MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
We will be in touch
I can't recall the last time a Lib Dem MP of any note was on TV or the Radio.
Have they thrown in the towel or has 'S Kier Starmer made the redundant as a party!?
🙂
Do they still exist after the yellow Tory led them into oblivion in the last election ?
Hiding under a rock after they facilitated Brexit by goading Magic Grandpa into supporting an early election. Then their loudmouth leader claiming she'd become the next PM then backtracking on that statement days later, making herself look utterly un-electable.
Keeping their head down regarding coronavirus seems sensible. No need to alienate anyone they don't have to by calling for more, less or different lockdown and safety measures.
If they are still the party of remain, I'm hoping they are preparing for battle in the coming months.
They must have forgotten that they form part of the opposition to elected government. They will now become totally irrelevant as Labour reclaim the middle ground.
They always struggle when Labour has a decent leader.
I do wonder a bit what they are for now.
A Starmer led Labour is not as scary for the comfortable middle classes
The Brexit debate is regrettably lost. The best we can hope for is a good agreement and that is much in Labour's gift to push for than the lib dems. And electoral reform is so far down the list of most people's priority its not worth bobbing up and down for.
And electoral reform is so far down the list of most people’s priority its not worth bobbing up and down
And that's the problem!
They always struggle when Labour has a decent leader.
I think the evidence suggests they do better when Lab has a decent leader, which I know sounds slightly counterintuitive.
Get the name right. They rebranded to 'JO SWINSON'S Lib Dems'
No idea what became of them, to answer your question.
What became of them? The voters turned on them (or away from them), this was amplified by the voting system, they now have few MPs, and so you hear less of them. Nothing odd about that.
One of them asked a question at PMQs today. No idea what it was, TV was on mute...
Where are the Lib Dems!?
Dunno?, I'll have a hunt down the back of the sofa, as good a place as any to start searching
They are still very active, just ignored mostly, by mainstream media. So you have to look for what they are doing rather than a spun version being shoved down your throat by a right wing opinion piece.
They are also undergoing a leadership contest.
Layla Moran will probably win, here's a recent article mentioning her.
https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/politics/new-law-would-stop-last-bank-branches-leaving-yorkshire-towns-claims-liberal-democrat-leadership-hopeful-layla-moran-2882823#gsc.tab=0
If you do a google news search it's pretty much all from the Oxford mail, where she is local MP.
Sir Ed has been on tv via Skype a few times recently.
Sadly the media need simple black and white quotes / standpoints, in / out, for or against type sound bites. They cant cope with a choice of 3. So they are left out completey.
Sad really, as we could do with more than a choice of 2. Toff or workikng class, social or capital.
Id vote for them just to get proportional representation, without that voting is mostly a waste of time.
They are still very active, just ignored mostly, by mainstream media. So you have to look for what they are doing rather than a spun version being shoved down your throat by a right wing opinion piece.
I suppose the problem is without MP's there's not really anything to report. It's not that the media is ignoring them. You don't often hear from the hundreds of UKIP and brexit party members who didn't win seats either.
Daisy Cooper, our new MP down in St Albans seems to be waging a one-woman fight back on all fronts, seen her poping up all over the place.
Otherwise they have gone to ground to focus on the local elections and rebuilding with a new leader. It's not like there's going to be another GE any time soon and whatever they were doing before clearly didn't work so a period of introspection may do them some good.
Their local base remains strong and I suspect they'll be proven right on many of the issues they've campaigned on recently, they'll be back.
I was about to say that they're probably involved in yet more internecine leadership battles based on an article in my local paper which suggests my MP, Wera Hobhouse, is pitching for the Lib Dem leadership after accusing Ed Davey of being a Tory.
However, interestingly, that article seems to have been pulled (along with another Wera one too):
https://www.somersetlive.co.uk/news/somerset-news/bath-mp-wera-hobhouse-claims-4234181
But there's some more details here:
"Wera Hobhouse" sounds like a new range of tools for fixing ovens
Who?
They always struggle when Labour has a decent leader.
They didn’t do any better when Labour has a terrible leader though
Fundamentally you're not hearing from them because there isn't an election due. They're not in Government and they're not part of the shadow cabinet.
I feel for them, of all the Party manifestos in of the last 10 years (Have the Tories really been in power for a decade already? Well, that's gone well) they're usually more aligned to my thinking than most, I've voted for them exactly once in a GE in 2010, they didn't win my seat, they were never going to, but the seat they won election ended up going to form a Tory Government - if you look at their history and reason for coming into existence that really is unforgivable.
The sad thing is that in 2010, they had a choice, join forces with a largely centrist Labour Party or the Tories. The Lib Dems (not to be confused with the old Liberal Party) had only came to be because the Labour Party had lurched to the left 20 years previously, but Under Brown they should have had not problem merging their policies and getting along - but they didn't, they made the valid point that Labour had lost the popular vote and number of MPs to the Tories and it would have been wrong to prop them up, but really I think they feared being swallowed up by Labour.
I'd bet that more than a few of them have wished they could have only gone back in time and gone into power with Labour. They signed their own death warrant really, CMD mangled their deal on PR, called a referendum on the worst possible, least attractive version of PR and when it was inevitably shot down in flames gave an excuse for the two main parties to refuse another for a generation. Then they used them as the whipping boy for any policy they didn't like and spat them out at the end, looking like a laughing stock to non-LD voters and Tory Puppets to their core, they even went so far as indirectly helping CMD win a majority which led to the Brexit ref and all the shit that's come with it since.
Political Parties will often hope for the worst to happen as it gives them chance to bash their opponents with it.
I don't know how they do in Westminster when there's a decent Labour leader, but their membership fell all through the Blair/Brown years, rose ready for the 2010 election and then dropped to their lowest level whilst they were in Government, it's the way of it that membership level fall if there's not an General Election or Leadership contest due, but to be actually in Government has have the lowest membership in your history gives a pretty decent indication of how your core fells about it.
With so few MPs and a memberships that's likely to fall again now, they're going to be weaker still when we get to the next election, with Labour moving to the centre again and Brexit (probably) done - the next Election is Likely to be Johnson the populist v Starmer the cenrtic with little room for anyone else.
I think we are only capable of dealing with just 2 political parties.
Has this ever been otherwise ?
And electoral reform is so far down the list of most people’s priority its not worth bobbing up and down
And that’s the problem!
Can you give examples of electoral systems that have historically given better governments than those of the UK?
I know at the moment we have idiots, but generally, over the last 100 years or so, we haven't done too badly.
What system produces consistently better governing?
AV+/AMS as used in Germany and NZ?
The sad thing is that in 2010, they had a choice, join forces with a largely centrist Labour Party or the Tories.
Nothing I have read, written by people in Brown’s or Clegg’s teams, suggest that was remotely true. Even if you ignore the counting.
Kelvin is right - the maths did not work for any sort of deal with labour. They need only have done S&C with the tories tho - that was their mistake.
Hopefully thats the end of them splitting the vote on the left and giving us tory governments on minorities of the vote
I think we are only capable of dealing with just 2 political parties.
Has this ever been otherwise ?
True. Just need get those two parties to be the unmentionables on one side and combined Labour + Lib Debs on the other, with the irrelevant third party formed of a breakaway Magic Grandpa / Momentum types.
What we need is a one election grand coalition of the left on a manifesto of parliamentary and constitutional reform ( constitutional convention) reform, tax reform. Two years, referendum on the outcome of the constitutional convention. New elections under a proportional system, no more lords.
BOSH We would never have a tory majority government again
The the lib dems can flourish and we would see a complete realignment of UK politics