Balance: Jeremy Corbyn's tax return

Heartfeltdawn

Fretwired said:

Lib Dems. Bin Tim nice but dim. Look at the emerging narrative about their time in coalition with the Tories - many people see the previous coalition government as better than the current one. If I were a Lib Dem spokesperson I would say that was down to the moderating influence of the Lib Dems. Yes promises were broken but people are now getting to see what the Tories are like with their hands on power. By 2020 I can see the electorate being fed up and very worried. Labour are unelectable in Scotland and many parts of England so I can see there being a coalition government. Were I the Lib Dems this is what I would be working towards - being coalition partners.

For example, the Lib Dems maybe in favour of the EU (like Cameron) and of free enterprise, but in coalition with the Tories they would defend the NHS and education. People who like some Tory polices but are worried about the NHS could vote Lib Dem. This is simplistic example to make a point but this is what happens in other countries like Germany. We may have to get use to coalitions and tactical voting.

If you as spokesman for the Libs claimed that the coalition government was down to the Liberal hand of moderation, I would laugh at you. 

A place like Germany that has had to embark on a huge effort to repair itself after WWII... you can understand why collaborative government is the way forward there given their dictator-filled history. Here, at least at government level, coalition is still a dirty word. Would any political party finishing second or worse dare going into coalition with another party after seeing what happened to the Libs? I'm not sure they would.

UnclePsychosis

Heartfeltdawn;1036371" said:

IC
Because the Libs were seen as the decent party. They were the party who stayed with their principles and beliefs and accepted that staying with these beliefs meant bugger all chance of power. Come the coalition, even diehard supporters felt the party had shat on its principles in exchange for some nice lunches and the odd PMQ session with a yellow-tinged man representing the government. 

The alternative was to be the only political party in history that said no to being in power.

The Lib Dems had spent decades convincing people they were a serious option, saying "no we don't really want to be in government after all" would have seen them rightly dismissed as a joke.

It is utterly bizarre that voters abandoned the Lib Dems for compromising on some principles whilst rewarding parties that often times don't seem to have any.

Fretwired

Heartfeltdawn said:

If you as spokesman for the Libs claimed that the coalition government was down to the Liberal hand of moderation, I would laugh at you. 

A place like Germany that has had to embark on a huge effort to repair itself after WWII... you can understand why collaborative government is the way forward there given their dictator-filled history. Here, at least at government level, coalition is still a dirty word. Would any political party finishing second or worse dare going into coalition with another party after seeing what happened to the Libs? I'm not sure they would.

Germany didn't want collaborative government after the war. They didn't want a system that allowed another Adolf Hitler to come to power with say 27% of the vote which is basically what Cameron and co got.

As for the Lib Dems laugh away. Labour was written off until Tony Blair came along and remodelled the party so that it appealed to Tory voters. Had we been around in the 1990s and I'd written 'Tony Blair needs to move to the centre to attract Tory voters' you'd have said 'don't make me laugh' ... :-) The Lib Dems should look at Blair's New Labour. 

Labour have gone left and the Tory's are being dragged right. Let's say your politics are in the centre - you like free enterprise, low tax, the EU but you value your public services like the NHS and you want a fair deal for the poor and disabled. You voted Tory as you liked David Cameron but as 2020 draws nearer you're unsure. Say Cameron wins the EU vote and leaves and Boris takes over. Boris will bash the EU, is for low tax and privatisation of the NHS .. he's a classic Tory.

And let's say you live in the SE of England and you own your own home and you want to pass it on to your kids - Labour want to hike inheritance tax. You also save through ISAs and so forth but are scared Labour will introduce new stealth taxes to fund their utopian dream - you think Labour are anti-aspiration and anti-middle-class. So who do you vote for?

I tell you with the right leader there's an opportunity for the Lib Dems .. the right leader may also be able to get some moderate Labour MPs to defect (before they're thrown out). If they could win 50 seats they could hold the balance of power. They need to drop Tim as leader though. If they were clever they'd get a woman to lead the party.

Philly_Q

Fretwired said:

I tell you with the right leader there's an opportunity for the Lib Dems .. the right leader may also be able to get some moderate Labour MPs to defect (before they're thrown out). If they could win 50 seats they could hold the balance of power. They need to drop Tim as leader though. If they were clever they'd get a woman to lead the party.

Does the leader have to be an MP?  Their options are pretty limited on that front.

Heartfeltdawn

UnclePsychosis said:

The alternative was to be the only political party in history that said no to being in power.

And so they chose an option that didn't give them any real power and left them ripped to pieces at the next election and with a lot of their long term supporters questioning the party. If that's the legacy of Clegg then it's a shabby one. 

Fretwired

Philly_Q said:

Fretwired said:

I tell you with the right leader there's an opportunity for the Lib Dems .. the right leader may also be able to get some moderate Labour MPs to defect (before they're thrown out). If they could win 50 seats they could hold the balance of power. They need to drop Tim as leader though. If they were clever they'd get a woman to lead the party.

Does the leader have to be an MP?  Their options are pretty limited on that front.

I don't think so. Didn't Farage lead UKIP when he wasn't an MP but they had an MP.

capo4th

Corbyn is an idiot and a stop gap leader.

Whilst I go and eat my steak and wedges can anyone please list me 5 things that the labour government achieved whilst in power for 13 years under Blair and Brown that had a positive impact on the UK.

Fretwired

capo4th said:

Corbyn is an idiot and a stop gap leader.

Whilst I go and eat my steak and wedges can anyone please list me 5 things that the labour government achieved whilst in power for 13 years under Blair and Brown that had a positive impact on the UK.

They spent a lot of money on rebuilding and equipping hospitals and schools. My nearest hospital had £500 million spent on it which was just as well as they saved my dad's life.

Drew_TNBD

If you say you hate black people, then you become a social pariah.

If you hate the rich however, you get free steak and blowjobs all year round.

Heartfeltdawn

Fretwired said:

Germany didn't want collaborative government after the war. They didn't want a system that allowed another Adolf Hitler to come to power with say 27% of the vote which is basically what Cameron and co got.

As for the Lib Dems laugh away. Labour was written off until Tony Blair came along and remodelled the party so that it appealed to Tory voters. Had we been around in the 1990s and I'd written 'Tony Blair needs to move to the centre to attract Tory voters' you'd have said 'don't make me laugh' ... :-) The Lib Dems should look at Blair's New Labour. 

Labour have gone left and the Tory's are being dragged right. Let's say your politics are in the centre - you like free enterprise, low tax, the EU but you value your public services like the NHS and you want a fair deal for the poor and disabled. You voted Tory as you liked David Cameron but as 2020 draws nearer you're unsure. Say Cameron wins the EU vote and leaves and Boris takes over. Boris will bash the EU, is for low tax and privatisation of the NHS .. he's a classic Tory.

And let's say you live in the SE of England and you own your own home and you want to pass it on to your kids - Labour want to hike inheritance tax. You also save through ISAs and so forth but are scared Labour will introduce new stealth taxes to fund their utopian dream - you think Labour are anti-aspiration and anti-middle-class. So who do you vote for?

I tell you with the right leader there's an opportunity for the Lib Dems .. the right leader may also be able to get some moderate Labour MPs to defect (before they're thrown out). If they could win 50 seats they could hold the balance of power. They need to drop Tim as leader though. If they were clever they'd get a woman to lead the party.

Sure, after the war, but since then we've also had German reunification which required something a bit different. Coalition politics there has become an accepted part of politics. Coalitions at the highest level are accepted: here they are treated with a bit of disdain, a bit strange considering the WWII coalition government. 

Labour weren't written off prior to Blair. Kinnock wasn't a great leader and still managed to cut the Tory majority. Most opinion polls from the time went with a hung parliament or a Labour majority (I think we've heard that one recently ) John Smith showed himself to be a thoroughly capable leader and his death was a huge loss. Now to win Blair did indeed move to the centre and it's precisely that move and his oleaginous personality that persuaded me to not vote for him in 1997. NME was trumpeting him, the Cool Britannia bandwagon was in full swing, the pinnacle of the "anyone but the Tories" call... and for what? A leader and party who were very conservative in many ways, hence the overlapping policies from Major to Blair to Brown to coalition to Cameron, and who arguably moved even more toward the right with each successive election.  

Now if the Libs became a refuge for disaffected Tories and the remnants of the Blairite gang, what would that do for the hardcore Lib who is still a member now? The defections to the Libs might be counteracted by those leaving. 

The Libs lost nearly 4.5 million voters in 2015. Scotland and the South West were wipeout zones. Now in 2005 with their high point of 62 seats, these regions had plenty of yellow. As it is, it's unlikely that all those SNP voters are going to flock to a revitalized LibDem party. Without those regions coming back to them, it'll be bloody hard to get up to 50 seats again. 

When's this ruddy referendum again?

Heartfeltdawn

Drew_fx said:

If you say you hate black people, then you become a social pariah.

If you hate the rich however, you get free steak and blowjobs all year round.

Any denouncement of the rich depends entirely on the quality of the steak and the deliverer of the blowjob. 

DarnWeight

capo4th said:

Corbyn is an idiot and a stop gap leader.

Whilst I go and eat my steak and wedges can anyone please list me 5 things that the labour government achieved whilst in power for 13 years under Blair and Brown that had a positive impact on the UK.

Scottish/Welsh Devolution

The Good Friday Agreement

Sure Start

Investment in NHS and education (as per comment above)

National Minimum Wage

Naturally there are caveats to some of the above (the expansion of PFI would be a big one), and none of this should excuse their biggest failings (too many to list), but they were at least aware of the requirement to invest in public services where there was a genuine social need.

quarky

It is telling that in recent history, the only time the left does well is when they shift towards the right. Although I do take some pleasure in that (given I know so many people who seem to claim that UK is a left leaning society), it isn't the most healthy situation, and the Scottish voting for SNP makes things even worse.

Despite all the issues of coalition governments (and there are many), there must be something better than what we have. Or maybe the electorate are getting the Parliament structure they deserve.

Heartfeltdawn

quarky said:

It is telling that in recent history, the only time the left does well is when they shift towards the right. Although I do take some pleasure in that (given I know so many people who seem to claim that UK is a left leaning society), it isn't the most healthy situation, and the Scottish voting for SNP makes things even worse.

I'll post up from a previous post last year. 

1979 to 2005 general election voting. 

Conservatives - (right/centre right) - average of 39.27%

Labour - (left/centre left)                - average of 36.98%

Liberal/SDP - (left/centre left).       - average of 19.5%

This leaves 4.25% for the rest of the parties over the 1979-2005 time period, everyone from the Greens to the BNP to UKIP to the Natural Law Party. 

In other words, over 1979-2005, the Labour-Liberal vote averaged 56.52% per election.

Philly_Q

Fretwired said:

Philly_Q said:

Fretwired said:

I tell you with the right leader there's an opportunity for the Lib Dems .. the right leader may also be able to get some moderate Labour MPs to defect (before they're thrown out). If they could win 50 seats they could hold the balance of power. They need to drop Tim as leader though. If they were clever they'd get a woman to lead the party.

Does the leader have to be an MP?  Their options are pretty limited on that front.

I don't think so. Didn't Farage lead UKIP when he wasn't an MP but they had an MP.

He did, and of course he was leader for ages before they had any MPs, but different political parties have their own internal rules and electoral systems.

I just googled it, apparently the Lib Dem constitution does require the leader to be an MP - so their choice really is limited!

quarky

Heartfeltdawn said:

In other words, over 1979-2005, the Labour-Liberal vote averaged 56.52% per election.

Yeah, I have heard that too, from socialists as if trying to suggest that the left have some kind of moral high-ground. Do the LibDems describe themselves as a leftist party though? Certainly under Clegg they were a centralist party weren't they? If nothing else, actions speak louder than words I guess.

EDIT: Ultimately, socialism is one of those things that I think people think they want, but when the chips are down, they don't.

Heartfeltdawn

It's not a question of high ground. The debate in this forum had a few contributors saying Britain was mostly right-wing in nature. The overall election data simply didn't back this up. I kept it to that time period simply because 1979 was the first election I was alive for. 

The official Lib Dem stance from central office was a centrist stance. My Bath MP at the time, Don Foster, announced he would stand down at the 2015 election: a trawl through the comments section on the Bath Chronicle website tells you how many in Bath felt about the Liberal Democrat move to the centre. Don was someone who went from voting to reduce VAT from 17.5% to 15% in 2008 to voting in favour of raising it to 20% in 2010. You can look at his change of heart over tuition fees as another indicator of someone whose values changed in coalition. 

In 2004 the Orange Book was published. It featured articles by the economic liberal strand of the party. All of the authors (bar Holland and Marshall) were MPs after the 2005 election. Seven of them featured in the coalition government. So as a framework for rising to power, the Orange Book was clearly useful. When it comes to long-term party strength, then you look at the aftermath.  Post-2015 election, the only author within the Orange Book who was still in Parliament was Clegg. That tells you that something went very horribly wrong, the political equivalent of boom-bust economics. 

Axe_meister

The problem with our system and especially during our coalition is that it was based on compromise (loose-loose) rather the. Collaboration (win-win) which is unfortunately part of the British way of life.

Moe_Zambeek

Heartfeltdawn;1036570" said:

quarky said:


In other words, over 1979-2005, the Labour-Liberal vote averaged 56.52% per election.

And the Conservative - Liberal vote averaged 58.77%

Adding these numbers doesn't tell you an awful lot other than that the Conservative vote is consistently higher than the lib dems or labour. You can slice it and dice it anyway you want but adding up all the losers and saying it's proof of anything is a waste of time. Psephology is an extremely complicated field and as has been mentioned many factors affect voting. Looking at those numbers I'd say the uk is very much a small-c conservative country...

ICBM

Compromise is a good thing, not bad. Government that works by small incremental changes rather than 'big ideas' tends to achieve more in the long term and is less likely to make catastrophic mistakes. But for some reason we view 'compromise' as a negative word implying weakness and seem to think dictatorship by the largest minority is "strong" government.

Don't mention "collaboration" in this country either... that means working for the enemy. We are still a very divided country in many ways.

But we're also a slightly left-of-centre country on average. It's absolutely not true that the Tories have a natural majority - the problem has always been that the left and centre are divided, which under our electoral system usually allows the right to win.

One of the reasons the SNP has done so well in Scotland is because Labour has moved so far to the right that it has abandoned the left entirely to them.