the parliamentary Lib Dem line on this website that gives me hope that grass-roots Lib Dems have retained their integrity, but I have no such faith in the Lib Dems who will be asking me for my vote, and they won’t be getting it any more.

  • Peter Watson 28th Oct '12 - 11:21am

    Watching Danny Alexander’s unconvincing performance on the Sunday Politics at the moment, I’d love Andrew Neil to ask “What would you have done differently in a majority Lib Dem government?”.

  • @ Peter Watson, I think I understand what you are saying, but IMO that could be a communication problem, not the actual integrity of the people concerned. What I notice is that some supporters of the Conservatives moan that they are not being “Conservative” enough when they are in government, and exactly the same thing happens with Labour. Philosophical purity gets compromised as any party gets to the top, I was expecting that if I ever saw the Liberal Democrats in government. If I had seen a Liberal Democrat Majority happen, and then they had backed out on electoral reform, charged the poor more taxes and spent the money on nuclear “defences”, then I would be taking my support elsewhere and seething about power crazed hypocrites. All I am seeing is a political party forced to compromise by both power itself and a coalition position, no it is not different in that sense to the others, they are “all the same” in that way. To an extent it is also true that power corrupts, but believing that in the first place is top of the list of reasons why I am a liberal, so it is hardly going to put me off.

  • @ tabman yes, thank you for pointing it out, it was more comfy huddling in West Country pubs with a handful of like minded people with no Cabinet Ministers messing things up on our behalf, but the cute little CND sign on the back of Jeremy Thorpe’s car just was never going to be as powerful as keeping the Tories from Majority Rule.

  • Missomole

    It was not the LD that stopped the Tories from majority rule, I believe that it was the electorate and our useless electoral system.

    I would say from what I have seen, which you will disagree with but that is beside the point, we have pretty much Tory majority rule anyway but with no chance of an election before 2015

  • You’re right bazzasc – it does look a lot like majority Tory rule. Probably because 6/7 of the coalition are Tories, and most of the people on the opposition benches agree with the Tories (ATOS disability assessments, raising tuition fees, slashing housing benefit, a grudging AV referendum if pushed, scrapping EMA… all straight out of the plan for Labour’s fourth term)

    It’s a little hard to divine the electorate’s intent with our lovely old electoral arrangements though. More of them backed the Tories to rule this time than handed Labour their final five years…

  • Bazzasc – without the coalition we would have had financial turmoil and then Tory majority rule in an atmosphere of far worse austerity than what you see presently.

  • Steve Griffiths 28th Oct '12 - 2:03pm

    “The embrace them closely strategy of the first coalition year now looks naive”

    Of course it does and as Matthew Huntbach has so neatly pointed out, the hoary old campaigners like me who had dealt with and fought the Tories for years in the council chamber and outside, knew exactly what to expect from such an arrangement. Many of us also warned the party to be on its guard. In October 2010 I resigned from the Lib Dems (as many others of the Libertarian Left have done since) because of tuition fees, rightward drift of the party and the coalition. In that resignation letter, I said then:

    ” I’ve not fought the Tories for more than forty years to want to put them in a position of power. Those who support the Coalition Government repeat the mantra that we are now in ‘grown-up politics’, to cover their policy nakedness. I say, from years of fighting them at the ballot box, that the Tories will give you as little as possible and dump the Lib Dems as soon as expedient to them. To believe anything else is the naive politics of the kindergarten. ”

    The letter went to both Leader and Deputy Leader and there was not even an acknowledgement of 40 years of campaigning for the Liberals and Lib Dems, except from a former local colleague. The party was told it was being naive, but the ministerial cars were I guess too big a draw…

  • Steve Griffiths – you’ve fought then for forty years, I’ve fought them for thirty. I also believe in working with the hand I’m dealt, not leaving the table.

  • Steve Griffiths 28th Oct '12 - 3:24pm

    tabman

    I’ve not gone anywhere, nor have my views and beliefs changed. It was the party that drifted off to the right and departed from the left-of-centre table.

  • Steve Griffiths – even were what you said the truth (which it isn’t) the party is that which its members make it. Personally I would be very worried if the party didn’t change or adapt with time; if you keep doing what you’ve always done you’ll get what you’ve always got – in our case, nothing since 1910.

  • Steve Griffiths 28th Oct '12 - 4:21pm

    tabman

    Well either it is the truth that the party has moved from the left-of-centre, or it has not. You seem in your first sentence to say it is not the case, but then in your second sentence you seem to suggest that the party has indeed changed with time. If you wan’t to learn some ‘home truths’, why don’t you speak with others like me who have departed after decades of service and ask them why they did so.

    You say that the party is “that which its members make it”. At one time it was a ‘broader church’ than recent leadership pronoucements suggest they wish it to be now. We’ve gone, not only because of policy/philosophy issues, but also because we are told those of our beliefs no longer have a place within the party.

    As for adaptability, I would not wish to see a party so ‘adaptable’ that it would sacrifice its own long held principles simply for percieved electability. Coalition followed soon after 1910 and where did that get us? Divided and unelectable. I wonder if that fate awaits us again, unless the leadship stops trying to mould the Lib Dem into a “tight little right little party”?

  • Nick (not Clegg) 28th Oct '12 - 4:30pm

    Tabman – “there are several contributors who prefer the impotent purity of permanent opposition to the messy coitus of being in coalition.”

    I thought you had formed a government with the Tories or, to be more accurate, that you had provided the lobby fodder to enable them to form one. I did not realise that you had got into bed with them.

    Incidentally, I think that what Steve Griffiths says is true.. In looking at the “offspring” of your “messy coitus” (I.e the legislation it has produced and that which is in gestation) each of us has to decide whether, on the whole ,we support this government or not. Speaking for myself, I find that I am no less opposed to the Cameron Government than I was to those of Thatcher and Major (Macmillan’s, and Heath’s are now but distant memories). That is why I decided, last year, that it would be illogical to continue paying a membership subscription to a Party which is supporting a set of policies to which I am (yes, you are right in this respect) opposed.

  • Steve Griffiths – you’ve left; such is your prerogative. The alternative would have been to stay and argue your case. I don’t believe in your false left/right dichotomy; time and again I see far more that unites me with some of my strongest critics than narrow economics.

    The majority viewpoint in a party changes over time. Those that find themselves in the minority (we’ve all been there at some point) face choices. You either accept the majority view for Tyr time being but argue your case, or you leave.

  • Tabman

    Don’t you think that the party has also pushed out those who are on the social democratic wing of the party by some of their comments and actions. I hear Laws and I hear a dyed in the wool liberal Tory.

    Any Coalition would have perhaps brung this result – essentially a split in the party and a new philosophy going forward. The party is now liberal right and is seen as such by many of the ex-voters. Those in influential positions are already indicating that with their incessant attacks on Labour which, in fact, no longer makes any sense from an electoral point of view seeing the biggest threat to LD seats is from the Tory side. It must be, therefore, ideological.

  • bazzasc – Do you think that if we were under Conservative Majority Rule there would be a chance of an election much before 2015? Do you think that with the ability to select when they held the election, and re arrange the election map to suit themselves, it would be easy to get them out?

    I wouldn’t worry too much about whether or not I agree with you regarding whether or not we are under an outright Conservative Government, have you noticed that the Conservatives do not think we are?

  • Missomole

    I don’t think the timing of the election makes that much difference to be honest and, although I agree with fixed terms, 5 years is too long.

    As to reorganising the boundaries (which I assume you allude to) no single party Government would be able to do what they propose. There would always be the need for agreement and you have helped them to achieve that. I think being in opposition would actually have given you more influence on this particular point as in Government you were seduced by the linking of it to AV.

    As to what Tory MPs think the 2010 intake are rabid right wingers. Remember though that the Tories did not win the election so they could not command a majority anyway. I am not convinced by this argument about a snap election returning a Tory majority in 2010 – the reason the non-Tories did not want another election was financial (the banker donors to the Tories frightening us into a Tory-led Government)

  • @Peter Watson
    re: Danny Alexander’s unconvincing performance against Andrew Neil – are you sure that’s nothing to do with Andrew Neil’s bad questions?

    @tabman
    don’t be so hard on critics of the party, we can only win them back by listening to them – I was talking to one former member today who resigned when we went into coalition, she’s still happy to continue as a focus deliverer and she’s actually unhappy that she won’t have a vote in our upcoming PPC selection.

  • @bazzasc
    isn’t is somewhat excessive to judge your opinion on occasional facts, or the fact that of one man’s membership (anyway Chris Huhne creates a fair balance with David Laws) – that’s like saying you don’t like parliament because Cromwell committed genocide!

    I seriously don’t get the ‘them and us’ attitude you’re expressing, liberal community politics is about participating, just as you’re doing here on LDV.

  • Bazzasc – I spent years working for the party when your views were in the ascendancy. I find it ironic that when the emphasis has shifted slightly, many of those for whom I worked diligently seem unable to return the favour.

  • Oranjepan, see my comment above. Perhaps it is harsh, but it does feel like one side are not keeping their part of the bargain.

  • Matthew Huntbach 28th Oct '12 - 9:26pm

    Andrew Tennant

    @Matthew Huntbach
    *sigh*
    Anyone accusing any other member of not being a proper Liberal Democrat. Particularly on a post highlighting how we should work together to effectively fight against the Tories who don’t share our aims and principles

    I ask once again, Andrew. Just WHO do you mean by this? You are making yourself look very bad by your continual refusal to answer my question, instead evading it by replies which don’t at all clarify what you meant when you first wrote about “bickering”.

    This is what you wrote on 26th October at 6.10pm:

    We can fight together as a party or we can bicker amongst one another. I know which an think will win us more seats.

    You seem at that point to be accusing some people of “bickering” and thereby losing us seats. So just WHO is it in the party that you claim is doing this, just WHO is it that is accusing other members of not being proper Liberal Democrats? Could you please name the person and quote the words that you believe have this meaning? Could you please state where what you wrote then fits into the conversation on this thread that had taken place up till that point?

  • tabman,
    maybe that’s fair, but I think we also need to take individual circumstances into consideration. Many people including some former supporters will have changed personal priorities as is perfectly natural with the course of time. We shouldn’t judge them for that, we should listen to them.

    Look at the difference between the professional and volunteer side of the organisation, not everyone can be equally committed or can have equally broad and deep knowledge of what’s going on. I consider myself quite switched on, but I’m a long way from the heart of things.

    Maybe its an effect of mediated discussion, that opinion is abstracted and individuals are taken as holders of archetypal views and we get overanxious about defeating that one thing we disagree to be able to set the world to rights.

    But that’s the product of a sense of powerlessness driven by our ceding control over our communication to the medium. It’s not reflective of any wider truth, that’s still there to be debated!

  • Matthew Huntbach 28th Oct '12 - 10:08pm

    Peter Watson

    The problem for me is the way that the Lib Dem leadership has given the impression that they have dominated policy – economic and otherwise. We were told nonsense about 75% of our manifesto in the coalition agreement, and our leaders come out to promote and support coalition policies that they previously opposed. There is no impression of reluctance or compromise.

    Exactly – this is the point I have been making since the coalition was formed. I’m sorry, when people like “Tabman” write things like:

    there are several contributors who prefer the impotent purity of permanent opposition to the messy coitus of being in coalition

    they are missing the point. I’m not saying we shouldn’t have joined the coalition, and I’m not saying that Liberal Democrat MPs are bad people for what they are supporting as part of the coalition. I fully accept that a coalition does mean compromise. I also note that this is a coalition where, thanks to the electoral system, the Conservatives have much more dominance over the Liberal Democrats than they would if seats were allocated in proportion to votes – and I further note that the British people voted, by two-to-one, to support this electoral system after a campaign in its defence in which this distortion was put forward as its best point. Therefore, so far as I am concerned, we have the government the British people voted for in 2010, and any doubt over that was removed in 2011 when the British people gave overwhelming support to the electoral system which gave them that government. But it’s a government which is extreme right-wing Conservative, with only a little Liberal Democrat influence. The distortions of the electoral system which the British people – in Labour voting areas just as much as Conservative voting areas – gave such strong support to led to the “decisive” government its supporters in the referendum – many of them leading Labour Party members – said was such a good thing about it. Because the distortions so weakened the Liberal Democrats and ruled out an alternative coalition with Labour, despite the very extreme nature of the Conservative Party and it having well below half the vote, it can almost do all it wants, the Liberal Democrats can only tinker at the edges of it. I accept all that, I don’t like it a bit, but I accept it because I am a democrat, and as I said, it is what the British people voted for in 2010 and reaffirmed in 2011 by giving such strong support to the electoral system that gave it to us and rejecting even the tiniest reform of it.

    What I object to is the way the leadership of the Liberal Democrats instead of putting it as I have, which I believe is the reality, have continually exaggerated their influence in the government, and continually issued statements which suggest what we have now is such a super wonderful thing and we should all rejoice in it, we should consider it as having reached the goal we were working for over so many years. No – it is not. A very minor influence on a government which is very far from our ideal, which wants to do so much which is the direct opposite of what we have always said we were for is not a super wonderful thing, it is not the goal we have been working for over so many years. Every time someone at the top of our party open his or her mouth and said that, or some naive supporter lower down writes an article stating something similar – exaggerating our real influence and making out a few minor amendments to a basically Tory government line are some huge triumph, I cringe because I can feel yet more of our vote slipping away.

    The leadership are deliberately trying to conflate two separate issues

    Issue 1) Acceptance that the situation after the 2010 general election meant the best option for pursuing our policies was to join the coalition with the Conservatives

    Issue 2) Acceptance of the leadership’s tactics of appearing very happy with the coalition as if it was almost a Liberal Democrat government.

    That is, they are trying to make out that anyone who object to Issue 1 is also objecting to Issue 2, and is thus not a realist.

    All I am saying, and have been saying right from the start of the coalition, is that we should be saying “The government is like this because of the way the people of this country voted and the distortions of the electoral system. It is very far from what we wanted and campaigned for in 2010. It is a government whose policies reflect the fact that its composition is five-sixths Conservative. The reality is that our situation was either we accepted this in return for being able to exert just a small influence, or we left the country in a situation of instability with no majority government – which would almost inevitably have led to another general election being called and the Conservatives engineering it to gain a full majority. If you don’t like what you see, support electoral reform so we never again see such an extremist government dominated by one party despite it getting only a little over a third of the vote”.

    Every time we make exaggerated claims about our influence on this government, make out that some minor amendment is some huge Liberal Democrat triumph, we damage ourselves, because it makes us look weak and pathetic, lacking in ambition if we are so excited over something so small, or far closer to the Conservatives than we gave the impression of beforehand if we really do think the current government is so wonderful and doing so much that is “Liberal Democrat policy”.

  • Matthew Huntbach 28th Oct '12 - 10:30pm

    Now, actually I think all those people writing here about resigning from the party because it has moved so far to the right have not got it quite right. I don’t find among ordinary members of the party any sense of having moved to the right. The problem really does come down to the impression the party leadership has given of this happening by the way it has handled the coalition, by its relentless pushing of the line “Rejoice, we are achieving so much”. I believe that if instead it had approached the coalition with an air of reluctance, stating that it is basically a Tory government and all we can really do is fill in a few details and maybe weigh the balance a bit towards the more liberal side when there’s a close balance in the Tory party, we would be in better shape.

    So, rather than resigning from the party, I wish people who opposed the way it is being misled would stay in and be more vocal against the leadership from inside. This is why I keep pushing Andrew Tennant on “bickering”, because I suspect by that he does mean “criticism of the leadership”. So, unless he clarifies it, I do put him alongside those leadership loyalists who think anyone who speaks out against how it is being led ought to resign. If he really does take the opposite view – if those he accuses of “bickering” are the leadership loyalists trying to force others out of the party, that’s great, but I’d like him to say that clearly.

    It has always been a very strong part of my beliefs as a liberal that leaders ought to be servants – that is, they should accept they are under the direction of those they lead, and therefore be willing to listen to them and change direction if asked. I have no problem with the party having a right and a left, having people whose economic views aren’t far from the Conservatives’ and people who are appalled by Conservative economics, but the leader, as our servant, should not be biased to either side and should make a conscious effort to reflect both sides. I regret our current leader does not do that. He has shown an outright bias to the right of the party throughout. That is poor leadership. If one wishes to be the leader, one must drop one’s own partisan views. If one wishes to keep to one’s own partisan views, one must not go forward to be leader.

  • Matthew, while supporting your line of staying in the party and fighting for what has been the mainstream, I do wonder whether those who resign and no longer support the party with their membership (moral and financial) will actually exert more pressure on the leadership to change track. It cannot continue to sustain losses of between 15 and 20% per annum. This week, incidentally sees the first actual principal council gain since May by the party (by a wafer thin majority by a recently defeated councillor, following the death of a Lib Dem councillor who defected to Tory – so probably in some books, not a technical gain at all). The party in that time has lost almost half the seats it has defended – we are speaking of byelections here, where Lib Dem strength is or should be, concentrated.

  • Misomole

    “Considering the fact that they are junior partners in a Coalition Government, at a time when economic and international circumstances indicate significant harm if we do not maintain stability, I am quite baffled by people who feel so disappointed with the Lib Dems.”

    The issue about trust was not just about tuition fees. I am just an ordinary floating voter and in 2010 what I remember about the Liberal Democrats is “no more broken promises”, a pledge to “vote against any rise in tuition fees” and ” the Tory VAT bombshell”. I also recall AV being called ‘a miserable little compromise” . I’m sorry not to be as deep into the detail of policy as Lib Dem members themselves but I don’t think many of us ordinary folk are. We listen to the campaigns before each election. It may be true that coalition government requires compromises but Andrew was saying that Lib Dems could show voters that only they had policies which could be trusted. My point was : how is an ordinary citizen, not affiliated to any party, to judge that Lib Dems can indeed be trusted when they seem to have embraced the opposite of what they campaigned for and lost a lot of trust from ordinary voters like myself, in the process. It was not meant as a jibe against Lib Dems for tuition fees but was actually a serios question. I simply don’t know what Lib Dems actually believe in. For instance are you for tuition fees or against? Are you for an increased level of VAT or do you still consider it a ‘regressive tax which disproportionately hits the poorest in society”? Are you for AV or not? I simply do not know the answers to those questions and I’m not sure that Lib Dems know the answer either but I would love someone to tell me categorically where you stand on these areas. Thanks!

  • Should say Missomole – wretched autocorrect!

  • Andrew Tennant 29th Oct '12 - 5:39am

    @Matthew Huntbach
    I think I’ve been quite clear and answered your question, perhaps three times already. By bickering I refer to any comment, such as those early on, whoever from, that accuses other members of not being proper Liberal Democrats, whether dismissing Liberals, Social Democrats, Orange Bookers, or those with a more statist view of public services delivery.

    I want as many people as possible to feel welcome in the party and to debate their views openly to propose and democratically decide party policy.

    To attack one another personally is to do our opponents’ job and to weaken our party rather than working to ensure its success.

  • Nick (not Clegg) 29th Oct '12 - 11:18am

    Al the right comments, but not necessarily in the right order?

    Andrew Tennant -“By bickering I refer to any comment …, that accuses other members* of not being proper Liberal Democrats, ”

    Andrew Tennant- “I’d have had you down as a Labour member…”

    Richard Dean – “Would anyone like a mirror? ”

    *Does that include former members?

  • Matthew Huntbach 29th Oct '12 - 12:47pm

    Tim13

    Matthew, while supporting your line of staying in the party and fighting for what has been the mainstream, I do wonder whether those who resign and no longer support the party with their membership (moral and financial) will actually exert more pressure on the leadership to change track.

    I wish I could see signs of it, but I can’t. Instead it seems that the resignations are leading to a party which is ever more “follow my leader” as what’s left of it marches over the cliff. Every resignation makes it harder for those of us left in the party to fight back. I think it’s time there was a big stand of people willing to say in public “I’m a Liberal Democrat and I DON’T agree with Nick – but it’s my party, not his, I’m not going to leave it because of him, I’m staying and fighting to turn the party back into one I would be proud to campaign for”.

  • Andrew Tennant 29th Oct '12 - 12:49pm

    @Nick (not Clegg)
    Demonstrably not!

    @Matthew Huntbach
    We can certainly agree that a fairer, more representative voting system would mean more Lib Dems elected and therefore more Lib Dem influence. For our numbers I am impressed by what policy influence we have achieved. For our vote share we should perhaps be achieving more. That it is the Lib Dems that take the flak for the unsuitability of the voting system is an unwelcome irony.

    @Phyllis
    As one Lib Dem, my view on each would be as follows:
    VAT – more progressive that income taxes, but a poor substitute for proper wealth and capital taxes
    Tuitions fees – still party policy to abolish, but hard to justify in the current financial climate where we must choose between measures to help the poorest and the demonstrably better off. It wouldn’t be a priority for me in the next parliament.
    AV – clearly a superior system to FPTP, but not as proportional as STV. The quote is taken out of context, where it originally was highlighting the reluctance of the offer made by the two larger parties.

  • Matthew Huntbach 29th Oct '12 - 12:54pm

    Phyllis

    Are you for AV or not?

    But this is a silly argument. Liberal Democrats support the STV system. The AV system is a minor improvement on the current electoral system, it corrects just some of the problems of it, STV corrects those problems and many more.

    You seem to be suggesting there is something wrong if the Liberal Democrats support replacing the current system with AV. Are you unable to see the argument that AV is better than what we have now so given a choice between what we have now and AV we should support AV, even though we think AV is only a small reform and not nearly as far as we would want to go if we had enough MPs to force a much deeper reform?

    The same goes for much else – one may be disappointed that it is not possible to get our ideal, but does that then mean sitting back and not doing what one can to push things a little towards our ideal, even if circumstances only give us the power to give a little push?

  • Matthew Huntbach 29th Oct '12 - 1:02pm

    Andrew Tennant

    We can certainly agree that a fairer, more representative voting system would mean more Lib Dems elected and therefore more Lib Dem influence. For our numbers I am impressed by what policy influence we have achieved.

    You might be, it seems most others, including many people who used to vote for us, are not.

    I think many of those people who are not impressed have actually not properly take into account the political situation – as a minority coalition partner with just one sixth of its seats we have little power, all we can do really is join sides with those in the major coalition partner who are more to our side when there is an issue where the major partner is fairly evenly divided. It is simply not possible for us in our position to force the whole Conservative Party to support policies which are Liberal Democrat policy but have no real support already in the the Conservative Party.

    The problem is when people like you go on and on about what we have achieved and make it out to be so much as if we are almost equal in power to the Conservatives in the coalition, instead of making us look good, it makes us look bad, because it gives the impression we are in full support of all the stuff coming out of this government which is NOT Liberal Democrat policy and in fact is detestable to most Liberal Democrats.

  • Thanks to all who responded. I was actually asking for clarification on what Lib Dem policy actually is ( in response to the author’s mention of policies which can be trusted) not putting forward an ‘argument’ – ‘silly’ or otherwise. . I voted yes to AV but my point was actually just that people do not know what Lib Dem policy now is and I cited a number of areas where there was great clarity in the Election Campaign but now there is confusion. As I said I am just an ordinary voter. So your party policy is still to abolish tuition fees when there is enough money? Given that there is never enough money, when exactly do you plan to abolish them? 2020? 2025? And what is your policy on tuition fees in the interim? Do you see the problem for ordinary voters here?

    Again I am fact-finding here, not arguing or criticising. Between now and 2015 I have to decide who to give my vote to and I need to arrive at an informed decision, hence my questions. I am not here to have a row, or indeed, dare I use the word, bicker with other contributors.

  • Steve Griffiths 29th Oct '12 - 2:02pm

    Matthew

    “So, rather than resigning from the party, I wish people who opposed the way it is being misled would stay in and be more vocal against the leadership from inside”

    Well as one of the the self confessed ‘leavers’ in this thread, I guess the onus to me to comment. It’s a fair argument and one that has been put to me before, by others of my views who have stayed in the Lib Dems to do just that. Others have made the point that things have changed since my views were mainstream in the party, and now as a democrat I should accept that the views of others are now in the majority. The difference between then and now however, is that we did not expect those of a contary view to leave the party, which is currently being voiced about us.

    As for staying in the party to try and exert more influence to change tack, who would be listening? Any MPs who may differ from ‘The Truth’ as the leadership sees it, I suspect are ‘whipped’ to remain silent. The leadership has surrounded itself with only those who share its narrow view. In a famous speech about an earlier non-listening Tory government, David Lloyd George said it was like a fish “with no eyes and no ears “. I’m afraid the current Lib Dem leadership is such a fish.

  • Nick (not Clegg) 29th Oct '12 - 3:04pm

    @ Matthew Huntbach: ” … because it gives the impression we are in full support of all the stuff coming out of this government which is NOT Liberal Democrat policy and in fact is detestable to most Liberal Democrats.”

    So Liberal Democrat MPs are voting through policies which most of them (or most of their members) find detestable!!! Why, then, pray, should anyone ever take them seriously again?

    I used to be proud to campaign as a Liberal and as a Liberal Democrat: I am afraid that the Party is now dieing of shame.

  • Andrew Tennant 29th Oct '12 - 3:29pm

    @Phyllis
    It would presently be party policy to oppose fees and to try therefore to abolish them. I’d be surprised was there not a conference motion and vote on the issue in advance of the next election. The policy in the next manifesto will be determined partly by what the outcome of that vote is, and what Federal Policy Committee (elected by an consisting of members) agree should be included or excluded. If it’s not in the manifesto to change the status quo, then the party won’t be committing to change it.

  • Andrew Tennant 29th Oct '12 - 3:35pm

    @Steve Griffiths
    All I can see in the comments here are individuals compelling others to stay, to make their views heard, and to contribute to the debate.

    Perhaps you mean Clegg’s ‘there is no future for the party as a receptacle for protest votes’? Here, to me, Clegg’s not arguing for people to leave, but to decide what they stand for and to argue for it – for the party to be defined by what we democratically believe in rather than that the others do that we simply oppose. Not asking for fewer people, but asking those within the party to think deeper and to argue harder for why Lib Dems should be elected and how we can positively change the country.

  • Steve Griffiths 29th Oct '12 - 3:50pm

    @Andrew Tennant

    On this discussion thread quite right; I was referring to several other discussion threads on LDV in past weeks where incidences were given by me and others, of where it had been suggested that those of my beliefs should leave the party.

  • @Phyllis – I did not think you were “getting at the Liberal Democrats” over tuition fees, I chose to use it it as an example of the sort of action which caused the breach of trust which you were referring to. I also think that the accusations about “bickering” are not directed at you, but at party members and ex-party members who are discussing the direction the party has taken, and which direction it may take in the future.

    At this stage no party that I know of has it’s manifesto written for 2015, so if you are looking for information with which to decide who to vote for, the best you will be able to do is the answers people have already given you here, or open chat websites for other parties, and seeking information on each party’s general values . As for the issue of trusting the Lib Dem leader when some of his own party do not trust him, that also applies to both Labour and the Conservatives at the present time, it is one of the hazards of democracy highlighted by the state UK politics is in.

  • Andrew Tennant 29th Oct '12 - 6:14pm

    @Missomole & @Phyllis
    As the person who first used the word ‘bickering’, seeking to avoid a diversion into the history of the party before my first memories, in retrospect unwisely, as it only made it draw out for longer; I certainly did not wish to deter your comments or contribution to the discussion here.

  • Matthew Huntbach 29th Oct '12 - 10:01pm

    Nick (not Clegg)

    So Liberal Democrat MPs are voting through policies which most of them (or most of their members) find detestable!!! Why, then, pray, should anyone ever take them seriously again?

    Because, as I KEEP saying, there were two choices:

    1) Join a coalition in which the Liberal Democrats would have only a small influence

    2) Have a full Conservative government in which the Liberal Democrats would have no influence

    People like you keep writing in a way that supposes that somehow a government which was fully Liberal Democrat or at least Social Democrat could have emerged form the 2010 general election results. It could not. If the Labour Party believes a coalition on these terms was viable then, since the party balance in Parliament has not changed since then, it ought to offer such a coalition. If YOU believe such a coalition was and is viable, why don’t you criticise the Labour Party for not offering it? Why must the Liberal Democrats get the blame and not the Labour Party for not being willing to provide it is it were possible?

    The reality is that the electoral system twisted representation so that there was no viable government apart from one dominated by the Conservative Party. The people of Britain backed this system by two-to-one in a referendum in which the supporters of the system, Labour as much as Conservative, put forward this distortion which gave the Conservatives so much power on only just above a third of the vote, as its best feature. It was this distortion that meant Labour and the LibDems, even though they had over half the votes between them, could not form a coalition because the combined number of Labour and LibDem MPs were still not enough to give a majority in Parliament.

    Had the LibDems blocked everything proposed by the Conservatives, which is what you seem to be suggesting they should do, then what? The Conservatives, backed by the Ulster Unionists who usually vote with them, would be able to block everything proposed by Labour. Labour and the Conservatives would have blocked everything proposed by the Liberal Democrats. Do you think that would work out well? Because it is the logic of your argument.

    Cameron, as the leader of the largest party and the only one capable of forming a government would still have been made PM, and probably made a deal with the Ulster Unionists – throw a few billion at Northern Ireland to keep them on side – to keep going for a while, but nothing too nasty. Then he’d say, after the LibDems had blocked a few things and the Tory press had insulted them with “Nah nah nah nah nah, you people are afraid of power, you’er getting in the way of effective government, “OK, let’s have another general election, people of the UK vote out the LibDems so that I can have a majority and govern properly”.

    What the coalition is actually about is the LibDem MPs agreeing to support some pretty detestable stuff because the alternative was the Tories on their own pushing through stuff that would be even more detestable. As I keep saying, if the people of this country don’t like that, they shouldn’t have given their support to the electoral system which gave the Tories more strength than their votes ought to have given them and gave the LibDems far less strength than their votes ought to have given them. I just wish we had a LibDem leader who would actually say this, instead of making it out the current situation is so wonderful, just what we always wanted.

  • Andrew Tennant 30th Oct '12 - 8:03am

    @Matthew Huntbach
    While I don’t want to talk down what we’ve achieved given our numbers in parliament, the idea that ‘The best way to get a more Lib Dem government is to elect more Lib Dem MPs’ is an idea that I can definitely get behind.

  • @Nick (not Clegg) – “Why, then, pray, should anyone ever take them seriously again?”

    Because all that it amounts t is an ability to compromise when there is no better option, and the capacity to do the relevant electoral maths, both qualities that I regard as basic essentials for a party that is claiming t o be “Liberal” and “Democratic”.

    @Matthew Huntbach – I thoroughly enjoyed reading your last post, where do I have to live to vote for you?

  • Apologies for my failure to type the simple word “to” properly twice in the above post.

  • Nick (not Clegg) 30th Oct '12 - 3:39pm

    @ Matthew Huntbach

    The opening paragraph of your latest comment imputes to me ,or to “people like me” – whoever they may be (anyone who used to support the LibDems but no longer does?), views which I do not hold and have never expressed.

    The rest can be summed up as follows. Like the Curat’e’s Egg, most of this government’s record is pretty rotten but some of it (presumably the bits which the LibDems have contributed – remind me, which bits are they, again?) is excellent. So we should all hold our noses and pretend that we are enjoying the meal,

    Your problem is that, having entered into a coalition, you are party to the whole package and will have to defend it when the election comes. In short, to use your own word, you are compromised.

    Meanwhile Missomole advises Phyllis that you guys cannot actually say what Liberal Democrats stand for now because you will not know until Team Clegg publishes the manifesto for the 2015 election.

    So I say again why, pray, should anyone ever take a LibDem candidate seriously again? By the way, you do not need to attempt an answer; the question is rhetorical.

  • @ Nick (not Clegg) – That actually is not what I said at all really is it?

  • Andrew Tennant

    “If the Tories aren’t delivering the policies we want and need to see, we should call for an election and show the electorate that only we as a party have the instincts and policies they can trust to do what’s right by them and right for the country.”

    But what are these policies, Andrew, that only the Lib Dems have? And since it is unlikely you will ever govern on your own, won’t you just renege on them again in any future Coalition, blaming the dominant party once more? You see, that final paragraph of yours is pretty meaningless, isn’t it?

  • Missomole

    “At this stage no party that I know of has it’s manifesto written for 2015, so if you are looking for information with which to decide who to vote for, the best you will be able to do is the answers people have already given you here”.

    That is precisely why I am here, and also the reason I also lurk on Conservative Home and CiF. I understand that no-one’s written their manifesto yet so we have to go back to the manifesto for 2010 and the difficulty for Lib Dems is that Nick Clegg said one thing very earnestly before the election and then embraced the opposite when in government, again very earnestly. I can understand the.demands of realpolitik but how can one man sound so sincere about two opposite positions in the space of weeks or months? I already have a sense that the other two parties are slippery customers too but Nick promised to be different (again very earnestly). So here I am trying to make sense of it by following the debates by ordinary Lib Dems. So far, it’s left me very confused. For instance in another thread a while ago, I mentioned VAT and those big poster about the ” Tory VAT bombshell” VAT and one contributor told me that the Lib Dem position at the last election was that you supported increasing VAT before the election but merely opposed the Tories ‘secretly’ planning to introduce it! Only to be told by another contributor that that was completely untrue! Confused.com!!

  • Missomole
    “As for the issue of trusting the Lib Dem leader when some of his own party do not trust him, that also applies to both Labour and the Conservatives at the present time,”

    It definitely applies to the Conservatives. I have seem some extremely personal attacks on David Cameron on CH but does it apply to Labour? They seem to be holding a unified front at the moment and I’m not seeing the same distrust of Ed within his own party. Of course Labour have had an easy time (too easy !) of it so far and doubtless a significant lead in the opinion polls is keeping the troops happy. But so far Miliband seems to have surprised his critics and on some issues, he has made a brave stand, eg over Murdoch. Now in my view the Lib Dems had a golden opportunity to redeem themselves in the eyes of the electorate and that was over the NHS. If you had killed the Bill, I think your ratings would have soared. As it s, when Shirley Williams made her initial objections and it was taken up at your conference, I actually said to my husband “Thank god for Shirley and the rank and file Lib Dems!! They’ve stopped the nasty party selling off our NHS to their rich chums”. And I wasn’t the only one who felt that way.

    But then you blew it.

  • Matthew Huntbach 30th Oct '12 - 11:10pm

    Nick (not Clegg)

    The rest can be summed up as follows. Like the Curat’e’s Egg, most of this government’s record is pretty rotten but some of it (presumably the bits which the LibDems have contributed – remind me, which bits are they, again?) is excellent. So we should all hold our noses and pretend that we are enjoying the meal,

    Perhaps before firing off you should have read what I wrote earlier in this thread. Go back and see what I wrote on 26th October at 6.21pm. As you can see, I am very critical of the Liberal Democrat leadership, and the way they have handled the coalition situation. In particular to use your own words I am saying that the big mistake made was to give the impression that we are “enjoying the meal”.

    Your problem is that, having entered into a coalition, you are party to the whole package and will have to defend it when the election comes. In short, to use your own word, you are compromised

    The government is five-sixths Conservative and what it is doing reflects that. Quite obviously what it is doing is not what a 100% Liberal Democrat government would do. Following the May 2010 general election the Liberal Democrats were no more in a position to put in place a 100% Liberal Democrat government than were Labour in position to put in place a 100% Labour government. So why do you criticise the Liberal Democrats for not having a 100% Liberal Democrat government but you do not criticise the Labour Party for not having a 100% Labour government? We all of us have to work with what democracy has given us. Democracy may not give us what is our ideal.

    Meanwhile Missomole advises Phyllis that you guys cannot actually say what Liberal Democrats stand for now because you will not know until Team Clegg publishes the manifesto for the 2015 election.

    I am not a supporter of Mr Clegg, I believe he has been a very poor leader of the Liberal Democrats. I am not a supporter of the Leninist model of politics in which a political party is supposed to be the tool of its leader, with its members giving uncritical loyalty to whatever is this year’s party line.

    So I say again why, pray, should anyone ever take a LibDem candidate seriously again? By the way, you do not need to attempt an answer; the question is rhetorical

    Well, perhaps you don’t want me to answer your question because you are unable to answer mine. However, I shall answer your question. The May 2010 general election gave us a Parliament in which fewer than one in ten MPs was a Liberal Democrat. This was in part down to the distortion of the electoral system, it did nit mean fewer than one in ten people voted LibDem, in fact more than two in ten people voetd LibDem.

    Your line seems to be that Liberal Democrats cannot be trusted because they have not managed to implement 100% of their manifesto. But how actually do you suppose they could have done that with under 10% of the MPs being Liberal Democrat?

    As I have already said, suppose the Liberal Democrats sat back and voted against everything that was not in the Liberal Democrat manifesto. And the Conservatives sat back and voted against everything that was not in the Conservative manifesto. And Labour sat back and voted against everything that was not in the Labour manifesto. Then we would have deadlock, we would have no government. In order to have a government the Liberal Democrats had to agree to the only one that was viable (well actually a Conservative-Labour coalition would have been viable but neither of those parties was willing to agree to it).

    The Liberal Democrats agreed to this coalition not because they agree to everything the Conservatives want but because they agree that Britain does need a government, and that government has to be on the basis of what the people of Britain voted for. The people of Britain voted in larger numbers than anything else for candidates of the Conservative Party. In voting for the Conservatives or for Labour they voted for parties which stood by the principle we should have government of the largest party even if that party gets well under half the votes because both the Conservatives and Labour support the electoral system we have which distorts representation in favour if the largest party – in May 2010 that was the Conservatives. Therefore in agreeing to the coalition, the Liberal Democrats gave the people of Britain what they voted for – an essentially Conservative government. If the people of Britain did not want that, they should not have voted Conservative, and neither should they have voted Labour because Labour supports the distortion in favour of the largest party and against third parties which in 2010 gave us an essentially Conservative government. With five times as many Conservative MPs as Liberal Democrat MPs, quite oviously this government is noit going to be very Liberal Democrat. But why blame the Liberal Democrats for that? Why not blame those who voted Conservative, and those who voted in favour of the distortion which so weakened the Liberal Democrats and strengthened the Conservatives in the referendum on that matter which took place in May 2011?

  • Matthew Huntbach 30th Oct '12 - 11:17pm

    Phyllis

    I actually said to my husband “Thank god for Shirley and the rank and file Lib Dems!! They’ve stopped the nasty party selling off our NHS to their rich chums”.

    That’s actually something of a misrepresentation of what the NHS Bill was proposing. I write this as someone who got elected as a representative to the Liberal Democrat conference and paid money I could not really afford to go to Newcastle and stay there primarily to vote for the party NOT to support the Bill. I am extremely disappointed that the leadership of the party ignored that vote. However, please do not insult me and others who are not fans of the current leader by assuming that just because we are still members of the party we are 100% in favor of what he says and does. As I said, I am not a Leninist, I do not support the Leninist model of political party.

  • Matthew Huntbach 30th Oct '12 - 11:20pm

    Phyllis

    It definitely applies to the Conservatives. I have seem some extremely personal attacks on David Cameron on CH but does it apply to Labour? They seem to be holding a unified front at the moment and I’m not seeing the same distrust of Ed within his own party

    So, do you think this is a good thing? Do you like the Leninist model of political party where all members of the party have to be loyal and uncritical supporters of its leader? If so, surely you should be abusing me and telling me I am a bad person because I am a member of the Liberal Democrats but I am open in my dislike of and disagreement with Nick Clegg and the way he is leading our party.

  • Matthew Huntbach 30th Oct '12 - 11:22pm

    Missomole

    @Matthew Huntbach – I thoroughly enjoyed reading your last post, where do I have to live to vote for you?

    In 1994, 1998 and 2002, Downham ward, London Borough of Lewisham. But I did not stand for re-election in 2006, and have not stood for any elected post since then.

  • Matthew Huntback
    “So, do you think this is a good thing? Do you like the Leninist model of political party where all members of the party have to be loyal and uncritical supporters of its leader”

    No, since you ask, I don’t think the Leninist model etc is a good thing at all. In fact, one of the most deplorable things about New Labour was the requirement to be ‘on-message”. From 1997 onwards, this permeated down to the public sector organisation where I worked where we were all expected to be ‘strategically-aligned’ – another term for ‘sheep’. Just for the avoidance of any doubt, I respect your clear-sighted ness on the state of the Lib Dems and the leadership ( though I disagree with you about the relative impotence of Lib Dems in government)..

    But I genuinely don’t sense any great dislike or distrust of Miliband in the Labour Party and as I said, I think that may be partly down to the polls.

  • Matthew Huntback

    ” However, please do not insult me and others who are not fans of the current leader by assuming that just because we are still members of the party we are 100% in favor of what he says and does. As I said, I am not a Leninist, I do not support the Leninist model of political party.”

    Okey dokey. But where I think you are wrong is when you argue (elsewhere) that if Lib Dems do not support the Tories, they would call a general nelection and attain an outright majority. I suspect that if the leadership had killed the NHS Bill, the country would have supported your party as never before and the Tories would have suffered. You would have been regarded as saviours, standing up for your principles and the country, having tried to make Coalition work. Another such opportunity may yet come along but will the Lib Dem leadership be brave enough to seize it?

  • Matthew Huntback
    “That’s actually something of a misrepresentation of what the NHS Bill was proposing”

    I’m sure that Lansley was not so crass that he actually put ‘I intend to sell off the NHS to my rich chums” in the Bill but you don’t have to dig very deep to see where it’s leading.

  • Matthew Huntbach 31st Oct '12 - 12:20am

    Phyllis

    Okey dokey. But where I think you are wrong is when you argue (elsewhere) that if Lib Dems do not support the Tories, they would call a general nelection and attain an outright majority.

    No, I am not arguing that. My argument was that was the case in May 2010 after the general election. I am not saying that is the case now. In fact what I thought in May 2010 was “Oh, sh**, we are in a situation where we have no alternative but to form a coalition with the Conservatives. We will have to do that, but leave it about two years for people to see what the Tories are like when they are in government, and then pull the rug on them”.

    I suspect that if the leadership had killed the NHS Bill, the country would have supported your party as never before and the Tories would have suffered

    If the general public had given the impression that they would, perhaps that would have been so. Certainly I feel the NHS Bill could have been the pretext for pulling the rug, given the statement about there not being any large-scale top-down reform of the NHS in the coalition agreement.

    Sadly, however, there seems to be nothing which Liberal Democrats on the left of the party like myself can do which would convince the people of this country to back us. One need only look at this thread to see this. I spend a lot of time attacking the leadership of the Liberal Democrats, saying how it’s got things all wrong, how it ought to have done things very differently, and yet STILL people like you and Nick (not Clegg) attack me on the assumption that as I am still a member of the party I must be an evil 100% supporter of Nick Clegg

    The fact is, Phyllis, that perhaps the biggest thing stopping an effective rebellion in the Liberal Democrats is the way that people like you outside it just keep attacking and attacking ALL of us with personal abuse. You never seem to stop to bother to consider all the various threads of opinion within the party, instead you assume we run to a Leninist model where we are all obedient servants of our leader. The consequence is that it seems pointless trying to do anything, because it seems whatever we do we will STILL be met with “Nah nah nah nah nah, nasty rotten Liberal Democrats didn’t keep your promises” along with the line I’ve been trying to point out is silly that suggests somehow, with just 10% of the MPs we ought to have been able t achieve 100% of our manifesto.

    I think if there was a sign that people outside the party would be prepared to back it if it stood up more against the Tories, and if its members stood up more against where its leader seems to be trying to take it, we would be given the strength to do it. But we aren’t. As I said, it seems no matter what we do, we will still be condemned as if we are all uncritical supporters of the Conservative Party just because of what the election result of 2010 forced us into. When this happens, the LibDem leadership will always win by using the argument “You won’t get anywhere by dividing the party, it will just look like bickering, and lose us votes. So instead, just do what we say and shut up”.

  • Matthew Huntbach 31st Oct '12 - 12:41am

    Andrew Tennant

    While I don’t want to talk down what we’ve achieved given our numbers in parliament, the idea that ‘The best way to get a more Lib Dem government is to elect more Lib Dem MPs’ is an idea that I can definitely get behind.

    Well, yes, so why can’t the party leadership see it that way? By exaggerating what it’s possible to achieve as a junior partner in the coalition with just one sixth of its MPs, by issuing ridiculous statements such as the one which suggested 75% of this government’s policy is Liberal Democrat (it did’t actually say that, but that’s how it came across), the party leadership is actually destroying that argument.

    If the party leadership were to say “We can only achieve a little in the current situation because we only have a few MPs, it would:

    1) Be honest

    2) Make it more clear that what this government is doing is very far from what we would want if we were not constrained by being very much the junior partner in the coalition

    3) Make it more clear that if you want Liberal Democrat policies, you need more Liberal Democrat MPs.

    The constant line being put out by the leadership – and by you, Andrew Tennant, in your original article – that we are achieving huge things in the coalition, suggests we don’t need many MPs to achieve huge things, and suggests that we are quite happy with the current government as it is (i.e. mainly Tory) because we are achieving so much in it. I believe this is a disastrous approach. I’ve been saying so ever since the “Rose Garden” love-in, where Nick Clegg gave the impression of being almost an equal partner with David Cameron, and therefore led the way into us getting the blame for all this government is doing because it suggests we have equal responsibility for it.

    I appreciate the idea was that by acting big and exaggerating what we are able to achieve, people would be impressed and think “Gosh, I never voted LibDem before because I never thought the LibDems would win power, but now I can see LibDem government ministers, I’ll become a LibDem supporter”. But it hasn’t worked, has it? Instead it’s had the opposite effect, people see Liberal Democrat ministers, but see a government which is doing mainly right-wing Tory things, and think when they see the LibDem ministers boasting about it “Well, it seems to me all they really wanted was nice government positions, they didn’t really care for what policies they support, so now they are happy supporting Conservative policies in order to get those positions – I won’t vote for them again”. That is, by exaggerating our strength and being dishonest about the limitations placed on us by having five times fewer MPs than the Conservatives, we’ve actually made ourselves look weaker, not stronger.

    By saying things like “I’m a coalition enthusiast”, you give the impression you are very happy with the current situation, that you very much like having a very right-wing Tory government with just a little Liberal Democrat influence. That is extremely damaging to us. The better thing to have said is “I’m a coalition realist”, that is, while accepting the reality of the 2010 general election result which forced us into this situation, also making it clear it’s way short of our ideal, and we are not nearly so much happy with it as we would be with a government with a much stronger Liberal Democrat presence.

  • Andrew Tennant 31st Oct '12 - 11:39am

    @Matthew Huntbach
    I wouldn’t worry Matthew, I doubt I’m as influential or as responsible for the party’s fortunes as you make me out to be!

    We disagree on whether the Lib Dem policies we have been able to implement, despite our limited MP numbers, are an achievement; but we each agree we should be arguing for more – more Lib Dem policies in the government programme, and more Lib Dems elected next time to give the party more capacity to get its policies delivered. I’m pretty sure Nick Clegg agrees on that as well, and I’d expect the general election campaign will be structured as such.

    @Phyllis
    I gave you a list in my original article. I want to do what we can now. I’ll hold the Conservatives to the coalition agreement; but any outstanding still to do will be our campaigns for the next General Election (2015 or sooner).

    Of course if you want to hold the Lib Dems to account for delivering their manifesto in full, then you’ll need to ensure that we have a majority. Our ideals are there for everyone to see, but we need he help of voters to achieve them.

  • Nick (not Clegg) 31st Oct '12 - 2:20pm

    @ Matthew: Huntbach “So why do you criticise the Liberal Democrats … but … not … the Labour Party …?
    Is that the question you want me to answer? I’m sorry, I thought it was rhetorical.

    What would be the point of a former LibDem member visiting a LibDem chat site in order to criticise Labour or, for that matter, the Conservatives ,UKIP or any other party you may care to mention? You should be able to do that for yourselves.

    Having skim-read your various contributions to the above debate (I’m sorry, I do not have time to study them in detail), I gather that you are highly critical of the current LibDem leadership and of some aspects of the LibDem performance since May 2010 but that you choose to voice those criticisms from within the Party. I, on the other hand, choose to voice my criticisms from outside and to spend the time and money which I used to devote to the Liberal Democrats on other things.

  • Matthew Huntbach – “If the party leadership were to say “We can only achieve a little in the current situation because we only have a few MPs, it would:

    1) Be honest

    2) Make it more clear that what this government is doing is very far from what we would want if we were not constrained by being very much the junior partner in the coalition

    3) Make it more clear that if you want Liberal Democrat policies, you need more Liberal Democrat MPs.”

    Exactly this, exactly! How can Nick Clegg not see that?

    I think the reason some people are looking for how much of a manifesto has been put into practice are not just missing the Coalition thing, they are also thinking in a way that is conditioned by the existing electoral system, into believing that the only way to judge a party’s integrity is to check simply against it’s manifesto. I never liked that way of thinking, it is taught by the parties that like FPTP, because they want dictatorship rights over the majority of voters who did not elect them all the time. It also strikes me as unrealistic, since no party can actually control all future events, and how can they be totally sure that they can put an entire manifesto into practice without the ability to control the future? A manifesto is a statement of intentions, and can provide a good guide as to how a party thinks about problems, and the direction it wishes to take the country in, but it should not be use IMO as the only way to assess a party. In fact, when politicians actually tell me as a voter, to judge a party entirely on how much of it’s manifesto actually happened, I feel like my intelligence is being insulted, I don’t need a little checklist to tick boxes off, thank you, I am capable of reading interviews, listening to speeches, and watching how you all actually behave as people too.

    @Matthew Huntbach – Oh well maybe there are still some Lib Dems like you still in action somewhere out there.

  • Nick (not Clegg) 1st Nov '12 - 12:37pm

    @Matthew Huntbach & Missemole “when politicians actually tell me as a voter, to judge a party entirely on how much of it’s manifesto actually happened, I feel like my intelligence is being insulted, I don’t need a little checklist to tick boxes off, thank you, I am capable of reading interviews, listening to speeches, and watching how you all actually behave as people too”

    Exactly. What made you think I was judging the LibDems by whether they had achieved x or y% of their manifesto ? If , having read interviews, listened to speeches and, more importantly in my opinion, watched what they actually do, you still want to support the Liberal Democrats, that’s your choice: I don’t.

    And, by the way, if you want to be taken seriously as a political party rather than a diminishing sect, I suggest that you refrain from insulting people by insinuating that those who disagree with you do not understand what you are saying.

  • @Nick (not Clegg) – I do not speak on here as a member of the Liberal Democrat Party, I am a voter, that is the only capacity in which I say anything on here.

    Where did I insinuate that if other people do not agree with me, they do not understand what I am saying? Or indicate that I thought you had in any way decided to judge the Liberal Democrats entirely on manifesto promises delivered?
    or not?

  • Nick (not Clegg) 5th Nov '12 - 11:00am

    @ Missemole

    I suggest that you re-read your comments and a selection of MH’s, starting with the most recent and working back.

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