What are grass roots Liberal Democrats thinking?
Having spent some time talking to other members and seeing what’s being said online, the general view seems to be:
a) Disappointment at the election result, with the variation between different similar seats and campaigns leading to lots of questions
b) Despite the disappointment, people are tired rather than angry; there’s almost no sign of any recriminations
c) Understandable anxiety about what comes next – with an acceptance that whatever comes next won’t be perfect (we didn’t win the election, so of course we won’t get everything we want) but with very strong views that real movement on electoral reform is essential. Even activists and members who haven’t lived through previous promises of reviews or even votes in Parliament on different aspects of electoral reform (cf Jenkins Commission under Blair or European PR vote under Callaghan) overwhelmingly view electoral reform as vital and a promise to think about it as not enough.
Agree, agree, agree. No recriminations as our vote share went up by 1%! The campaign couldn’t have been done better… the only issue was the terror tactics used by the Tories and Labour. Thankfully with electoral reform those tactics will be rendered useless.
It was pretty disappointing night, but this time first-past-the-post has thrown us more practical power than we’ve ever had, despite getting a few less seats than last time.
Must admit to feeling a bit squeamish about a Lib-Con pact, but I don’t think Lib-Lab is plausible from an electoral maths point of view.
Mark, You should use all your contacts to make sure that this e-mail address for comments to the FE and Parliamentary Party balancedparliament@libdemvoice.org
I thought we campaigned as well as we could. I’d like some examination of Cleggmania. What was it? A personal vote only? Did our immigration and defence policies turn voters off in the second debate?
I don’t like the idea of propping up the Tories but we might be able to get electoral reform out of it. Hey, ho. Business as usual…
John: given that email address is one I got set-up and came from a post that I wrote, I’m aware of it 🙂
I think we have to go with whoever will give us fair votes; and rudeness or Nick’s personal preferences should have absolutely nothing to do with it.
Suspect there will be an awful lot more pressure on Clegg behind the scenes than is being reported.
Let’s face it, we’ve had an easy ride since ’92 as the beneficiary of anti-Tory tactical voting and the easy “protest” vote in elections which didn’t matter. If Clegg had not had the boost of the debates, we would have been horribly squeezed and we would probably have lost 1m votes and dropped to not more than 30 seats. I cannot for the life of me see why Cameron agreed to include us.
As a party, we need to decide whether we are lefty liberals or righty liberals. If you’re a rightly liberal, go join the Tories who at least have some credibility on this front with their civil liberty and empowerment agenda. If you’re a lefty liberal, then wait and see if one of the Millibands gets the Labour leadership and go join them to marginalise the Balls/Whelan faction.
If Balls wins the Labour leadership, we might be able to peel off Blairite Labour MPs and recreate the SDP/Alliance type platform we had in ’87. That could make us the opposition after the next election with a marginlaised rump of hard-left socialists being Labour’s only survivors. If not, we might as well stick as we are and accept that the Tories will win big in 18-36 months time and we will never be a meaningful electoral force again.
Re Dave Bridger
I can’t believe what you are saying that we should break up the party and form with either Labour or the Torres. This is what the Lib dems have campaigned for and end to the old two party system where power is swapped between red and blue all the time.
If we were to get A.V out of this then our number of M.Ps would increase greatly for the reason that Labour voters would pick us as there second option in Lib Con constituencies and the torrys would see us as a better option than Labour.
You seem to forget that the Lib Dems were the one party to oppose the illegal war in Iraq which was supported by both the torrys and the Labour party. I seem to remember that David Milliband played a big role in that war.
Over all I think we have got the best possible deal that we could from the torrys we have achieved a referendum on A.V despite the torrys being deeply opposed to it. We have also achieved reform of the house of Lords and fairer taxes for the poor. We have also ended Labours environmental suicide project of the 3rd run way at heathrow and managed to implement our plan of taxing airlines per plane rather than per customer. Meanwhile we have force the torrys to drop there inheritance tax break for millionaires. We have also agreed on a plan to reverse Labours erosion of Civil Liberties.
As I understand the Lib Con option was the only real option not just because of the mathematics of the situation but also because of Labours apparent lack of will to negotiate apparently they refused to scrap the remainder of the monstrosity that is there I.D cards.