Best Of

[part 2]

3. A market economy again. The economy for so many people doesn't pay their bills no matter how hard they work. Points 1 and 2 address the cost of living, which means more disposable income. But we need productive labour. Companies have stopped investing in kit and in people, but were given fat tax breaks away. So if you want your discounted council tax and a discounted UC-supported work force, you need to invest in skills and training. Make Capitalism Great Again. Borrow, invest, make a Return on that investment. For industry, the state, regions and local government. Stop burning cash on administration and start investing.

4. Smash the Treasury idiocy. Apparently we can't afford police officers or criminal justice - as if crime is cost free. We can't afford teachers but can afford emergency supply cover and crisis management. Can't afford NHS medical capacity - doctors, nurses, beds - but can afford 400 levels of market-driven management tiers.

A local example. Aberdeenshire council - faced with an ever-widening funding hole thanks to the SNP taking £34m a year off them - are faced with a choice of unpalatable cuts. So have declared they will remove half the grit bins. Which apparently will save money. Will lead to a load more accidents and costs both on the NHS and on business as people fall over, but that cost isn't on this year's council budget so its therefore zero cost. Bullshit. Same with cutting the police and the courts and teachers and not building roads and railways and airports.

I could go on all day. Plus add in that the UK in its current form is largely unworkable, so go federal. etc

We need to rediscover radical liberalism from the last century. The party created modern Britain in two phases, giving us universal education, healthcare and welfare. Britain is broken at a basic level, so radical shifts are once again needed.

In short, we need a new leader. I think Ed did a fantastic job transforming our prospects after the coalition, but he’s topped out.

Genuine question. What radical shifts would you like to see the Lib Dems propose?

At a basic level? A shift from the Treasury swamp towards actually addressing the structural failures in our economy.

Four biggies for me:
1. Price of energy - we pay absurdly high amounts for energy which is pegged to the import price of gas we largely don't import. This inflates the price of everything which is why we have such a deep cost of living crisis.

We need to copy Spain and decouple energy prices from gas. Further than that, we need to remap our thinking behind the energy grid - Miliband is sadly frit on this subject. We are paying to switch off wind turbines because the grid doesn't have the transmission capacity to send the power dahn sarf. Spend that money on capacity FFS it isn't difficult.

Cut wholesale energy prices by 20%+ and inflation crashes. The economy functions better and people are removed from crippling energy poverty. Combine that with a program of home insulation and micro solar generation on your roof and we can collapse energy prices for good. Which means industry can afford to be in the UK which brings investment and jobs and growth.

2. Price of housing. The market doesn't work. Developers build far too slowly and they are building executive-style rat trap homes that we already have a glut of. What we need is apartments and starter homes - ones not clad in PlebBurn3000 by RBKC. Planning applications take too long and once granted developers don't build unless they think they can make enough profit.

Empower Housing Associations to borrow and get fast tracked-planning like they are government, but build commercially - operational independence. Every unit built is Not For Sale. Ever. Let at social rents, which collapses the rentier class private landlord sector which floods the market with homes.

Of course to build homes we need a workforce. Make construction a national priority. Fund colleges to train brickies, sparkies, plumbers etc. Tax breaks on factories to make bricks. We can't avoid migrant labour if we don't have domestic replacements. Get on it.

[part 1]

We need to rediscover radical liberalism from the last century. The party created modern Britain in two phases, giving us universal education, healthcare and welfare. Britain is broken at a basic level, so radical shifts are once again needed.

In short, we need a new leader. I think Ed did a fantastic job transforming our prospects after the coalition, but he’s topped out.

No, I don't think we do need a new leader. Davey is highly competent and knows how to run both local and national campaigns. The next GE will be about consolidation of those 72 seats, and adding a modest amount of further ones.

@GarethoftheVale2 gets a couple of things wrong in his header, the first being the lazy stereotypes, when actually the polling shows that the LDs have some of the most even support by demographic groups. The second is his interpretation of the gap between the 17% NEV in the locals and the 14% nationally. Yes, GOTV counts, but as well as that there is a willingness of LD voters to vote tactically, and to recruit tactical voters nationally. That seam of voters has plenty left. The next GE will be a festival of tactical voting, with voters trying to keep out Reform. LDs stand to benefit.

In terms of overall policy I think the LDs are right to not buy into the "Britain is Broken" meme being driven by the populist right and Social Media. The country is not fundamentally broken, at least not more than it ever was, and that sort of relentless negativity and hate driven politics needs opposition. There's a lot of people out there who are fundamentally decent, happy to help their neighbours and happy with both diversity and international co-operation. A lot of us don't want to burn the country to its foundations.

How do the LDs stand to benefit from tactical votes to keep out reform? Where are these LD/Reform battlegrounds? A couple in the SW maybe but the LD battles are almost all vs the Tories.

The foundation of any party's GE campaign should start with retaining their existing seats, so these are the first place to recruit anti-Reform tactical voters. Labour needs to consider this too, and that will require appealling to LD inclined voters (the disparity between LD local and national vote shows that a lot of LD inclined voters already tactically vote).

I think the Tories have the hardest job defending their existing seats, being squeezed by both the Reform party and the LDs. I think Tory seat numbers will fall further. They have no USP, just reflexive voters like BigG who have always voted Tory, and those are dwindling further.

Quick experiment for everyone to try.

Try to imagine a Generic Liberal Voter. Now do the same for a Generic Liberal Constituency. Easy-peasy.

Now do the same for Reform. There are a couple of possibilities, but that's fine. Same for Labour.

Now try the same for the Conservatives. What does a Conservative seat look like these days? It's certainly harder to picture, and it might be impossible.

Indeed. There genuinely aren't many places where the sorts of voters who the Conservatives think they are .
outnumber the sorts of voters who actually vote for them.

The Conservatives USP has always been about keeping Labour out. If someone else has come along who can do that better...

We need to rediscover radical liberalism from the last century. The party created modern Britain in two phases, giving us universal education, healthcare and welfare. Britain is broken at a basic level, so radical shifts are once again needed.

In short, we need a new leader. I think Ed did a fantastic job transforming our prospects after the coalition, but he’s topped out.

No, I don't think we do need a new leader. Davey is highly competent and knows how to run both local and national campaigns. The next GE will be about consolidation of those 72 seats, and adding a modest amount of further ones.

@GarethoftheVale2 gets a couple of things wrong in his header, the first being the lazy stereotypes, when actually the polling shows that the LDs have some of the most even support by demographic groups. The second is his interpretation of the gap between the 17% NEV in the locals and the 14% nationally. Yes, GOTV counts, but as well as that there is a willingness of LD voters to vote tactically, and to recruit tactical voters nationally. That seam of voters has plenty left. The next GE will be a festival of tactical voting, with voters trying to keep out Reform. LDs stand to benefit.

In terms of overall policy I think the LDs are right to not buy into the "Britain is Broken" meme being driven by the populist right and Social Media. The country is not fundamentally broken, at least not more than it ever was, and that sort of relentless negativity and hate driven politics needs opposition. There's a lot of people out there who are fundamentally decent, happy to help their neighbours and happy with both diversity and international co-operation. A lot of us don't want to burn the country to its foundations.

How do the LDs stand to benefit from tactical votes to keep out reform? Where are these LD/Reform battlegrounds? A couple in the SW maybe but the LD battles are almost all vs the Tories.

We need to rediscover radical liberalism from the last century. The party created modern Britain in two phases, giving us universal education, healthcare and welfare. Britain is broken at a basic level, so radical shifts are once again needed.

In short, we need a new leader. I think Ed did a fantastic job transforming our prospects after the coalition, but he’s topped out.

No, I don't think we do need a new leader. Davey is highly competent and knows how to run both local and national campaigns. The next GE will be about consolidation of those 72 seats, and adding a modest amount of further ones.

@GarethoftheVale2 gets a couple of things wrong in his header, the first being the lazy stereotypes, when actually the polling shows that the LDs have some of the most even support by demographic groups. The second is his interpretation of the gap between the 17% NEV in the locals and the 14% nationally. Yes, GOTV counts, but as well as that there is a willingness of LD voters to vote tactically, and to recruit tactical voters nationally. That seam of voters has plenty left. The next GE will be a festival of tactical voting, with voters trying to keep out Reform. LDs stand to benefit.

In terms of overall policy I think the LDs are right to not buy into the "Britain is Broken" meme being driven by the populist right and Social Media. The country is not fundamentally broken, at least not more than it ever was, and that sort of relentless negativity and hate driven politics needs opposition. There's a lot of people out there who are fundamentally decent, happy to help their neighbours and happy with both diversity and international co-operation. A lot of us don't want to burn the country to its foundations.

How do the LDs stand to benefit from tactical votes to keep out reform? Where are these LD/Reform battlegrounds? A couple in the SW maybe but the LD battles are almost all vs the Tories.

The foundation of any party's GE campaign should start with retaining their existing seats, so these are the first place to recruit anti-Reform tactical voters. Labour needs to consider this too, and that will require appealling to LD inclined voters (the disparity between LD local and national vote shows that a lot of LD inclined voters already tactically vote).

I think the Tories have the hardest job defending their existing seats, being squeezed by both the Reform party and the LDs. I think Tory seat numbers will fall further. They have no USP, just reflexive voters like BigG who have always voted Tory, and those are dwindling further.

Quick experiment for everyone to try.

Try to imagine a Generic Liberal Voter. Now do the same for a Generic Liberal Constituency. Easy-peasy.

Now do the same for Reform. There are a couple of possibilities, but that's fine. Same for Labour.

Now try the same for the Conservatives. What does a Conservative seat look like these days? It's certainly harder to picture, and it might be impossible.

Middle class, voted for Brexit but not massively so, often has a high Asian and Jewish population who are well off and despise Reform and socialism

I think that proves Stuart's point tbh, and is even reflected in polling data. Outer London is becoming a Conservative redoubt.