I've had a bit of fun on the subject of the General Election this week. As just about no one was expecting it, including the cabinet if you can believe The Sunday Times, I hadn't really thought too hard about what I would be doing. Regular readers will know that I am a member of the Barnet Lib Dems. As I live in Hendon, the chances of a Lib Dem becoming our MP are negligible. There are two reasons I support the party. The first is that they are committed to reversing Brexit. I believe that it has been a disaster for the UK and to a lesser extent for the rest of Europe, especially Ireland. It has made both conducting business and travelling far more difficult. Huge amounts of money are being spent on checking perfectly legal travellers and goods, meaning that there is not enough to tackle things like drugs and people trafficking gangs. The sum has been announced as £4.7 Billion. I wrote about this earlier in the week.
The other reason is that they are committed to electoral reform and PR. The truth is that the UK rarely has a representative government. Generally we are governed by a party that doesn't even represent 50% of the population. The argument that the Tories and Labour used to use was that you'd get bad government if we had coalitions. I think that any reasonable person would say that what has followed the Tory/Lib Dem coalition has shown the opposite to be true. Whilst I was not a fan of much of what the coalition did, and resigned from the Lib Dems as a result, there was genuine proper debate about policies and to some extent the dire economic state of the UK following the credit crunch was addressed. Sadly, when the Conservatives no longer had the discipline of having to agree policies with partners, the whole thing has fallen apart. I don't believe that PR is perfect, but it is better than what we've seen.
When I was putting this blog together, I reviewed the journey from David Cameron becoming PM to the moment Rishi Sunak called the election. When we went to the polls in 2015, The UK was respected and seen as a country that was governed by sensible grown ups, who were prepared to take difficult decisions. Cameron got a decent majority and the Lib Dems were severely and rightly punished for reneging on the student loan policy. I genuinely believe that they could and should have stuck to their guns. The UK would be a better place. It was the right policy. They didn't. What followed since has been chaos. In nine years since we've had five Tory Prime Ministers, Cameron - a disaster who lumbered us with Brexit, failing to run an honest referendum campaign, playing into the hands of Farage. When he failed, he scarpered. Theresa May took over. She was also a disaster. She called an election that wasn't needed and lost her majority. Not only that, she lost it in the face of a chaotic Labour party, riddled with splits and lead by Jeremy Corbyn. She had to be propped up by the DUP, which to me was shameful. She was deposed by Boris Johnson, who promised to "Get Brexit done". He lead a Tory party that had a strong message (albeit one I totally disagreed with). Johnson proved he was a great campaigner, winning a big majority and decapitating Corbynism. Sadly, he also proved he was a hopeless administrator, with Downing Street becoming the centre of lockdown Rave culture. His authority and his administration fell apart. It seemed that no one could be worse, but the Tories proved otherwise, enlisting Liz Truss as PM. In an act of wanton vandalism, she and her chancellor announced a totally irresponsible, uncosted budget. The markets ripped her apart. She was gone in less time than it takes a lettuce to rot. Rishi Sunak came in. To be fair, he has to some degree addressed the mess that Truss left, but he has no real authority, no vision and no plan. The UK has rivers full of excrement, trains that are costly and unreliable, a lower standard of living, no plan for energy security resulting in huge bills. School budgets are creaking and the NHS has massive waiting lists. Much of this is simply because the Tory party is unable to agree anything. It is riven by factions.
As for Labour, I am very unimpressed with Sir Keir Starmer. He seems to have no policies and no charisma. I am quite impressed with his deputy, Rachel Reeve, who does at least seem to understand economics. Given where Starmer was when he took over from Corbyn, you have to grudgingly admit he has got their act together. My biggest issue with Starmer is that he seems very cowardly in his refusal to admit that Brexit is ruining the UK. He also seems happy with first past the post.
The problem is we don't live in a perfect world. For what the Tories inflicted upon our wallets with Truss, they should be thrown out of office. The party demonstrated that it cared less about the people of the UK than odd the ideology that seems to excite right wing think tanks and 'research groups'. These fools live in ivory towers and mist have never had a real job or run a business. What the UK needs is a period of stability, sensible government and long term planning. Things like spending billions on HS2 and then cancelling it are signs of serial incompetence.
What I am hoping for is a hung parliament, where the Lib Dems have a block of 50-60 MP's and form a coalition with a Starmer Labour party to sort the mess out. I would make PR and a winding back of Brexit key elements. I accept that re-joining the EU may be a problem, not least because they will be cautious and may not want us. But we should make things work better.
For this to happen, we all need to vote tactically. We need to vote for the person most likely to defeat the incumbent Conservative MP. In Hendon, this means voting for David Pinto-Dushinsky. I won't be posting any videos endorsing him, but I have no hesitation in urging any Lib Dem who wants to see a change of government to do the same. Just as I urge every Labour supporter in seats where the Lib Dems are second and have a serious prospect of winning to vote Lib Dem. It isn't perfect, but for the actions of Truss, the contempt Boris Johnson had for us during Covid and the sheer lack of vision and incompetence of Sunak, cancelling things such as HS2, wasting billions and botching border arrangements with the EU, the Conservatives deserve to be booted out. What replaces them is even more important. The 2010-2015 coalition demonstrated that you can have strong, effective government with coalitions. I believe the next government should be bold, brave and representative.
One last thing. The failure of Nigel Farage to stand as a candidate should demonstrate to everyone that the man cares little for the people of the UK. If he really believed in what he's been spouting, he would have stood.
2 comments:
“ The argument that the Tories and Labour used to use was that you'd get bad government if we had coalitions. I think that any reasonable person would say that what has followed the Tory/Lib Dem coalition has shown the opposite to be true. Whilst I was not a fan of much of what the coalition did, and resigned from the Lib Dems as a result, there was genuine proper debate about policies and to some extent the dire economic state of the UK following the credit crunch was addressed. Sadly, when the Conservatives no longer had the discipline of having to agree policies with partners, the whole thing has fallen apart. I don't believe that PR is perfect, but it is better than what we've seen”
Sorry Rog but that is just nonsense. The last. thing the coalition’ government was, was an advert for PR. The credit crunch occurred in 2008 and if look at the historical data the economy was growing again in 2010. That growth was killed off due to the policy of Austerity which the Lib Dem’s not only signed up for but actually agreed with. Clegg and the other Lib Dem grandees of the time like Cable and Ed Davy were and still are as much “small state” believers as were Osbourne and Cameron.
Orange bookers who believe in a small state with private companies running public services (which is why Cable and the Lib Dem’s led on the policy of privatising the Post Office).
The policy of austerity was political as much as it was idiotic economics (no other major western economy including the USA was daft enough to choke off growth with austerity). While Cameron proved to be a fool by thinking he could use a referendum to deal with factions of the Tory Party , Austerity which was enthusiastically supported by the Lib Dem’s was a major factor why many people voted to leave the EU and of course he lost. The Lib Dem’s are far from blameless in the result going the way of Leave.
While student loan fiasco gets the headlines that wasn’t the only reason why the Lib Dem’s were punished subsequently. It boiled down to “Vote Lib Dem, get Tory policies”. The worst one of these was THE perfect illustration as to why people do not trust coalition governments which was the spectacle of the late Shirley Williams running around the Lib Dem conference desperately drumming up support for the disastrous NHS Reform bill of Andrew Lansey. It looked like it was going to be rejected and the Lib Dem leadership were scared stiff that would bring the coalition down before there had been a. referendum on AV. You had a former Labour politician, Williams , formerly of party that introduced the NHS canvassing for conference votes in support of a policy that would wreck it.
At the end of the day the coalition government. was a terrible advert for PR for two main reasons. There was hardly any difference (certainly economically) between the Tories and the Lib Dems (both fans of small state and Austerity) andthe Lib Dem’s were not prepared to walk away, which is something that happens regularly in other countries were coalitions are common, when policies like Lansey’s surfaced. As soon as the fixed term parliament act was passed and the Lib Dem’s enthusiastically signed up for it, the Tories had them by the balls. They were rightly seen as impotent when it came to exerting influence and the Tories were able to get through everything major they wanted. The only use the Lib Dem’s were was to allow Cameron to park the issue of the EU to one side for five years. The way the Lib Dem’s behaved in that government has probably set back the cause of PR decades.
I disagree Dave you say "The only use the Lib Dem’s were was to allow Cameron to park the issue of the EU to one side for five years." If that were all they did, then that would be enough as we would be even more in the shit now. I will respectfully disagree.
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