In an interview in yesterday’s Independent on Sunday, Julia Goldsworthy, former MP for Falmouth and Camborne and ex Special Adviser to Danny Alexander, had this to say about the Rose Garden love-in on the day the Coalition was formed:
I sat at home watching Nick and David in their first press conference in the Rose Garden. I think probably for a lot of political activists it was quite sick-inducing, but it was absolutely necessary because of the economy and national interest. Coalition was a fairly new thing to get our heads around. It was fairly important to demonstrate that this was a relationship that could work. It was fairly important to ham it up at the start, to show that this was something that was going to last.
And she gave an insight into the way the Government works. No behind the scenes bitching is tolerated at the Treasury:
”Danny and the Chancellor have said … because economic stability so crucial, the Treasury is the department where the Coalition more than anywhere else has to work.
“George has always been very very clear to anyone coming in to the Treasury, he told any ministers and advisers, this is the department where the coalition has to work: ‘If I catch you doing anything to undermine the Government you will be out of here faster than your legs can carry you.’”
I guess that this was extra important given that it was tensions between Downing Street and the Treasury which caused massive problems for Brown, Blair and Thatcher governments. It was the last thing that the Coalition needed. Generally, though, a few spats at Education and the Home Office aside, this Coalition has been remarkably well behaved in comparison.
Julia has recently been selected for Camborne and Redruth. She knows she has a tough fight ahead of her:
The former MP says Lib Dem candidates like her have a “really good story to tell about what we have achieved in Government”, but admits that the fight in Camborne and Redruth will be tough because, unlike many places in the country, unemployment has risen and the area remains deprived. At the Treasury, she has overseen the implementation of the key 2010 Lib Dem manifesto promise to raise the income tax threshold to £10,000, but admits that she will also defend the Bedroom Tax if challenged on the doorstep.
“I quite strongly believe that not changing anything is really unfair, it is fair to have a level playing field. That is an argument I am happy to have. Part of the solution is making sure we are able to get people into the size of accommodation they actually need.”
Interestingly, she’s changed her mind to be in favour of all-women shortlists:
The problem is with the pace of change. I just don’t think the way Parliament is going to take the step change that we need without all-women shortlists. If you want a big impact and do it quickly, now is the time to consider all-women shortlists. It is going to be a necessary thing to get us where we need to be.
And on the question that every Liberal Democrat is asked these days, on a post 2015 coalition, she reminds us how Labour didn’t want to be in government in 2010:
The people who decide the outcome of the next election are the voters. In 2010 it was very clear that the Labour Party they didn’t want to be in Government, they wanted someone else to be sorting out the problems of the economy.
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38 Comments
It was hardly “sick-inducing”. It was quite refreshing to see politicians from opposing parties collaborating, or maybe I am just not cynical enough! A love in with Gordon Brown and the statist Labour party really would have been sick inducing!
Well either you aren’t “cynical” enough, or you are too Tory-supporting! But the actual event was schmaltzy beyond belief! Don’t agree with Julia by the way “necessary in the economy’s interest” Bah! Why don’t politicians get off their knees? We are supposed to be a set of democracies in “the West”. We don’t (or shouldn’t) be bowing down to bond markets or any other group of financiers. This thinking makes a complete mockery of democracy.
Lucas Amos
“It was hardly “sick-inducing” … A love in with Gordon Brown and the statist Labour party really would have been sick inducing!
In other words, you don’t find it sick-inducing so long as you don’t really disapprove of the object of the “love-in”. Consider that about half the party (perhaps more) found the Tories as objectionable as you apparently find Labour and try for a bit of empathy.
“……….. the fight in Camborne and Redruth will be tough because, unlike many places in the country, unemployment has risen and the area remains deprived.
…………she will also defend the Bedroom Tax if challenged on the doorstep.”
Party policy has moved on . The Liberal Democrat conference voted to get rid of the bedroom tax. Why would she want to campaign against party policy at the next election?
” it was absolutely necessary because of the economy and national interest”
Utter tripe.
For this to be true, you have to explain why you campaigned on a different economic policy to the one you enacted in government.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15717770
Britain’s debt very prudently scheduled.
“The people who decide the outcome of the next election are the voters. In 2010 it was very clear that the Labour Party they didn’t want to be in Government, they wanted someone else to be sorting out the problems of the economy.”
So the “Gordon Brown clinging on to power, squatting in Downing Street” stuff was rubbish then?
“…. she reminds us how Labour didn’t want to be in government in 2010:
The people who decide the outcome of the next election are the voters.”
So nothing to do with what Labour might have wanted.
Sheesh, some LDs really have swallowed the tory party line.
@Lucas Amos
The rose garden probably accounted for half the Lib Dems’ opinion poll slump post-May 2010, with tuition fees making up the rest. It was a catastrophe for your party. Most of your party do seem to have realised this, albeit three years after the event, hence the very different tone of the coalition over the past year or so. If the Lib Dems had approached this coalition from the start the way they are conducting it now, you might still be a serious political force.
It was a serious mistake that has been hugely damaging to the party.
It was perfectly possible to make the point that the Liberal Democrats would support the coalition long-term for the reasons of stability, without giving the impression that we felt it was all wonderful, the best possible outcome, what we had wanted in the first place. It was perfectly possible to accept that as the Conservatives had won the most votes they had the right to lead the government, without giving the impression that we were joining the coalition because we were in ideological agreement with their policies so much more than those of Labour. It was perfectly possible to tell the truth – that as a party with just one sixth of the coalition’s MPs, our influence on the government would necessarily be limited. What has damaged us most is the initial impression that we were equal partners, so we have been assumed to be equally responsible for policies where from our position of weakness we obviously have NOT had an equal input.
“, unlike many places in the country, unemployment has risen and the area remains deprived”
Crike, who could have seen that coming, under a Tory/Orange Book government?
http://ig.ft.com/austerity-map/?gss=E06000052
Tax credit and benefit changes cost Cornwall £521 per working age adult.
cf West Oxfordshire, £284.
I wasnt sickened in any way, I thought it was the expression of something we had been arguing for over decades, that intelligent Politicians can work together. It was also the first British Government voted in by a majority of the Electorate. In that sense it was Britains first Elected Government & Clegg & Cameron our first Elected Leaders.
We will never know the reason for our slump in The V I Polls, one members speculation is as good as another. To use our “Poll” ratings intelligently we need to compare them to to the last time we were in Government.
@ Paul Barker “intelligent politicians can work together”: Well one of them was. The other has lost almost half his party’s members, half the activists, more than half the voters and soon most of the MEPs. What a muppet.
Paul Barker wrote:
“It was also the first British Government voted in by a majority of the Electorate.”
Wrong. What was written on the ballot-paper was “Conservative” and “Liberal Democrat”, not “Conservative government propped up by Liberal Democrats”. I voted Liberal Democrat because I wanted a Liberal Democrat government. If I had known that what we would get is a Conservative government propped up by Liberal Democrats, I would have spoilt my paper. I guess more than half of our voters would have done the same, since they deserted us soon after the “coalition” was formed.
@ paul barker. Can I ask you to think through what you have just said — in particular —
“…. It was also the first British Government voted in by a majority of the Electorate…”
How did a majority of the Electorate vote for a top down reorganisation of the NHS? Check both parties’ manifestos, statements during the election, The Coalition Agreement.
How did a majority of the Electorate vote for massive investment in a new nuclear power station, subsidised contrary to EU rules?
How did a majority of the Electorate vote for tuition fees, the bedroom tax, the gutting of loca counci finances, massive cuts I benefits and a Food Bank society?
You might just be able to argue that on the basis of both manifestos and Cameron’s slogan of “vote blue, get green” the majority of the Electorate voted for “The Greenest Governent Ever” — BUT we did NOT get that did we?
at least part of this was inevitable for the 0.5 party in a 2.5 party system that was seen, and encouraged, as the protest vote party.
“We will never know the reason for our slump in The V I Polls”
Mystifying, isn’t it?
I was optimistic for this coalition but now I think it is time to call it a day. I’m sure Nick and David are happy to go for another year but the whole thing is getting stale and the longer they go on the less popular they will become. Going to the country now would be the best way forward.
The Rose Garden episode was indeed everything that could possibly be wrong in that the style eclipsed the substance. It would have been just as bad with Labour as with Tories. What Lib Dems have campaigned for over the years was for co-operation in government between people who disagree on much but can seek common ways forward in certain areas. The impression given in the Rose Garden performance was schmalzy ‘convergence’. Completely the wrong way to go.
So, ‘necessary’? Ms Goldsworthy’s judgement in this matter draws one back to the 2010 General Election. Certain Lib Dem candidates , presumably by exercising judgement in respect of ‘pitch’moved forwards against the Conservatives in that election. Others did not.
paul barker
“It was also the first British Government voted in by a majority of the Electorate. In that sense it was Britains first Elected Government & Clegg & Cameron our first Elected Leaders.”
What utter nonsense. The government was no more or less elected than any other since WW2; and it was not “voted in by a majority”. Nobody voted for a Tory/Lib Dem coalition because that wasn’t an option on any ballot paper anywhere. By contrast, the Tory/Liberal coalition of 1918 and the National Government of 1931 were voted in by a majority of voters, having stood very clearly on a joint ticket.
This government was formed on the same basis as every other — on the basis of being able to command a majority of MPs in the House of Commons. It’s a perfectly legitimate government in British constitutional terms but it has no greater claim to authority than any other. You can’t retrospectively assign to voters an intention that they had no means of expressing when they went to vote.
Why try to portray Lib Dems and Tories in the Treasury as united??????????
First this is patently untrue – there is a huge debate raging between the Lib Dems wanting more action on Income Tax Thresholds (ITT) and the Tories wanting action on National Insurance. Why not come clean on this?
This is a repeat of the wrong headed and utterly naive Rose Garden Strategy (“not a fag paper between us” as it was also described by Lib Dem spin doctors) which was not formulated because of the state of the economy but because of a strategic decision about Coalition Government and its propensity to generate a new narrative for the Lib Dems and a new core vote. An Eldorado of a core vote that could only persuded at the expense of jettisoning two thirds of our existing support built up over forty years or toil and campaigning.
This blunder is being repeated as I type by the DPM spouting a Treasury/Coaltion line that actually for the employed real incomes have been rising. This is both dubious because it only applies to those in continuous employment since 2010 (possible no more than 33% of the work force) and because it actually demonstrates the key issue that should differentiate us from the Tories: growing inequality in the most Unequal Recovery the UK has ever experienced.
So, we should be communicating Liberal Democracy not Coalition autocracy; just as we should have in May 2010.
The politically inept continue to steer the ship towards the rocks.
We seem on every thread to be bickering over the same political territory. I prefer Matthew Huntbach’s more nuanced expositions to the arguments regularly put forward by John Tilley et al. on one side and by Paul Barker on the other side, but although I salute the indefatigability of all concerned, it would surely be better to turn our minds to those issues – quite numerous, despite what may appear from threads like the present one – on which we as Liberal Democrats are agreed and on which our position is distinct from that of Tories and Labour.
“George has always been very very clear to anyone coming in to the Treasury, he told any ministers and advisers, this is the department where the coalition has to work…”
George… as in George Osborne… the person who works the controls and who does more out-manoeuvring for party political ends than any other politician in Government? How naive of Julia not to recognise this (at least in this article).
As I see it the Rose Garden was a necessary first step in demonstrating to the Press,the public and the markets that this govt would hold.The Coalition partnership wasn’t an obvious one and the LD’s were ,in some quarters,being portrayed as a Party who wouldn’t stand up to the rigours of govt. I don’t think there was an option for Nick to go out there and look unhappy or to go out there to highlight the differences between the two Parties as some on here suggest.
Sesenco
Wrong. What was written on the ballot-paper was “Conservative” and “Liberal Democrat”, not “Conservative government propped up by Liberal Democrats”. I voted Liberal Democrat because I wanted a Liberal Democrat government. If I had known that what we would get is a Conservative government propped up by Liberal Democrats, I would have spoilt my paper
You didn’t get a “Conservative government propped up by Liberal Democrats” because you voted Liberal Democrat. You got it because more people voted Conservative than for any other party, and because the Liberal Democrats came third in overall votes, under an electoral system where – as its supporters made clear in 2011 when they successfully defended it, and in fact raised as its main virtue – the party which comes first in terms of votes tends to get much more in share of seats than share of votes and parties which come third tend to get much less.
What you are saying is weird. You voted for something, but you didn’t get it because the option you voted for was not supported by many people, so you say you wish you had never voted for it. Well, I’ve voted for the Liberal Democrats and the Liberal Party before that in every election since 1979, and never got a Liberal or Liberal Democrat government. I’ve never got the MP I voted for in my life, and I’ve never even got a councillor I voted for in my life. But isn’t that how democracy works? If we vote for something but more people vote for something else, we don’t get it? Does that mean all of us on the losing side should just stop voting, should give up trying to win people over to our position?
Now, suppose other people who voted Liberal Democrat in 2010 had some sort of foresight and so did what you say you wish you had done, what would have happened? Given that most constituencies which returned Liberal Democrat MPs are places where the main competition is between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, the Liberal Democrats would have had fewer MPs and the Conservatives more. The number of constituencies where the competition is between Labour and the Liberal Democrats, and the Liberal Democrats won, is tiny – if in all of them the Liberal Democrat vote in 2010 had been lower so Labour would have won instead of Liberal Democrat, we would have had more Labour MPs and fewer Liberal Democrat MPs, but as it would have made no difference to the number of Conservative MPs, we would STILL have been in a position where a Conservative-dominated government was the only viable one.
I do not know where you live, Sesenco, but I very much doubt your vote contributed to us getting this government. Can you please give an example ANYWHERE of how someone voting Liberal Democrat contributed to us having the government we have now, and not voting Liberal Democrat would have contributed to a government not dominated by the Conservatives? The places where that applies are places where the Liberal Democrats came third, and the Conservatives came first. Abstaining from voting at all in those places would not have stopped the Conservatives from winning them, you would need to have voted Labour to do that. But you aren’t saying you wished you had voted Labour.
Of course, if you were genuinely torn between Liberal Democrat and Labour and anxious that if you voted for one you would have “split the vote” and “let in” the Conservatives, then there is an easy solution – introduce the Alternative Vote system so that you could have voted Liberal Democrat first and got your vote transferred to Labour second. But if this dilemma is at the heart of the “I wish I hadn’t voted Liberal Democrat” line, why is it that people used that line to argue voting AGAINST the Alternative Vote system rather than for it?
So underneath what you seem to be saying, as so many other people are, it was at the heart of the “No” case made by Labour supporters in the AV referendum, is “I am angry with us having a Conservative-LibDem coalition dominated by the Conservatives, so what I want is a situation which would have given us a straight Conservative government”. In other words, you are expressing support for the very thing you are angry with the Liberal Democrats over because you think they have given it to us.
Malcolm Todd
Nobody voted for a Tory/Lib Dem coalition because that wasn’t an option on any ballot paper anywhere.
The argument that the current government is illegitimate because “no-one voted for it” is commonly made. The corollary of this argument is that the ONLY legitimate government would be one constituted of a single party. So which party would that have been in 2010? Given that the Conservatives won the most votes, then surely everyone saying “The coalition government is illegitimate” should be following up by saying “We should have a purely Conservative government, because that is what people voted for”. So surely anyone making the argument that the coalition is illegitimate should be APPLAUDING Nick Clegg every time he gives in and drops Liberal Democrat policy and accepts Conservative policy, because every time he does that, he is bringing the current government closer to what they regard as legitimate.
I have been making this point now continuously here and elsewhere since 2011 when the main argument against the coalition, that it is unbalanced due to the distortions of electoral system, was destroyed by the people of this country voting IN FAVOUR of that electoral system after a campaign for it in which that distortion was put as its best aspect. I must have made this point dozens of times now. NOT ONCE have I got an answer to it. NOT ONCE has anyone who has complained about the Liberal Democrats for “propping up the Conservatives” and said that after this they oppose electoral reform and want to go back to a pure two-party system had the decency to admit that the logic of their position is that a pure Conservative government is what would result now form what they say they want, and therefore that their only legitimate attack on Nick Clegg should be for what he does that stops us from quite having that. NOT ONCE has anyone pulled apart my argument and said why it is invalid.
That is why, though I detest this government, and I think Nick Clegg has done very bad job, I have no time for the “nah-nah-nah-nah-nah, Liberal Democrats rolled over and supported the Conservatives” line, because I have never encountered ANYONE who had made that line who has been able to answer the point I made above. NOT ONCE, not in three years of me making this point again and again and again, NOT ONCE.
“NOT ONCE”
I’m always apprehensive at answering your points, Matthew Huntbach, because of the risk of entering into a discussion that will last until the next month. However, I think there is a fundamental flaw in your logic. Just because someone argues that the Lib Dems have been ineffectual in coalition doesn’t mean that they are opposed to AV or PR. I voted yes to AV because I believe in pluralist politics and better representation, but I also think the Lib Dems have been rubbish in coalition. Being rubbish (tuition fees, cheering on people being made unemployed in the public sector and all the other things in 2010 that directly caused a precipitous decline in Lib Dem polling) may well have helped the case against AV, but where is your evidence that it is the same people that voted Lib Dem and feel misrepresented that then voted against AV? Anecdotally, the two people that I know that voted against AV, because they didn’t want smaller parties disproportionately calling the shots in a coalition (oh, the irony), were a die-hard Labour party member and a die-hard Tory voter, but that’s hardly surprising. I also know several people who voted Lib Dem and feel very let down by the coalition but also voted yes to AV, so I haven’t actually come across anyone that holds the position you are describing.
“That is why, though I detest this government, and I think Nick Clegg has done very bad job, I have no time for the “nah-nah-nah-nah-nah, Liberal Democrats rolled over and supported the Conservatives” ”
I detest this government and I think Nick Clegg has done a very bad job, yet you frequently have a go at me as one of the people supposedly going ‘nah-nah-nah-nah’. I recognize that the coalition was the only realistic option, but it is the nature of what the Lib Dems have done, or haven’t done, in coalition that I feel annoyed about. Your answer to me is probably going to be along the lines that the Lib Dems only have a sixth of the number of MPs so can’t do much anyway, but where is the consistency in saying, on the one hand, that you detest the government and think Clegg has done a bad job and, on the other hand, saying the Lib Dems had no choice and couldn’t have done things much differently anyway?
Steve
where is your evidence that it is the same people that voted Lib Dem and feel misrepresented that then voted against AV?
It was a line I was constantly hearing during the AV referendum “Having seen how the LibDems have just given in to the Tories, I don’t believe in coalitions, and I support the idea of our current electoral system which tends to lead to single party government”. It was one of the main lines put forward by the “No” campaign, or at least by Labour supporters of the “No” campaign – “Nick Clegg has given in to the Tories, so vote ‘No’ so we don’t have this sort of thong happening again”.
The impression was certainly given that a lot of people were voting “No” because they didn’t like how Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats had acted in the coalition – and they meant by “giving in” to the Tories.
This is not to say that everyone who has been disappointed by Nick Clegg voted “No”. How could I think that when I myself am disappointed by Nick Clegg but voted “Yes”? The point I am trying to make is that there is a significant batch of people who have adopted the logically contradictory position of stating that they prefer single-party government and accept distortion of representation in order to get it, and yet say they oppose Nick Clegg on the grounds that he has just “propped up” the Tories. Isn’t backing an electoral system which gives the Conservatives a much bigger share of the seats than they had of the votes, enough to give them a Parliamentary majority in most cases very much “propping up the Tories”? That is why I say, anyone who supports the current electoral system on the grounds they agree with its distortion has no moral right to criticise Clegg for “propping up the Tories” because they are doing just the same by supporting that electoral distortion. So that writes off most of the Labour Party and its supporters, I regard them all as hypocrites because they are the principal proppers up of the Tories by their backing of the distortional electoral system.
where is the consistency in saying, on the one hand, that you detest the government and think Clegg has done a bad job and, on the other hand, saying the Lib Dems had no choice and couldn’t have done things much differently anyway?
Where is the inconsistency? I detest the government because it is a Tory-dominated government, and I detest the Tories and what they stand for. All I’m saying is that it’s the government that resulted from the combination of how people voted and how the electoral system we have distorted how they voted – and noting also that this distortion was backed, two to one in favour, by the British people when they were given the opportunity to object to it. Surely you can agree there is no inconsistency in accepting that a government is what results from how people voted, and in detesting that government? It is a position that people on the losing side of an election are likely to take, isn’t it? I don’t think there is any inconsistency in accepting the reality of what has happened and yet being unhappy about what has happened.
The point I am trying to make is to separate out what I feel are two different issues:
1) Criticism of Nick Clegg for forming the coalition, and for not being able to obtain much in the way of Liberal Democrat policy from it.
2) Criticism of Nick Clegg for the way he has presented the coalition and argued its case.
I feel a lot of the criticism that comes under 1) is unrealistic, because it does not recognise the reality of the situation in May 2010. However, I feel confusion of 1) and 2) has led to legitimate criticism that falls under 2) not being heard, or being brushed off. Clegg and the Cleggies have themselves deliberately confused 1) and 2), by making out that anyone who is critical of Clegg’s leadership in someone living in a fantasy world because they have not accepted the realties of 1). That is why I think if one REALLY wants to attack Clegg and the Cleggies it is necessary to establish this clear separation to stop them from playing that trick. Accept the limitations of 1) and then criticise Clegg for all the mistakes he has made following that, the biggest being the way he has not been honest throughout about 1), and so has damaged the party by making it seem as if its very limited influence is out of choice rather than out of reality. So that is why I feel those outside the Liberal Democrats making their “nah-nah-nah-nah-nah” lines are UNDERMINING those within the Liberal Democrats trying to fight against Clegg and the Cleggies, because they are helping the Cleggies in their attempts to confuse 1) and 2), because they are diverting the argument from what is possible and instead raising impossibilities which the Cleggies can easily brush off, and because by the constant use of language which suggests anyone who is a member of the Liberal Democrats must be a mad keen Clegg fan they are denying the wider support which those of us inside the party who want to change it back to what it was need to have to be able to do that.
@Dean.W. :
“As I see it the Rose Garden was a necessary first step in demonstrating to the Press,the public and the markets that this govt would hold.”
Having an event was necessary. No one suggests (as far as I can see) that Nick Clegg should have looked unhappy that day. The failings of that event were all down to nuance and attitude. The world was not going to fall apart because of some clarity of definition of a relatively-narrow coalition agenda which united the parties. Some balance was called for, rather than gung-ho. Also a bit more seriousness about the scale of the problems faced by the coalition. That is all.
The Rose Garden is back today — if you watch your TV News you will see Clegg and Cameron wandering around a garden (not Downing Street) with small children. A London nursery we are told.
What precisely do Clegg or his advisors imagine the political advantage of this photo-opportunity might be?
Do they think that if the voters see Clegg aimlessly walking around a nursery in Cameron’s shadow it will help our candidates in the counci elections?
What are voters expected to think when they see the pictures on TV ?
Tony Dawson
No one suggests (as far as I can see) that Nick Clegg should have looked unhappy that day.
I did. I made just that point at that time – Clegg ought to have looked unhappy. His looking very happy (I had a big spat with the then editor of LDV who told me I was banned from using the word I wanted to use – beginning with “sm” and rhyming with “rug”) damaged us and we have never recovered from it, because it gave the impression that this coalition was not the miserable little compromise it really was but instead was what we wanted all along.
Matthew Huntbach
No. That isn’t what I think. I’m speaking with the benefit of hindsight. Knowing now what the result was, I regret not spoiling my paper. But I didn’t know what the result was when I cast my vote. In fact, I didn’t believe for one moment that the Tories would go into coalition. I believed that they would govern as a minority, in much the same way as Harold Wilson did in February 1974.
My primary concern throughout the 2010 campaign was to do anything to prevent a majority Tory government. In fact, I took a week off work to campaign for a Liberal Democrat who actually won a seat off the Conservatives. In my own constituency, which in 2005 Labour held by a small majority over the Tories, I seriously considered voting Labour, but didn’t. In the end, the Tories won the seat with a very substantial majority. In the county elections last year, I did vote Labour and helped Labour beat a sitting Conservative. There was no Liberal Democrat candidate.
In 2015, I will vote Liberal Democrat again because Labour has a slim chance of winning in the constituency where I live. Voting Labour makes me feel very uncomfortable, but I will do it if I have to to defeat the Tories. If I lived in Yeovil, I would still vote Liberal Democrat, because David Laws, for all his faults, is not a Tory, even though some people think he behaves like one.
Matthew Huntback
Do please read what people have written before putting their name at the top of one of your rants. I did not say that this government was “illegitimate”. In fact, I said, in response to some nonsense from paul barker (and in the very same comment that you quoted from):
“This government was formed on the same basis as every other — on the basis of being able to command a majority of MPs in the House of Commons. It’s a perfectly legitimate government in British constitutional terms but it has no greater claim to authority than any other. ” (emphasis added for the hard of reading)
Apologies for misspelling your name, Matthew – simple typo.
Malcolm Todd, sorry for the misimpression, I was actually following up from what you wrote rather than suggesting you yourself had the views I was criticising, I thought this was obvious as I started off by positing a view which is common and you yourself were opposing. But I can see because I put my comment as a follow-up to yours, the impression might have been given that I was accusing you of holding those views.
The point I was making was that anyone who believes (which you and I agree is against how the British constitution works) that a vote in a general election is a vote for a single party government formed by the party of the candidate voted for, and that therefore only single party governments are legitimate, ought to follow that up by saying the legitimate government following the 2010 general election should be a pure Conservative one. So, any Labour Party person who uses the line “nah-nah-nah-nah-nah, the coalition is illegitimate, no-one voted for it” should be FORCED, in my view to state what is the corollary of their views – that the closer the current government gets to a pure Conservative one, the closer it is to what they would regard as legitimate. If they won’t do that, they should be written off as a despicable hypocrite. The fact that the Labour Party is made up almost entirely of such despicable hypocrites is one reason why despite my great unhappiness with Clegg and the way he is leading the Liberal Democrats, I have no great wish to leave the Liberal Democrats and join Labour.
The name “Huntbach” by the way is a long-established English name, see here. It has always been spelled with a final ‘h’ since first recorded in the 14th century, the “bach” ending is the same ending that is found in some English placenames, such as Sandbach in Cheshire. The name is not related to or derived from “hunchback” and it is not of German origin either.
Oops. Sorry, must have been feeling extra touchy yesterday…
I generally find people who throw out the “nobody voted for this government” line haven’t worked out what they think they mean at all. Indeed, often have only the haziest notion of how governments are formed. Telling them that Cameron’s Tories got a bigger share of the vote in 2010 than Blair’s Labour did in 2005 ought to stop them in their tracks. But it just gets blank looks – probably because there’s maths involved…
This government was formed on the same basis as every other — on the basis of being able to command a majority of MPs in the House of Commons. It’s a perfectly legitimate government in British constitutional terms but it has no greater claim to authority than any other. You can’t retrospectively assign to voters an intention that they had no means of expressing when they went to vote.
These are Malcolm Todd’s words and worth repeating.
“For a lot of political activists it was quite sick-inducing, but it was absolutely necessary”
For real human beings, as opposed to political activists, what is sick-inducing cannot possibly be necessary!
Actually, David, that’s not strictly true: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vomiting#Emetics.