Lib Dem party's roots abandoned by their leaders

[David Johnson]

Hi,
"The Lib Dem membership may soon realise that their party is being led by the centre-right."

Bloody hell, Johnson, still banging on about your opinion of the Lib Dems are you?

Well, actually that is the statement of a senior Lib Dem member, a former DIrector of Policy for the party, Richard Grayson who wrote part of the Lib Dems 2010 manifesto.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... rship-cuts

Talking about yesterday's budget cuts he says
"It is far from clear that all these choices have to be made now and in the way the government has made them"

He trashes Nick Clegg's argument that the Lib Dem leadership changed their view as to how quickly the cuts should be carried out based on a conversation with the Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King.

"Nick Clegg has been quoted as saying that the situation Greece and a conversation with Mervyn King persuaded him. However, the conversation with King was "a day or two after the government was formed" and by that point the coalition had already reached preliminary agreement on cuts."

He shreds the public persona of Nick Clegg in the election campaign that the leadership were in favour of cuts that did not potentially damage the recovery similar to the Labour position.

Grayson states quoting from the Lib Dem manifesto
""If spending is cut too soon, it would undermine the much-needed recovery and cost jobs." The public can be forgiven for having believed that the manifesto was the party's position.

He goes on
"Moreover, it has been suggested that Danny Alexander advocated early cuts in talks with both Labour and the Conservatives. If that is true, it should surprise nobody who took part in debate on public spending at the 2008 Liberal Democrat conference....The Liberal Democrat leadership believed in "savage cuts" long before they entered government."

In short, Grayson's argument, unlike some on this forum, mentioning no names, suggests that the Lib Dems did not form a coalition with the Labour party even though their manifestos had much in common, because the Lib Dem leadership, unlike their manifesto, is centre-right and were much more natural bedfellows of the Tories.

But hey, some of us knew this anyway, didn't we?

Cheers
D

[number 6]

Dead right David,i personally always saw lib dems(with a few exception..simon hughes,charles kennedy) as tory lite

[crofter]

I am pretty sure if they had to get in bed with Labour then they could easily have been Labour Lite ... kind of get the impression that they are really the rentamob party and I wonder if they see this as their big chance to either fuck it up big style or become a serious 3rd party in the long term.

[David Johnson]

I thought Simon Hughes was okay until I saw an interview of him with Andrew Neil where he defends the Osborne/Alexander budget as fair.

Fair it ain't. Not just my words but those of the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies analysis.

They have shown how the Lib Dem Cons have fiddled the figures. The only way they could show that the better off were the losers is by including reformes announced by the previous Labour government. In addition the IFS estimates that the squeeze on the poorer families will increase in the second half of the parliament as the welfare cuts kicked in.
Further cuts affecting the poor will result from the 25% hit on just about all public service departments. The poor tend to depend more on public services..

And today it was announced that the Lib Dem Cons are likely to tak a years pension off anyone 59 or younger, a measure which obviously impacts on the less well off much more than the rich.

Fair, my arse!

Cheers
D

[David Johnson]

"I wonder if they see this as their big chance to either fuck it up big style or become a serious 3rd party in the long term."

Judging from this interview between John Humphreys and Cleggie on the Today program, the fuck it up big style option looks the likelier. From Cleggmania to bumbling half-wit!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/ne ... 757712.stm

CHeers
D

[max_tranmere]

Do you remember when they used to say that the all of the Liberal MP's could fit in the back of a London taxi? The party, now the Liberal Democrats, have a lot more MP's than that now obviously and the main reason for their expansion in recent times is because a lot of Tory voters, who wouldn't have been seen dead voting Labour, defected to the Lib Dems during the 1980s and 90s as they got more and more fed up with the Tories. Many of the people who have been voting for the Lib Dems never really knew what they stood for, and still dont, but were certain they weren't Socialists. So much of their rise has been because of the descent in the support levels of the Tories over the last 25 years, more than it has been because of anything about the Lib Dems specifically.

[David Johnson]

Max,
I agree with that. Particularly in this century, as some Tory voters began to think that the likes of Ian Duncan Smith and Michael Howard were lost causes they looked around for alternatives. They couldn't vote for Labour so they ended up voting for the Lib Dems.

CHeers
D

[bristolian]

Good post. You only have to look at LD top dogs to see where the political instincts really lie:

David Laws- ex city boy; massive personal fortune by age 28
Nick Clegg- Westminster School, son of diplomat, parents mega rich, house in France etc
Chris Huhne- 7 houses, massive personal fortune



how can thsi party EVER be thought of as progressive???

These are TORIES!!!! Wake up!

[alicia_fan_uk]

You could make similar allegations against certain of the leading lights in the Labour Party, too. Does that prove they are Tories?

Can someone tell me who I can vote for in the next elections who won't either be Tories (Lab, Libs, Cons it seems), racists (BNP), paranoid fringe-nutters/racists-light (UKIP) or otherwise too small in the wider context to make much of an impact given current voting systems etc (pretty much everyone else)?

Sorry for the pessimism; I'm not normally so negative.

[Sam Slater]

Prepare yourself for 2 months-worth of questions, jibes and provocations after that, alicia_fan_uk!