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Where did it all go wrong for The Liberal Democrats ?

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hst43102

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There are Christians and there are Christians, there is a huge range of views between different churches and congregations. I've been to some evangelical (elim) services and they were rather different to your bog standard C of E service. Quite disturbing in some ways too, especially the speaking in tongues...
100% agree with you there, there are millions of Christians who have all kinds of different beliefs and practices. I think that (thankfully) the majority aren't homophobic, at least compared to the average population.
 
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TravelDream

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The Lib Dems have had a miracle in Wales. In Mid and West Wales they have managed, just about, to get a member elected on the regional list. The Welsh leader Jane Dodds is top of the list so will be Senedd member. This 2021-2026 parliament will be a four member one (probably) with just a single Lib Dem.
 

Butts

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The Lib Dems have had a miracle in Wales. In Mid and West Wales they have managed, just about, to get a member elected on the regional list. The Welsh leader Jane Dodds is top of the list so will be Senedd member. This 2021-2026 parliament will be a four member one (probably) with just a single Lib Dem.

I suppose you can't really begrudge them the one seat.

How is Dodd's spinning the near wipe out - no doubt a deluded "reasonable performance" or some other guff.

When is Lembit Opik coming back to save the Party ? At least he was a laugh.
 

DynamicSpirit

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There's some evidence in there to suggest Tim Farron thinks gay sex is sinful.

Therefore he's a homophobe.

Without wanting to derail the thread, the logic doesn't hold at all. If someone thought that being gay per se (ie. existing as a gay person) was sinful, then I'd agree that would make that person homophobic. I don't believe there is any evidence that Tim Farron believes that. And that's not at all the same thing as believing that having gay sex is sinful. After all, I imagine you'd find that those evangelicals you are condemning equally believe that any sex (including heterosexual sex) is sinful if done outside marriage. That doesn't make them unmarried-people-phobes. It simply makes them people who have certain ethical beliefs about what things are right and wrong to do. I imagine we would both strongly disagree with the evangelical viewpoint regarding sex, but disagreeing with them doesn't make them homophobes.
 

deltic

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Oh dear where is Deltic ???

You've been wiped out in Wales and your leader there has done a disappearing act ?

Where is Ms Dodds ? - looking for Lembit Opik to return and save the party?
Still here - we still have one seat in Wales and in Scotland have more constituency seats than Labour and the Conservatives although that will obviously change when the regional seats are distributed. But agree its been a very poor night for us. As mentioned above the Greens have taken over as the protest vote in many areas. In London they have done well and are in a clear 3rd place and have out polled the Tories in some seats. They however have the same problem as the Lib Dems in that few are prepared to back them when it matters. So Sian Berry has so far only got half the number of votes that Green candidates received in total for the constituency seats on the Greater London Assembly while Shaun Bailey has nearly 10% more Mayoral votes than Tory candidates polled.
 

peters

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Behind The Greens in Scotland

While it might not be representative of the final results the BBC News homepage is currently showing with 49 seats declared the Greens have not won a single seat, while the Lib Dems have won more than the Conservatives and Labour, even if they are a long way behind the SNP.

There are Christians and there are Christians, there is a huge range of views between different churches and congregations. I've been to some evangelical (elim) services and they were rather different to your bog standard C of E service. Quite disturbing in some ways too, especially the speaking in tongues...

Agreed. Even with C of E and Catholic churches who have a leader there's differences within those denominations. In Knutsford there's 2 C of E churches, one has had two female vicars while the other is part of a Conservative Evangelical movement which opposes the ordination of women. With 'free churches' it's even less straight forward as they can make decisions locally, my old next door neighbour was a Methodist but she didn't attend the nearest church but the one where she fitted in.
 

TravelDream

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While it might not be representative of the final results the BBC News homepage is currently showing with 49 seats declared the Greens have not won a single seat, while the Lib Dems have won more than the Conservatives and Labour, even if they are a long way behind the SNP.

I don't mean to be critical, but you obviously have no idea at all of the electoral system used in Welsh and Scottish elections.

They use a mixture of constituencies and regional lists.

This article gives some description if you're interested - https://www.heraldscotland.com/news...-scotlands-voting-system-differ-uk-elections/

All of the Greens seats will be on the regional lists. At the moment, we only have constituency results.
I think the Greens only ran in a few constituencies actually. The Lib Dems, in comparison, run in all constituencies and obviously have won some.
 

Butts

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While it might not be representative of the final results the BBC News homepage is currently showing with 49 seats declared the Greens have not won a single seat, while the Lib Dems have won more than the Conservatives and Labour, even if they are a long way behind the SNP.



Agreed. Even with C of E and Catholic churches who have a leader there's differences within those denominations. In Knutsford there's 2 C of E churches, one has had two female vicars while the other is part of a Conservative Evangelical movement which opposes the ordination of women. With 'free churches' it's even less straight forward as they can make decisions locally, my old next door neighbour was a Methodist but she didn't attend the nearest church but the one where she fitted in.

It won't be anything like the final results when The List Seats are added.

Whilst the LD's will be lucky to pick up any the Conservatives and Labour will be the biggest beneficiaries closely followed by The Greens - checkout the situation in a few hours.

Are you an avid student of Scottish Politics ?
 

peters

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I don't mean to be critical, but you obviously have no idea at all of the electoral system used in Welsh and Scottish elections.

They use a mixture of constituencies and regional lists.

It won't be anything like the final results when The List Seats are added.

Whilst the LD's will be lucky to pick up any the Conservatives and Labour will be the biggest beneficiaries closely followed by The Greens - checkout the situation in a few hours.

Are you an avid student of Scottish Politics ?

I am aware of the two types, mainly thanks to media coverage on Alex Salamond's Alba Party but I wasn't aware the Scottish Greens were similar to Alba Party in not really bothering with constituencies.
 

takno

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It won't be anything like the final results when The List Seats are added.

Whilst the LD's will be lucky to pick up any the Conservatives and Labour will be the biggest beneficiaries closely followed by The Greens - checkout the situation in a few hours.

Are you an avid student of Scottish Politics ?
The LDs will almost certainly pick up a few list seats, since they did in the last election, and they aren't doing any worse. Add to that that, certainly in my constituency, they were more or less actively saying "only vote for us on the list", and they may actually look a little better.

You seem to have an awful lot of fairly trite analysis verging on abuse for other parties, but very little to say about the indifferent performance of your own, which really should be storming ahead right now if the opposition are as terrible as you like to claim.
 

Horizon22

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There's many factors but the primary one was clearly the coalition but I would hardly say they're an irrelevance. They're England's 3rd biggest party, control several councils and have pockets of strength around the country and have an estimated projected vote share of around 17% based on these elections. I wouldn't say its easy trying to break through the system in the way the media portrays it as a 2-party fight but the Lib Dems did achieve it in the 1990s and 2000s. But it was decades of hard work. It will take time to build that up again, but there have been several misguided steps along the way to make it happen.
 

Butts

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There's many factors but the primary one was clearly the coalition but I would hardly say they're an irrelevance. They're England's 3rd biggest party, control several councils and have pockets of strength around the country and have an estimated projected vote share of around 17% based on these elections. I wouldn't say its easy trying to break through the system in the way the media portrays it as a 2-party fight but the Lib Dems did achieve it in the 1990s and 2000s. But it was decades of hard work. It will take time to build that up again, but there have been several misguided steps along the way to make it happen.

Are you confident about their future prospects in Wales ?

The LDs will almost certainly pick up a few list seats, since they did in the last election, and they aren't doing any worse. Add to that that, certainly in my constituency, they were more or less actively saying "only vote for us on the list", and they may actually look a little better.

You seem to have an awful lot of fairly trite analysis verging on abuse for other parties, but very little to say about the indifferent performance of your own, which really should be storming ahead right now if the opposition are as terrible as you like to claim.

Well they did hold Aberdeenshire West which prevents the SNP "winning outright"

Still awaiting the list figures but if we remain in the high twenties and beat Labour that will have to do.

It could have been better but remaining second in Wales and Scotland is something The Liberal Democrats (subject of the thread) can only dream of. Likely to be fifth in Scotland and already fourth in Wales.

So - where did it all go wrong as I asked originally ?

Oh dear BBC predicting the LD's will pick up no list seats :E

Takno your LD's have been tanked - what happened to their list seats ?
 
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peters

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Looking at the Warrington council results and Cheshire PCC 1st round votes:

I notice Lib Dems seem to have strong support in two parts of the Warrington borough, winning seats for Lymm and Stockton Heath. Lymm is a place you would expect to be more likely to vote Conservative than Labour, so maybe in the case of Warrington some people see the Lib Dems as more likely to do good on a Labour controlled council area than Tories.

With the Cheshire PCC there was quite a big increase in turnout compared to last time, with the Conservatives, Labour and Lib Dems all picking up more votes than last time, an increase of 75% in the case of the Lib Dems. The only other candidate was UKIP last time and is Reform UK this time, Reform UK got a lot less votes than UKIP last time but it's not ex-UKIP voters who the Lib Dems will be picking up.

They're England's 3rd biggest party

While the SNP might disagree, you could argue they are the UK's 3rd biggest party as they finished 3rd in terms of total votes at the last General Election, even if those votes don't translate into seats.
 

Butts

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Are there any Scottish or Welsh Liberal Democrats out there or have you gone into hiding ?

I repeat my opener "Where did it all go wrong ? "
 

DarloRich

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Are there any Scottish or Welsh Liberal Democrats out there or have you gone into hiding ?

I repeat my opener "Where did it all go wrong ? "

The results for the last few days seems to suggest that the protest votes that perhaps once went to the LD's have gone Green.
 

tbtc

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The results for the last few days seems to suggest that the protest votes that perhaps once went to the LD's have gone Green.

I think that's made a big difference - I think that the Greens have been hoovering up a lot of anti-establishment people (and it's hard to be an anti-establishment party when you've been in coalition Government - being Green means not having to deal with that baggage)

Three additional things I'd mention are:

1. I think that a lot of people voted LibDem (as I have in the past) partly because they liked the idea of some policies but without them being exposed to the harsh realities of compromise required to get them into Government. Five years as coalition partners meant swallowing a lot of pride and abandoning a lot of promises. Some of that was because they were only the junior partners (so of course were never going to get everything into law - just as the DUP got their fingers burned), some of that was because the LibDem policies had been cooked up in decades of opposition. There was no expectation of having to trade off one policy against another (e.g. one of the things that they did get was a referendum on proportional representation - maybe a savvier party more used to tough compromises might have enacted a higher price). Government is tough, and seeing your long established wishlist whittled down will have been disheartening to a lot of long term voters. That said, I think that the Coalition years look significantly better in hindsight than they did at the time - Clgeg won't be remembered fondly by many but he at least forced Cameron etc to behave - without the LIbDems, the Tory party descended into a bit of a car crash!

2. A lot of people seem savvier about their votes - I noticed in the Scottish results yesterday that the third party vote was collapsing in a number of constituencies - e.g. Tories who'd rather back Labour in a two-horse-race with the SNP than waste their vote on the Tories and let the seat go to a pro-Indy candidate. THat's the kind of thing that's going to squeeze the "third" party. Now that we've all got access to voting patterns/ history, we don't want to "waste" our vote (or, if we do, we want to vote for a really alternative party). Look at how a lot of the 2017 increase in votes that Corbynites like to boast about happened at the same time as a big increase in Tory votes - the LibDem and UKIP votes were squeezed as the choice between the main two parties became a lot more binary - so more people voted for their "least worst" preference from the top two

3. There's also a lot more of the single issue campaigners these days - you don't have to sign up to a whole raft of policies, you just focus on the things that matter to you - whether that's Extinction Rebellion/ Amnesty International/ Stonewall/ Women's Equality/ Immigration, whatever... why spoil your purity by having to belong to a party with policies on things you don't care about? A few of the political people I've known have drifted away from being part of organised politics and the hassle of being part of discussions about things you don't care about - just pick and choose the single issue groups that you are about

But, at the same time, maybe the LibDems aren't far away from their natural position of around 10% - maybe it was just the Kennedy/Clegg years that were a positive "blip"?
 

Butts

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I think that's made a big difference - I think that the Greens have been hoovering up a lot of anti-establishment people (and it's hard to be an anti-establishment party when you've been in coalition Government - being Green means not having to deal with that baggage)

Three additional things I'd mention are:

1. I think that a lot of people voted LibDem (as I have in the past) partly because they liked the idea of some policies but without them being exposed to the harsh realities of compromise required to get them into Government. Five years as coalition partners meant swallowing a lot of pride and abandoning a lot of promises. Some of that was because they were only the junior partners (so of course were never going to get everything into law - just as the DUP got their fingers burned), some of that was because the LibDem policies had been cooked up in decades of opposition. There was no expectation of having to trade off one policy against another (e.g. one of the things that they did get was a referendum on proportional representation - maybe a savvier party more used to tough compromises might have enacted a higher price). Government is tough, and seeing your long established wishlist whittled down will have been disheartening to a lot of long term voters. That said, I think that the Coalition years look significantly better in hindsight than they did at the time - Clgeg won't be remembered fondly by many but he at least forced Cameron etc to behave - without the LIbDems, the Tory party descended into a bit of a car crash!

2. A lot of people seem savvier about their votes - I noticed in the Scottish results yesterday that the third party vote was collapsing in a number of constituencies - e.g. Tories who'd rather back Labour in a two-horse-race with the SNP than waste their vote on the Tories and let the seat go to a pro-Indy candidate. THat's the kind of thing that's going to squeeze the "third" party. Now that we've all got access to voting patterns/ history, we don't want to "waste" our vote (or, if we do, we want to vote for a really alternative party). Look at how a lot of the 2017 increase in votes that Corbynites like to boast about happened at the same time as a big increase in Tory votes - the LibDem and UKIP votes were squeezed as the choice between the main two parties became a lot more binary - so more people voted for their "least worst" preference from the top two

3. There's also a lot more of the single issue campaigners these days - you don't have to sign up to a whole raft of policies, you just focus on the things that matter to you - whether that's Extinction Rebellion/ Amnesty International/ Stonewall/ Women's Equality/ Immigration, whatever... why spoil your purity by having to belong to a party with policies on things you don't care about? A few of the political people I've known have drifted away from being part of organised politics and the hassle of being part of discussions about things you don't care about - just pick and choose the single issue groups that you are about

But, at the same time, maybe the LibDems aren't far away from their natural position of around 10% - maybe it was just the Kennedy/Clegg years that were a positive "blip"?

They'd kill for that in Scotland and Wales !!
 

317 forever

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Apparently the Liberal Democrats have now made 7 net gains in tally of Councillors. Not as many as their 700 in 2019 but it is still progress, although very modest progress.

England local elections 2021 - BBC News

Liberal Democrat​

  • Councils Total 7
  • Councils Change 1
  • Councillors Total 586
  • Councillors Change 7
 

DynamicSpirit

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Hello from Oxfordshire. If "going wrong" means "taking eight seats off the Tories and becoming the joint largest party" then long may it continue to go wrong...


I actually voted LibDem (in London, and after much agonising about who to vote for), and I'm happy to hear that the LibDems did so well in Oxfordshire. But I don't think picking up 8 seats in one particular authority changes the fact that the LibDems are in an electorally very bad state overall across the country. Their net gain of 7 councillors in England, and loss of 1 MSP in Scotland is essentially standing still. A statement along the lines of 'long may this continue' in response doesn't seem to me to represent the kind of ambition that I'd expect LibDem supporters to have! ;)
 

Butts

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I actually voted LibDem (in London, and after much agonising about who to vote for), and I'm happy to hear that the LibDems did so well in Oxfordshire. But I don't think picking up 8 seats in one particular authority changes the fact that the LibDems are in an electorally very bad state overall across the country. Their net gain of 7 councillors in England, and loss of 1 MSP in Scotland is essentially standing still. A statement along the lines of 'long may this continue' in response doesn't seem to me to represent the kind of ambition that I'd expect LibDem supporters to have! ;)

Don't forget Wales where they lost Brecon their one remaining seat in the Senedd and scraped one on the list vote leaving them on a grand total of one.

As I understand it they have no Westminster Representation either.

This seems like a delusional Liberal Democrat version of an "Oxfordcentric bourgeoisie.............."
 

317 forever

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I actually voted LibDem (in London, and after much agonising about who to vote for), and I'm happy to hear that the LibDems did so well in Oxfordshire. But I don't think picking up 8 seats in one particular authority changes the fact that the LibDems are in an electorally very bad state overall across the country. Their net gain of 7 councillors in England, and loss of 1 MSP in Scotland is essentially standing still. A statement along the lines of 'long may this continue' in response doesn't seem to me to represent the kind of ambition that I'd expect LibDem supporters to have! ;)
It could also easily be the Layla effect - as her seat is Oxford West & Abingdon. She may well have proved an excellent campaigner in her area. So, no net gains anywhere else. We can merely reflect on how much better the LibDems could have done had she become leader and in that sense represented the whole country, not just Oxfordshire.
 

RuralRambler

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The wrong decision was made over tuition fees but unlike Labour and Tories who both made commitments on tuition fees that were broken we were unable to shake off the fall out from it.

I think that's because there was a higher proportion of libdem voters (students, Uni lecturers, parents of teens, etc) who cared about tuition fees. It's likely a smaller proportion of lab/tory voters would be students/lecturers, so probably weren't personally affected by U turns. For other parties, tuition fees were just a minor issue they stood on, but for Clegg, he made it one of the biggest issues of his campaign so agreeing to the increases (not even abstaining) he alienated a lot of the voters he'd only just won.
 

Butts

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I think that's because there was a higher proportion of libdem voters (students, Uni lecturers, parents of teens, etc) who cared about tuition fees. It's likely a smaller proportion of lab/tory voters would be students/lecturers, so probably weren't personally affected by U turns. For other parties, tuition fees were just a minor issue they stood on, but for Clegg, he made it one of the biggest issues of his campaign so agreeing to the increases (not even abstaining) he alienated a lot of the voters he'd only just won.

How does that explain their lack of progress in Scotland where there are no Tuition Fees for domiciled Students attending University at home ?
 

Doctor Fegg

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I actually voted LibDem (in London, and after much agonising about who to vote for), and I'm happy to hear that the LibDems did so well in Oxfordshire. But I don't think picking up 8 seats in one particular authority changes the fact that the LibDems are in an electorally very bad state overall across the country.
Indeed it doesn't - though what do I care about Hartlepool, I don't live there - and as @317 forever says, the Layla effect is significant here. Would that she'd been elected as party leader instead of the hapless Davey.
 

WelshBluebird

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How does that explain their lack of progress in Scotland where there are no Tuition Fees for domiciled Students attending University at home ?
A lot of their downfall from the tuition fee stuff wasn't specifically because of the policy, it was because they very publicly had promised to vote against any increase and then basically threw it away instantly. Its the lack of trust that results in which has caused a lot of their issues since. Speaking as someone who voted lib dem in 2010, it wasn't the increase in fees itself that bothered me (after all, it wouldn't have affected me as I was already at uni so was locked in to the old fees), it was the fact that I ended up not being able to trust anything they said at all after that. A lot of the comments lib dem candidates received when campaigning for the 2015 election was basically "you are saying X now, but why on earth should I believe you". Now many will argue that is a stance you should take with any politician, and maybe that is a wise choice, but when deciding who to vote for, if you can't trust a word the candidate is saying then what is the point!

Also, again maybe this is just my own view, but for me them propping up the Tories did much more harm to their reputation in my eyes than any tuition fee vote did.
 

DynamicSpirit

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I think the problem with the Lib Dems is they don't know what 'Liberalism' is and don't know how to apply it practically to present day politics.

Put simply, the LibDems should be about equality without Labour's class politics. That should mean a high focus on education, public spending, economic rebalancing and devolution/constitutional change. However, they've boxed themselves, like Labour, in an awkward, unattractive corner by being staunchy internationalist and anti-nation state (they can kiss goodbye to any Northern England seats), being dogmatically anti-Brexit and not accepting to vote or at least advocating some kind of new UK-EU relationship and embracing 'woke' politics before more moderate progressivism - at least, that's what I have seen from members.

The LibDems should start by saying to the Tories and Labour that at least a third of you are probably Liberals. One Nation Tories are Liberals - mildly progressive, fisicaly responsible, patriotic but also internationalist. Whilst Labour moderates are much like the latter but perhaps more likely to advocate higher public spending. These two groups are not Corbynite or Johnsonian Red Wall purists, plus they're probably both remainers anyway.

The LibDems would then need to realise that most major socio-economic policies from 1945-2016 were Liberal in nature. The Beveridge Report for instance, Thatcherism - a Liberal rather than a Tory ideology (Thatcher even admitted she was more of a Gladstonian Liberal than a Tory), Blairism which arguably completed the neo-liberal Thatcherite project and lastly Cameron who was just a more 'small c' Conservative Blair. The Liberals have a large, ready-made ideological spectrum that if it accepts and capitalises on could drain away disenfranchised Labour/Tory moderates.

I believe they need a intellectual, passionate leader that can really aggressively sell the nation what it means to be a Liberal. Until then, they're just going to have to keep dreaming of a time when PR becomes the General Election voting system.

I think there's a lot of truth in this.

The time when the the LibDems (as the Liberal/SDP alliance) got the most popular support was during the 1980s - when they were consistently getting over 20% of the vote. Fewer seats then compared to the Blair years in large part because in those days the Tories were also popular and most LibDem targets tend to be Tory ones, but that was when the 'Liberal' vote was highest. And if my memory is correct, I believe what they were offering at the time was unashamedly centrist - making a virtue of not being ideological, and of openly saying that that picking the best ideas from both left and right was a good thing. I think today that would basically translate into being pro-market-economy, but with a much stronger ethical/green basis than you get from the Tories, while also being receptive to social justice issues. And I think today that would be a strong message, able to pick up both Labour and Tory moderates. The trouble is, as you say, the path the LibDems have gone down recently is much more left-wing, pushing a raft of 'trendy' ideas like reversing Brexit (that was yesterday's battle), a universal basic income (magic money tree) or enthusiastically jumping onto 'woke' causes. Not only do these kinds of things have very little to do with liberalism, but they are electorally problematic because it's chasing exactly the same voters that the Greens and Labour are chasing (often, more successfully) and will simply put off the moderate ex-Tory voters that the LibDems need.

For that reason, I disagree with those who wish Layla Moran had become leader. Yeah, Ed Davey doesn't come across as the most inspiring or passionate leader, but at least he's not trying to push the LibDems even further down the wrong road, which I think Layla Moran would have done.

I wonder if the problem originated in the Blair years - when Tony Blair moved Labour into centrist LibDem territory, and instead of standing their ground, the LibDems for some reason pivoted to the left of (New) Labour - and they've now been stuck with that legacy in terms of having a pretty left-wing membership? I don't know, I'm just guessing there, but it seems possible.
 
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Butts

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A lot of their downfall from the tuition fee stuff wasn't specifically because of the policy, it was because they very publicly had promised to vote against any increase and then basically threw it away instantly. Its the lack of trust that results in which has caused a lot of their issues since. Speaking as someone who voted lib dem in 2010, it wasn't the increase in fees itself that bothered me (after all, it wouldn't have affected me as I was already at uni so was locked in to the old fees), it was the fact that I ended up not being able to trust anything they said at all after that. A lot of the comments lib dem candidates received when campaigning for the 2015 election was basically "you are saying X now, but why on earth should I believe you". Now many will argue that is a stance you should take with any politician, and maybe that is a wise choice, but when deciding who to vote for, if you can't trust a word the candidate is saying then what is the point!

Also, again maybe this is just my own view, but for me them propping up the Tories did much more harm to their reputation in my eyes than any tuition fee vote did.

Surely their Voters should realise that if you go into Coalition you have to compromise. Was their promise relating to fees not related to the admittedly unlikely event that they themselves formed a Government ?

All Politicians tell porkies so it's hardly a unique trait to them.

Is the whole issue of Tuition Fees not a misnomer as hardly anyone will pay the whole lot back ?

Indeed it doesn't - though what do I care about Hartlepool, I don't live there - and as @317 forever says, the Layla effect is significant here. Would that she'd been elected as party leader instead of the hapless Davey.

You urgently need to send her to Wales then, if she's that good, to resuscitate the moribund excuse for a Welsh Liberal Party .
 

WelshBluebird

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Surely their Voters should realise that if you go into Coalition you have to compromise. Was their promise relating to fees not related to the admittedly unlikely event that they themselves formed a Government ?
Not at all.
It was, and I quote - "I pledge to vote against any increase in fees in the next parliament and to pressure the government to introduce a fairer alternative".
That doesn't sound like there's condition of them forming a government there, if anything it specifically assumes they wouldn't!
All Politicians tell porkies so it's hardly a unique trait to them.
Have politicians who end up in government so quick abandoned an election promise before (and I don't mean something buried in their literature, I mean a central policy they stood on)? I'm not so sure! There are smaller examples (Labour dropping rail nationalisation in 1997 is one that comes to mind) but nothing so big. It would have been like Boris getting elected in the 2019 election on the promise to get Brexit done and then suddenly reversing Brexit afterwards).
Is the whole issue of Tuition Fees not a misnomer as hardly anyone will pay the whole lot back ?
As I said, it wasn't really the policy itself but the way it was promised and then very quickly abandoned.

In terms of the policy itself, I suspect one for another thread if you want to go down that route, but lets just say I heavily suspect that something will have to change as it is likely less people will pay the whole lot back than what was budgeted for and so there will be a nice lovely hole in government finances that will require more stringent measures to be taken against people who have outstanding student loans (we've already seen the interest rates being increased by quite a bit, and some loans being sold off by the government). There's nothing in the agreements that say the government cannot unilaterally change the terms the loans were taken on either so retroactive changes to those terms could happen - although I'd hope any such change would be successfully challenged in court.
 

telstarbox

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Surely their Voters should realise that if you go into Coalition you have to compromise. Was their promise relating to fees not related to the admittedly unlikely event that they themselves formed a Government ?

All Politicians tell porkies so it's hardly a unique trait to them.

Is the whole issue of Tuition Fees not a misnomer as hardly anyone will pay the whole lot back ?



You urgently need to send her to Wales then, if she's that good, to resuscitate the moribund excuse for a Welsh Liberal Party .
There was a very likely chance that they would form part of the government as going into the election, neither Labour or the Tories were polling high enough to win a majority. This was well before the SNP hegemony as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2010_United_Kingdom_general_election#2010

And after the election they had talks with both parties, ending up with 5 Cabinet positions, so they could easily have insisted on the tuition fees promise as their dealbreaker for a coalition agreement. It would have been more effective than the AV referendum.
 
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