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Posts Tagged ‘Lib Dems’

We should attack the Lib Dems not cave in to them

10/01/2013, 02:50:00 PM

by Pete Bowyer

With David Clark et al’s letter to the Guardian today, Labour’s defeatist tendency is once again on the march, prematurely calling for a Lib-Lab coalition following the 2015 general election.

After a year in which the Lib Dems fortunes have sunk to an all time low, and Labour has established a clear, if soft, lead in the polls, it is perverse that we should be preparing the ground now for a future coalition with a toxic political party. Just ask the Tories!

Those of us who have long confronted the Lib Dems on the ground in local politics, have become weary of the suggestion that they are a truly progressive force in British politics. Here in Lambeth, their short-lived, single term coalition with the Tories saw council tax rise by almost 40%, social housing conditions deteriorate and severe cuts across the board in local services.

Ironically, many of the signatories to the letters are fully signed up members to “the 2015 Election is already in the bag” brigade, which makes you wonder how confident they are in their own predictions. Those of us who are not quite so complacent, believe it is incumbent on all party members to campaign for a majority Labour government, rather than throwing our opponents a political lifeline.

If, in the event, we fail to achieve one, the parliamentary arithmetic will dictate next steps. The instincts of most Labour party members would be to proceed with a minority government initially, and call an early second election to establish a clear mandate as soon as the opportunity arose, a strategy which David Cameron was extremely foolish not to follow in 2010.

In the meantime, we should continue to attack the Lib Dems, not cave in to them.

Pete Bowyer is a councillor in Lambeth

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The Lib Dems are flocking to Labour, but are we losing support too?

30/11/2012, 02:42:58 PM

by Kevin Meagher

So as we predicted earlier this week, Labour held Rotherham last night. And, on the face of it, in impressive style.

Labour’s Sarah Champion lived up to her name winning 46 per cent of the vote, 1.7 per cent up on 2010. UKIP were next on 21.8 per cent, with the BNP in third place.

Against the triple whammy of a horrible child grooming scandal in the town, the case of the foster parents who had three children removed from their care by the local council for being UKIP members and the circumstances of Denis MacShane’s resignation, it was not a bad night, all in all, for Labour.

The Lib Dems crashed to eighth place, repeating their dismal performance in the recent police commissioner elections in South Yorkshire when they managed fifth place. Out of five.

They could only muster 451 votes last night, on a 13.9 per cent swing away from their 2010 result when 5,994 people voted for them. Not enough support, then, to win a local council by-election in the town.

So where are these ex-Lib Dems going?

If they are coming straight over to Labour, which seems perfectly plausible given what we know about voting patterns between the two parties, then Labour’s result would have been even more impressive.

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Uncovered: a secret memo to George Osborne

22/11/2012, 07:00:57 AM

by Peter Watt

I can’t tell you how this came into my possession but the following memo was found on a photocopier in Westminster yesterday. The send field was hidden.*

MEMO

To: Rt Hon George George Osborne

Date: 20/11/2012

STRICTLY PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL

Turning around our current polling situation

George, as you know the Labour party think that they have the next election in the bag. They think that the public have pretty much decided that the government is a busted flush. They think that what has undoubtedly been a pretty appalling year for us has sealed our fate. Privately they accept that Miliband has a way to go before he’s seen as a prime minister but think that our self-inflicted wounds (if we are honest, our incompetence and successive blunders) will mean that he is given an easy ride through to the election. And that ultimately our unpopularity will overcome his shortcomings in the minds of voters. But as I have said to you, I actually think that not only are they wrong, their confidence in the face of their substantial poll leads will prove to be their undoing.

In essence I think that that whilst the Labour party undoubtedly has a lead at this stage, its position is exaggerated by the positions of the Lib Dems and UKIP. It is virtually certain that the Lib Dems will rise in the polls before the election and in all likelihood will poll in the high teens on election day. Equally, whilst Farage and co might do well through to the Euros they will fall away as we near the election. If both of these are correct then the true polling position is considerably closer. In other words the Labour lead can be overcome. Of course, that does not mean that we do not need to regroup and fast.

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The Lib Dems are down, but they’re not out

24/09/2012, 07:00:48 AM

by Kevin Meagher

As the Lib Dems try to put their best foot forward during their annual conference next week they grapple with two pretty fixed opinions about them nowadays.

The first is, of course, that they are a dead duck electorally. An analysis of 28 opinion polls taken last month from the venerable UK Polling Report website shows an average level of support of just 9.5%. In comparison 10 opinion polls taken in August 2007 (again, two years into the 2005 parliament) shows a figure of 15.6%.

A biggish 6-point gap then, hence the commentary of the Lib Dems’ perpetual, irredeemable decline. But the same analysis of just ICM polls gives pause for thought. As Mike Smithson from UK Polling Report explains: “ICM…make an educated guess as to how the don’t knows would vote, assuming that 50% of them will vote for the party they voted for in 2010.

This normally gives the Liberal Democrats a significant boost.” Between June and August 2007 the Lib Dems averaged 18.3% in ICM’s polls. June to August this year shows them averaging 14.3%. Now take out the usual margin of error of plus/minus 3% and that leaves a potential 1% gap from where they were at the same stage in the last parliament. (more…)

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Flawed bill, floored coalition

11/07/2012, 11:03:15 AM

by Phil Hunt

Lords reform faces a hugely uncertain future with the failure of the Coalition government to even put its timetable motion to the vote in the House of Commons last night. The humiliating climb down was a sight to behold. As the Coalition partners slugged it out over a long two day debate, it became abundantly clear that a mass of Tory MPs would not support the Bill. Equally clear during the debate, was the catastrophic failure by Nick Clegg to produce a coherent piece of legislation.

Whatever the controversies over whether the second chamber should be 80% or 100% elected, once only terms of 15 years or the place of bishops, the focus of most MPs was on the powers of an elected Lords. And the lack of any convincing argument from Ministers as to how legislative gridlock was to be avoided between two elected chambers was rapidly exposed.

Potentially, the House of Lords has a lot of muscle. The pre-legislative scrutiny undertaken by the Joint Select Committee it reported back: “if the Lords chose to use its powers, it would be one of the most powerful second chambers in the world”. Yet it hasn’t done this for many years, precisely because its current members know they lack democratic legitimacy. Conventions have developed to help Peers exercise a voluntary constraint. An all or mostly elected chamber will give short shrift to that.

One of the more fanciable claims made by the government about its Lords Reform Bill was that Mr Clegg had dealt with the fear of many MPs that Commons primacy would be challenged by an elected second chamber. In fact, all the Bill does is to say that the Parliament Acts will apply. Without the conventions however, there will be little to hold back a confident and assertive House.

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The Lib Dems’ amazing adventure

09/04/2012, 07:00:05 AM

by Ben Mitchell

Once upon a time there was a political party who believed in something. Who stood for something. Who held views other parties rejected. Who campaigned on issues that weren’t always universally popular.

They then had a leader who grew and grew in stature. Who charmed and won over the electorate in a series of pre-general election televised debates.

But, unfortunately, for said party, this never translated into votes on polling day. Blame our antiquated voting system they raged. We sympathised.

But then, when all seemed lost, along came a smart and convincing salesman offering them the chance of a lifetime. This jolly, chirpy, chappy, waved the prospect of power-sharing under their disillusioned noses.

What’s more, this guy looked and sounded very much like our guy, thought the party faithful.

They hit it off instantly. The public were taken aback: two sworn enemies jumping into bed with each other; governing together? But, their politics are so different. How will they ever get anything done, asked a sceptical media?

Won’t they bicker and argue constantly?

But, they didn’t. In fact, they seemed to quite like each other. A lot. That other bunch aren’t so bad after all, they thought to themselves. We’ve been unfair to them all these years.

Anyway, the party thought, we’ve still got our beliefs and our principles. We’ll never sacrifice them.

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The Lib Dems and their dissociative disorder

26/03/2012, 07:30:10 AM

by Kevin Meagher

Making a diagnosis for multiple personality disorder (MPD) requires the presence of two or more distinct identities which recurrently take control of a person’s behaviour.

Two competing, contradictory personalities vying for supremacy? Now I am no psychiatrist, but if organisations could develop the condition, then the Liberal Democrats are surely a classic case?

Take Simon Hughes. He is the personality who dominates the airwaves when the Lib Dems have done something bad. Every time they sell their soul to the Conservatives up pops Simon, combining earnestness and convoluted circumlocutions to explain away why they have not done what the dogs in the street can see they have done.

He is like a bank robber pleading in mitigation that the gang were only interested in notes and at least had the decency to leave the loose change alone. They may have waved the sawn-off shotgun in the bank teller’s face, but they didn’t actually pull the trigger. He is a splitter of hairs so fine that it would require the Hubble telescope to be trained on his logic in order to make out the nuances.

He was out there on Wednesday and Thursday, distancing himself from the decision to scrap the 50p top tax rate – the signature proposal in the budget – and one to which the entire cabinet is actively signed-up. “The chancellor took a view that he wanted to do things that mattered a lot to Conservatives” the deputy leader of the Lib Dems told Radio Five Live. “What mattered to us [the Lib Dems] was not that at all.”

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After this budget, the Lib Dems are all over the place

21/03/2012, 02:49:31 PM

by Amanda Ramsay

The focus today has been on George Osborne. Understandably so. But one of the stories in the days to come will be how this budget has exacerbated the cracks that were already spreading through the Liberal Democrats and the instability this will bring to the government.

Like them or loathe them, the Conservatives have made their position known. As NEC candidate Peter Wheeler puts it: “Tories make it clear what their priorities are – Tax cuts for the rich and pay cuts for the north.”

But they are burdened by a partner who lacks their self-assurance and discipline.

Long-suffering Tories, already struggling with David Cameron’s leadership, are tiring of having to put-up with on-the-hoof Liberal Democrat solo policy announcements such as Vince Cable’s off-piste mooting of a mansion tax that was never going to happen.

This may have been political point scoring on Cable’s part, but even whispers of such a tax will have wrought terror in Tory heartlands, particularly in London where such talk could cost Boris Johnson’s political life.

It’s part of a pattern of ill-disciplined behaviour that has increasingly dismayed Tory MPs. For example, there was the failure to support their own leadership line from Nick Clegg over the health bill, not to mention February’s leaked letter from Vince Cable, when the business secretary told the prime minister and the deputy prime minister that the government lacks a “compelling vision” for Britain.

For restive Tory backbenchers and political advisers, all of this will have steeled Tory determination to make this their budget.

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This government is driven by venal self-interest

12/03/2012, 04:03:25 PM

by Amanda Ramsay

It’s a very strange time in parliament at the moment. Having changed the legislative calendar, with the Queen’s Speech now in May rather than the traditional November, parliament has run-out of business. The Commons is becalmed while the battles over health, welfare and legal aid being fought-out in the Lords.

With welfare reform cuts about to hit home and housing benefit caps forcing displacement and homelessness, the character of the laws due royal assent over the next few weeks show an old school Tory, right-wing, ideological intent to take government back to laissez-faire sink-or-swim economics; where the state sits back and does the very bare minimum to assist its citizens in trouble.

Whilst Labour souls worry about the Tory-led government’s woeful destruction of aspiration and hope, it is difficult to detect any noticeable or natural empathy from the likes of independently wealthy Cameron and Clegg and the many other millionaires in the cabinet.

Those with private wealth don’t usually know the fear of facing homelessness or joblessness. They can pay for private health insurance and secure their futures through top-class public schooling; can afford private care if disabled, frail or ill and enjoy their own pensions and investments, so have no need for the welfare state. As Tory grandee Alan Clarke once memorably explained, they live off the interest on the interest. Put simply, they can cut with impunity because they don’t feel the pain.

No clearer is this ambivalence evident than with the Health and Social Care Bill. The ramifications of allowing foundation hospitals to use up to 49% of their resources for private, non-NHS work, may not worry certain individuals that can afford US-style private health care insurance, however, NHS waiting lists will surely soar while paving the way for a two-tier health care system.

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Whip’s notebook

07/02/2012, 07:00:19 AM

By Jon Ashworth

Before I became an MP I was for many years a bag carrier, which meant a lot of marching at the side of Gordon, Harriet or Ed through Westminster corridors while trying to look serious, doing my best not to drop the wad of briefing papers and most of all desperately hoping I wouldn’t get us lost.

As a diligent member of the leader’s political office, I would usually take advantage of the opportunity to get their view on some upcoming vote at the NEC or some whipping issue causing anguish. Often a backbench MP or fellow (shadow) minster would need a word with Gordon, Harriet or Ed and so Gordon, Harriet or Ed would assure me they would speak to them “in the vote”.

I never really knew what this meant until I became an MP myself.

Now of course at one rudimentary level I knew it meant they would speak to them as they go through the voting lobbies. But I never really appreciated the whole voting lobby experience. It’s where us MPs all congregate, gossip, catch-up and have that quick word with a colleague we’ve been looking out for. We’re all busy people so it’s often where my good friends and parliamentary neighbours Keith Vaz, Liz Kendall and I get together for a quick conflab about any pressing Leicester issue.

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