I think this thread shows something of the wider population, in the end the Lib Dems were seen as mischief makers and troublesome Gov't partners on the right, and limp wristed sellouts by the left.
They managed to get the worst of both worlds.
The Lib Dems created trouble for the Conservatives on precisely one subject after the coalition agreement came into effect: boundary changes. Any view that sees the Lib Dems as having been troublesome Government partners would need some careful explanation. David Cameron got far more trouble from the right of his own party over the EU.
Of course, the Lib Dems had a fair amount of Hamletesque agonising about what they were doing, but that was almost entirely internal to the party.
Mr. Topping, perhaps, but rushing is sometimes the right move. The Romans were astounded when they heard Hannibal was already in Italy. Alexander was famous for moving swiftly.
Is this more than a spoiling campaign against Tim Farron?
If Ashdown is behind it, it could be part of the spoiling campaign.
“Our vote was being seriously eroded by the Labour/Salmond thing,” Ashdown recalled. “There was a sort of hidden army of people who were so worried about Labour that they literally came out to vote for the first time.”
Ashdown is quite delusional or deliberately misleading to deflect blame. The reason ex LibDems deserted the party was not fear (of the SNP) but anger at the unnecessary betrayal on fees, NHS etc.
I think Ashdown, who was in charge of the General Election strategy and leads the party "elite", has been as harmful to the LibDems as Clegg. He would do the party a favour if he shut up.
Much in that. For the leader of the campaign to be so wrong as to say he would eat his hat if the exit poll was anything like for the LibDems just illustrated how far adrift from reality Paddy had become. Seems like the Tory canvassers had a much better understanding of what was happening in LibDem held seats than the party grandees did...
The LibDems were historically screwed long before the tuition fees debacle, they just didn't know it. They have been since forever a pushme/pullyou party - communist here, Orange Book there, beards and sandals everywhere. This worked fine as a ragbag of local oppositions. But at the national scale you must present yourself as one thing or the other - and so they were a bomb waiting to explode. Their USP has always been that they can make coalition government a good experience! The fact of a hung parliament was bound to ignite a fuse that led to their destruction as they had been living a deep lie from the outset (and still do). One half of the party was inevitably going to melt - and given the electoral maths in May 2010 the only choice was coalition with Dave and the lefty half going into meltdown.
Much like Labour, the LibDems now need to decide who they are and what they believe in. And to present this consistently everywhere. Good luck with that. It'll be like herding cats. They have become an irrelevance. If they simply disappear nobody will really notice.
I think this thread shows something of the wider population, in the end the Lib Dems were seen as mischief makers and troublesome Gov't partners on the right, and limp wristed sellouts by the left.
They managed to get the worst of both worlds.
The Lib Dems created trouble for the Conservatives on precisely one subject after the coalition agreement came into effect: boundary changes. Any view that sees the Lib Dems as having been troublesome Government partners would need some careful explanation. David Cameron got far more trouble from the right of his own party over the EU.
Of course, the Lib Dems had a fair amount of Hamletesque agonising about what they were doing, but that was almost entirely internal to the party.
When the boundary changes were blocked occurred, I laid Conservative Majority on the exchanges. I also backed Lib Dem 32.5+ seats.
I think the Lib Dems were making the same calculation...
Is this more than a spoiling campaign against Tim Farron?
If Ashdown is behind it, it could be part of the spoiling campaign.
“Our vote was being seriously eroded by the Labour/Salmond thing,” Ashdown recalled. “There was a sort of hidden army of people who were so worried about Labour that they literally came out to vote for the first time.”
Ashdown is quite delusional or deliberately misleading to deflect blame. The reason ex LibDems deserted the party was not fear (of the SNP) but anger at the unnecessary betrayal on fees, NHS etc.
I think Ashdown, who was in charge of the General Election strategy and leads the party "elite", has been as harmful to the LibDems as Clegg. He would do the party a favour if he shut up.
Much in that. For the leader of the campaign to be so wrong as to say he would eat his hat if the exit poll was anything like for the LibDems just illustrated how far adrift from reality Paddy had become. Seems like the Tory canvassers had a much better understanding of what was happening in LibDem held seats than the party grandees did...
I wouldn't read very much into what politicians say on election night broadcasts before any results had come out. He was hardly going to say "well, that's pretty much what I've been expecting, the campaign has been a disaster from start to finish", was he?
My reading is that the Lib Dems knew that they were doing badly (our host vote-swapping with Twickenham is a big clue to that).
I'm less convinced that they knew - or know - why they did so badly. It can't have been both a desire to administer a slap on the wrist and fear of a Labour/SNP coalition. The two are entirely inconsistent.
LibDems being angry at Nick for rowing back on tuition fees (or other manifesto policies) are as idiotic as Cons backbenchers being angry at Cam for the compromises he made.
The junior and senior members of a c-o-a-l-i-t-i-o-n government respectively.
I mean it takes a special kind of dim to act that way.
No, because tuition fees -- which was the main plank of the LibDem campaign -- was dropped in the coalition talks, when Clegg could have made it a pre-condition. (Come to think of it, did not one of the "inside stories" at the time suggest the Conservative negotiators were surprised to find they knew more than the LibDems what was in the yellow manifesto?)
In a current parallel, it has been suggested that some Conservative proposals were designed to be negotiated away, and now they are stuck with them.
And if Clegg's pre-condition had been rejected?
Perhaps it was.
What was his move then? Go to Lab when Cons rightly would have said: "but you said you would go with the largest party", to say nothing of the backlash "held to ransome" media narrative it would have engendered. Or to flounce out back to the cold outside, have C&S, likely an election in Sep (this was of course pre-FTPA) at which the public would have been given an inkling of weak government, and would have reverted to Lab or Cons?
I don't think he did badly, tuition fees and all.
He did dreadfully.
This notion that the Lib Dems had no choice but to sign up with the Cons on the appalling terms that they did is entirely fanciful.
OK , prove it. Bear in mind the economic situation and tell us what government you would have put together in 2010.
Correct. Thereafter the LDs ran away from govt and did their best to constantly rubbish the very govt they were a part of. Stupid is as stupid does.
It seems that, despite the opportunity of coalition being the crowning moment of the political lives of the LDs, they weren't ready for it - either the negotiations or the mechanics of government.
They should have been preparing for months for those few days in May, the polls were pretty accurate in 2010. Yet, as was said below, they appeared not to have prepared at all.
I think this thread shows something of the wider population, in the end the Lib Dems were seen as mischief makers and troublesome Gov't partners on the right, and limp wristed sellouts by the left.
They managed to get the worst of both worlds.
The Lib Dems created trouble for the Conservatives on precisely one subject after the coalition agreement came into effect: boundary changes. Any view that sees the Lib Dems as having been troublesome Government partners would need some careful explanation. David Cameron got far more trouble from the right of his own party over the EU.
Of course, the Lib Dems had a fair amount of Hamletesque agonising about what they were doing, but that was almost entirely internal to the party.
Here is just one example. You overlook the endless changes and hand wringing over the NHS proposals? All conducted in the full glare of the media. Undermining the image of coalitions. Add to that the frequent public positions that they were taming the "nasty tories"....
Is this more than a spoiling campaign against Tim Farron?
If Ashdown is behind it, it could be part of the spoiling campaign.
“Our vote was being seriously eroded by the Labour/Salmond thing,” Ashdown recalled. “There was a sort of hidden army of people who were so worried about Labour that they literally came out to vote for the first time.”
Ashdown is quite delusional or deliberately misleading to deflect blame. The reason ex LibDems deserted the party was not fear (of the SNP) but anger at the unnecessary betrayal on fees, NHS etc.
I think Ashdown, who was in charge of the General Election strategy and leads the party "elite", has been as harmful to the LibDems as Clegg. He would do the party a favour if he shut up.
Much in that. For the leader of the campaign to be so wrong as to say he would eat his hat if the exit poll was anything like for the LibDems just illustrated how far adrift from reality Paddy had become. Seems like the Tory canvassers had a much better understanding of what was happening in LibDem held seats than the party grandees did...
I wouldn't read very much into what politicians say on election night broadcasts before any results had come out. He was hardly going to say "well, that's pretty much what I've been expecting, the campaign has been a disaster from start to finish", was he?
My reading is that the Lib Dems knew that they were doing badly (our host vote-swapping with Twickenham is a big clue to that).
I'm less convinced that they knew - or know - why they did so badly. It can't have been both a desire to administer a slap on the wrist and fear of a Labour/SNP coalition. The two are entirely inconsistent.
When your voters are a loose coalition in the first place, it is quite conceivable that different parts of that coalition can respond to different messages. That, after all, was the genius of the Tory campaign...
The left continuing their disconnect from reality.
Radio 5 are running a morning show on that very topic. A load of hot air.
Any discussion of poverty in the UK in 2015 is almost nonsensical. Real poverty is confined to a small number of homeless and addicts, the notion that some 20% of children live in poverty is completely absurd.
LibDems being angry at Nick for rowing back on tuition fees (or other manifesto policies) are as idiotic as Cons backbenchers being angry at Cam for the compromises he made.
The junior and senior members of a c-o-a-l-i-t-i-o-n government respectively.
I mean it takes a special kind of dim to act that way.
No, be
In a current parallel, it has been suggested that some Conservative proposals were designed to be negotiated away, and now they are stuck with them.
And if Clegg's pre-condes and all.
remember."
And storm triumphantly into the wilderness.
Not what being a political party who seeks to make the world a better place is all about. Plus (I have no idea) did the overwhelming approval of the coalition by LD members come after the coalition talks, wherein the tuition fee policy was amended?
Where they were given the right to abstain! Yet, brilliantly, they ended up with the minister responsible, and in the end nearly all voted for the policy he designed (which is actually not too bad a policy, in my view).
Correct - it was a better policy for the poor students that was then currently in place and the report itself was diluted by the coalition. Getting worked up about it and protesting was typical of the thick nature of LDs. The tories went out of their way to help the LDs over tuition fees and as you say the report was a Labour report nothing to do with either coalition partner.
Give them a break.
Here we had a party with some bonkers la-la land policies which no one ever thought would be tested in the cold light of day. Was this their fault? Partly. It was also the GBP's fault for voting for them previously in such numbers so as to encourage them. Under such circumstances they probably thought they were doing great things.
Right up until they came up against a) the steam-train reality of government; and b) a battle-hardened, slick grown-up political party.
Under such circumstances I think it is ok to c*ck it up a bit while an adjustment is made. Their first crack at government in the modern era and it really was one strike and you're out for them.
It was unrealistic to expect them to make the transformation effortlessly, perfectly and without error.
And then the very people who criticise them, the people who voted for a protest party in defiance of the status quo, go on to penalise them when they gain power, wonder why we have the system of government we have, and often bemoan it.
Me? I'm delighted. But I can see the iniquity of it.
LibDems being angry at Nick for rowing back on tuition fees (or other manifesto policies) are as idiotic as Cons backbenchers being angry at Cam for the compromises he made.
The junior and senior members of a c-o-a-l-i-t-i-o-n government respectively.
I mean it takes a special kind of dim to act that way.
No, because tuition fees -- which was the main plank of the LibDem campaign -- was dropped in the coalition talks, when Clegg could have made it a pre-condition. (Come to think of it, did not one of the "inside stories" at the time suggest the Conservative negotiators were surprised to find they knew more than the LibDems what was in the yellow manifesto?)
In a current parallel, it has been suggested that some Conservative proposals were designed to be negotiated away, and now they are stuck with them.
And if Clegg's pre-condition had been rejected?
Perhaps it was.
What was his move then? Go to Lab when Cons rightly would have said: "but you said you would go with the largest party", to say nothing of the backlash "held to ransome" media narrative it would have engendered. Or to flounce out back to the cold outside, have C&S, likely an election in Sep (this was of course pre-FTPA) at which the public would have been given an inkling of weak government, and would have reverted to Lab or Cons?
I don't think he did badly, tuition fees and all.
He did dreadfully.
This notion that the Lib Dems had no choice but to sign up with the Cons on the appalling terms that they did is entirely fanciful.
OK , prove it. Bear in mind the economic situation and tell us what government you would have put together in 2010.
Correct. Thereafter the LDs ran away from govt and did their best to constantly rubbish the very govt they were a part of. Stupid is as stupid does.
It seems that, despite the opportunity of coalition being the crowning moment of the political lives of the LDs, they weren't ready for it - either the negotiations or the mechanics of government.
They should have been preparing for months for those few days in May, the polls were pretty accurate in 2010. Yet, as was said below, they appeared not to have prepared at all.
Months? They'd had since 1922 to prepare themselves for another stint in government.
The LibDems were historically screwed long before the tuition fees debacle, they just didn't know it. They have been since forever a pushme/pullyou party - communist here, Orange Book there, beards and sandals everywhere. This worked fine as a ragbag of local oppositions. But at the national scale you must present yourself as one thing or the other - and so they were a bomb waiting to explode. Their USP has always been that they can make coalition government a good experience! The fact of a hung parliament was bound to ignite a fuse that led to their destruction as they had been living a deep lie from the outset (and still do). One half of the party was inevitably going to melt - and given the electoral maths in May 2010 the only choice was coalition with Dave and the lefty half going into meltdown.
Much like Labour, the LibDems now need to decide who they are and what they believe in. And to present this consistently everywhere. Good luck with that. It'll be like herding cats. They have become an irrelevance. If they simply disappear nobody will really notice.
The left continuing their disconnect from reality.
Radio 5 are running a morning show on that very topic. A load of hot air.
Any discussion of poverty in the UK in 2015 is almost nonsensical. Real poverty is confined to a small number of homeless and addicts, the notion that some 20% of children live in poverty is completely absurd.
Child poverty means that parents can't afford shoes for their children, not that they can't afford iPads for them.
The Conservative need to bring in a new measure of "absolute poverty", focused on a basket of goods and services that are absolutely essential: housing, utilities, groceries etc. It would transform this whole debate to their advantage. They don't need to even stop measuring the existing definition, just change it to "relative poverty".
The LibDems were historically screwed long before the tuition fees debacle, they just didn't know it. They have been since forever a pushme/pullyou party - communist here, Orange Book there, beards and sandals everywhere. This worked fine as a ragbag of local oppositions. But at the national scale you must present yourself as one thing or the other - and so they were a bomb waiting to explode. Their USP has always been that they can make coalition government a good experience! The fact of a hung parliament was bound to ignite a fuse that led to their destruction as they had been living a deep lie from the outset (and still do). One half of the party was inevitably going to melt - and given the electoral maths in May 2010 the only choice was coalition with Dave and the lefty half going into meltdown.
Much like Labour, the LibDems now need to decide who they are and what they believe in. And to present this consistently everywhere. Good luck with that. It'll be like herding cats. They have become an irrelevance. If they simply disappear nobody will really notice.
I have read this morning that among the 300 child grooming suspects in Rotherham are sitting councillors, and that the West Midlands police knew about street grooming for five years but did not alert the public.
Is there a possibility that these local councils will be closed down with fresh elections required, as in Tower Hamlets?
It would be nice to think so. The Panorama programme last week clearly showed that the problems in some of these places are institutional, as they have gone on for over a decade with huge efforts to cover it up when the media got hold of any stories.
There are also arguments for finding a way of avoiding how some of these councils become one party states with no opposition voices to be heard. This has been shown over hundreds of years and hundreds of authorities to inevitably lead towards corruption.
I still can't quite get over having 300 suspects in one medium sized town. It must have been 10-20% of the Pakistani adult male population.
The left continuing their disconnect from reality.
Radio 5 are running a morning show on that very topic. A load of hot air.
Any discussion of poverty in the UK in 2015 is almost nonsensical. Real poverty is confined to a small number of homeless and addicts, the notion that some 20% of children live in poverty is completely absurd.
Child poverty means that parents can't afford shoes for their children, not that they can't afford iPads for them.
The Conservative need to bring in a new measure of "absolute poverty", focused on a basket of goods and services that are absolutely essential: housing, utilities, groceries etc. It would transform this whole debate to their advantage. They don't need to even stop measuring the existing definition, just change it to "relative poverty".
IMO it was the Cons that rushed to coalition. Before you knew it when everyone was discussing C&S there was Cam's speech identifying and offering movement on each LibDem policy area - the four "fairs". It was well-researched and crafted and left the LDs nowhere to go but into coalition. Of course tuition fees were an issue (mentioned after class size reform in the manifesto, my googling has just reminded me) but no more than any other policy that would have to be on the table in a coalition and yes, despite the pledge. This is politics. And we were in unchartered territory.
So in retrospect I think the Cons jumped too quickly and yes, the LDs played it badly perhaps even on tuition fees, but they got into govt, which presumably is the aim of every political party and, perhaps analagously to the Cons, they didn't realise how many cards they held - but then they after all got their AV referendum and many other things besides.
Coming back to topic, although high profile, I don't think that solitary u-turn was justification for the shellacking they and Nick got (although as a Cons I am delighted).
You're criticising the Tory strategy in 2010? Which was, remember, the election whichever whoever won "would be out of power for a generation" - instead the Tories now have a majority!
Also worth noting how important the politics of the first 3-6 months of a government (or even the first week, in the case of the coalition) are. The same sort of thing is going on now but most people are switched off.
The Lib Dems created trouble for the Conservatives on precisely one subject after the coalition agreement came into effect: boundary changes.
Not so. They made an absolute dog's breakfast of the NHS reforms by insisting on massive complications to the changes which they'd initially signed up to. Clegg was a co-signatory of the original White Paper:
SIMON LAMBERT: How to spot a Greek euro note (again) - and why this old chestnut is a damning indictment of the eurozone crisis. Regardless of how much over-spending went on in Greece before the crisis hit, the failure to deliver a proper solution should be a lesson for decades to come.
I was reminded of that last week when a reader tweeted an old blog of mine – How to tell where a euro note comes from.
It began with the line: ‘As forecasts hit fever pitch of Greece being bundled out of the euro’
The date? May 2012. And, in fact, this blog was actually honing in on something I’d first written about in May 2010.
It looked at the way to spot the origin of a euro note (using the letter before its serial number) and why claims that Greek ones might prove worthless in the event of a default were nonsense.
Beyond learning how to work out where your euros are from, there is something to be learnt about the eurozone’s failure in looking at those old posts.
If your initial cure for a financial crisis has spent the past five years making it worse, stop prescribing it.
The LibDems were historically screwed long before the tuition fees debacle, they just didn't know it. They have been since forever a pushme/pullyou party - communist here, Orange Book there, beards and sandals everywhere. This worked fine as a ragbag of local oppositions. But at the national scale you must present yourself as one thing or the other - and so they were a bomb waiting to explode. Their USP has always been that they can make coalition government a good experience! The fact of a hung parliament was bound to ignite a fuse that led to their destruction as they had been living a deep lie from the outset (and still do). One half of the party was inevitably going to melt - and given the electoral maths in May 2010 the only choice was coalition with Dave and the lefty half going into meltdown.
Much like Labour, the LibDems now need to decide who they are and what they believe in. And to present this consistently everywhere. Good luck with that. It'll be like herding cats. They have become an irrelevance. If they simply disappear nobody will really notice.
Yes.
All they had to do was be liberal. and democratic. We may notice that noone is defending liberalism/liberty after all of our rights and civil liberties (for want of a better phrase) have been lost
I like that idea. It's much more practical and creates a more grown-up discussion.
grown-up discussion meaning "discussion in the terms I prefer".
abandoning relative measure means the right wingers are free to accumulate massively ridiculous amounts of land power money and stuff, and it's OK because the proles have inside toilets
Mr Topping - you say ''It was also the GBP's fault for voting for them previously in such numbers so as to encourage them.'' etc.
All of which are good points. The reason that they did get those votes was that they were not pro LD votes, they were protest votes. The people (anti war leftie pacifist peacniks) who deserted labour had no affinity with LDs at all. In Scotland now they have flocked to the SNP once the indy referendum blocked their attempt to break up a centrist UK. So the LDs were always in a massively false position, as long as they did nothing and allowed the UK to go to hell in a basket then the lefties were happy. As soon as they dared to do something and heavens above with a tory govt then the loopy fruit loop lefries screamed blue murder.
The Lib Dems created trouble for the Conservatives on precisely one subject after the coalition agreement came into effect: boundary changes.
Not so. They made an absolute dog's breakfast of the NHS reforms by insisting on massive complications to the changes which they'd initially signed up to. Clegg was a co-signatory of the original White Paper:
Has anyone seen the new government's proposals, if any, for a Health Bill? I don't recall anything in the Queen's Speech.
Would now seem a good time to revert to the original Lansley proposals while there is some goodwill within the government - or would this now just be another pointless re-org and it's best to stick with the status quo arrangement for another few years??
Is the real challenge for the Lib Dems, how they stand up against the Greens? The Greens share many of the same types of voters as the Lib Dems and beat the LDs in the EC elections a year ago. At this GE the Greens gained half the LD vote share, although even that number was slightly suppressed as the Greens fielded 10% fewer candidates.
LibDems being angry at Nick for rowing back on tuition fees (or other manifesto policies) are as idiotic as Cons backbenchers being angry at Cam for the compromises he made.
The junior and senior members of a c-o-a-l-i-t-i-o-n government respectively.
I mean it takes a special kind of dim to act that way.
No, because tuition fees -- which was the main plank of the LibDem campaign -- was dropped in the coalition talks, when Clegg could have made it a pre-condition. (Come to think of it, did not one of the "inside stories" at the time suggest the Conservative negotiators were surprised to find they knew more than the LibDems what was in the yellow manifesto?)
In a current parallel, it has been suggested that some Conservative proposals were designed to be negotiated away, and now they are stuck with them.
And if Clegg's pre-condition had been rejected?
Perhaps it was.
What was his move then? Go to Lab when Cons rightly would have said: "but you said you would go with the largest party", to say nothing of the backlash "held to ransome" media narrative it would have engendered. Or to flounce out back to the cold outside, have C&S, likely an election in Sep (this was of course pre-FTPA) at which the public would have been given an inkling of weak government, and would have reverted to Lab or Cons?
I don't think he did badly, tuition fees and all.
He did dreadfully.
This notion that the Lib Dems had no choice but to sign up with the Cons on the appalling terms that they did is entirely fanciful.
OK , prove it. Bear in mind the economic situation and tell us what government you would have put together in 2010.
At the very least the LDs should have demanded one of Chancellor of the Exchequer, Home Secretary or Health Secretary. I'm willing to accept that Foreign Secretary was not viable as a position for the LDs. If the Conservatives were not willing to give up one of those then they weren't willing to be in a coalition, they were only wanting human shields and lobby fodder.
The economic situation in 2010 was OK. It wasn't great, it wasn't good, it was fine. The notion that the UK was teetering on some kind of apocalyptic precipice is, once again, fanciful and used as justification for the LDs destroying themselves
They had the Deputy PM - a position that filled numerous cabinet committee chairmanships. They were 2 sides of a quad that had to agree policy. You produce even more absurd excuses.
"On Wednesday the European commission created a new “taskforce” dedicated to the British question. And it put Britain’s most senior and most experienced eurocrat, Jonathan Faull, in charge of it. A fervent if critical pro-European, Faull, 60, has spent his entire career, 37 years, in Brussels. A lawyer, a liberal, not a Tory, a francophile, he is a consummate Brussels insider."
Hammond's demand for the UK to have a veto over financial sector decisions also seems sensible. The UK has the majority of the continent's financial services (outside of retail banking), so it should be something reasonable the EU can accept.
The LibDems were historically screwed long before the tuition fees debacle, they just didn't know it. They have been since forever a pushme/pullyou party - communist here, Orange Book there, beards and sandals everywhere. This worked fine as a ragbag of local oppositions. But at the national scale you must present yourself as one thing or the other - and so they were a bomb waiting to explode. Their USP has always been that they can make coalition government a good experience! The fact of a hung parliament was bound to ignite a fuse that led to their destruction as they had been living a deep lie from the outset (and still do). One half of the party was inevitably going to melt - and given the electoral maths in May 2010 the only choice was coalition with Dave and the lefty half going into meltdown.
Much like Labour, the LibDems now need to decide who they are and what they believe in. And to present this consistently everywhere. Good luck with that. It'll be like herding cats. They have become an irrelevance. If they simply disappear nobody will really notice.
Yes.
All they had to do was be liberal. and democratic. We may notice that noone is defending liberalism/liberty after all of our rights and civil liberties (for want of a better phrase) have been lost
IMO it was the Cons that rushed to coalition. Before you knew it when everyone was discussing C&S there was Cam's speech identifying and offering movement on each LibDem policy area - the four "fairs". It was well-researched and crafted and left the LDs nowhere to go but into coalition. Of course tuition fees were an issue (mentioned after class size reform in the manifesto, my googling has just reminded me) but no more than any other policy that would have to be on the table in a coalition and yes, despite the pledge. This is politics. And we were in unchartered territory.
So in retrospect I think the Cons jumped too quickly and yes, the LDs played it badly perhaps even on tuition fees, but they got into govt, which presumably is the aim of every political party and, perhaps analagously to the Cons, they didn't realise how many cards they held - but then they after all got their AV referendum and many other things besides.
Coming back to topic, although high profile, I don't think that solitary u-turn was justification for the shellacking they and Nick got (although as a Cons I am delighted).
You're criticising the Tory strategy in 2010? Which was, remember, the election whichever whoever won "would be out of power for a generation" - instead the Tories now have a majority!
Also worth noting how important the politics of the first 3-6 months of a government (or even the first week, in the case of the coalition) are. The same sort of thing is going on now but most people are switched off.
The Cons were still nasty in 2010 and everyone had forgotten the economic competence bit. Just as the debate in 2015 focused on this nastiness, so did it then, but without responsibility for one of the fastest growing economies in the world to show in support. Hell, people still think the Cons are nasty, but will tolerate this for economic competence.
In 2010 Cam thought it might all disappear. As has been said, regardless of vote shares and increases, this is a man who could not win an election outright against Gordon Brown, a man who, even his fans concede, made huge and lasting mistakes as chancellor and PM.
Under those circumstances Cam leapt at the chance of govt, gave away too much (why not tough it out with C&S?), and hoped everything else would fall into place. He was nearly derailed (by his backbenchers, of course, not the LDs, as they were less tolerant of his failure plus they are/were t0ssers, many of them) but he achieved the aim.
And he has now been proved right. So am I criticising the Tory strategy in 2010? No. I am saying that both the Cons and the LDs were in a peculiar position in 2010 and both misplayed it a bit. For the Cons this was recoverable, for the LDs, it seems much less so.
It's worth remembering that the Lib Dems themselves felt that they had a very good deal in 2010. As Paddy Ashdown said, "they've given us our whole bloody manifesto!". The whole party voted it through, including all parts of the federal executive. They were totally up for it and Labour were never serious.
It's what followed after that mattered. Clegg gambled on getting major constitutional reform to make his mark, which he failed to do, and then everything became a bit 'yeah but no but yeah but no but yeah' and this lead to the Lib Dems losing all respect. They were just terrible at the politics.
The watershed moment for me was Osborne and Alexander's presentation of a *coalition* budget in March this year, that both Clegg and Alexander had influenced and signed up to.
The very next day, Alexander was out there with his own yellow box presenting their own budget. It was totally ridiculous and made them a laughing stock. They wanted the benefits (and votes) of being both in government and opposition, taking credit for what was popular and disowning what was not.
In the end, no one was prepared to vote for such directionless and churlish petulance. And rightly so.
Would now seem a good time to revert to the original Lansley proposals while there is some goodwill within the government - or would this now just be another pointless re-org and it's best to stick with the status quo arrangement for another few years??
The latter.
Having said that, Jeremy Hunt (who's a much, much better politician and manager than Lansley) is slowly moving things in the right direction.
Mr. Royale, I felt sorry for Alexander over that. It seemed to be a cruel and unusual punishment, an act with all the insight and sound judgement of Ed Miliband's tombstone.
It's worth remembering that the Lib Dems themselves felt that they had a very good deal in 2010. As Paddy Ashdown said, "they've given us our whole bloody manifesto!". The whole party voted it through, including all parts of the federal executive. They were totally up for it and Labour were never serious.
It's what followed after that mattered. Clegg gambled on getting major constitutional reform to make his mark, which he failed to do, and then everything became a bit 'yeah but no but yeah but no but yeah' and this lead to the Lib Dems losing all respect. They were just terrible at the politics.
The watershed moment for me was Osborne and Alexander's presentation of a *coalition* budget in March this year, that both Clegg and Alexander had influenced and signed up to.
The very next day, Alexander was out there with his own yellow box presenting their own budget. It was totally ridiculous and made them a laughing stock. They wanted the benefits (and votes) of being both in government and opposition, taking credit for what was popular and disowning what was not.
In the end, no one was prepared to vote for such directionless and churlish petulance. And rightly so.
I wonder whatever happened to the yellow box. That's a very collectable piece of political memorabilia.
The economic situation in 2010 was OK. It wasn't great, it wasn't good, it was fine. The notion that the UK was teetering on some kind of apocalyptic precipice is, once again, fanciful and used as justification for the LDs destroying themselves
If you had written that the economic situation was utterly mindbogglingly freaking disastrous and there was a risk of total catastrophe, I would have harangued you for your mild overuse of hyperbole.
The odd thing is that as a political position, this viewpoint that "everything was pretty much fine by 2010" as if the effects of the credit crunch had basically all been sorted out, seems to be quite a common one. It's definitely a trope in the Guardian and Staggers and among left wing people I talk to.
Funnily enough it doesn't match Labour's position at the time of the election, where they were arguing we needed the tried and tested Brown and Darling combo to steer us through the dark and difficult times ahead. Nor are Balls and Miliband a well known hard-right arch-Thatcherite Tory-acolyte double act, but their clear position at the 2015 GE was that sorting out the lingering after-effects of 2007/8 on the UK fiscal position would require considerable sacrifice until late in this next parliament, and both acknowledged we still faced risks from the ongoing upheavals in Europe (if you want to see what the "precipice" looks like, circumspice).
Yet in the grass roots the idea that the economic all clear had sounded by 2010 strangely persists.
They had the Deputy PM - a position that filled numerous cabinet committee chairmanships. They were 2 sides of a quad that had to agree policy. You produce even more absurd excuses.
Deupty PM is a nothing, make-weight, position.
When Clegg accepted it I knew the LDs were screwed.
It's worth remembering that the Lib Dems themselves felt that they had a very good deal in 2010. As Paddy Ashdown said, "they've given us our whole bloody manifesto!". The whole party voted it through, including all parts of the federal executive. They were totally up for it and Labour were never serious.
It's what followed after that mattered. Clegg gambled on getting major constitutional reform to make his mark, which he failed to do, and then everything became a bit 'yeah but no but yeah but no but yeah' and this lead to the Lib Dems losing all respect. They were just terrible at the politics.
The watershed moment for me was Osborne and Alexander's presentation of a *coalition* budget in March this year, that both Clegg and Alexander had influenced and signed up to.
The very next day, Alexander was out there with his own yellow box presenting their own budget. It was totally ridiculous and made them a laughing stock. They wanted the benefits (and votes) of being both in government and opposition, taking credit for what was popular and disowning what was not.
In the end, no one was prepared to vote for such directionless and churlish petulance. And rightly so.
I think we all agreed that they needed to, and indeed in govt had a great opportunity to (re)define themselves and what they stood for (analagously to UKIP now although with Nige at the helm this is unlikely to happen).
They failed to do this, as you say. And to be an anti-govt protest party while in, um, govt is sort of, you know, well...dumb.
The LibDems were historically screwed long before the tuition fees debacle, they just didn't know it. They have been since forever a pushme/pullyou party - communist here, Orange Book there, beards and sandals everywhere. This worked fine as a ragbag of local oppositions. But at the national scale you must present yourself as one thing or the other - and so they were a bomb waiting to explode. Their USP has always been that they can make coalition government a good experience! The fact of a hung parliament was bound to ignite a fuse that led to their destruction as they had been living a deep lie from the outset (and still do). One half of the party was inevitably going to melt - and given the electoral maths in May 2010 the only choice was coalition with Dave and the lefty half going into meltdown.
Much like Labour, the LibDems now need to decide who they are and what they believe in. And to present this consistently everywhere. Good luck with that. It'll be like herding cats. They have become an irrelevance. If they simply disappear nobody will really notice.
Yes.
All they had to do was be liberal. and democratic. We may notice that noone is defending liberalism/liberty after all of our rights and civil liberties (for want of a better phrase) have been lost
you omitted baby eating.
surely a tory policy? Or do you mean lib dems should have been defending such on libertariam grounds?
On the excellent Patrick Wintour & Nicholas Watt article, there's one key little snippet that has betting significance, regarding the abortive coup against Clegg:
Pugh expected that other voices would follow. “To my astonishment,” he recalled, “some of the very people who had said to me, ‘Yes, we have got to do something,’ then said diametrically the opposite.”
'Tis ever so. Coups are much harder and more uncertain than everyone expects.
That's why Gordon Brown led Labour into the 2010 GE, despite everyone knowing he was a disaster. It's why Ed Miliband led Labour into the 2015 GE, despite everyone knowing he was a disaster. And it's why whoever becomes Labour leader in a few weeks' time will lead Labour into the 2020 GE, no matter how poor a leader he or she turns out to be.
FWIW not a single person I spoke to during the whole election period mentioned the SNP as a motivation for their vote. Labour and the LDs are kidding themselves if they believe this was the only reason they lost!
And anyway the problem ain't going away next time, surely the SNP will hold enough seats to constitute a major bloc with potential to form a coalition with Labour. So if some did vote in such a way to prevent this in 2015, it will remain a reason in 2020. Just that I don't think it was as big a deal as people say.
Nicola Sturgeon has dramatically intervened in the battle against online trolls by pledging to discipline those SNP members responsible for spreading poisonous abuse.
The First Minister vowed to help clean up Scottish politics after this newspaper unmasked some of the country’s most vile cybernats. Writing exclusively for the Scottish Daily Mail, the SNP leader said the time had come to ‘send a clear message that politics in Scotland will not be sullied by this behaviour’.
She also called on politicians who ‘follow’ online abusers to ‘stop feeding the trolls’. A Mail investigation has found that 72 Nationalist MPs and MSPs, including ministers and senior party figures, have online links with cybernats responsible for some of the worst abuse in public life.
An interesting and cynical attempt to divert from all the other skeletons rattling their bones in the cupboard.
Surgeon's attempted line is 'it is a problem for all political parties, we are all to blame and we must all deal with it together'.
No. The nationalist abuse campaign was largely organised by in post senior SNP officials, with whom you repeatably refused to deal - eg Neil Hay, and SNP linked people to whom you denied any links.
It is an SNP problem overlaid on an SNP culture of abuse over scores of years, and needs to be dealt with as such.
I wonder whether the Mail has used up its ammunition yet?
Would now seem a good time to revert to the original Lansley proposals while there is some goodwill within the government - or would this now just be another pointless re-org and it's best to stick with the status quo arrangement for another few years??
The latter.
Having said that, Jeremy Hunt (who's a much, much better politician and manager than Lansley) is slowly moving things in the right direction.
LibDems being angry at Nick for rowing back on tuition fees (or other manifesto policies) are as idiotic as Cons backbenchers being angry at Cam for the compromises he made.
The junior and senior members of a c-o-a-l-i-t-i-o-n government respectively.
I mean it takes a special kind of dim to act that way.
No, because tuition fees -- which was the main plank of the LibDem campaign -- was dropped in the coalition talks, when Clegg could have made it a pre-condition. (Come to think of it, did not one of the "inside stories" at the time suggest the Conservative negotiators were surprised to find they knew more than the LibDems what was in the yellow manifesto?)
In a current parallel, it has been suggested that some Conservative proposals were designed to be negotiated away, and now they are stuck with them.
And if Clegg's pre-condition had been rejected?
Perhaps it was.
What was his move then? Go to Lab when Cons rightly would have said: "but you said you would go with the largest party", to say nothing of the backlash "held to ransome" media narrative it would have engendered. Or to flounce out back to the cold outside, have C&S, likely an election in Sep (this was of course pre-FTPA) at which the public would have been given an inkling of weak government, and would have reverted to Lab or Cons?
I don't think he did badly, tuition fees and all.
He did dreadfully.
This notion that the Lib Dems had no choice but to sign up with the Cons on the appalling terms that they did is entirely fanciful.
OK , prove it. Bear in mind the economic situation and tell us what government you would have put together in 2010.
Correct. Thereafter the LDs ran away from govt and did their best to constantly rubbish the very govt they were a part of. Stupid is as stupid does.
I think that's a blinkered view. Did you not notice the Tories whinging about coalition policies that they disagreed with, it wasn't just the LibDems. It's inevitable that each part of the coalition would press for their policies and press against ones they disagreed with. In what way did the LibDems 'run away from government'. An unbiased observer would say that they stuck with the coalition for the full five years and that it wasn't a bad government compared to the previous Brown one. It may even be seen as good compared to the current Tory one (which has a much more benign economic situation), it's too early to tell at the moment.
If the LDs want to blame the polls as the excerpt above suggests then they really are a busted flush. The fact that it comes from the totally out of touch Ashdown is not surprising. Mr TSE - I believe (so I am told) that Ms Steele was a willing participant and enjoyed the experience (conveniently administered by a multi billionaire so why not?) - I think therefore that your analogy falls down. Some people might be able to suggest the correct colourful expression for what the electorate did so royally to the LDs, I couldn't possibly comment.
Would now seem a good time to revert to the original Lansley proposals while there is some goodwill within the government - or would this now just be another pointless re-org and it's best to stick with the status quo arrangement for another few years??
The latter.
Having said that, Jeremy Hunt (who's a much, much better politician and manager than Lansley) is slowly moving things in the right direction.
Thanks for that. I've been lucky enough not to have had dealings with the NHS for a long time, agree that Hunt seems more of a consensus-builder in the role.
It's worth remembering that the Lib Dems themselves felt that they had a very good deal in 2010. As Paddy Ashdown said, "they've given us our whole bloody manifesto!". The whole party voted it through, including all parts of the federal executive. They were totally up for it and Labour were never serious.
It's what followed after that mattered. Clegg gambled on getting major constitutional reform to make his mark, which he failed to do, and then everything became a bit 'yeah but no but yeah but no but yeah' and this lead to the Lib Dems losing all respect. They were just terrible at the politics.
The watershed moment for me was Osborne and Alexander's presentation of a *coalition* budget in March this year, that both Clegg and Alexander had influenced and signed up to.
The very next day, Alexander was out there with his own yellow box presenting their own budget. It was totally ridiculous and made them a laughing stock. They wanted the benefits (and votes) of being both in government and opposition, taking credit for what was popular and disowning what was not.
In the end, no one was prepared to vote for such directionless and churlish petulance. And rightly so.
I wonder whatever happened to the yellow box. That's a very collectable piece of political memorabilia.
That's a very good question. It is a unique and moving epitaph to their time as serious players in British politics.
It's worth remembering that the Lib Dems themselves felt that they had a very good deal in 2010. As Paddy Ashdown said, "they've given us our whole bloody manifesto!". The whole party voted it through, including all parts of the federal executive. They were totally up for it and Labour were never serious.
It's what followed after that mattered. Clegg gambled on getting major constitutional reform to make his mark, which he failed to do, and then everything became a bit 'yeah but no but yeah but no but yeah' and this lead to the Lib Dems losing all respect. They were just terrible at the politics.
The watershed moment for me was Osborne and Alexander's presentation of a *coalition* budget in March this year, that both Clegg and Alexander had influenced and signed up to.
The very next day, Alexander was out there with his own yellow box presenting their own budget. It was totally ridiculous and made them a laughing stock. They wanted the benefits (and votes) of being both in government and opposition, taking credit for what was popular and disowning what was not.
In the end, no one was prepared to vote for such directionless and churlish petulance. And rightly so.
I wonder whatever happened to the yellow box. That's a very collectable piece of political memorabilia.
That's a very good question. It is a unique and moving epitaph to their time as serious players in British politics.
There will never be anything like it ever again.
It's probably buried in the foundations of a motorway flyover, underneath the crushed remains of the Ed Stone.
I think that's a blinkered view. Did you not notice the Tories whinging about coalition policies that they disagreed with, it wasn't just the LibDems. It's inevitable that each part of the coalition would press for their policies and press against ones they disagreed with.
That completely misses the point. The Tories never said they wanted coalition government, whereas the LibDems and their predecessors had been telling us for a half a century that that was exactly what they wanted, and claiming that the electoral system was unfair because it didn't give us coalition governments. The Cleggasm was precisely all about 'parties working together' and all that guff.
So it was perfectly reasonable for the Tories to moan about coalition - which they'd warned against - but the LibDems should have been celebrating their massive success and trying to convince us that the New Politics was, as they had argued, better than the sum of the parts. Instead they went around looking as though someone had shot their pet hamster. Voters clearly decided, out of kindness, to make sure that the LibDems never had to suffer the unhappiness of coalition government again.
FWIW not a single person I spoke to during the whole election period mentioned the SNP as a motivation for their vote. Labour and the LDs are kidding themselves if they believe this was the only reason they lost!
And anyway the problem ain't going away next time, surely the SNP will hold enough seats to constitute a major bloc with potential to form a coalition with Labour. So if some did vote in such a way to prevent this in 2015, it will remain a reason in 2020. Just that I don't think it was as big a deal as people say.
Anecdotage is likely unreliable here, since it only needed to turn a few percent of votes to be a game changer, so personal "anecdotal sample sizes" are likely too small. For what little it is worth, I did hear people bring it up in political conversation unprompted - the big newspaper, BBC and ITV coverage of the SNP apparently playing a part - but the folk I heard it from were nailed-on Tories anyway (who may have been tempted by the siren calls of Blair but certainly not by Miliband). I wondered if it might have raised certainty to vote and discouraged UKIP protest votes (which some of them might have considered) but for the national effect I'll defer to the polling evidence. Certainly private polling (and focus groups if I recall correctly) indicated to both Tories and Labour that this could be an election-defining issue, so there must be strong empirical evidence of an effect.
They had the Deputy PM - a position that filled numerous cabinet committee chairmanships. They were 2 sides of a quad that had to agree policy. You produce even more absurd excuses.
Deupty PM is a nothing, make-weight, position.
When Clegg accepted it I knew the LDs were screwed.
Once again you show how out of touch you are. From the Mail in 2010: ''Nick Clegg has been handed sweeping powers in the coalition Government which will make him a more powerful figure than Lord Mandelson was under Labour. An unprecedented written agreement between the Tories and the Liberal Democrats, published last night, revealed that the Deputy Prime Minister has won formal influence over policies, Government reshuffles, public appointments and Budgets. Crucially, Mr Clegg is to chair an all-powerful Cabinet committee on domestic affairs, putting him in overall charge of formulating reforms of health, education and policing.'' ''And all of George Osborne's Budget decisions as Chancellor will 'require consultation' with his Lib Dem Treasury Chief Secretary David Laws, the coalition agreement states. Extraordinarily, the document bars Mr Osborne from consulting the Prime Minister over a Budget measure without also speaking to Mr Clegg. The scale of influence the Deputy Prime Minister will enjoy across Whitehall will further alarm Right-wing Tory MPs, who fear Mr Cameron has given too much ground to the Lib Dems to persuade them to join the Government. But Downing Street sources said it demonstrated that Mr Cameron was sincere when he promised a 'big, open and comprehensive' power-sharing offer.''
Yet despite all this they continually undermined theor own government. A totally bonkers stance if you want to be re-elected.
It's worth remembering that the Lib Dems themselves felt that they had a very good deal in 2010. As Paddy Ashdown said, "they've given us our whole bloody manifesto!". The whole party voted it through, including all parts of the federal executive. They were totally up for it and Labour were never serious.
It's what followed after that mattered. Clegg gambled on getting major constitutional reform to make his mark, which he failed to do, and then everything became a bit 'yeah but no but yeah but no but yeah' and this lead to the Lib Dems losing all respect. They were just terrible at the politics.
The watershed moment for me was Osborne and Alexander's presentation of a *coalition* budget in March this year, that both Clegg and Alexander had influenced and signed up to.
The very next day, Alexander was out there with his own yellow box presenting their own budget. It was totally ridiculous and made them a laughing stock. They wanted the benefits (and votes) of being both in government and opposition, taking credit for what was popular and disowning what was not.
In the end, no one was prepared to vote for such directionless and churlish petulance. And rightly so.
I wonder whatever happened to the yellow box. That's a very collectable piece of political memorabilia.
That's a very good question. It is a unique and moving epitaph to their time as serious players in British politics.
There will never be anything like it ever again.
It's probably buried in the foundations of a motorway flyover, underneath the crushed remains of the Ed Stone.
Odd to think as recently as 2007 there was serious debate as to whether the Conservatives would be permanently finished if they lost the snap election Brown might have called.
Who then would have predicted Labour with one seat in Scotland?
Saw Jim Murphy interviewed by Matt Forde last night (also saw Tom Watson leaving the HofC as I walked the wrong way to the theatre, down Whitehall instead of The Mall!)
Interesting snippets
He loathes Alex Salmond He prefers Nicola Sturgeon A female cabinet Minster lost her job under Blair because he used bits of paper w MPs names on to sort out who was in or out and hers fell in the floor without him noticing He is adamant the SNP are not a left wing party but shape shifters who will say anything to get independence He admitted SLAB could offer nothing to better the SNPs emotional pitch He was elected as an MP in 1997 despite not wanting to be one and not campaigning and says it's fitting that his replacement didn't want to be an MP either. Both swept in because of their parties popularity
He also phoned David Miliband live on stage on FaceTime! But he didn't answer...
His move then would have been to say: "This was my signature policy that I and most of my MPs signed personal pledges on. I am going to keep my word and the Conservatives are living in cloud cuckoo land if they think otherwise. They didn't win an election either, remember."
And storm triumphantly into the wilderness.
Not what being a political party who seeks to make the world a better place is all about. Plus (I have no idea) did the overwhelming approval of the coalition by LD members come after the coalition talks, wherein the tuition fee policy was amended?
Where they were given the right to abstain! Yet, brilliantly, they ended up with the minister responsible, and in the end nearly all voted for the policy he designed (which is actually not too bad a policy, in my view).
The tuition fee policy was, in Cable's words, "financially illiterate".
It was sold as helping to reduce the deficit. In practice, the government totally funded the £9,000 pa per student and borrowed to do so. In a piece of financial jiggery-pokery, the government expenditure was then balanced against the accompanying student debts so that the deficit was unchanged in the national accounts. It increased government borrowing and didn't reduce the deficit. All it did was kick the cost 30 years down the road when many students will not repay their student loans.
When Cable used the words "financially illiterate" he was referring to the Labour policy of reducing the student fees to £6,000 in a fully funded way. What a hypocrite! That was when I resolved not to help his campaign in Twickenham in any way, and why I was delighted when he lost his seat.
His move then would have been to say: "This was my signature policy that I and most of my MPs signed personal pledges on. I am going to keep my word and the Conservatives are living in cloud cuckoo land if they think otherwise. They didn't win an election either, remember."
And storm triumphantly into the wilderness.
Not what being a political party who seeks to make the world a better place is all about. Plus (I have no idea) did the overwhelming approval of the coalition by LD members come after the coalition talks, wherein the tuition fee policy was amended?
Where they were given the right to abstain! Yet, brilliantly, they ended up with the minister responsible, and in the end nearly all voted for the policy he designed (which is actually not too bad a policy, in my view).
The tuition fee policy was, in Cable's words, "financially illiterate".
.
The tuition fee policy was, in Cable's words, "financially illiterate".
It was sold as helping to reduce the deficit. In practice, the government totally funded the £9,000 pa per student and borrowed to do so. In a piece of financial jiggery-pokery, the government expenditure was then balanced against the accompanying student debts so that the deficit was unchanged in the national accounts. It increased government borrowing and didn't reduce the deficit. All it did was kick the cost 30 years down the road when many students will not repay their student loans.
When Cable used the words "financially illiterate" he was referring to the Labour policy of reducing the student fees to £6,000 in a fully funded way. What a hypocrite! That was when I resolved not to help his campaign in Twickenham in any way, and why I was delighted when he lost his seat.
The tuition fee policy was, in Cable's words, "financially illiterate".
It was sold as helping to reduce the deficit. In practice, the government totally funded the £9,000 pa per student and borrowed to do so. In a piece of financial jiggery-pokery, the government expenditure was then balanced against the accompanying student debts so that the deficit was unchanged in the national accounts. It increased government borrowing and didn't reduce the deficit. All it did was kick the cost 30 years down the road when many students will not repay their student loans.
When Cable used the words "financially illiterate" he was referring to the Labour policy of reducing the student fees to £6,000 in a fully funded way. What a hypocrite! That was when I resolved not to help his campaign in Twickenham in any way, and why I was delighted when he lost his seat.
Note that 6 of the ten local authorities with the largets population rises are in London.
Is this sustainable? Could the figure actually be higher? Or should it be lower? Or is it actually about right for the UK. Is there any independent research on what a "sustainable" population level would be?
The tuition fee policy was, in Cable's words, "financially illiterate".
It was sold as helping to reduce the deficit. In practice, the government totally funded the £9,000 pa per student and borrowed to do so. In a piece of financial jiggery-pokery, the government expenditure was then balanced against the accompanying student debts so that the deficit was unchanged in the national accounts. It increased government borrowing and didn't reduce the deficit. All it did was kick the cost 30 years down the road when many students will not repay their student loans.
When Cable used the words "financially illiterate" he was referring to the Labour policy of reducing the student fees to £6,000 in a fully funded way. What a hypocrite! That was when I resolved not to help his campaign in Twickenham in any way, and why I was delighted when he lost his seat.
Yes, the policy as was had little to do with the deficit - that was necessary salesmanship. Instead it acted as a de facto graduate tax - not a bad policy.
When Clegg accepted it I knew the LDs were screwed.
Once again you show how out of touch you are. From the Mail in 2010: ''Nick Clegg has been handed sweeping powers in the coalition Government which will make him a more powerful figure than Lord Mandelson was under Labour. An unprecedented written agreement between the Tories and the Liberal Democrats, published last night, revealed that the Deputy Prime Minister has won formal influence over policies, Government reshuffles, public appointments and Budgets. Crucially, Mr Clegg is to chair an all-powerful Cabinet committee on domestic affairs, putting him in overall charge of formulating reforms of health, education and policing.'' ''And all of George Osborne's Budget decisions as Chancellor will 'require consultation' with his Lib Dem Treasury Chief Secretary David Laws, the coalition agreement states. Extraordinarily, the document bars Mr Osborne from consulting the Prime Minister over a Budget measure without also speaking to Mr Clegg. The scale of influence the Deputy Prime Minister will enjoy across Whitehall will further alarm Right-wing Tory MPs, who fear Mr Cameron has given too much ground to the Lib Dems to persuade them to join the Government. But Downing Street sources said it demonstrated that Mr Cameron was sincere when he promised a 'big, open and comprehensive' power-sharing offer.''
Yet despite all this they continually undermined theor own government. A totally bonkers stance if you want to be re-elected.
I disagree that the LDs continually undermined their own government, though the level of unhappy chatter was surprising for a party that advocated coalition government so strongly. I think much of the sniping was just a failed attempt at differentiation, something they never mastered. At its heart, compared to coalitions around the world, this one worked relatively smoothly with few fractious log jams.
But I agree strongly re the role of Deputy PM. It is an ad hoc position. You can have a modern government with no DPM whatsoever, or one that is basically a figurehead or totem, or one with fingers in a lot of small-fry pies, or one with a more central role and influence over bigger decisions. It isn't possible to say Deputy PM is intrinsically a weak or strong position, it depends on the structure around it.
NB it is also possible to be home sec for five years, be hostage to fortune (prison escapes/riots, miscarriages of justice, bureaucrat shambles or scandal) but not actually get anything much done. It is one of the most important offices but it's not necessarily where you want to be if you want to exert widespread influence over the direction of policy more broadly than the gambit of that department.
Saw Jim Murphy interviewed by Matt Forde last night (also saw Tom Watson leaving the HofC as I walked the wrong way to the theatre, down Whitehall instead of The Mall!)
Interesting snippets
He loathes Alex Salmond
As does almost the entirety of Scottish Labour. That is why Labour's entire election strategy for the last decade has been to attack and rubbish Alex Salmond personally rather than the SNP.
They have spent the last decade in denial about Salmond's popularity and had been convinced that if only they could make the public at large loathe Salmond as much as they loathe him they would win. And then yet another Leader Opinions poll wold come out with Slamond with a big net positive and they would melt down into apoplexy. Again.
They've never been able to attack SNP on its record of governance because the have been too consumed by attacking the man.
Once again you show how out of touch you are. From the Mail in 2010: ''Nick Clegg has been handed sweeping powers in the coalition Government which will make him a more powerful figure than Lord Mandelson was under Labour. An unprecedented written agreement between the Tories and the Liberal Democrats, published last night, revealed that the Deputy Prime Minister has won formal influence over policies, Government reshuffles, public appointments and Budgets. Crucially, Mr Clegg is to chair an all-powerful Cabinet committee on domestic affairs, putting him in overall charge of formulating reforms of health, education and policing.'' ''And all of George Osborne's Budget decisions as Chancellor will 'require consultation' with his Lib Dem Treasury Chief Secretary David Laws, the coalition agreement states. Extraordinarily, the document bars Mr Osborne from consulting the Prime Minister over a Budget measure without also speaking to Mr Clegg. The scale of influence the Deputy Prime Minister will enjoy across Whitehall will further alarm Right-wing Tory MPs, who fear Mr Cameron has given too much ground to the Lib Dems to persuade them to join the Government. But Downing Street sources said it demonstrated that Mr Cameron was sincere when he promised a 'big, open and comprehensive' power-sharing offer.''
Yet despite all this they continually undermined theor own government. A totally bonkers stance if you want to be re-elected.
I disagree that the LDs continually undermined their own government, though the level of unhappy chatter was surprising for a party that advocated coalition government so strongly. I think much of the sniping was just a failed attempt at differentiation, something they never mastered. At its heart, compared to coalitions around the world, this one worked relatively smoothly with few fractious log jams.
But I agree strongly re the role of Deputy PM. It is an ad hoc position. You can have a modern government with no DPM whatsoever, or one that is basically a figurehead or totem, or one with fingers in a lot of small-fry pies, or one with a more central role and influence over bigger decisions. It isn't possible to say Deputy PM is intrinsically a weak or strong position, it depends on the structure around it.
NB it is also possible to be home sec for five years, be hostage to fortune (prison escapes/riots, miscarriages of justice, bureaucrat shambles or scandal) but not actually get anything much done. It is one of the most important offices but it's not necessarily where you want to be if you want to exert widespread influence over the direction of policy more broadly than the gambit of that department.
FWIW not a single person I spoke to during the whole election period mentioned the SNP as a motivation for their vote. Labour and the LDs are kidding themselves if they believe this was the only reason they lost!
And anyway the problem ain't going away next time, surely the SNP will hold enough seats to constitute a major bloc with potential to form a coalition with Labour. So if some did vote in such a way to prevent this in 2015, it will remain a reason in 2020. Just that I don't think it was as big a deal as people say.
The degree to which the LDs and more importantly, Labour are avoiding any serious attempt to analyse the reasons they lost so heavily last month continues to be very heartening for Conservatives. They simply cannot accept the reality that they are disliked way more than the 'nasty Tories' when push comes to shove.
I disagree that the LDs continually undermined their own government, though the level of unhappy chatter was surprising for a party that advocated coalition government so strongly. I think much of the sniping was just a failed attempt at differentiation, something they never mastered. At its heart, compared to coalitions around the world, this one worked relatively smoothly with few fractious log jams.
But I agree strongly re the role of Deputy PM. It is an ad hoc position. You can have a modern government with no DPM whatsoever, or one that is basically a figurehead or totem, or one with fingers in a lot of small-fry pies, or one with a more central role and influence over bigger decisions. It isn't possible to say Deputy PM is intrinsically a weak or strong position, it depends on the structure around it.
NB it is also possible to be home sec for five years, be hostage to fortune (prison escapes/riots, miscarriages of justice, bureaucrat shambles or scandal) but not actually get anything much done. It is one of the most important offices but it's not necessarily where you want to be if you want to exert widespread influence over the direction of policy more broadly than the gambit of that department.
Saw Jim Murphy interviewed by Matt Forde last night (also saw Tom Watson leaving the HofC as I walked the wrong way to the theatre, down Whitehall instead of The Mall!)
Interesting snippets
He loathes Alex Salmond
As does almost the entirety of Scottish Labour. That is why Labour's entire election strategy for the last decade has been to attack and rubbish Alex Salmond personally rather than the SNP.
They have spent the last decade in denial about Salmond's popularity and had been convinced that if only they could make the public at large loathe Salmond as much as they loathe him they would win. And then yet another Leader Opinions poll wold come out with Slamond with a big net positive and they would melt down into apoplexy. Again.
They've never been able to attack SNP on its record of governance because the have been too consumed by attacking the man.
Actually he did attack the SNP's record of governance, saying that education standards for the poorest kids had gone backwards, but said making points like this was beaten everytime by the SNP's nationalist offer
Don't shoot the messenger here btw, I couldn't care less
Once again you show how out of touch you are. From the Mail in 2010: ''Nick Clegg has been handed sweeping powers in the coalition Government which will make him a more powerful figure than Lord Mandelson was under Labour. An unprecedented written agreement between the Tories and the Liberal Democrats, published last night, revealed that the Deputy Prime Minister has won formal influence over policies, Government reshuffles, public appointments and Budgets. Crucially, Mr Clegg is to chair an all-powerful Cabinet committee on domestic affairs, putting him in overall charge of formulating reforms of health, education and policing.'' ''And all of George Osborne's Budget decisions as Chancellor will 'require consultation' with his Lib Dem Treasury Chief Secretary David Laws, the coalition agreement states. Extraordinarily, the document bars Mr Osborne from consulting the Prime Minister over a Budget measure without also speaking to Mr Clegg. The scale of influence the Deputy Prime Minister will enjoy across Whitehall will further alarm Right-wing Tory MPs, who fear Mr Cameron has given too much ground to the Lib Dems to persuade them to join the Government. But Downing Street sources said it demonstrated that Mr Cameron was sincere when he promised a 'big, open and comprehensive' power-sharing offer.''
Yet despite all this they continually undermined theor own government. A totally bonkers stance if you want to be re-elected.
[...]
NB it is also possible to be home sec for five years, be hostage to fortune (prison escapes/riots, miscarriages of justice, bureaucrat shambles or scandal) but not actually get anything much done. It is one of the most important offices but it's not necessarily where you want to be if you want to exert widespread influence over the direction of policy more broadly than the gambit of that department.
I think within a year she becomes the longest serving since the Victorians.
Nicola Sturgeon has dramatically intervened in the battle against online trolls by pledging to discipline those SNP members responsible for spreading poisonous abuse.
The First Minister vowed to help clean up Scottish politics after this newspaper unmasked some of the country’s most vile cybernats. Writing exclusively for the Scottish Daily Mail, the SNP leader said the time had come to ‘send a clear message that politics in Scotland will not be sullied by this behaviour’.
She also called on politicians who ‘follow’ online abusers to ‘stop feeding the trolls’. A Mail investigation has found that 72 Nationalist MPs and MSPs, including ministers and senior party figures, have online links with cybernats responsible for some of the worst abuse in public life.
An interesting and cynical attempt to divert from all the other skeletons rattling their bones in the cupboard.
Surgeon's attempted line is 'it is a problem for all political parties, we are all to blame and we must all deal with it together'.
No. The nationalist abuse campaign was largely organised by in post senior SNP officials, with whom you repeatably refused to deal - eg Neil Hay, and SNP linked people to whom you denied any links.
It is an SNP problem overlaid on an SNP culture of abuse over scores of years, and needs to be dealt with as such.
I wonder whether the Mail has used up its ammunition yet?
I think the extremists on both sides of the Cyberwars fought daily on twitter are as bad as each other. The MSM chooses to only report about the nationalists and seems blinded to the fact that unionists are just as bad. I feeling is that there is a good argument for saying what is said on twitter should stay on twitter, unless it's criminal behaviour. As Sturgeon said she receives hundreds of abusive tweets but chooses to ignore them.
There are many websites on both sides of the equation where these guys fight it out on a daily basis, each side gives as good as it gets. Check out Smash the SNP, United Against Separation, SNPout, Tactical Voter etc. Also there is the dark underbelly of unionism on the west coast which I assume you're aware of.
Home Sec is a tough gig, I think the easiest is Foreign Sec of the 4 state offices myself.
May has done well to survive there for 5 years, but I think it's eaten at her chances of becoming next Conservative Leader a fair way above what they would have been if she was Foreign Sec.
Nicola Sturgeon has dramatically intervened in the battle against online trolls by pledging to discipline those SNP members responsible for spreading poisonous abuse.
The First Minister vowed to help clean up Scottish politics after this newspaper unmasked some of the country’s most vile cybernats. Writing exclusively for the Scottish Daily Mail, the SNP leader said the time had come to ‘send a clear message that politics in Scotland will not be sullied by this behaviour’.
She also called on politicians who ‘follow’ online abusers to ‘stop feeding the trolls’. A Mail investigation has found that 72 Nationalist MPs and MSPs, including ministers and senior party figures, have online links with cybernats responsible for some of the worst abuse in public life.
An interesting and cynical attempt to divert from all the other skeletons rattling their bones in the cupboard.
Surgeon's attempted line is 'it is a problem for all political parties, we are all to blame and we must all deal with it together'.
No. The nationalist abuse campaign was largely organised by in post senior SNP officials, with whom you repeatably refused to deal - eg Neil Hay, and SNP linked people to whom you denied any links.
It is an SNP problem overlaid on an SNP culture of abuse over scores of years, and needs to be dealt with as such.
I wonder whether the Mail has used up its ammunition yet?
I think the extremists on both sides of the Cyberwars fought daily on twitter are as bad as each other. The MSM chooses to only report about the nationalists and seems blinded to the fact that unionists are just as bad. I feeling is that there is a good argument for saying what is said on twitter should stay on twitter, unless it's criminal behaviour. As Sturgeon said she receives hundreds of abusive tweets but chooses to ignore them.
There are many websites on both sides of the equation where these guys fight it out on a daily basis, each side gives as good as it gets. Check out Smash the SNP, United Against Separation, SNPout, Tactical Voter etc. Also there is the dark underbelly of unionism on the west coast which I assume you're aware of.
I have yet to see significant evidence of eg extensive links of anonymous accounts to senior conservatives, or Labour, figures.
Can you help me there?
And there is still the age old cultural issues within the SNP.
Home Sec is a tough gig, I think the easiest is Foreign Sec of the 4 state offices myself.
May has done well to survive there for 5 years, but I think it's eaten at her chances of becoming next Conservative Leader a fair way above what they would have been if she was Foreign Sec.
Home Sec is a tough gig, I think the easiest is Foreign Sec of the 4 state offices myself.
May has done well to survive there for 5 years, but I think it's eaten at her chances of becoming next Conservative Leader a fair way above what they would have been if she was Foreign Sec.
Conversely, Shadow Foreign Sec is a very tough gig.
Note that 6 of the ten local authorities with the largets population rises are in London.
Is this sustainable? Could the figure actually be higher? Or should it be lower? Or is it actually about right for the UK. Is there any independent research on what a "sustainable" population level would be?
I don't know how young people in the South East of England will ever be able to afford a house. We'd have to build at twice the speed we're currently going just to keep up with population growth, let alone starting to address the problem.
Off topic.US Democrat nomination .If Hillary is to meet any challenge I spotted Martin O'Malley who is still available at prices up to 25-1.He is very appealing to a growing environmentalism,boosted by the decision of the Rockefellers and the words of Pope Francis and other faith leaders.19-1 on Betfair seems a fair back 2 lay.
Home Sec is a tough gig, I think the easiest is Foreign Sec of the 4 state offices myself.
May has done well to survive there for 5 years, but I think it's eaten at her chances of becoming next Conservative Leader a fair way above what they would have been if she was Foreign Sec.
Conversely, Shadow Foreign Sec is a very tough gig.
It depends how you define tough. Michael Ancram was Shadow Foreign Secretary throughout the Iraq debacle without anyone noticing. Conversely Robin Cook made a name for himself in Blair's Shadow Cabinet.
Home Sec is a tough gig, I think the easiest is Foreign Sec of the 4 state offices myself.
May has done well to survive there for 5 years, but I think it's eaten at her chances of becoming next Conservative Leader a fair way above what they would have been if she was Foreign Sec.
Lord Carrington would disagree
Wasn't Lord Carrington's problem that he followed the FO's 4 stage plan of dealing with a crisis. 1. Say that nothing is going to happen etc
The First Minister vowed to help clean up Scottish politics after this newspaper unmasked some of the country’s most vile cybernats. Writing exclusively for the Scottish Daily Mail, the SNP leader said the time had come to ‘send a clear message that politics in Scotland will not be sullied by this behaviour’.
An interesting and cynical attempt to divert from all the other skeletons rattling their bones in the cupboard.
Surgeon's attempted line is 'it is a problem for all political parties, we are all to blame and we must all deal with it together'.
No. The nationalist abuse campaign was largely organised by in post senior SNP officials, with whom you repeatably refused to deal - eg Neil Hay, and SNP linked people to whom you denied any links.
It is an SNP problem overlaid on an SNP culture of abuse over scores of years, and needs to be dealt with as such.
I wonder whether the Mail has used up its ammunition yet?
I think the extremists on both sides of the Cyberwars fought daily on twitter are as bad as each other. The MSM chooses to only report about the nationalists and seems blinded to the fact that unionists are just as bad. I feeling is that there is a good argument for saying what is said on twitter should stay on twitter, unless it's criminal behaviour. As Sturgeon said she receives hundreds of abusive tweets but chooses to ignore them.
There are many websites on both sides of the equation where these guys fight it out on a daily basis, each side gives as good as it gets. Check out Smash the SNP, United Against Separation, SNPout, Tactical Voter etc. Also there is the dark underbelly of unionism on the west coast which I assume you're aware of.
I have yet to see significant evidence of eg extensive links of anonymous accounts to senior conservatives, or Labour, figures.
Can you help me there?
And there is still the age old cultural issues within the SNP.
A couple of questions for you:
1. Have you actually read the 2 offensive tweets sent by Neil Hay ? 2. Have you heard of Ian Smart ?
I condemn both sides, recent examples of some of the long running cultural issues on the west coast:
I remain very surprised that the LibDems allowed Lansley's Health Reforms to go through given that his proposals were not even in the 2010 Tory manifesto - never mind the LibDem manifesto. They should have blocked it or walked out of the Coalition. By 2012 it was obvious that they had sustained massive electoral damage by going into Government with the Tories, and this was an issue which really resonated with the public and which would have regained some - though far from all - of the left of centre votes lost to Labour.
I remain very surprised that the LibDems allowed Lansley's Health Reforms to go through given that his proposals were not even in the 2010 Tory manifesto - never mind the LibDem manifesto. They should have blocked it or walked out of the Coalition. By 2012 it was obvious that they had sustained massive electoral damage by going into Government with the Tories, and this was an issue which really resonated with the public and which would have regained some - though far from all - of the left of centre votes lost to Labour.
The Tories themselves were hoping for a modest revival to this effect, to help them in the Lab-Con marginals. Whether this would ultimately have led to more Con seats overall is an open question.
Comments
Of course, the Lib Dems had a fair amount of Hamletesque agonising about what they were doing, but that was almost entirely internal to the party.
Much like Labour, the LibDems now need to decide who they are and what they believe in. And to present this consistently everywhere. Good luck with that. It'll be like herding cats. They have become an irrelevance. If they simply disappear nobody will really notice.
I think the Lib Dems were making the same calculation...
My reading is that the Lib Dems knew that they were doing badly (our host vote-swapping with Twickenham is a big clue to that).
I'm less convinced that they knew - or know - why they did so badly. It can't have been both a desire to administer a slap on the wrist and fear of a Labour/SNP coalition. The two are entirely inconsistent.
They should have been preparing for months for those few days in May, the polls were pretty accurate in 2010. Yet, as was said below, they appeared not to have prepared at all.
Add to that the frequent public positions that they were taming the "nasty tories"....
Even that right-wing firebrand Allister Heath agrees http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11697568/Our-poverty-rules-are-an-insult-to-everyone-its-time-to-rip-them-up.html
Even that right-wing firebrand Frank Field agrees http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3138350/Our-measure-child-poverty-dodgy-not-enshrined-law-says-ex-Labour-chief-Frank-Field.html
Child poverty means that parents can't afford shoes for their children, not that they can't afford iPads for them.
Here we had a party with some bonkers la-la land policies which no one ever thought would be tested in the cold light of day. Was this their fault? Partly. It was also the GBP's fault for voting for them previously in such numbers so as to encourage them. Under such circumstances they probably thought they were doing great things.
Right up until they came up against a) the steam-train reality of government; and b) a battle-hardened, slick grown-up political party.
Under such circumstances I think it is ok to c*ck it up a bit while an adjustment is made. Their first crack at government in the modern era and it really was one strike and you're out for them.
It was unrealistic to expect them to make the transformation effortlessly, perfectly and without error.
And then the very people who criticise them, the people who voted for a protest party in defiance of the status quo, go on to penalise them when they gain power, wonder why we have the system of government we have, and often bemoan it.
Me? I'm delighted. But I can see the iniquity of it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=United_Kingdom_European_Communities_membership_referendum,_1975#/media/File:United_Kingdom_European_Communities_membership_referendum,_1975_results.png
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CIVadnLWwAEIDKC.jpg
Also worth noting how important the politics of the first 3-6 months of a government (or even the first week, in the case of the coalition) are. The same sort of thing is going on now but most people are switched off.
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/213823/dh_117794.pdf
They ended up opposing themselves on it.
abandoning relative measure means the right wingers are free to accumulate massively ridiculous amounts of land power money and stuff, and it's OK because the proles have inside toilets
All of which are good points. The reason that they did get those votes was that they were not pro LD votes, they were protest votes. The people (anti war leftie pacifist peacniks) who deserted labour had no affinity with LDs at all. In Scotland now they have flocked to the SNP once the indy referendum blocked their attempt to break up a centrist UK.
So the LDs were always in a massively false position, as long as they did nothing and allowed the UK to go to hell in a basket then the lefties were happy. As soon as they dared to do something and heavens above with a tory govt then the loopy fruit loop lefries screamed blue murder.
Would now seem a good time to revert to the original Lansley proposals while there is some goodwill within the government - or would this now just be another pointless re-org and it's best to stick with the status quo arrangement for another few years??
"On Wednesday the European commission created a new “taskforce” dedicated to the British question. And it put Britain’s most senior and most experienced eurocrat, Jonathan Faull, in charge of it. A fervent if critical pro-European, Faull, 60, has spent his entire career, 37 years, in Brussels. A lawyer, a liberal, not a Tory, a francophile, he is a consummate Brussels insider."
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jun/25/eu-referendum-cameron-to-make-history-by-laying-out-britains-demands
Hammond's demand for the UK to have a veto over financial sector decisions also seems sensible. The UK has the majority of the continent's financial services (outside of retail banking), so it should be something reasonable the EU can accept.
In 2010 Cam thought it might all disappear. As has been said, regardless of vote shares and increases, this is a man who could not win an election outright against Gordon Brown, a man who, even his fans concede, made huge and lasting mistakes as chancellor and PM.
Under those circumstances Cam leapt at the chance of govt, gave away too much (why not tough it out with C&S?), and hoped everything else would fall into place. He was nearly derailed (by his backbenchers, of course, not the LDs, as they were less tolerant of his failure plus they are/were t0ssers, many of them) but he achieved the aim.
And he has now been proved right. So am I criticising the Tory strategy in 2010? No. I am saying that both the Cons and the LDs were in a peculiar position in 2010 and both misplayed it a bit. For the Cons this was recoverable, for the LDs, it seems much less so.
It's what followed after that mattered. Clegg gambled on getting major constitutional reform to make his mark, which he failed to do, and then everything became a bit 'yeah but no but yeah but no but yeah' and this lead to the Lib Dems losing all respect. They were just terrible at the politics.
The watershed moment for me was Osborne and Alexander's presentation of a *coalition* budget in March this year, that both Clegg and Alexander had influenced and signed up to.
The very next day, Alexander was out there with his own yellow box presenting their own budget. It was totally ridiculous and made them a laughing stock. They wanted the benefits (and votes) of being both in government and opposition, taking credit for what was popular and disowning what was not.
In the end, no one was prepared to vote for such directionless and churlish petulance. And rightly so.
Having said that, Jeremy Hunt (who's a much, much better politician and manager than Lansley) is slowly moving things in the right direction.
The odd thing is that as a political position, this viewpoint that "everything was pretty much fine by 2010" as if the effects of the credit crunch had basically all been sorted out, seems to be quite a common one. It's definitely a trope in the Guardian and Staggers and among left wing people I talk to.
Funnily enough it doesn't match Labour's position at the time of the election, where they were arguing we needed the tried and tested Brown and Darling combo to steer us through the dark and difficult times ahead. Nor are Balls and Miliband a well known hard-right arch-Thatcherite Tory-acolyte double act, but their clear position at the 2015 GE was that sorting out the lingering after-effects of 2007/8 on the UK fiscal position would require considerable sacrifice until late in this next parliament, and both acknowledged we still faced risks from the ongoing upheavals in Europe (if you want to see what the "precipice" looks like, circumspice).
Yet in the grass roots the idea that the economic all clear had sounded by 2010 strangely persists.
When Clegg accepted it I knew the LDs were screwed.
They failed to do this, as you say. And to be an anti-govt protest party while in, um, govt is sort of, you know, well...dumb.
Pugh expected that other voices would follow. “To my astonishment,” he recalled, “some of the very people who had said to me, ‘Yes, we have got to do something,’ then said diametrically the opposite.”
'Tis ever so. Coups are much harder and more uncertain than everyone expects.
That's why Gordon Brown led Labour into the 2010 GE, despite everyone knowing he was a disaster. It's why Ed Miliband led Labour into the 2015 GE, despite everyone knowing he was a disaster. And it's why whoever becomes Labour leader in a few weeks' time will lead Labour into the 2020 GE, no matter how poor a leader he or she turns out to be.
And anyway the problem ain't going away next time, surely the SNP will hold enough seats to constitute a major bloc with potential to form a coalition with Labour. So if some did vote in such a way to prevent this in 2015, it will remain a reason in 2020. Just that I don't think it was as big a deal as people say.
Surgeon's attempted line is 'it is a problem for all political parties, we are all to blame and we must all deal with it together'.
No. The nationalist abuse campaign was largely organised by in post senior SNP officials, with whom you repeatably refused to deal - eg Neil Hay, and SNP linked people to whom you denied any links.
It is an SNP problem overlaid on an SNP culture of abuse over scores of years, and needs to be dealt with as such.
I wonder whether the Mail has used up its ammunition yet?
Me too. A long-shot, certainly, but 66/1 is very good value.
Mr TSE - I believe (so I am told) that Ms Steele was a willing participant and enjoyed the experience (conveniently administered by a multi billionaire so why not?) - I think therefore that your analogy falls down. Some people might be able to suggest the correct colourful expression for what the electorate did so royally to the LDs, I couldn't possibly comment.
I've been lucky enough not to have had dealings with the NHS for a long time, agree that Hunt seems more of a consensus-builder in the role.
There will never be anything like it ever again.
So it was perfectly reasonable for the Tories to moan about coalition - which they'd warned against - but the LibDems should have been celebrating their massive success and trying to convince us that the New Politics was, as they had argued, better than the sum of the parts. Instead they went around looking as though someone had shot their pet hamster. Voters clearly decided, out of kindness, to make sure that the LibDems never had to suffer the unhappiness of coalition government again.
An unprecedented written agreement between the Tories and the Liberal Democrats, published last night, revealed that the Deputy Prime Minister has won formal influence over policies, Government reshuffles, public appointments and Budgets.
Crucially, Mr Clegg is to chair an all-powerful Cabinet committee on domestic affairs, putting him in overall charge of formulating reforms of health, education and policing.''
''And all of George Osborne's Budget decisions as Chancellor will 'require consultation' with his Lib Dem Treasury Chief Secretary David Laws, the coalition agreement states.
Extraordinarily, the document bars Mr Osborne from consulting the Prime Minister over a Budget measure without also speaking to Mr Clegg.
The scale of influence the Deputy Prime Minister will enjoy across Whitehall will further alarm Right-wing Tory MPs, who fear Mr Cameron has given too much ground to the Lib Dems to persuade them to join the Government.
But Downing Street sources said it demonstrated that Mr Cameron was sincere when he promised a 'big, open and comprehensive' power-sharing offer.''
Yet despite all this they continually undermined theor own government. A totally bonkers stance if you want to be re-elected.
It's a great bet.
I asked for £40, but £0.76 was all Hills was willing to oblige !
The price will come in in a few minutes most likely now, mind.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-33267657
Who then would have predicted Labour with one seat in Scotland?
Interesting snippets
He loathes Alex Salmond
He prefers Nicola Sturgeon
A female cabinet Minster lost her job under Blair because he used bits of paper w MPs names on to sort out who was in or out and hers fell in the floor without him noticing
He is adamant the SNP are not a left wing party but shape shifters who will say anything to get independence
He admitted SLAB could offer nothing to better the SNPs emotional pitch
He was elected as an MP in 1997 despite not wanting to be one and not campaigning and says it's fitting that his replacement didn't want to be an MP either. Both swept in because of their parties popularity
He also phoned David Miliband live on stage on FaceTime! But he didn't answer...
Quite a funny bloke actually and pretty normal
The tuition fee policy was, in Cable's words, "financially illiterate".
It was sold as helping to reduce the deficit. In practice, the government totally funded the £9,000 pa per student and borrowed to do so. In a piece of financial jiggery-pokery, the government expenditure was then balanced against the accompanying student debts so that the deficit was unchanged in the national accounts. It increased government borrowing and didn't reduce the deficit. All it did was kick the cost 30 years down the road when many students will not repay their student loans.
When Cable used the words "financially illiterate" he was referring to the Labour policy of reducing the student fees to £6,000 in a fully funded way. What a hypocrite! That was when I resolved not to help his campaign in Twickenham in any way, and why I was delighted when he lost his seat.
The "above average" increase of 491,100 from mid-2013 to mid-2014 included net migration adding 259,700 to population growth, the ONS figures show.
This was more than "natural growth" - births minus deaths - which added 226,200. "
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-33266792
Note that 6 of the ten local authorities with the largets population rises are in London.
Is this sustainable? Could the figure actually be higher? Or should it be lower? Or is it actually about right for the UK.
Is there any independent research on what a "sustainable" population level would be?
Former Scottish Secretary Alistair Carmichael has accused David Cameron of an "almost psychopathic ruthlessness" that has put the Union in jeopardy.
http://bit.ly/1NdJVxk
But I agree strongly re the role of Deputy PM. It is an ad hoc position. You can have a modern government with no DPM whatsoever, or one that is basically a figurehead or totem, or one with fingers in a lot of small-fry pies, or one with a more central role and influence over bigger decisions. It isn't possible to say Deputy PM is intrinsically a weak or strong position, it depends on the structure around it.
NB it is also possible to be home sec for five years, be hostage to fortune (prison escapes/riots, miscarriages of justice, bureaucrat shambles or scandal) but not actually get anything much done. It is one of the most important offices but it's not necessarily where you want to be if you want to exert widespread influence over the direction of policy more broadly than the gambit of that department.
baseball cap & beer not so sure, OTOH.
They have spent the last decade in denial about Salmond's popularity and had been convinced that if only they could make the public at large loathe Salmond as much as they loathe him they would win. And then yet another Leader Opinions poll wold come out with Slamond with a big net positive and they would melt down into apoplexy. Again.
They've never been able to attack SNP on its record of governance because the have been too consumed by attacking the man.
And are offering pension reform by 2022 (from 2025)
No news on defence, but I don't think that'll be a stumbling block
I think this'll be enough
Mrs May is currently 3rd.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Secretary#Home_Secretaries.2C_1900.E2.80.932001
Don't shoot the messenger here btw, I couldn't care less
Mark Denten @BBCMarkDenten
Rail union @RMTunion says it will campaign for EU withdrawal.Decision made at union's annual conference in Newcastle.
Surgeon's attempted line is 'it is a problem for all political parties, we are all to blame and we must all deal with it together'.
No. The nationalist abuse campaign was largely organised by in post senior SNP officials, with whom you repeatably refused to deal - eg Neil Hay, and SNP linked people to whom you denied any links.
It is an SNP problem overlaid on an SNP culture of abuse over scores of years, and needs to be dealt with as such.
I wonder whether the Mail has used up its ammunition yet?
I think the extremists on both sides of the Cyberwars fought daily on twitter are as bad as each other. The MSM chooses to only report about the nationalists and seems blinded to the fact that unionists are just as bad. I feeling is that there is a good argument for saying what is said on twitter should stay on twitter, unless it's criminal behaviour. As Sturgeon said she receives hundreds of abusive tweets but chooses to ignore them.
Queen of Cyberunionism:
https://twitter.com/Historywoman
king of Cybernatism:
https://twitter.com/WingsScotland
There are many websites on both sides of the equation where these guys fight it out on a daily basis, each side gives as good as it gets. Check out Smash the SNP, United Against Separation, SNPout, Tactical Voter etc. Also there is the dark underbelly of unionism on the west coast which I assume you're aware of.
May has done well to survive there for 5 years, but I think it's eaten at her chances of becoming next Conservative Leader a fair way above what they would have been if she was Foreign Sec.
Queen of Cyberunionism:
https://twitter.com/Historywoman
king of Cybernatism:
https://twitter.com/WingsScotland
There are many websites on both sides of the equation where these guys fight it out on a daily basis, each side gives as good as it gets. Check out Smash the SNP, United Against Separation, SNPout, Tactical Voter etc. Also there is the dark underbelly of unionism on the west coast which I assume you're aware of.
I have yet to see significant evidence of eg extensive links of anonymous accounts to senior conservatives, or Labour, figures.
Can you help me there?
And there is still the age old cultural issues within the SNP.
https://twitter.com/standardnews/status/614029045609598976
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-33270586
http://ecowatch.com/2015/06/18/martin-omalley-climate-plan/
1. Say that nothing is going to happen etc
Can you help me there?
And there is still the age old cultural issues within the SNP.
A couple of questions for you:
1. Have you actually read the 2 offensive tweets sent by Neil Hay ?
2. Have you heard of Ian Smart ?
I condemn both sides, recent examples of some of the long running cultural issues on the west coast:
http://www.thenational.scot/news/orangefest-petition-organiser-receives-online-death-threats.3795