Best Of

Forgive me if this has been raised before, but I am baffled by the time spent considering the Sultanas/Jezbollah as a credible political force. Where is their support going to come from? OK, I agree, the appalling situation in Gaza gives them a cause around which they can rally, but when a General Election comes, surely they are going to end up in the same category as the SWP, Communists, TUSC, IRP and all the other ideologically based left wing parties. Yes, they think Labour is doing a bad job (and so do I) but the average Labour voter isn't going to give much consideration to Corbyn - he's yesterday's man, and widely seen as a man who tried but failed. (Clegg and Johnson also come into that category.)

No, if left-wing ideological voters want to punish the Labour Party then they will vote Green (or Nationalist, if one is available.) They might, at a stretch, think that the Lib Dems are pointless, but at least they are seen to be "sound" on Gaza, Trump, etc and a vote for them might get rid of another Tory. But this new Leftist concept has arrived too late in a crowded political marketplace, and their weaknesses (leadership, nomenclature, half-cocked launch etc) are already plain to see, long before the PR hatchet-men in ther Labour Party get to work on them.

So, ignore them - they are not relevant now, and will not be at the next General Election.

The nascent political grouping without a final name yet that is built around the Independent Alliance grouping have 6 MPs already. That makes them the fifth largest party in the Commons and 50% bigger than the Green Party. If the Green Party elect Polanski as their leader, as seems likely, you might have two parties looking rather similar, so which populist left firebrand do you want? Polanski or the original, Corbyn? Or maybe it's Polanski vs Sultana? Polanski wants an alliance, although Corbyn is sceptical of that. But my point is that I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss Your Party. They might come out ahead of a tussle with the Greens, or part of a formal alliance with the Greens. Or they might sink without a trace.

I'm a former MP for 13 years (not all that left-wing, though I was happy with Corbyn as leader), and have been a member of Labour since I was 21; I'm currently chair of my constituency CLP. I'm fed up with the negative slant of the current Labour leadership, but don't feel the Greens or the LibDems offer a coherent alternative, let alone a left-wing one, though I'd be open to the possibility of alliance. I'm therefore a possible switcher if the new party offers a coherent, largely positive alternative. If they end up like the SWP, certainly not, but we'll see.

There are lots of Labour people like me - at least 25% of the membership, I'd say - and we are not exclusively basing our choices on probability to win outright We feel the voters are in sufficient flux to give a serious leftish party a reasonable chance. We might be wrong, but it's a mistake to assume we don't exist.

I have been left of centre all of my life and only left the Labour party during Corbyn's reign. I think you are going to find that there is a very limited market for a party that appears to prioritise the interest of Palestinians over the interests of British people.

However much I deplore Netanyahu's actions I know that Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran are the far greater threat to me than Israel will ever be. Much of the concern about the boats and asylum seekers is actually concern/fear about the impact of political islam on the UK and if you wish to dismiss/ridicule that as racist then so be it.

It saddens me that all over Europe the left cannot see how islamic immigration is fuelling the far right. The day I hear Corbyn unequivocally criticising the mysogeny and homophobia of Hamas and their fellow travellers (or indeed many muslims in the UK) is the day I might listen to what he has to say but I know it will never happen

Personally I would prefer that we sought a consensus with other European countries in relation to ECHR and in the UN on the Convention for Refugees. A unified approach recognising the changes since 1952 and 1967 which make the current Convention unworkable would be better but the timescale for this is probably unacceptable. It is something our government should have been working on for more than a decade.

Unilateral action, such as contemplated by Reform, risks a lot of uncertainties, not least because it is likely to have knock on consequences for other countries which may well invite retaliation in ways we will not appreciate. What is increasingly clear is the live and let live attitude of our civil service, courts and political class is simply unacceptable to the majority. I am nervous that Farage will use this issue to propel himself into Downing Street unless the liberal consensus amongst the other parties breaks in a material way.

His and the LDs lumbering oafishness is one of the untold great political stories.

Clegg is partly to blame, having crashed the car and run off from the scene, but the main blame is on the UK public. Talk about a bad break up!

You’ll forgive me if I don’t take your analysis too seriously. As a Conservative, it must still annoy you lost 250 seats in July 2024 and the result for your party in terms of seats and vote share was the worst since 1832.

Even now you’re in a statistical tie with the LDs for third place with YouGov having lost a quarter or more of those who did vote Conservative in 2024.

In the local by elections in the once solid heartland of Surrey last week, the Conservatives lost seats to both Reform and the “lumbering oafishness” of the Liberal Democrats with vote shares down a third to a half from 2021.

It does annoy, you're quite right.

I am, or more accurately was, a lifelong Tory.

I think you can judge my political views most accurately if I say that I'd have voted coalition rather than Tory in 2015.

As such I would really quite like to have a possible vote that was an alternative to my longstanding Tory one. There should be a degree of comfort for that with the LDs. There's not though, and it's been a while since that was true.

I sympathise to an extent.

The brief philosophical convergence of Cameron’s “liberal conservatism” and the Orange Bookers made the Coalition possible but the political cost of the arrangement killed off the Liberal Democrats as William Hague correctly surmised in the aftermath of the 2010 GE.

There are many in both parties who enjoyed the old adversarial relationship and preferred that to what could have been a political realignment. The emergence of “Europe” as an issue further fractured a relationship which had become strained by 2012-13. It didn’t help Conservative activists started working Liberal Democrats seats hard and that work paid dividends for the Conservatives in 2015 though that victory turned out to be the epitome of a poisoned chalice.

Could Cameron and Clegg have sold Coalition 2.0 to their parties and on what basis? Running as Coalition candidates would have smacked of the 1918 Coupon election - had the two leaders tried, would one or both parties have split?

It’s easy for me to see 2024 as revenge for 2015 but the party won seats last year it never got close to between 1997 and 2010 - Chichester being a good example, Surrey Heath another. Such gains would not have been possible but for thousands of disillusioned Conservatives feeling comfortable enough to vote Liberal Democrat or staying home relaxed about a possible Liberal Democrat win.

Perhaps the relevant question for you is where has your old Conservative Party gone and why did it choose to abandon ground on which it had enjoyed electoral success over decades to chase a populist chimera?

"The emergence of “Europe” as an issue further fractured a relationship which had become strained by 2012-13."

Except it was the elephant in the room in 2010. The LibDems made it a condition of Coalition that "though shalt not" discuss European membership. A referendum in 2011 supported by Cameron and Clegg would have locked us into ever closer union - eternally. Silencing the matter allowed Farage to run with it, then Boris to see it as a way to the Top Job.

Epic failure by the LibDems - that ultimately gave us Brexit.

Blaming the Lib Dems for Brexit seems a bit ... harsh?

Own up PB. Who signed this?