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About LinkBacksAnyone remember when we used to have a three (ish) party system? Haven’t heard (or at least had reported) a peep from the Lib Dems!
Anyone remember when we used to have a three (ish) party system? Haven’t heard (or at least had reported) a peep from the Lib Dems!
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They lost all credibility when they formed a coalition with the posh boys and quietly forgot all their promises.Originally Posted by peterb
Yes, I'm aware those promises were based on them actually winning office as a single party, but failing to fight for any of their pre-election pledges was a betrayal of epic proportions, and they have rightly paid the price.
I mean if ever there was a time to gain some real ground on Lab/Con, it has to be right now - May is incompetent, weak and generally lost at sea, whilst Corbyn can only manage an occasional snipe at what should be a target rich environment, because his party is a crumbling playground for anti-Semitism. Basically Labour has been screwed since they elected the wrong Milliband and the Tories have been up the creek since Cameron ran away from the mess he made.
Pretty much agree, but for the last line, with which I agree with blueball's amendment.I'm glad he's joined them and they have started to promote themselves...this could be our best way out of this mess
Best thing that could happen for the UK now is that the Tory & Labour brexiteers all defect and join up with this lot, a GE is called mid year and both the tories and labour pledge to remain in their manifesto, tories get back in power and this whole mess is put to bed.
Sadly I doubt that will happen (although I can dream!) and what is more likely is that whilst we'll see some defections, the "brexit party" will do just as badly as UKIP, the tories will keep leave in their manifesto whereas labour won't, and we'll end up with a labour government that either gives us a second referendum or chooses to remain.
As a remain voter that puts me in a real quandry - I fundamentally disagree with the vast majority of labour policy (notably their stance on nationialisation, tuition fees, & trade unions, amongst many, many, many others) and I am really not sure which option would do more damage to the UK - leaving the EU or Labour getting in to power with Corbyn as a leader.
I've come to the conclusion that we're probably all stuffed, and my best option is to move to Canada when (as is likely) my personal circumstances present the opportjunity in the next 12 months. I am so thoroughly embarassed and ashamed to be British right now
I'm still more than happy to be British (not that I have much choice) and I'm not embarrassed of ashamed of that .... just of our entire political class, who's behaviour on just abouf all sides has been nakedly self-serving.
I do wonder, though, about the results of the next General Election, partly because of turnout, and partly because Brexit emphatically doesn't follow party lines. It is, as some threads here have shown, an incredibly emotive subject and one on which many people have stronger feelings than party support.
Labour havd a problem. Not only does a good chunk of labour voters have a distinctly different Brexit view to Remainers like Starmer, but a very large chunk even of MPs don't support Corbyn, and it's clear public knowledge they don't.
The Tories have a problem, in that they're also badly split, not just by the ERG but also in that a very large chunk of their voters feel utterly betrayed by 'that woman' in No.10 and by the party hierarchy.
In both cases, for voters for whom the defining GenElec issue, right now, is not traditional party lines, but Brexit, there is a pretty decent chance that both will get their usual, expected (and, IMHO, taken for granted) voters will either decide to bote for a Brexit party, or perhaps more likely, not bother to vote at all.
I do have some good, and some bad, news for Corbyn supporters. I have already informed my (Brexit-supporting) local Tory MP that if this government either faff-up or sell-out Brexit, I will never vote Tory again as long as I live. That might be one more matchstick-sized contributiob towards a plank tgat puts Corbyn in power. Even if that's the consequence, I will never forgive the Tories if they sell out ..... and it's hard to see from here how they don't.
And I know quite a few people locally taking the same stance.
The bad news for Corbyn suppirters is that about half those people are former Labour supporters who might have tolerated Corbyn, but won't tolerste him and a Starmerite Brexit sellout.
If that tendency is in any way typical of those for which Brexit is key, nationally, it is going to put enormous strain on our 2.1-party FPTP system and short of significant reform, prove to be collossally underminjng of trust in and acquiescence to our entire political system.
After all, it's not exactly as if MPs were held in terribly high esteem before this fiasco started, and my bet is it's gone way done since, and as a result.
Spud1 (13-04-2019)
Agreed entirely.
So it's ironic that, on Brexit, they're the only one of the traditional 2.1 parties to have a coherent and consistent Brexit position. It's just like nobody much cares, given leadership nonentities of Farron/Cambell.
At least Champagne Charlie had some character.
As I recall the only manifesto promise they actually went back on was the student fees one. The rest they either managed (increased tax allowance, pupil premium, free primary school meals, same sex marriage, 15 hours free childcare,) or tried but couldn't get them through (electoral reform, changes to the House of Lords.)
Their problem is the one they went back on was the one everybody remembered and so they were punished.
lol excellentNigel Farage wants to register a huge victory in the European elections, but he can't even register his own website.
It didn't help that that was the one they so considerately provided reporters and media crews with several of their leaders holding printed pledges up for all to see.
They were setting thenselves up as hostages with that.
Trouble is, they relied on a tried and tested minority party technique of promising anything they like, knowing full well they'll never be in power to be held to account for it.
Then ..... oopsie .... 2010 election and coalition. They (and everybody else) totally failed to see that coming.
Updated that (by 6 years) for you!
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What's even more unfair is that they never actually went back on any commitment - they didn't win the election, and went in to a coalition - where they actually acted honourably and compromised - something neither of the two main parties at the moment seem to be capable of. It's such a shame that the general public as a whole took that as going back on promises/betraying their supporters. I personally saw it as a postive move - and not just because I am actualy in favour of tuition fees (we have far too many people going to university as it is based on our economy, and there are many better routes to high income generating jobs than getting a degree. Plus the fees are not taken on as debt, but thats a whole other discussion).
The coalition was the best government we have had in many years, full of compromise that led to more good policy than bad. Almost the exact opposite of what we have now, which is a huge shame.
on my post last night regards being ashamed to be british - the context of that is that I am still a passionate remainer and believer in the european project, and I see our countries general reaction to it and brexit as appauling...I can't help but feel we're giving up something that millions of other people would be (and are) desperate to have, and that we're sticking two fingers up to the rest of europe. A brexit supported won't feel that way of course (and that's fine! I respect the opposite opinion
The recent behaviour of our policitians on both sides of the debate just makes it worse and totally embarassing!
Corky34 (14-04-2019)
I didn't say he said I was racist but he labelled UKIP racist, and the direct inference of that transfers to anyone supporting them.
And is the exwctly the same cheap, nasty shot that HAS been directed at me, ma ny times, because I argued for something seen as anti-EU, and long, LONG before I ever voted UKIP. Which, for the record, has only ever been in EU elections and I am not and never have been either a member or in any other way associated with them, or any other right wing party, other than Conservative and that is limited to voting in elections.
UKIP posters weren't xenophobic towards eastern Europeans, and that poster feztured a PHOTO, not a made-up image, of the significant numbers of illegal migrants heading through Eastern Europe to Western Europe, most notably Germany, due to Merkel's open arms policy .... which, by the way, has been a major bone of contention with German voters and is a major factor in Merkel's most recent election kicking which is which Merkel lost the party leadership to AKK and is having to stand down in 2021.
The issue UKIP raised was never racist against Easter Europeans. What it was was anti-Freedom of movement. It was a policy objection. A objection to a core EU principle. However, due to our moronic government not implementing the Accession countries temporary limitations like almost all other EU countries did, we ended up not with the 50,000-75,000 immigrants that the government predicted, but the 750,000 we got, over that period ..... most of whom were Eastern European because, first, they dominated that bock of EU accession countries and, second, the relative economic conditions made it a vety tempting proposition.
And as a result, for many years in succession, Eastern Europe dominated the migration into the UK from EU countries.
So .... if you're going go tfy to make a point about excessive numbers using the pervectly legal freedom of movement rules to come here, which countries do you cite? Those not coming in large numbers, or those topping the list?
Obviously, the latter, no matter who it was. It just happened to be Eastern Europe. And oc those numbers, of course, a very small but nasty proportion happened to be from crime gangs from those countries. The problem there, again, is that with EU freedom of movement, it is far harder to keep criminals out that would otherwise be the case, were there no presumption of freedom of movement.
Back to posters ..... do you deny that the EU has a manor issue protecting it's external borders? I presume not. Sure, it's eased off now, in no small part due to several easrern European EU countries defying Brussels quite openly and closing their borders.
The problem there is two-fold. First, the EU, by it's own Schengen rules, is supposed to have secure external borders, in order to remove internal borders and facilitiate freedom of movement, both of goods and people.
But they didn't.
Had Brussels spent a fraction of the time worrying about securing their external borders with southern neighbours, like the Med routes from north Africa, that they have about worrying about the post-Brexit border between NI and the RofI, we wouldn't have had those massive marching centipedes of illegal migrants and there'd have been nothing to photograph for that UKIP poster.
But again, just to stress it, that photo was about the illegal migrant problem, not Eastern European migrants who were legally coming here.
The common theme, however, should be obvious :-
1) The volume, and NOT the race or country of origin, of migrants using FoM rules after their accession .... i.e. an objection to the nature of and effects from EU policy, not the migrants
2) EU external borders and their huge-scale breach, and then noth Brussels but especially Merkel's knee-jerk reaction, thereby creating an ongoing risk (and not much more than risk) for us when, due to that policy's abject failure, the illegal migrant/asylum-seeker risis hit. That is, again, an EU policy issue.
And as you may have noticed, UKIP (old version, in those days) was an anti-EU party and is more than entitled to try to make the point, using factual representations, i.e. posters of what was actually happening.
There was nothing racist about it. But it does make for an easy, nasty and cheap smear, to say "Ooooh, look foreigners, it must be racist."
No. It's not anout who or where from. It's about how many, and over what time period.
If the huge numbers had been Dutch, or Danes, that would have been the example used. If there hadn't been huge numbers, it wouldn't have been much of an issue in the first place. But thd large volume was comjng from where it was coming from, and if the objection is numbers of net EU migration per year, and you cite numbers, you can't ignore where they come from. It's simply a fact.
And as for Labour promptly booting out people complained about for anti-semiticism, have you heard the views of leading jewish Labour MP's? The complaints of inaction, investigations blocked, nothing happening for months, even years?
Fixed that for you
"And as for Tories promptly booting out people complained about for Islamophobia, have you heard the views of leading Tory MP's? The complaints of inaction, investigations blocked, nothing happening for months, even years?"
outwar6010 (16-04-2019)
I wouldn't be able to tell you their current leader.
The third party is now people in disbelief, with no allegiance to any party, a silent majority? A very bad place to be. Any decision made by any party starts to be for a minority.
I only voted on the EU referendum. I've yet to see any party deserving of my vote for a general or local election.
Not exactly, if we're talking about the now infamous breaking point poster that was an photo taken in 2015 of Syria refugees being escorted along the Slovenian border.
Obviously the subject of who's an illegal migrant and who's a refuge is debatable but to say they were heading to Germany seems a bit presumptuous as (afaik) we don't know where they ended up, and of course it's not like the UK's hand were clean when it came/comes to Syria.
It seems were willing to get involved in other countries affairs but when things go wrong we tend to wash our hands of the whole thing.
Thanks for the correction, but I meant what I said, which was 2010 election, not the referendum.
The post was about LibDems making promises and breaking them, because they didn't expect to be on power to be able to implement them.
They got caught out in the 2010 election, when they ended up in coalition with Cameron and, what happened? In order to sesl the coalition deal, both Cameron and Clagg had to compromise. Neither got everything they wanted.
The charitable view of that, and it's how the LibDems played it, is "we're in coalition, we reigned back the Tories but couldn't get everything, we are after all by far the smaller party".
But, true though that is, there were two msjor problems :-
1) The perception factor. They'd stood there waving those silly Tuition Fee guarantee pledgez about, as a publicity stunt, and never mind the realities of coalition (*) it looked bad. Really bad. It was a PR own goal on the scale of Miliband's Ed Stone or Cameron's Huskies ..... or hug-a-hoodie, or eating bananas, or not knowing the price of bread and milk. Or, indeed, £350m on the side of a bus.
Moral of that? Get decent PR people who can adequately predict what press/media will do to you with you latest genius stunt.
2) A LOTA of people, mainly students, voted LD in large part because of that pledge, and quite rightly felt utterly betrayed by having it bargained away in what might, charitably speaking, have been "in the natoonsl interest" but from a more cynical view (wot? Me? Nah) was seen as selling out for self-serving reasons.
Clegg and the LDs may well have felt that sacrificing tuition fees was 'in the national interest" to get "stable government" but they paid the price at the 2015 election, for what was perceived, rightly or wrongly, as selling out at the 2010 election.
Who knows what would have happened if they'd stuck to that tuition fee pledge? Maybe the Tories would have conceded it and their rep wouldn't have taken that hit. Maybe we'd have had another GenElec and .... whatever? Brown won? Camefon won outright? Who knows. But if so, several scenarios point at Cameron never promising an EU in/out referendum.
(*) One of the major problems with PR is that it tends to lead to coalitions and the danger of that is that deals are then struck behind closed doors without us, the voters, being involved?
I wonder how many 2010 LD voters would still have voted LD had they known tuition fee pledges would be a coaliton deal casualty? My bet is quite a few would not, if for them that issue was the totemic one that led them to vote LD.
2010 might, then, have seen Brown win?
But who knows. What we do know is that reneging on that pledge, and coalitionn, were major factors in the LD's 2015 fall ftom electoral grace.
I agree with the rest of your post but not sure if the above is true.
Even a single party government with a healthy FPTP majority doesn't implement all of its manifesto (and even the bits it does might look very different to what was sold at election time,) and cabinet is the very definition of deals being struck behind closed doors, as voters in a representitive system we're only involved at elections and referenda either way.
If anything it may be less likely for deals to be kept private as one parties would be very keen to leak anything that showed another party looking unreasonable.
Similar position, I tend to find myself leaning toward Tory, especially on economic policies (**).I'm glad he's joined them and they have started to promote themselves...this could be our best way out of this mess
Best thing that could happen for the UK now is that the Tory & Labour brexiteers all defect and join up with this lot, a GE is called mid year and both the tories and labour pledge to remain in their manifesto, tories get back in power and this whole mess is put to bed.
Sadly I doubt that will happen (although I can dream!) and what is more likely is that whilst we'll see some defections, the "brexit party" will do just as badly as UKIP, the tories will keep leave in their manifesto whereas labour won't, and we'll end up with a labour government that either gives us a second referendum or chooses to remain.
As a remain voter that puts me in a real quandry - I fundamentally disagree with the vast majority of labour policy (notably their stance on nationialisation, tuition fees, & trade unions, amongst many, many, many others) and I am really not sure which option would do more damage to the UK - leaving the EU or Labour getting in to power with Corbyn as a leader.
I've come to the conclusion that we're probably all stuffed, and my best option is to move to Canada when (as is likely) my personal circumstances present the opportjunity in the next 12 months. I am so thoroughly embarassed and ashamed to be British right now
If I was to vote in another GE (*), it would be mostly based on Brexit policies (**).
More specifically, I am pro 2nd referendum. But the thing is, I don't think that Corbyn is that keen on it. And while I have the impression that most Labour MP are in favour, it is far from unanimous.
As for being embarrassed or ashamed.. I am not really. I mean, in 2016, we were a very, very large minority.. and it doesn't take long for people around me (here overseas), to guess that I am part of that very large minority. I don't need to spell it out where I stand on brexit, people can usually guess where I am likely to stand based on my background (it is pretty international). But said background is also sufficiently unusual that I probably have to accept that my views may not necessarily be in line with the majority. But no, personally, I can't feel ashamed for something that is out of my hand. I don't think that it is in our interest for the government to embarrass itself in front of the international community, but it's well out of my hand.
(*) In practice, I am already out of the UK, so it is only appropriate that I stay out of any elections (like the last GE) and just watch the drama unfold.. as I am doing now. Yeah the outcome of all this may affect whether I choose to one day move back in the UK, but it's a big world out there (which is why I would rather us being part of an Union than out), and while Brexit will create some barriers for me if I wanted to move to an EU country, I can probably figure something out if I want to, and there is also the entire rest of the world.
(**) A possibly interesting point is that while there is much talk about the economy consequence of no-deal, the one thing I do agree with some brexiters on, is that it's not just about the economy. Yet I am pro-remains because of those non-economic reasons.. which are just added reasons for me to be pro-remain.
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