The challenge for… the Liberal Democrats – politicalbetting.com
The challenge for… the Liberal Democrats – politicalbetting.com
This is the midpoint in a series looking at the challenges and opportunities for the 7 main Great Britain parties. Today we will look at the Liberal Democrats and see if they can continue their recent triumphs.
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The Lib Dems risk being like Eumenes of Pergamon. Yes, highly successful. Yes, a winner. But only a regional player, always in the shadow of a greater empire.
Unless they're willing to venture out of their cosy, well-meaning, WASPI-supporting, rocket sandwich-eating comfort zone, their chief aspiration will be that of a junior partner in government.
In short, we need a new leader. I think Ed did a fantastic job transforming our prospects after the coalition, but he’s topped out.
If Arpineh Masihi could vote, she would have cast her ballot for Donald Trump. She's a devout supporter of the US president – even now that she's locked up as an illegal immigrant.
"He's doing the right thing because lots of these people don't deserve to be here,"
"I will support him until the day I die. He's making America great again."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3vd1vn9n06o
Sky did not couch it like that. They squarely put the blame at Rachel Reeves's door.
I have found my hotel TV also has CNN, so I can dispense with the mindless presenting style of Sky and enjoy a proper Communist station. I haven't seen CNN for a while, and yes they are very critical of Trump, but there would appear to be a World outside Washington ( or in our case Westminster). Apparently there is a continent out there called Africa and wholesale humanitarian atrocities in a place called Sudan have been going on. I thought the only news was that Starmer is a bastard! We live and learn if we can access CNN.
There is a lot I agree with @Garethofthevale and to be fair I would consider the Lib Dems but for their stance on the EU which I do not want to rejoin.
I did query their policies a few days ago and received a response that they had a policy of a 6% digital tax and taxing oil companies
Given the first would cause fury from Trump, and the second is already heavily taxed, then I do not know where they would find the money especially with their desire to deal with social care
I also do not agree with their support for WASPI women
I remain one of the dwindling band of conservative supporters but here in Wales at the Senedd election next year and the GE I am likely to vote Plaid to oust labour
When the Whiggish Liberals left to join the Conservatives as Liberal Imperialists, so the remainder of the party started to embrace statist solutions, our relative decline started.
IMV this is a significant causal factor in the party's current woes.
The plane could be confused with a Ukrainian drone. Pantsir air defense system mistakenly fired at a passenger plane, which suffered minor damage. The crew successfully landed the plane."
https://x.com/Maks_NAFO_FELLA/status/1943511760910098461
This should, on topic, be a real opportunity for the Lib Dems to properly take the middle ground from the Tories once and for all but I am not sure that it is working out like that. There is a wing of the Lib Dems that is just a bit too left for former Tories and, of course, like all the main parties, there is a deep reluctance to face the reality we are living in.
As a socially liberal, fiscally hawkish ex Tory I feel pretty homeless right now.
In many ways, liberal assumptions are taken for granted. But, liberalism (like all ideologies) is riddled with paradoxes.
How do you reconcile the rights of majorities, in a democracy, with protecting the rights of minorities? Is liberalism universalist, or is a government justified in prioritising its citizens over non-citizens? How does liberalism operate in a world where sometimes, it's necessary to wage war?
Steer clear of the Faragistas. They will do very well in the RedWall South.
Reeves budget was a disaster and 'the chickens are coming home to roost'
Burley, Rigby and others haunted conservative politician when they were in government and now Labour are experiencing the same treatment
Best not to watch much like I do not watch GBNews
It's a shock seeing it play out in real life, but it probably shouldn't be a surprise.
Moreover working on quite how you rip things up and start again without just wrecking things would ensure and attractive political debate - young people might be attracted. Possible good MP material, rather than the beige workaday cloth of the current mob.
What the LDs need in short is;
New Leader
Better MPs
Policies that will make a difference
Where they are now I think it's not so hard to imagine a competing party being set up.
The one advantage the LDs have - which we see in the local results, including last night’s by-elections, is that while both Tory (brand already trashed) and Labour (brand now being trashed) are losing votes in droves to Reform, the LibDem vote base is reasonably resilient, and indeed the LDs are well-positioned to pick up extra anti-Reform votes from the (former) major parties.
Anyhow, as I get sorted for yet another ferry crossing, here’s a photo from yesterday at Norway’s second largest glacier, dog for scale (although not showing a great deal of interest in this notable geographical feature tbh).
Many Soviets thought they'd be fine in a purge because they hadn't done anything wrong.
This iteration of the Lib Dem map looks a lot more coherent and stable than previous ones, which often tracked a mixture of hyperactive activists, by-election wins and opportunistic campaigns (like tuition fees). On top of that, it's quite a bit bigger, and still has some room to grow. It helps that the Conservatives appear to have given up on the "nice England" part of their former coalition.
The catch is that Nice England gets you a solid block, but nowhere near winning nationwide. In their glory days, the Conservatives had the shires and the suburbs. The Red Wall was only ever the jam on top, and probably more trouble than it was worth, coherence-wise. Labour got the cities, the suburbs and the wall. Reform appear to be uniting the shires and the red wall, which looks mad but seems to work for now.
What's the next type of place for the Lib Dems to attack?
As the ICE stuff is showing in America, they are wrong. Racists don't care that the person they hate is your friend or wife. They don't care if that person is a doctor, or helps loads of people in the wider community. They care only that they are different.
conviction; runs a business - but the level of cognitive dissonance is remarkable.
..Yet her family says they have faith that Arpineh will be released, and believe that only hardened, dangerous criminals will actually be deported.
"I don't blame Trump, I blame Biden," Arthur says. "It's his doing for open borders, but I believe in the system and all the good people will be released and the ones that are bad will be sent back."
While many of those detained do not have criminal records, Aprineh is a convicted felon, which makes her a prime target for removal.
ICE did not respond to a request for comment about Arpineh's case..
Trump's "worst of the worst" lies have penetrated deep. It's anyone's guess how long it will take for the reality to sink in.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't do everything to stop the boats for very many reasons
Shouts of “Heil Hitler” and “Long live Comrade Stalin” just before the execution were not unknown.
They were great exploiters of nationalism, too.
It's almost like the LDs need to do a Jaguar and pivot away from the existing base.
Another, related problem, is economics. Liberalism is, rightly, the main basis of the party, but that leads open left or right economics, to some extent. Pure liberalism would look more centre-right, but recent and historic liberalism has had things in common with the left. A radical outlook means choosing a direction and that will also alienate some. An alliance with liberal Cameroon Tories made sense, philisophically, but it still shocked and appalled the more left-inclined voters.
Under PR we'd probably have two liberal parties, with different economic ideas, fairly friendly and willing to go into coalitions together, but a challenger in different seats - not entirely unlike the Alliance. The other parties would also split of course, with the more liberal Tories and Labourites likely joining the two strands of liberalism.
Radical change is needed; year zero isn't.
Very good nights for Reform and LDs on the locals, hideous results for Con and Labour.
Polling this morning from Techne, changes since a fortnight ago
Ref 29 (+1)
Lab 22 (-1)
Con 18 (=)
LD 16 (=)
Green 9 (+1)
SNP 2 (-1)
Whoops. Four more years of this, I'm not sure the nation can take it.
To get such flat growth numbers, some sectors must already be in recession.
I just feel the Lib Dem’s don’t give a shit about most parts of the country. Just the Waitrose part.
They’re also very fragile and don’t like being criticised
Apart from anyone who understands anything about Economics that is.
@GarethoftheVale2 gets a couple of things wrong in his header, the first being the lazy stereotypes, when actually the polling shows that the LDs have some of the most even support by demographic groups. The second is his interpretation of the gap between the 17% NEV in the locals and the 14% nationally. Yes, GOTV counts, but as well as that there is a willingness of LD voters to vote tactically, and to recruit tactical voters nationally. That seam of voters has plenty left. The next GE will be a festival of tactical voting, with voters trying to keep out Reform. LDs stand to benefit.
In terms of overall policy I think the LDs are right to not buy into the "Britain is Broken" meme being driven by the populist right and Social Media. The country is not fundamentally broken, at least not more than it ever was, and that sort of relentless negativity and hate driven politics needs opposition. There's a lot of people out there who are fundamentally decent, happy to help their neighbours and happy with both diversity and international co-operation. A lot of us don't want to burn the country to its foundations.
You incur an immediate capital gains tax hit.
What you need to do is create a Collateralised Relative Obligation - a derivative with physical delivery in a low/no tax domicile. Then create an OTC market in CRO.
The Chancellor did none of these.
Growth did not result.
So, probably not...
But let’s not call it a digital service tax. Let’s make it a withholding tax or something or a transnational minimum tax incentivisatiom scheme of something suitably opaque
To get further seats they would likely need to see the Tory vote largely collapse further to Reform, then the LDs can be base for the more moderate One Nation Cameroon types in the South especially who are still in the party and didn't already go LD at the 2024 GE and who wouldn't vote for Farage.
Or they would need to hope Starmer is ousted by Rayner in which case they could be a base for more moderate social democrats as they were in 2019 when Corbyn led Labour. They won't win voters who want a more leftwing party than Starmer Labour as they will back the Greens or Corbyn's new party
https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/fcgi-bin/usercode.py?scotcontrol=N&CON=18&LAB=22&LIB=16&Reform=29&Green=9&UKIP=&TVCON=&TVLAB=&TVLIB=&TVReform=&TVGreen=&TVUKIP=&SCOTCON=&SCOTLAB=&SCOTLIB=&SCOTReform=&SCOTGreen=&SCOTUKIP=&SCOTNAT=&display=AllChanged&regorseat=(none)&boundary=2024base
They want to have a job that pays them enough to own a home, have a family, get to eat out occasionally and may be go on holiday once a year. Most people are pretty modest in their ambitions.
Ed Davey is also as a veteran of Cameron's Coalition government on the fiscally hawkish wing of the LDs while still being socially liberal
Only the wealthiest areas of them might go LD
Typical government statisticians, talking down the
ConservativeLabour governmentIn fact, a pedant continues (sorry), while I agree with your point, the bits you are thinking of of those three cities are South Manchester, North Leeds and North Cardiff.
By all means tackle the boats issue; it is problematic for a whole host of reasons. But it's not right to use that issue as a way of bashing all immigrants.
Quite a lot to unpick there from the house journal of the Centrist Dad.
I think the Tories have the hardest job defending their existing seats, being squeezed by both the Reform party and the LDs. I think Tory seat numbers will fall further. They have no USP, just reflexive voters like BigG who have always voted Tory, and those are dwindling further.
But that’s not inconsistent with your statement…
Our friend Nige has a lot to do with that. The internal unhappiness is always written on his face.
Their dilemma is real. If they are to expand - say into being the challenger in 300 seats and not 100, it has to be clear who is their adversary. Currently their adversary is the Tories, which rationally means that to expand they need to seek more seats where they can be the adversary of the Tories.
I don't think this can happen. They can't displace Labour. So can they displace the Tories as opponent of Labour? It doesn't look like it.
Their best approach therefore is to slightly and incrementally build on the current status, as the party who can help Labour to a second term, who are obviously not Tories, but hold some common ground with Labour.
It's a valid point, of course, there is much that is good with the country. But we have some fundamental issues, particularly around expenditure and tax receipts that need addressing, along with investing sensibly for longer term gain.