11 Comments

• Cdf 8th May '11 - 11:07am

  labour mps voted against raising tuition fees actually

• Martin Land 8th May '11 - 12:02pm

  Mark, I wish you wouldn’t publish threads on the public forum asking – What’s next? The danger is that some of us will, under this provocation, actually say what we think.

• Grace 8th May '11 - 12:30pm

  Mark, do you really believe that? Honestly? Don’t you think that the problem may not be poor PR and campaigning (although that is clearly also a problem), but rather how do you market a brand that promises one thniog but actually does another. I fully accept that there were few options open to us at the coalition table, but since the deal has been signed we our MPS ar consistently backing the tory agenda rather than following the coaltion agreement or pary policy – just look at tuition fees and health as two highly emotive examples of that. The public, the membership, and the activist base all, by and large, feel betrayed and let down. To try and spin a different message as some sort of Lib Dem officianado is disingenious – it just extends the pain and makes us all look follish at bes or deceitful at worst.

  There are times when the only way out of the shit is to admit you are covered in it and ask for a shovel.

• Jack Reynard 8th May '11 - 12:38pm

  Nick Clegg is a poor leader, ineffectual negotiator and rubbish campaigner. He has nowhere to go. For the good of the country he must destroy Lansley NHS privatisation plans and then resign for the good of the party.

  He has brought disaster to the country and the party. There is no way that electoral reform will ever have a chance of a fair hearing and the Tories are going to get away with the biggest hustle since cemeteries where sold off for 3p back in the bad old days of Lady Porter and Mrs Thatcher.

  If he decides to stay and fight on it will be only for himself and not the good of the people or the party. Being Cameron’s fag is not a job worthy of any progressive and he should have a bit more respect for his party, if not himself.

• Richard Hill 8th May '11 - 12:43pm

  It’s always a good time to think what next.
  What are we trying to be, a mini me socialist (Labour) type party or a Liberal party. The socialist option is not me and bound to fail as Labour are supported by the unions (as thick as thieves, which is what they are) exploiting the rest of the organized people and blackmailing the organizers. If I wanted to be part of that I would have joined Labour.
  Certainly not like the Conservatives, as soon as they create a successful economy they grab as much as they can for themselves.
  There is a third way which if I am correct is the only one that will work allowing for the reality of human nature but that is not for open forum, it’s for when we review what we are about and develop a strategy to implement it in private.

• Paul Griffiths 8th May '11 - 2:37pm

  Grace, when you say that “…the membership, and the activist base all, by and large, feel betrayed and let down…” do you genuinely not understand how hurtful that is to members and activists like me who have campaigned long and hard for this party and who do not feel betrayed or let down but are instead proud of our achievements and supportive of the leadership? I have been a party member for 20 years but now I’m being made to feel as if I am some kind of freak. Are you really saying that there is no place for people like me in the Lib Dems any more?

• Jedibeeftrix 8th May '11 - 3:42pm

  “What are we trying to be, a mini me socialist (Labour) type party or a Liberal party.”

  Well said Richard.

• Squeedle 8th May '11 - 5:13pm

  I posted this in another thread, but I’m posting it here as well. Because it comes from my heart, from someone who WANTS to be able to vote LD again:

  I used to vote Labour, but I became disillusioned after the Iraq debacle and their authoritarianism and neglect of the working class and abandonment of their core values.. I also, as a disabled person who is still lucky enough to be able to work, became sickened with Labour’s constant “tough” stance against benefits all for the tabloids.

  In 2005, for the first time ever (after voting Labour all my life), I voted LD. That is a big move from someone whose family always voted Labour, without fail, since the 1920s. You were against the Iraq war, you spoke out in defense of the disabled. You presented and advertised yourselves, up here in the North at least, as a party to the left of Labour. You explicitly ran on a social democratic, often nearly democratic socialist platform. I liked your defense of the weak, your principles with regard to International Law, the EU and the UN. You seemed to be a left-of-centre, compassionate, strong private AND public sectors, sticking-up-for-the-vulnerable sort of party. To people like me who value community, strong public services, good health, civil liberties, help for the weakest/poorest, equality, etc, over money and greed, you spoke my bloody language! I voted for you in all local and national elections up until and including May 2010. Not an eternity, but a big step for someone from such a staunch Labour family. I even thought the coalition was a good idea at the time, and thought you would moderate the Tory excesses and be the voice of low-income, sick, left-leaning people like myself. In May 2010 I thought to myself “at least the NHS and welfare state will be safe as the LDs won’t let the Tories do anything stupid/callous.” I assumed you’d reduce the deficit in a humane way, making those who caused this crisis pay their fair share, as Labour failed to do. How wrong I was.

  It is now a year later. You are letting the Tories privatise the NHS through the back door. You are attacking the sick and disabled (and your welfare minister Webb is supporting (or, at least, not publicly correcting) Tory lies about the disabled in the press); you are not living up to your green promises, you are letting the banks take the piss out of the public STILL, you are sacking millions of good, decent public sector workers, you’ve even gone silent on civil liberties while the Met have been shown to have operated plain-clothes “snatch squads” arresting people for “pre-crime” during the Royal Wedding. You are giving greedy corporations with only profit in mind more control over OUR services. You broke personal pledges about higher education and put many intelligent working-class people off of going to uni. You fight publicly and get angry with the Tories about AV but not about the disabled, the NHS, the poor, etc. And worst of all? Seeing Clegg and Alexander pat Cameron and Osborne on the back as Tory MPs shouted “more, more!” and celebrated cuts which will hit the weakest the most. And yet you blame people like me, the voter, for not “getting it”. I get it alright. I just want to keep our NHS, keep my local library, our welfare state, make the rich pay a fairer level of taxes, stay in work but know there is a safety net for when I finally become too incapacitated to work (which will happen in 10 years, my doctors say), etc. I get it, we just no longer agree about these things.

  I repeat, DO get it. I’m not stupid or “not getting the message” as many LDs now accuse people like me of doing or being. Compromises in coalitions are required, yes. But each party should have its own red lines. You should have drawn the lines at any of their plans which hurt the poorest, their plans to destroy the NHS, tuition fees, etc. You should have stuck up for those who voted for you, those who believed your eleciton leaflets and the MPs who presented yourselves as left-of-centre.

  I have since gone back to Labour. They still have many flaws, but I know they are genuinely trying to fix themselves, bring those they lost back into the fold and find their voice again. It will take a long time, I’m sure. But I feel more at home with a party who defend the NHS at all costs, for example, than one who is willing to destroy the NHS because of a “compromise.” And every time you blame people like me, the voters, you only push us further away.

  Face it: if you present yourself as a party with beliefs and principles and then decide they don’t matter when offered a whiff of power (like New Labour), you will lose your voters for some time. European Socialists who go into coalitions don’t stop being Socialists because of this fact and neither do conservatives. But you’ve stopped being liberal/social democratic in millions of peoples’ eyes. I would like to vote LD again. But, honestly, I don’t see it happening for some time, if ever again.

  You’ve let the Tories play you like a fiddle, and instead of seeing this truth, you just blamed Labour (and many of your voters) for everything and let the Tories be Tories. This while saga (especially Clegg) is a tragedy on almost Shakespearean levels. Unfortunately, the victim isn’t Clegg. It’s most of us who actually believed him.

• Andrew R 9th May '11 - 2:06pm

  @Squeedle

  Hear hear. And I am someone who has supported the LibDems for the last three general elections, and never had time for Labour’s tribalism, warmongering, and anti-democratic principles. I’d define myself as left-of-centre, liberal (with regard to human rights, freedom for the individual), generally pro-markets for the private sector, but pro-strong state for running the public services and supporting those who need help. And passionate about an ethical foreign policy (so possibly to the left of mainstream LibDem policy in this area, you might say). But all in all, a natural for the LibDems, no?

  But I am utterly alienated by what we have seen over the last year – as are so many others – even more than I expected – from what we saw last Thursday.

  But many (not all) of the writers and party activists on here just don’t seem to get it. Listen:

  – We former lib-dem voters *do not* believe that your fulsome support of the Conservatives’s cuts is necessary. (Argue that ‘there was no alternative’ until you’re blue in the face – we don’t believe it!)

  – We *do not* believe that that most of the coalitions’ actions are in any way improving things; rather, we feel they are ruining the country for the future.

  – We *do not* support your attacks on the welfare system.

  – We *do not* accept that you ‘had to’ revise your policy on tuition fees; you’d made a pledge that was a clear as clear could be; it should have been a red line issue.

  – We *do not* feel represented by a party whose leader has said he personally supports totally unnecessary and extremely dangerous radical changes to the NHS.

  – We *do not* still agree with Nick; we think he has betrayed us.

  Accuse us of having our heads in the sand, of not understanding the real world, of preferring opposition to real power, if you want to. But in doing so you’ll lose millions of us for good.

  It’s your leadership that needs to change course, not us, your former voters.

• Matthew Huntbach 9th May '11 - 4:35pm

  Squeedle
  
  Face it: if you present yourself as a party with beliefs and principles and then decide they don’t matter when offered a whiff of power (like New Labour), you will lose your voters for some time. European Socialists who go into coalitions don’t stop being Socialists because of this fact and neither do conservatives.
  
  Er, yes, but can’t you seem there is the teensiest bit of a problem with what you say? Which is, indeed, that Conservatives in a coalition don’t stop being Conservatives. You appear to believe that 57 Liberal Democrat MPs have the power to force 307 Conservative MPs to vote for Liberal Democrat policies rather than Conservative policies, and then you abuse them because they couldn’t manage that.

  The people of this country, combined with the First Past the Post electoral system elected a Parliament with 307 Conservative MPs, 258 Labour, 57 LibDems and 28 others. Add the Labour and LibDem numbers, and you still get less than half. That is why the only viable coalition was Conservative-LibDem, and with less than one sixth of the MPs in the coalition, that’s obviously going to be far more Conservative than LibDem. It puts the LibDems in a position where they can influence the details, but not the general thrust.

  Now the British people have voted to endorse the electoral system which distorted the representation and gave us this result, to endorse an electoral system whose main principle is that all power should go to whoever gets the most votes even if that’s well short of half. So it seems to me that they voted for what they’ve got last year, and confirmed they agreed with the system and principles that gave it to us this year.

  As a democrat my most basic principle is that people should get what they voted for, even if it’s not what I wanted. So far as I’m concerned, yesterday’s vote was vote of confidence in Cameron’s government because it endorsed the principle that the biggest party should dominate even if it didn’t really get half the votes. From now on, if anyone moans to me about this government, I shall ask them “Did you vote Yes in the referendum?”. And if they say “No” I shall answer “Well, tough then – either by voting No or by abstaining and letting No win, you gave a vote of confidence in the way it came about. Shut up and live with what you by your (in)action supported”.

• Squeedle 9th May '11 - 5:50pm

  I voted “Yes” and in the 2010 election I voted for a LibDem MP.

  I assumed that LD MP would vote in what he believed in, even in a coalition. Nobody forced LD MPs to vote in favour of tuition fees or other Tory policies. Like I said, the Tories have been Tories in this Coalition and the LDs have been acting/voting like Tories. You could have said NO to many Tory policies, but instead people like Alexander come out and tell us how they now support Tory policy and that we should, too.

  And you’re, again, trying to blame the electorate for “not understanding coalition”. I’m sorry but I believed your pre-election literature and campaign. Your campaign wasn’t “we believe in x, but if we go into coalition, we will drop those beliefs.”

  As for saying I am “abusing” LibDems…please. It is the public who were convinced to vote for one thing and then got another, against their wishes, who are being abused. It is the sick and disabled being abused by this government. It is the poor bearing the brunt of your austerity. It is the average man having to pay greater taxes and face job insecurity and lower living standards. Sorry, I have no sympathy for MPs these days.

  I get the feeling that most people on this site are economically comfortable. People don’t seem very worried about what average people are now facing. In my job I see people every day who are worried sick about the future. But LDs now seem to want to focus on Lords Reform, which most people could not care less about. Lords Reform won’t put food on the table, create jobs or protect the NHS. Not in the short term, at least.

  Stop treating your (now ex) voters are stupid and stop being so tribal. Bloody listen to us. Your party was wiped out and you’re still poo-pooing the opinions of ex-LD voters like me. The arrogance is still, even after last weeks’ defeat, astounding. This arrogance is the exact same arrogance people like me got from New Labour after Iraq.