Liberal Democrat MP resigns party whip in the House of Commons
Following news of his plan to vote for Theresa May’s Brexit deal, Lib Dem MP Stephen Lloyd has decided to resign the party’s whip in the House of Commons. He is remaining a member of the party.
Here are his exchange of letters with the party’s Chief Whip, Alistair Carmichael.
the error of making pre-election promises.. again. Perhaps we will learn one day.?
actually, perhaps it would be a good idea to scrap the whipping system all together, give MPs a secret voting system so that they can vote with their conscience on all matters, and not be told what to do by party leaders, party funders and lobbyists.. after all ‘they work for us’ don’t they.?
How would you feel at election time Peter if you couldn’t see how your local MP had voted on different issues, Peter?
On what platform did Stephen Lloyd stand in 2017? He knew where the Party stood and the referendum had happened.
As for Peter’s suggestion – secrecy in Parliament used to be the norm and it went along with systemic corruption. No whipping has been tried by some Liberal Democrat local council groups and where it’s led, as one would expect, to our councillors voting all over the place, we’ve been justifiably punished. Most people vote for a party. It’s reasonable to expect that the party’s MPs or councillors will vote broadly in line with their manifesto on which they were elected. There is always room for genuine votes of conscience or dissident votes on ward/constituency matters.
MPs should vote according to their consciences: ie, from their hearts rather than their heads. As an MP, Stephen Lloyd confesses he voted Remain and then decided to ditch his principled-conscience stance in order to save his own neck, doubtless fearing he would lose his seat. He’s lost the respect of this lifelong war-baby Liberal, who holds dear our party’s cherished commitment to multifaceted individualism and belief in a united peace-loving Europe after a thousand years of racist bloodshed that has ruined and scarred millions of lives, including mine.