Articles with the Tag libdems

Yet Clegg does speak Dutch…

UK elections, UK politics
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Daniel Davies analyses the LibDem’s failings:

This is, to a large extent, why the vote share has collapsed. The median LibDem voter between about 2002 and 2010 was quite likely someone who believed (sensibly, a respectable case could certainly be made for this) that they were to the Left of Labour. Their signature policy was a hypothecated income tax increase for education, along with did-they-or-didn’t-they opposition to the Iraq War. Now, their electoral support consists of electoral reform trainspotters, about a dozen people who read the Orange Book and daydream about being Gerhard Schroeder, plus that part of the West Country that doesn’t get regular newspapers and believes that it is still voting for Gladstone. They have lost precisely that set of voters who they have spent the last year more or less intentionally losing.

Had Clegg made use of his Dutch heritage other than flattering Dutch newsmedia by talking to them in their own language, he could’ve boned up on the example of D66, like the LibDems a centrist party in some aspects to the left of the (Dutch) Labour Party. in the Dutch system coalition governments are of course the standard rather than the exception and D66 has had long experience with the opportunities and perils they offer.

D66 always has troubles in government because while usually the centre of a coalition, it’s also the smallest party, caught between two bigger ones with more opportunities to let their own voice be heard. So you’d have the CDA or VVD on the right fighting their corner, the PvdA on the left doing the same and D66 being crushed in the middle. As a rule of thumb, government participation leads to losing the next election. D66 knows this and therefore is careful to get something back for it; when they don’t and let the desire to be in government overrule their principles, they get punished even harder for it. Luckily for them the Dutch voter is more forgiving than the British and they have usually been able to quickly rebuild their following once back in opposition. Even so the party has been careful in getting concrete results in return for their support.

Something the LibDems forgot. If the best you can do is to get a referendum on a voting system you don’t actually want yourself, you haven’t really bargained all that well. Had I been Nick Clegg my two set in stone demands would’ve been getting the ministery of finance and getting a vote in parliament for proportional representation. It was the Tories who needed the LibDems, not the other way around. Instead Clegg traded everything for a chance to feel important and is now paying the price. Had he paid attention to Holland, he would’ve known better.

LibDem Fail

UK politics
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To start this post off, let’s look at the valiant effort one Andrew Hickey made a few weeks before last Thursday’s UK local elections/AV referendum, to defend the LibDem’s record in government by listing all the things it has done right. I won’t fisk it line by line, but if you look at it it’s all either penny ante stuff, or things the LibDems supposedly stopped their Tory partners from doing, but of course had the Liberals not enabled them in the first place to form a government, these plans couldn’t have been made in the first place…

It doesn’t weight up to the simple fact that the LibDems made possible the government that is busy slashing the welfare state through ideologically driven budget cuts, justified by the supposed need to get rid of an “unsupportedable” government debt to restore confidence in the economy. Child benefit frozen, housing benefits capped much lower, council housing rights changed from life to fixed terms, the chucking out of disabled and chronically ill people off the disability living allowance, freezing of public sector workings and cutting public sector jobs, cuts in pensions — all far outweight the supposed benefits the LibDems brought to the coalition government.

And now…

One of the entries on Hickey’s list is “Apart from protecting the NHS from Andrew Lansley” — not quite:

An investigation by The Sunday Telegraph has uncovered widespread cuts planned across the NHS, many of which have already been agreed by senior health service officials. They include:

* Restrictions on some of the most basic and common operations, including hip and knee replacements, cataract surgery and orthodontic procedures.

* Plans to cut hundreds of thousands of pounds from budgets for the terminally ill, with dying cancer patients to be told to manage their own symptoms if their condition worsens at evenings or weekends.
* The closure of nursing homes for the elderly.

* A reduction in acute hospital beds, including those for the mentally ill, with targets to discourage GPs from sending patients to hospitals and reduce the number of people using accident and emergency departments.

* Tighter rationing of NHS funding for IVF treatment, and for surgery for obesity.

* Thousands of job losses at NHS hospitals, including 500 staff to go at a trust where cancer patients recently suffered delays in diagnosis and treatment because of staff shortages.

* Cost-cutting programmes in paediatric and maternity services, care of the elderly and services that provide respite breaks to long-term carers.

The Sunday Telegraph found the details of hundreds of cuts buried in obscure appendices to lengthy policy and strategy documents published by trusts. In most cases, local communities appear to be unaware of the plans.

The Tories are still targeting the pillars of the welfare state and the LibDems enabled them to do so. Whether, as Lenny argues this is out of ideological concerns or, as I suspect, is just because the people at the top just like being in government is irrelevant. That’s why the LibDems got hammered in the local elections last Thursday, that’s why the AV vote went so disastrously wrong for the Yes camp, that’s even why the SNP won big in Scotland as the LibDem vote there switched over. Tories are Tories and nobody expected better of them, but people trusted the LibDems — no longer.

Wahahaha

Tories, UK politics
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Mark Thomas via Twitter:

Cable expected to get business/ banking role in cabinet, how wonderfully Etonian that Osbourne should bring in a private tutor.

BBC Political Editors – Making It Up As They Go Along

Dutch politics, Gordon Brown, Manufacturing consent, Media, Tories, UK politics
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UPDATE: Brown is currently announcing he’s going to see the Queen to resign and to recommend that she ask the leader of the opposition, ie Cameron, to form a government. But still, my post makes some valid points, not least that Nick Robinson should be sacked.

It ain’t over till the Queen lady sings…

The BBC are now performing a complete volte face and promoting a Lib Dem/Conservative coalition to the skies.

This is because, according to their ‘sources’, namely Charles ‘safety elephant’ Clarke, greedy backbench philanderer David Blunkett, that walking piece of unpleasantry John Reid and Bambi-eyed Andy Burnham (who must’ve been inhaling too much of his Maybelline mascara), that any Lib/Lab pact is dead.

The politicoliterati are still trying to turn this negotiating period into a two party adversarial contest (I blame Nick Robinson) – but that’s not what forming a coalition is about.

Take the Dutch model:

In the UK a party’s manifesto is its manifesto for government. In the Netherlands manifestoes exist to be melted during post-election negotiations, and fused together.

The process takes time. To do it in a week would be completely impossible in Holland. It cannot be done in days – or rather it can, but then Dutch people would strongly suspect that the job had not been done properly, and that the deal had not been well thought-out.

It’s understandable that the British newspapers are eager for a resolution, but it’s not correct that the UK is without leadership.

There is a caretaker government. The chancellor of the exchequer can continue to take part in discussions of the global economic crisis. Day-to-day decisions will continue to be made.

It’s absolutely normal, from a Dutch perspective, for parties to drive a hard bargain to get as many of their policies as possible into the programme of the new coalition government.

Dutch coalitions usually last for years… though one in 2002 fell after 87 days.

What is less normal is to have a party, like the Liberal Democrats in this case, in a position of so much power that it can make the difference between stable government and chaos. That is because, in the Dutch political system, there are always several coalition possibilities.

There is also less likelihood of a party holding simultaneous negotiations with the two biggest parties – so less scope for allegations of double-crossing.

This whole mess is a ridiculous media-driven one and it’s been talked up by the likes of Nick Robinson in order to fit his own preferred preconceived narrative.

This isn’t democracy, it’s government by media and the rumour mill, and in no way does it reflect the will of the voters.

If this latest rumour turns out to be true, the LibDems will, unsurprisingly, implode in acrimony and worst of all we’ll have a Tory government. The only upside is there’ll be another election along soon when it all falls apart as it’s bound to.

The downside is it’ll again be run under FPTP, and once again the voters will be robbed.

Gordo To Go

Gordon Brown, UK elections, UK politics, Video
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The price for Clegg’s cooperation; the voluntary dethronement of Gordon Brown.

Dethroned

Gordon Brown says he is to step down and that a new leadership election is to be called by the Labour party.

5.06pm: Here are the main points.

• Gordon Brown is going to resign. He wants to stand down as Labour leader before the next Labour conference in the autumn. But he intends to remain as prime minister until then (if he can).

• Nick Clegg has formally opened talks with Labour. Brown said that Clegg rang him recently (presumably after the Lib Dem meeting) to say he would like to have formal talks with a Labour team.

• Brown is proposing a “progressive” government, comprising Labour, the Lib Dems, and presumably the SNP, Plaid Cymru, the SDLP and the Alliance. Electoral reform would be a priority.

5.04pm: Brown says he will “facilitate” the discussions with the Lib Dems.

5.03pm: Brown says he has “no desire” to stay in his position longer than is needed. He would be willing to stay in office until the a new government is formed. But the election was a judgment on him. He is going to ask Labour to organise a leadership election, so that a new leader can be in place by the time of the conference. He will play no part in that contest.

5.02pm: He says he has had conversations with people like the head of the IMF about the eurozone crisis.

So we’ll have yet another unelected PM. Cheers then, Cleggy.

It had better not be a Milliband. (My money’s on Alan Johnson, but you knew that.)

Mind you the whole thing makes Cameron look like the over-confident, entitled tosser he is, and that can’t be a bad thing.