UK Parties: The Liberal Democrat party

[T_i_B]

A thread about the third party in British politics. Currently in government as part of a coalition with the Conservative Party.

http://www.libdems.org.uk/

http://www.libdems.org.uk/about_our_party

The Liberal Democrats are working to build a stronger economy in a fairer society, enabling everyone to get on in life.

We are the only party that can anchor Britain in the centre ground, ensuring we have sustainable growth and equality of opportunity.

[rurallib]

1. they expect anyone to believe that tripe after they became Cameron's

buddies? Or did they buddy up with the Tories because the Tories are also looking "to build a stronger economy in a fairer society"?
From my distant view Clegg comes off as a power hungry dude, willing to sell his mother for power.

I don't follow things very closely, but Clegg seems to be the very definition of hypocrite.

[LeftishBrit]

2. Most politicians are hypocrites, but Clegg is less good at hiding it than most

'Clegg comes off as a power hungry dude, willing to sell his mother for power.'

I would substitute 'status' here for 'power'. Clegg never had any power, but he did get the chance to strut around looking important.

In this way, Clegg and Cameron are rather alike. Cameron is a lazy so-and-so, without much inclination for the actual hard work that real power would require; but he certainly likes status, publicity, and opportunities to strut around looking important. Thus, Clegg has sold his soul (and his party's prospects for the foreseeable future) to Cameron; Cameron has sold his soul (and the country) to the likes of Iain Duncan-Smith; and Iain Duncan-Smith has sold his soul to the Devil; or perhaps IDS is the Devil!

[T_i_B]

4. That's pretty much how most people view the Lib Dems

They jumped at the chance of a coalition, and suddenly became very enthusiastic about lots of stuff they'd previously been opposed to. It's left the Lib Dems with a serious credibility problem.

This credibility issue means that very few people are going to take Lib Dems policy proposals very seriously this time around, so they seem to be standing on the blandest, most insipid platform around.

[mwooldri]

7. Exactly why the Lib Dem vote collapsed, particularly in the Home Counties.

I could take my home borough of Waverley. They had a Lib-Dem controlled council at one point, but then they started acting more like Tories once in power. The last election returned a Tory in all but one seat. It's changed a bit, with the independent going to UKIP and a few other Tories going the UKIP route.

[T_i_B]

9. I can' talk about Lib Dems in the Home Counties at the moment

I used to have a Home Counties Lib Dem as my MP (Colchester's Bob Russell, not perfect, but as good an MP as you'll get these days) but I honestly don't have any real idea of how things might pan out in Colchester this time around.

What I can say is that here in North East Derbyshire the Lib Dems used to be a strong presence in local government and used to be quite active. Then after they went into coalition their leaflets immediately became markedly more right wing in tone. And when local elections came around in 2011 they got virtually wiped out locally as people decided that there really isn't any need for a surrogate Tory party. And we haven't seen a single Lib Dem leaflet since 2011 so they've clearly given up round here.

Nearby the Lib Dems nearly took Sheffield Central from Labour in 2010 and also narrowly lost Chesterfield to Labour, but this time round I think Labour will make big gains at their expense in those constituencies.

The Lib Dems decline is not good for democracy as we do need a strong 3rd party offering a good alternative to the tripe from the main parties. And whilst their local leaflets could be dodgy in all kinds of ways, you could at least get a vague idea of what's going on with the local council from them.

[LeftishBrit]

3. Once on GD they were reporting some Republican nutter who wanted to ban human/jellyfish hybrids...

and I posted: 'Too late; Nick Clegg already exists!'

[Ironing Man]

5. hmmm...

while i have a rather more charitable view of the LD's - i actually think its admirable that a political party that relies on a particular client base for a significant proportion of its votes will turn around to that client base and say 'sorry, but the thing we promised (rashly) turns out to be unafordable, but we'll tell you that rather than try and prop it up with funding from other budgets'.

the most amusing thing about the LD's in coalition is the 30 years of bearded, sandal-wearing, sanctimonious LD's telling all and sundry that proportional representation will mean a future of coalition governments which will be better governments than the two 'old' parties provide, and then as soon as they actually get to take part in a coalition they discover that coalition, particularly when you only bring 60 MP's to the government, is a rather more cut and thrust afair that they had rather arrogantly foreseen. its almost as if they believed that coalition meant 'take up the LD manifesto...'

in contrast to most (all?), i'm actually more likely to vote LD than i was in 2010 - in 2010 i considered them to be a wishy-washy protest party where you could believe absolutely anything and still be a LD, a kind of rest home for people without the strength to hold their nose over things either Labour or the Tories did that they didn't like in order to achieve some of the things they did like. however, while a good wedge of their members have been running to the hills over the messy reality of coalition, most of their MP's have been pretty solid. they are at least, now, a serious party of government rather than a mung-bean eating pressure group - broadly i like the things the LD's have achieved in government, and they appear to be reasonably competent at being ministers, so i will at least give them the time of day.

[LeftishBrit]

8. It's not any specific item that bothers me so much...

not even the tuition fees on their own. All parties will court the students' vote and then betray them - I'm old enough to remember Blair doing so too; one of the things that put me off him well before Iraq.

It's their enabling of right-wing vicious mean-spirited Tories.

There are two possible narratives about it, I suppose. One is that the LibDems helped Cameron to power, and thus helped Duncan-Smith and others such as Shapps and Pickles to practice vicious sadism against poor people, and Lansley to sell off the NHS. The other is that maybe the Tories would have formed a government anyway, and would have practiced even more vicious sadism against poor people and sold the NHS even more totally. However, I do think that the nastiness of some of the Tories should have precluded the LDs remaining in coalition with them, even if they were daft enough to think that they could go in with them in the first place.

I think that the problem with the parties in general is that the MPs all have to play follow-the-leader, and so cannot act independently. And yes, this has some advantages with regard to the crazier Tories -Bill Cash and John Redwood unchained would be an even worse problem than they are now - but not with regard to 'wet' Tories under Thatcher, or anti-war Labourites under Blair, or anti-bedroom-tax LDs under the coalition.The LDs had the attraction of being 60 semi-independent MPs at a time when Labour were following Blair like cloned sheep, and the Tories were doing the same to the post-Thatcherites. Perhaps we should have all realized that this wouldn't continue if they did go in coalition; but we were mostly too horrified by the effects of disproportionately-large parliamentary majorities on elected-dictator types like Thatcher and Blair.

Also, most of the local LD councillors and MP candidates in my constituency were/are on the left of their party, and while I knew this intellectually, I didn't quite take in how RW some LDs were, even before the coalition.

[MisterP]

6. the LDP has two big tendencies: the social-dem and the "liberal" (which in Europe of course

means "capitalistic&quot : so it's facing an identity crisis as it competes with a Labour struggling to deal with Blair's legacy and Tories with Thatcher

ironically the closest party in my eyes to the LDP is the SNP ...

[T_i_B]

10. So....

What now for the rump that's left of the Lib Dems?

[mwooldri]

11. Depends whether they keep the local party going or not.

If the grassroots stay alive, or grow back since Clegg has now resigned, then the Lib Dems will come back. However with this Tory whitewash the local party apparatus may fall apart even more. Need strong grassroots. ... and the Clegg poison has killed off some of the grass. Get the SDP roots back and the Lib Dems can be viable again.

[T_i_B]

12. UK General Election kick

Strange how things change. In 2015 the Lib Dems offer to voters was paltry and their involvement in the coalition nearly destroyed them.

After 2 disastrous years for British politics the Lib Dems are looking attractive again, although they are starting from a very low point indeed.

[Ken Burch]

13. Why are threads from the 2015 election being re-posted now?

None of the three largest parties have the same leaders or the same programs.

[T_i_B]

14. Because a general election has been called

And doing it this way

1) Saves time as I don't need to do a new thread
2) Serves as a timely reminder of how the parties in question have changed in a mere 2 year gap

[Denzil_DC]

15. Yes, it's been interesting to be reminded what some of us posted a couple of years ago,

and how certain things panned out.

Two years is a long time in politics!

[T_i_B]

16. Doesn't help that they keep calling general elections every 2 years at present!

Still, many of us have been on a political journey of late as British politics has changed.

[T_i_B]

19. Well, it's 2024 now

And I'm still giving these old threads a kick for the general election!

[mwooldri]

17. If the 2019 GE is all about Brexit...

... the Lib Dems should do quite well, especially with the "Bollocks to Brexit" slogan.

In England and Wales, I feel that LD's need to focus in pro-remain areas and in areas where they run #2 to the Tories.

With Labour occupying the centre ground in terms of Brexit, I hope that Remain voters don't necessarily flock to the LD's and vote tactically for the party most likely to defeat the Tories. I don't expect the Lib Dems to make the same kind of results in terms of seats as they did in the European election but I do expect significant seat gains, hopefully at the expense of the Tories.

Scotland will be a very different battleground as Scotland is pro remain, and the Tories are the #3 or #4 party (SNP, Labour, and maybe the Lib Dems have more representation in Scotland than do the Tories). I expect Scottish issues to dominate, with Indyref2 likely to be featured prominently.

[Denzil_DC]

18. No, that's wrong. The Tories have more Scottish MPs than Labour or the Lib Dems:

SNP: 35
Tories: 13
Labour: 7
Lib Dems: 4

Polling this far out isn't that meaningful, especially as there's little Scotland-specific polling (most of the time it's based on small UK national subsamples, leading to large margins of error). Some expect an SNP wave to rival 2015, more moderate predictions see the Tories reduced to 5 seats, Labour to 1, and the Lib Dems gaining one for a total of 5.

[Emrys]

20. I've mentioned elsewhere that my old Lib Dem MP Alan Reid is standing again in Argyll, Bute & Lochaber

(an expanded constituency since the last general election, when he got beat by the SNP for the second time).

I've seen no signs of an upsurge in his support locally. The Lib Dems in Holyrood are no longer officially classed as a party group there as they fell below the threshold, holding just four seats.

They also hold four Westminster seats in Scotland, in Orkney & Shetland (long a traditional Lib Dem heartland for some reason), Caithness, Sutherland & Easter Ross (likewise), Edinburgh West, and North East Fife. I wouldn't class the last two as safe, but the Lib Dems apparently do and are optimistically looking to gain seats, on what polling basis is unclear.

Meanwhile, they got off to a shaky start with their Scottish campaign launch:

Link to tweet

The National
@ScotNational

The Liberal Democrats have launched their General Election campaign in North Queensferry with a focus on dentistry - which is a devolved matter

https://www.thenational.scot/news/24347852.scottish-libdems-launch-election-campaign-focusing-nhs-dentistry/

The Lib Dems are not alone in their lack of clarity in focus on devolved versus reserved matters, and both the Tories and Labour regularly fudge these issues in their campaigns, both when it suits them to do so, and often out of sheer ignorance.

They'll be missing their old party leader Willie Rennie, who at least could be relied upon to enliven campaigns with antics like wrestling rams:

Oor Willie: 14 of the wackiest Willie Rennie photo stunts



https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/politics/scottish-politics/2372938/oor-willie-14-of-the-wackiest-willie-rennie-photo-stunts/

[T_i_B]

21. Willie Rennie is the father of the cringe Lib Dem publicity stunt

Usually seen from the national party after a by-election win. He's been able to persuade the rest of the party of the benefits of a cringe photo shoot. And to be honest they do get the Lib Dems valuable publicity from media who would otherwise ignore them.

[Emrys]

22. He seems to have been of the school of thought that no publicity is bad publicity

I don't think he exactly projected gravitas, but each to their own.

[Emrys]

23. OK, they don't need Willie Rennie. Ed Davey has got this.

The Lib Dems' Welsh campaign launch: