ON the Lib dems – its not just tuition fees. Its Carmicheals lying before the last election. Its Cable selling off the post office. Plus of course enabling a hard right tory government

If you have trust honesty and principles as your USp and then throw them all away then you are left with nothing. Thats the lib dems position right now. They have nothing to offer

It was never that simple TJ no matter how blinkered your own outlook is.

Because the other parties are shining bacons of integrity?

Don’t talk b11x man and stop perpetuating the anti LD propaganda that precipitated the current mess.

It was also the the fact that most libdem voters would consider themselves left leaning centrists, more closely allied with the then labour party. So really in that election that ended up with the libdems supporting a tory government, the majority voted for left of centre politics, but rather than acknowledge that fact Clegg jumped into bed with the Tories because they had the largest minority. He ignored what the parties actually represented.

Tuition fees is an example of the policies they enabled, but mainly they enabled hard austerity, more tax liberation for the rich and punishment of those already victimised by society. The “hostile environment” for immigrants gets the headlines, but that same hostile environment has been applied to the poor and the disabled, and all that came from the libdem enabled tory government.

Who said it? Farage or Corbyn?

Take the quiz now!

https://www.libdems.org.uk/corbyn-farage-quiz

I find myself in that situation of where i vote in next GE.

I would never vote Tory. I always used to vote Labour, but hate the direction and sheer stubborn views of Corbyn and his lack of pro-activity in providing any opposition of real note to the Tories. I feel genuinely let down by Labour now.

Could i vote Lib-Dem, i come from Portsmouth which was always a Lib-Dem stronghold growing up, but for me, they would be the equivalent of voting for magnolia as a paint colour, it may make sense, but it would be last resort and fail to excite me…

Change indie party, they just come across as Tories who don’t have business interests that would benefit from leaving..

So you’d like to vote for a sensible party but they’re not exciting enough?!?

No wonder the country’s ****ed

Look squirrel!!!

Nope they fail to excite me through doing very little, they are profiting now, purely because they are the only “remain” party of any longstanding, not because their policies or actions do much for me, without brexit i would never normally vote for them, so it’s not because i am distracted by bushy-tailed rats……it’s because they’re an alternative i feel i am being forced to vote for, not the one i actually want to vote for, due to the issue of the day (well the issues of the last 2 years and for the foreseeable future)

I find myself in the position of wondering not to who to vote into the EP but rather who is most likely to keep Farage and his bunch of weasels out.

I’m in the north west of England so it’s a toss up between the Greens and Lib Dems. I’d hate to waste the vote.

Whatever the Liberal Democrats may have done or not have done in the past they are the party that want to stay in the E.U. If you want to show a majority for staying in the E.U then I suggest you vote Liberal Democrats. Voting Labour will be seen as endorsing leave. At the moment the Brexit Party are in the lead, according to the polls, can you imagine what Farage will be like if they get a majority and the right wing of the conservative party will take it as a vote for no deal.

For the European MEP elections i’d vote for George and Bungle if it kept that smug-faced cockwomble out of it…….

@Coyote – if you’re in the north west then the tactical voting site says a vote for the Green Party is the most likely to keep the faragists out if you don’t want to vote for the Labour/Tory Brexit coalition.

We both voted Green with our postal votes last night.

I mean, that is clever

That logo is smart isn’t it… they were so much more ready for this election than any of the other parties. Bloody scary who helped them be ready though. Dark days. For what it’s worth James Baker is pretty good… but I don’t see the LibDems getting two MEPs. One each for LibDems & Greens looking far from impossible though. Let’s hope they get to represent us for years… oh, and…

VOTE !

Yeh, I bet they were laughing when we were all joking about Farage heading to the right.

Could i vote Lib-Dem, i come from Portsmouth which was always a Lib-Dem stronghold growing up, but for me,

In that case you do vote lib dem as the tactical anti tory vote.

[url=https://flic.kr/p/2fQR3WG]DSC_0918[/url] by TandemJeremy, on Flickr

Literally a shit-eating grin.

(I didn’t mean it, Binners!)

It was never that simple TJ no matter how blinkered your own outlook is.

Because the other parties are shining bacons of integrity?

When integrity compared to the other parties is your USP – Also what MSP says.

@binners Thanks, I was leaning that way anyway. Voted Green in locals and nationals so at least I’m consistent.

I will check the polls and predictions for Scotland. Last time a uikpper sneaked in with the greens just missing out so green seems the best anti brexit vote in the europeans for me.

Enjoy the cakes Uncle Jezza 😃

FFS that’s not pro-brexit, it’s simply honouring a democratic vote. I still can’t get my head around why people can’t grasp this simple point.

If you’re going to claim that you cannot get your head around it after having had multiple people including myself explain it to you countless times over the last few months, then you’re either being spectacularly dense or disingenuously trolling. And I don’t really believe for a moment that you’re dense.

But we know the answer to this one now don’t we, after you finally revealed your hand the other day. You understand it perfectly well; you just don’t like it. Which, k’now, is absolutely fine and we can agree to differ, I can’t help but think that debate would be much simpler on both sides and might actually progress somewhere if you were simply more honest about that.

Fine for the euros as they’re completely meaningless.

This literally made me laugh out loud.

Brexiters for the last three years: “unelected bureaucrats!”

Us: “Oh look, the European elections, you can actually go and elect your MEPs after all, just what you wanted!”

Our resident RINO: “… they’re completely meaningless.”

binners

Subscriber

Enjoy the cakes Uncle Jezza 😃

Wot these cakes?
[url=https://flic.kr/p/2ewv53t]DSC_0917[/url] by TandemJeremy, on Flickr

ON the Lib dems – its not just tuition fees. Its Carmicheals lying before the last election. Its Cable selling off the post office. Plus of course enabling a hard right tory government

I don’t think this is true.

I’m a member of a Remain echo-chamber Facebook group. Whenever a political party gets mentioned, for whatever reason, with depressing regularity someone will always pop up with a reason why they can’t support that party. With the Lib Dems it’s the tuition fees argument, without exception; in three years I don’t think I’ve ever seen any other reason cited (if it has it’s rare). I’ve never seen the post office mentioned and I’ve never even heard of Carmichael. It’s exactly the same with Labour and the Iraq War.

I think perhaps people generally are largely disengaged from politics, so latch on to a single policy be that a positive or negative one. We saw it in the referendum – “well, I voted leave because I thought giving more money to the NHS was a good idea” – and we’re seeing it right now with Toadface’s Brexit Party which is gaining support despite not even having a single word on a manifesto. (Farage actually said that they were tired of politicians lying which is why they weren’t going to have a manifesto, and people actually bought that rather than going “um, well, have you tried not lying?”)

Couple this with inertia – people often vote for who they’ve always voted for, which is essentially a zero policy vote rather than even a single policy – and it’s really not difficult to see why we’ve been stuck with the same shower of shit in different pyjamas for decades.

We have to start looking forwards rather than backwards. What happened ten years ago is an irrelevance, we can’t change that now.

Voting LibDem would be easier if Carmichael was no longer an MP. I can’t stand the man, he’s dodgy. Sad that so many good MPs lost their seats because of being tainted by their party being in coalition with the Tories… yet he held on.

Anyway, the weird thing about the coalition “punishment” is that the other parties have been in coalitions with the Tories in other bodies across the UK, but, with voters being mostly politically unaware, that’s ignored.

Cougar

Subscriber

With the Lib Dems it’s the tuition fees argument, without exception

I don’t disagree but, I think “tuition fees” is pretty much the figurehead/most obvious thing to mention when it comes to the coalition disaster, if it wasn’t for that there’d most likely be something else.

But I kind of agree with TJ too, in that they haven’t done enough to move past that. Carmichael was the perfect example, faced with a perfect moment to take a moral stand, they instead backed him to the hilt. And their leader in Scotland is casually dishonest when he thinks there’s a trivial point to score. That sort of dishonesty just reinforces the legacy of the coalition, rather than doing anything to repair their reputation.

if it wasn’t for that there’d most likely be something else.

I don’t doubt that for a second. Point was, all those other reasons, and I’m sure they must be legion for all parties, rarely if ever get a look-in.

As transgressions go, I think it’s a pretty lame stick to be beating them with. They were a minority voice in a coalition government and as such had to pick their battles. They couldn’t object to everything the Tories came up with, and we quickly saw what happened when their influence was removed. They surely were a force for good overall in that government even if they made some mistakes along the way.

I don’t really know what they can do to repair that in honesty, people simply have long memories. I’ve oft wondered whether the best thing they could do would be to rebrand so that they aren’t called the LDs any more.

It’s essentially what Farage has just done with his new UKIP 2.0 party, it’s a canny move. Same shit only without all the previous baggage. Change could do the same with a mass defection from the LDs and the less bonkers aspects of Labour, could end up essentially being the new liberals without the millstone of something something tuition fees something.

In other news and with a crushing sound of inevitability, Boris has confirmed that he’s going to run for leadership (and by extension, PM).

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48299424

“International Development Secretary Rory Stewart and former work and pensions secretary Esther McVey have announced they will run and Commons leader Andrea Leadsom has said she is “considering” doing so.

Other widely touted possible contenders include former and current members of the cabinet, including Michael Gove, Amber Rudd, Sajid Javid, Dominic Raab, Jeremy Hunt, Penny Mordaunt and Liz Truss.”

Gods help us all. Everyone wants May gone, but like Cameron before her this is a big fat case of “be careful what you wish for.”

Not for the first time in the last couple of years, I find myself deferring to the wisdom of Douglas Adams.

“It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see…”
“You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?”
“No,” said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, “nothing so simple. Nothing anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people.”
“Odd,” said Arthur, “I thought you said it was a democracy.”
“I did,” said Ford. “It is.”
“So,” said Arthur, hoping he wasn’t sounding ridiculously obtuse, “why don’t people get rid of the lizards?”
“It honestly doesn’t occur to them,” said Ford. “They’ve all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they’ve voted in more or less approximates to the government they want.”
“You mean they actually vote for the lizards?”
“Oh yes,” said Ford with a shrug, “of course.”
“But,” said Arthur, going for the big one again, “why?”
“Because if they didn’t vote for a lizard,” said Ford, “the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?”
“What?”
“I said,” said Ford, with an increasing air of urgency creeping into his voice, “have you got any gin?”
“I’ll look. Tell me about the lizards.”
Ford shrugged again.
“Some people say that the lizards are the best thing that ever happened to them,” he said. “They’re completely wrong of course, completely and utterly wrong, but someone’s got to say it.”
“But that’s terrible,” said Arthur.
“Listen, bud,” said Ford, “if I had one Altairian dollar for every time I heard one bit of the Universe look at another bit of the Universe and say ‘That’s terrible’ I wouldn’t be sitting here like a lemon looking for a gin.”

I said essentially the same about 1000 pages ago. Lib Dems need to drop the party name and rebrand themselves. The traditional meaning of the word liberal, in the political sense, is no longer understood. For vast swathes of the population the term “liberal” has major negative connotations. Even if the LDs were the only party left those people wouldn’t be able to vote for them just on the name alone.

Our resident RINO

Chuckle.

Although shouldn’t that really be ‘Leaver in RINO’s clothing’.

In any case the mask slipped too far a couple of weeks ago with the ‘E.U. is basically a dictatorship’ slip-up.

Credit where it is due, though, it was 4-5 months before the inevitable.

But in the end it was, quoting the immortal Captain E Blackadder “about as convincing as a giraffe in dark glasses trying to get into a Polar Bears Only golf club”.

“International Development Secretary Rory Stewart and former work and pensions secretary Esther McVey have announced they will run and Commons leader Andrea Leadsom has said she is “considering” doing so.

Other widely touted possible contenders include former and current members of the cabinet, including Michael Gove, Amber Rudd, Sajid Javid, Dominic Raab, Jeremy Hunt, Penny Mordaunt and Liz Truss.”

St Nige of Faarange doesn’t like answering difficult questions does he…….

Awkward

Grrrr, I have no idea how to link a twitter feed……

St Nige of Faarange doesn’t like answering difficult questions does he…….

That last few seconds needs to be cropped and shared far and wide. The leavers like out-of-context quotes, they’d love it.

The LibDems are for being allowed into someone else’s government and against not being allowed into someone else’s government. That is the only policy that isn’t getting thrown out.

When they were in government they quietly went along with the Tories instead of raving and threatening to tear everything down if they didn’t get their way.

Sure, people always say the tuition fees but I think that’s because tuition fees represent what would probably happen again with pretty much any policy if they were given a sniff of a government job.

If TM had been lucky enough to get a coalition government with them her deal would have passed months ago. And without any kind of confirmatory referendum.

When they were in government they quietly went along with the Tories

Selective memory much? The tories have since undone most of what the lib dems achived in the coalition but here’s a short list of what they did get done…

The snoopers charter was consistently blocked by the lib dems
Blocked tory plans to reduce the number of commons MPs from 650 to 600
The allocation of 0.7% of GDP to International Development, both in practice and as law
The raising of the Income Tax personal allowance from £6475 to £10,600
Steve Webb delivered the “triple lock” on the State Pension
Nick Clegg saw through the pupil premium of (eventually) £1320 per primary school child and £935 for secondary children to reduce the attainment gap in England and Wales
A £2.5 billion banking levy
Free school meals for infant-school children and in the first three years in primary school in England
Vince Cable vetoed a proposed “fire-at-will” employment law
Stopping welfare cuts and ensuring benefits kept up with inflation
Same sex marriage legislation
15 hours free child care for disadvantaged children
Prohibition of the export of chemicals to where it is known they may be used to carry out the death penalty
Strong and stable government (true!)
5p charge on plastic bags.

Not too shabby considering they were a complete minority and had to pick thier battles very carefully.

Grrrr, I have no idea how to link a twitter feed……

Depressing thing is many of the comments. Apparently its the elite being nasty to him asking awkward questions.

if you’re in the north west then the tactical voting site says a vote for the Green Party

Which of the several sites is that one binners? The advice I’ve seen is for LibDem.

Grrrr, I have no idea how to link a twitter feed……

Depressing thing is many of the comments. Apparently its the elite being nasty to him asking awkward questions.

Reading the twitter feed , like most open Brexit discussions to be honest, is pretty depressing reading. I despair at the willful ignorance of these people.

“We” get everything we deserve.

mattyfez

Member

Not too shabby considering they were a complete minority and had to pick thier battles very carefully.

Half od what you list there is “stopped the Tories from doing X” but literally everything the Tories did for that entire term was made possible by the Lib Dems. You don’t get patted on the back for putting someone in government then standing in front of them occasionally.