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While UKIP needs an "honourable mention" having UKIP and only UKIP reveals an unfortunate trait: You read newspapers and watch the telly.
On July 01 2013 09:16 Christ the Redeemer wrote: I try understand US Megapolitics thread even if it is irrelevant in a gaming forum. At least the US is perceived to be a world power capable of upsetting global economics and politics. But UK?
I'll frequent this thread, but I can see a case being made for it being closed. If a ton of threads like this end up bubbling around... Also you might make an argument that the politics in the state of California is as complex and perhaps more significant. Of course California and U.S. foreign policy are the same which is not an argument you could make for the U.S. and U.K.
Yes, that's correct, I made a funny.
Also, Dear everyone who isn't British: Here's everything you need to know about Boris Johnson, the current mayor of London and a potential future Prime Minister, in 3 handy links.
The most significant role that the U.K. plays in international affairs is finance. We have a system set up that allows money to be hidden from Tax authorities and police forces world wide. Right now this role is being challenged to a degree and this is worth discussion. I see it as the most important political issue in the U.K. today. This is, in my view, the best place for information about this that I have found:
Brief history of the Lib Dems. In the 80s UK politics saw a huge polarisation between the centre right, led by Thatcher, and the left, led by Foot (later Benn). The economy was in crisis, vast sectors of the economy were in the public sector and had been mismanaged and underinvested into obsolescence in the preceding decades. Thatcher's response was privatisation, conflict with the unions, the destruction of the unprofitable coal and manufacturing sectors which threw the economy into disarray and created massive unemployment and class conflict. Labour's response to the crisis and to Thatcher were to move further to the left, to throw their lot in with the workers and commit to a socialist manifesto. However a group of people within Labour known as the gang of four felt that this was shortsighted and basically wrong, that hardcore socialism had failed, that economic reforms were both necessary and inevitable and that there existed a third possibility where you accepted the necessity of the free market (like Thatcher) without being a colossal dick (like Thatcher). The gang of four split from Labour and created the Social Democratic Party (SDP) as a centre left party. In the 1983 election they ran in alliance with the old Liberal party (irrelevant until 1983), the Conservatives got 42.4%, Labour got 27.6% and the SDP Lib alliance got 25.4%. The conservative success was in part boosted by the victory in the Falklands and represented a landslide victory. However due to the first past the post electoral system the split vote between Labour and SDP Lib alliance the SDP Lib alliance only got 13.8% of the seats in parliament. The 1987 election saw Labour again commit to a policy of socialism meanwhile the SDP and the Liberals merged to form the Liberal Democratic party and continued to offer a centre left alternative to the far left and centre right being offered by the two main parties. However after the defeat in 1987 Labour was repeating the internal divisions which had led the gang of four to break away and the lesson of two defeats saw the entire party re-evaluate itself rather than another schism. Labour abandoned its far left policies and accepted Thatcher's changes as a fait accompli, the damage was already done and the battles already fought, the question was now what to do with Thatcher's legacy. The middle class was an increasingly important voting bloc and Labour needed to appeal to them. New Labour emerged and basically imitated everything the Lib Dems had said in the decade before but as the nominally most left wing party still retained the working class voting bloc. Meanwhile the Lib Dems continued to get fucked by FPTP because they could reliably get second in a bunch of constituencies against both Labour and the Tories but couldn't win many.
In 1997 Blair's new Labour made an electoral pact with the Lib Dems to game the system and have Lib Dems vote Labour where the Lib Dems couldn't win and Labour vote Lib Dems where Labour couldn't win to unseat Conservatives. If the election was close they were to enter coalition government and FPTP was to be replaced with proportional representation, PR. Labour won a landslide and the Lib Dems were cast back into the wilderness as Blair had enough seats to do whatever the fuck he liked. The plans for PR were abandoned, Labour moved further to the right than the Lib Dems on healthcare, education and invading places because it turned out that Blair was actually a closet insane religious zealot. The Lib Dems led the anti-war movement against Labour and represented the interests of the left wing competently and diligently but nobody really cared because Labour had a massive majority and after two decades of Conservative rule they were still the default opposition and people didn't really notice that Labour had stolen the Conservative's ground.
Labour succeeded in spending over a decade ostracising everyone who ever voted for them, they invaded a bunch of places, introduced fees for higher education, privatised areas of the NHS, created huge deficits because they claimed that they had created a boom that would last forever and mismanaged everything they touched. Meanwhile the Lib Dems, having the virtue of not being associated with Labour, were looking pretty fucking amazing in comparison. They ran on the platform of not invading random places, not privatising education/healthcare and generally not being huge dicks. However people didn't really take them as seriously as they should have because they had no real experience of government having never been in government and had never achieved anything.
In 2010 Labour couldn't linger on any longer and held an election. Again FPTP fucked the Lib Dems but this time Labour and the Conservatives were both so incredibly unpopular that even with FPTP amplifying the impact of anyone popular no clear victor emerged. The Conservatives were promising to steer the sinking ship through the storms of the financial crisis by tossing people overboard while Labour, the helmsman who had sailed into it, promised that if we just kept on sailing further into the storm it'd all work out okay. The Lib Dems did as badly as usual on seats, winning just 9.1% of them, but because no clear majority emerged they held the deciding vote. They could side with the Conservatives, who had won the plurality and had the clearest mandate of anyone but could not rule alone, Labour, who had lost the election but would be able to cling on with an unworkable majority in coalition, or could force a new election. If they chose the first they would be cursed forever by the left wing and tainted by the decisions of a government that they couldn't control (nor had any mandate to control making up just 20% of the MPs in it), if they chose the second they would get nothing for it, be as ineffectual as ever and prove that the Lib Dems couldn't run a government, if they chose the third then they would prove that a three party system is a waste of time and cannot create a government, people would pick Labour or the Conservatives to avoid endless split elections. After three decades in the wilderness the Lib Dems were finally offered the chance to actually walk in the corridors of power, have their voices heard and enact some policies, if they shied away from it then they would prove to everyone that everything the Lib Dems had been claiming about them not being a wasted vote and actually being able to represent the opinions of Lib Dem voters was nonsense. If they refused the ability to make a difference then nobody would vote for them again, people do not vote for principles in sufficient numbers to win elections, they vote for results and if you promise results and then run from power they will not vote again. So, the Lib Dems joined a coalition with the Conservative party although they did extract the promise of a referendum on electoral reform, their ancient enemy. Labour had previously promised PR and reneged on it because having won a landslide in 97 they decided they quite liked FPTP, the most they could get from the Tories was the offer of a referendum and Clegg (leader of the Lib Dems) felt it was worth a deal with the devil.
The Conservatives mismanaged shit horribly. They came up with a plan whereby if they tossed enough people overboard the ship would fly away out of the storm. Unfortunately the plan involved tossing all the sailors overboard first and then the ship ground to a halt and left them all looking rather silly. The plan was that by now we'd be paying down the deficit with our budget surplus. The goalposts were moved constantly as things got from bad to worse to really worse and rather than paying down the deficit with our surplus we were increasing it faster than ever while unemployment went up and we went into a triple dip recession. We had the referendum on PR vs FPTP and the Lib Dems lost it decisively meanwhile their supporters felt betrayed by their votes in the election being for MPs who were now supporting the Conservative cuts. Lib Dem voters vowed never to vote Lib Dem again and the Lib Dem backbenchers, fearing for their jobs and their souls, rebelled against Clegg for leading them down this path of doom. Then the Conservatives started invading places too because "why not" and the animals could no longer tell the pigs and the humans apart. And that brings us to the present day and the Lib Dems, the party which just wanted to be centre left and run a decent economy without fucking everyone over or invading anywhere, being completely and utterly fucked. And it's not even their fault. They didn't even do anything wrong.
So now we're gonna be stuck with Labour, the Tories and God help us, UKIP.
The major political party part made me giggle a bit, because the UK political scene sounds basically like an english speaking version of ours. Didn't even know that , like here, the social democrats/labour party were also supporting financial deregulation.
On July 01 2013 12:06 KwarK wrote: Brief history of the Lib Dems. In the 80s UK politics saw a huge polarisation between the centre right, led by Thatcher, and the left, led by Foot (later Benn). The economy was in crisis, vast sectors of the economy were in the public sector and had been mismanaged and underinvested into obsolescence in the preceding decades. Thatcher's response was privatisation, conflict with the unions, the destruction of the unprofitable coal and manufacturing sectors which threw the economy into disarray and created massive unemployment and class conflict. Labour's response to the crisis and to Thatcher were to move further to the left, to throw their lot in with the workers and commit to a socialist manifesto. However a group of people within Labour known as the gang of four felt that this was shortsighted and basically wrong, that hardcore socialism had failed, that economic reforms were both necessary and inevitable and that there existed a third possibility where you accepted the necessity of the free market (like Thatcher) without being a colossal dick (like Thatcher). The gang of four split from Labour and created the Social Democratic Party (SDP) as a centre left party. In the 1983 election they ran in alliance with the old Liberal party (irrelevant until 1983), the Conservatives got 42.4%, Labour got 27.6% and the SDP Lib alliance got 25.4%. The conservative success was in part boosted by the victory in the Falklands and represented a landslide victory. However due to the first past the post electoral system the split vote between Labour and SDP Lib alliance the SDP Lib alliance only got 13.8% of the seats in parliament. The 1987 election saw Labour again commit to a policy of socialism meanwhile the SDP and the Liberals merged to form the Liberal Democratic party and continued to offer a centre left alternative to the far left and centre right being offered by the two main parties. However after the defeat in 1987 Labour was repeating the internal divisions which had led the gang of four to break away and the lesson of two defeats saw the entire party re-evaluate itself rather than another schism. Labour abandoned its far left policies and accepted Thatcher's changes as a fait accompli, the damage was already done and the battles already fought, the question was now what to do with Thatcher's legacy. The middle class was an increasingly important voting bloc and Labour needed to appeal to them. New Labour emerged and basically imitated everything the Lib Dems had said in the decade before but as the nominally most left wing party still retained the working class voting bloc. Meanwhile the Lib Dems continued to get fucked by FPTP because they could reliably get second in a bunch of constituencies against both Labour and the Tories but couldn't win many.
In 1997 Blair's new Labour made an electoral pact with the Lib Dems to game the system and have Lib Dems vote Labour where the Lib Dems couldn't win and Labour vote Lib Dems where Labour couldn't win to unseat Conservatives. If the election was close they were to enter coalition government and FPTP was to be replaced with proportional representation, PR. Labour won a landslide and the Lib Dems were cast back into the wilderness as Blair had enough seats to do whatever the fuck he liked. The plans for PR were abandoned, Labour moved further to the right than the Lib Dems on healthcare, education and invading places because it turned out that Blair was actually a closet insane religious zealot. The Lib Dems led the anti-war movement against Labour and represented the interests of the left wing competently and diligently but nobody really cared because Labour had a massive majority and after two decades of Conservative rule they were still the default opposition and people didn't really notice that Labour had stolen the Conservative's ground.
Labour succeeded in spending over a decade ostracising everyone who ever voted for them, they invaded a bunch of places, introduced fees for higher education, privatised areas of the NHS, created huge deficits because they claimed that they had created a boom that would last forever and mismanaged everything they touched. Meanwhile the Lib Dems, having the virtue of not being associated with Labour, were looking pretty fucking amazing in comparison. They ran on the platform of not invading random places, not privatising education/healthcare and generally not being huge dicks. However people didn't really take them as seriously as they should have because they had no real experience of government having never been in government and had never achieved anything.
In 2010 Labour couldn't linger on any longer and held an election. Again FPTP fucked the Lib Dems but this time Labour and the Conservatives were both so incredibly unpopular that even with FPTP amplifying the impact of anyone popular no clear victor emerged. The Conservatives were promising to steer the sinking ship through the storms of the financial crisis by tossing people overboard while Labour, the helmsman who had sailed into it, promised that if we just kept on sailing further into the storm it'd all work out okay. The Lib Dems did as badly as usual on seats, winning just 9.1% of them, but because no clear majority emerged they held the deciding vote. They could side with the Conservatives, who had won the plurality and had the clearest mandate of anyone but could not rule alone, Labour, who had lost the election but would be able to cling on with an unworkable majority in coalition, or could force a new election. If they chose the first they would be cursed forever by the left wing and tainted by the decisions of a government that they couldn't control (nor had any mandate to control making up just 20% of the MPs in it), if they chose the second they would get nothing for it, be as ineffectual as ever and prove that the Lib Dems couldn't run a government, if they chose the third then they would prove that a three party system is a waste of time and cannot create a government, people would pick Labour or the Conservatives to avoid endless split elections. After three decades in the wilderness the Lib Dems were finally offered the chance to actually walk in the corridors of power, have their voices heard and enact some policies, if they shied away from it then they would prove to everyone that everything the Lib Dems had been claiming about them not being a wasted vote and actually being able to represent the opinions of Lib Dem voters was nonsense. If they refused the ability to make a difference then nobody would vote for them again, people do not vote for principles in sufficient numbers to win elections, they vote for results and if you promise results and then run from power they will not vote again. So, the Lib Dems joined a coalition with the Conservative party although they did extract the promise of a referendum on electoral reform, their ancient enemy. Labour had previously promised PR and reneged on it because having won a landslide in 97 they decided they quite liked FPTP, the most they could get from the Tories was the offer of a referendum and Clegg (leader of the Lib Dems) felt it was worth a deal with the devil.
The Conservatives mismanaged shit horribly. They came up with a plan whereby if they tossed enough people overboard the ship would fly away out of the storm. Unfortunately the plan involved tossing all the sailors overboard first and then the ship ground to a halt and left them all looking rather silly. The plan was that by now we'd be paying down the deficit with our budget surplus. The goalposts were moved constantly as things got from bad to worse to really worse and rather than paying down the deficit with our surplus we were increasing it faster than ever while unemployment went up and we went into a triple dip recession. We had the referendum on PR vs FPTP and the Lib Dems lost it decisively meanwhile their supporters felt betrayed by their votes in the election being for MPs who were now supporting the Conservative cuts. Lib Dem voters vowed never to vote Lib Dem again and the Lib Dem backbenchers, fearing for their jobs and their souls, rebelled against Clegg for leading them down this path of doom. Then the Conservatives started invading places too because "why not" and the animals could no longer tell the pigs and the humans apart. And that brings us to the present day and the Lib Dems, the party which just wanted to be centre left and run a decent economy without fucking everyone over or invading anywhere, being completely and utterly fucked. And it's not even their fault. They didn't even do anything wrong.
So now we're gonna be stuck with Labour, the Tories and God help us, UKIP.
Haha nice overview, just wrong with most of the analysis .
On July 01 2013 12:06 KwarK wrote: Brief history of the Lib Dems. In the 80s UK politics saw a huge polarisation between the centre right, led by Thatcher, and the left, led by Foot (later Benn). The economy was in crisis, vast sectors of the economy were in the public sector and had been mismanaged and underinvested into obsolescence in the preceding decades. Thatcher's response was privatisation, conflict with the unions, the destruction of the unprofitable coal and manufacturing sectors which threw the economy into disarray and created massive unemployment and class conflict. Labour's response to the crisis and to Thatcher were to move further to the left, to throw their lot in with the workers and commit to a socialist manifesto. However a group of people within Labour known as the gang of four felt that this was shortsighted and basically wrong, that hardcore socialism had failed, that economic reforms were both necessary and inevitable and that there existed a third possibility where you accepted the necessity of the free market (like Thatcher) without being a colossal dick (like Thatcher). The gang of four split from Labour and created the Social Democratic Party (SDP) as a centre left party. In the 1983 election they ran in alliance with the old Liberal party (irrelevant until 1983), the Conservatives got 42.4%, Labour got 27.6% and the SDP Lib alliance got 25.4%. The conservative success was in part boosted by the victory in the Falklands and represented a landslide victory. However due to the first past the post electoral system the split vote between Labour and SDP Lib alliance the SDP Lib alliance only got 13.8% of the seats in parliament. The 1987 election saw Labour again commit to a policy of socialism meanwhile the SDP and the Liberals merged to form the Liberal Democratic party and continued to offer a centre left alternative to the far left and centre right being offered by the two main parties. However after the defeat in 1987 Labour was repeating the internal divisions which had led the gang of four to break away and the lesson of two defeats saw the entire party re-evaluate itself rather than another schism. Labour abandoned its far left policies and accepted Thatcher's changes as a fait accompli, the damage was already done and the battles already fought, the question was now what to do with Thatcher's legacy. The middle class was an increasingly important voting bloc and Labour needed to appeal to them. New Labour emerged and basically imitated everything the Lib Dems had said in the decade before but as the nominally most left wing party still retained the working class voting bloc. Meanwhile the Lib Dems continued to get fucked by FPTP because they could reliably get second in a bunch of constituencies against both Labour and the Tories but couldn't win many.
In 1997 Blair's new Labour made an electoral pact with the Lib Dems to game the system and have Lib Dems vote Labour where the Lib Dems couldn't win and Labour vote Lib Dems where Labour couldn't win to unseat Conservatives. If the election was close they were to enter coalition government and FPTP was to be replaced with proportional representation, PR. Labour won a landslide and the Lib Dems were cast back into the wilderness as Blair had enough seats to do whatever the fuck he liked. The plans for PR were abandoned, Labour moved further to the right than the Lib Dems on healthcare, education and invading places because it turned out that Blair was actually a closet insane religious zealot. The Lib Dems led the anti-war movement against Labour and represented the interests of the left wing competently and diligently but nobody really cared because Labour had a massive majority and after two decades of Conservative rule they were still the default opposition and people didn't really notice that Labour had stolen the Conservative's ground.
Labour succeeded in spending over a decade ostracising everyone who ever voted for them, they invaded a bunch of places, introduced fees for higher education, privatised areas of the NHS, created huge deficits because they claimed that they had created a boom that would last forever and mismanaged everything they touched. Meanwhile the Lib Dems, having the virtue of not being associated with Labour, were looking pretty fucking amazing in comparison. They ran on the platform of not invading random places, not privatising education/healthcare and generally not being huge dicks. However people didn't really take them as seriously as they should have because they had no real experience of government having never been in government and had never achieved anything.
In 2010 Labour couldn't linger on any longer and held an election. Again FPTP fucked the Lib Dems but this time Labour and the Conservatives were both so incredibly unpopular that even with FPTP amplifying the impact of anyone popular no clear victor emerged. The Conservatives were promising to steer the sinking ship through the storms of the financial crisis by tossing people overboard while Labour, the helmsman who had sailed into it, promised that if we just kept on sailing further into the storm it'd all work out okay. The Lib Dems did as badly as usual on seats, winning just 9.1% of them, but because no clear majority emerged they held the deciding vote. They could side with the Conservatives, who had won the plurality and had the clearest mandate of anyone but could not rule alone, Labour, who had lost the election but would be able to cling on with an unworkable majority in coalition, or could force a new election. If they chose the first they would be cursed forever by the left wing and tainted by the decisions of a government that they couldn't control (nor had any mandate to control making up just 20% of the MPs in it), if they chose the second they would get nothing for it, be as ineffectual as ever and prove that the Lib Dems couldn't run a government, if they chose the third then they would prove that a three party system is a waste of time and cannot create a government, people would pick Labour or the Conservatives to avoid endless split elections. After three decades in the wilderness the Lib Dems were finally offered the chance to actually walk in the corridors of power, have their voices heard and enact some policies, if they shied away from it then they would prove to everyone that everything the Lib Dems had been claiming about them not being a wasted vote and actually being able to represent the opinions of Lib Dem voters was nonsense. If they refused the ability to make a difference then nobody would vote for them again, people do not vote for principles in sufficient numbers to win elections, they vote for results and if you promise results and then run from power they will not vote again. So, the Lib Dems joined a coalition with the Conservative party although they did extract the promise of a referendum on electoral reform, their ancient enemy. Labour had previously promised PR and reneged on it because having won a landslide in 97 they decided they quite liked FPTP, the most they could get from the Tories was the offer of a referendum and Clegg (leader of the Lib Dems) felt it was worth a deal with the devil.
The Conservatives mismanaged shit horribly. They came up with a plan whereby if they tossed enough people overboard the ship would fly away out of the storm. Unfortunately the plan involved tossing all the sailors overboard first and then the ship ground to a halt and left them all looking rather silly. The plan was that by now we'd be paying down the deficit with our budget surplus. The goalposts were moved constantly as things got from bad to worse to really worse and rather than paying down the deficit with our surplus we were increasing it faster than ever while unemployment went up and we went into a triple dip recession. We had the referendum on PR vs FPTP and the Lib Dems lost it decisively meanwhile their supporters felt betrayed by their votes in the election being for MPs who were now supporting the Conservative cuts. Lib Dem voters vowed never to vote Lib Dem again and the Lib Dem backbenchers, fearing for their jobs and their souls, rebelled against Clegg for leading them down this path of doom. Then the Conservatives started invading places too because "why not" and the animals could no longer tell the pigs and the humans apart. And that brings us to the present day and the Lib Dems, the party which just wanted to be centre left and run a decent economy without fucking everyone over or invading anywhere, being completely and utterly fucked. And it's not even their fault. They didn't even do anything wrong.
So now we're gonna be stuck with Labour, the Tories and God help us, UKIP.
Haha nice overview, just wrong with most of the analysis .
Yeah i might stick this into the OP as an opinion piece. I disagree with alot of it and i still hold that they have made some pretty stupid errors in both strategy and execution that have alienated their core voter base and made them look incredibly incompetent and dishonest. Not that i can think of any current political parties who aren't both incompetent and dishonest.
On July 01 2013 12:06 KwarK wrote: Brief history of the Lib Dems. In the 80s UK politics saw a huge polarisation between the centre right, led by Thatcher, and the left, led by Foot (later Benn). The economy was in crisis, vast sectors of the economy were in the public sector and had been mismanaged and underinvested into obsolescence in the preceding decades. Thatcher's response was privatisation, conflict with the unions, the destruction of the unprofitable coal and manufacturing sectors which threw the economy into disarray and created massive unemployment and class conflict. Labour's response to the crisis and to Thatcher were to move further to the left, to throw their lot in with the workers and commit to a socialist manifesto. However a group of people within Labour known as the gang of four felt that this was shortsighted and basically wrong, that hardcore socialism had failed, that economic reforms were both necessary and inevitable and that there existed a third possibility where you accepted the necessity of the free market (like Thatcher) without being a colossal dick (like Thatcher). The gang of four split from Labour and created the Social Democratic Party (SDP) as a centre left party. In the 1983 election they ran in alliance with the old Liberal party (irrelevant until 1983), the Conservatives got 42.4%, Labour got 27.6% and the SDP Lib alliance got 25.4%. The conservative success was in part boosted by the victory in the Falklands and represented a landslide victory. However due to the first past the post electoral system the split vote between Labour and SDP Lib alliance the SDP Lib alliance only got 13.8% of the seats in parliament. The 1987 election saw Labour again commit to a policy of socialism meanwhile the SDP and the Liberals merged to form the Liberal Democratic party and continued to offer a centre left alternative to the far left and centre right being offered by the two main parties. However after the defeat in 1987 Labour was repeating the internal divisions which had led the gang of four to break away and the lesson of two defeats saw the entire party re-evaluate itself rather than another schism. Labour abandoned its far left policies and accepted Thatcher's changes as a fait accompli, the damage was already done and the battles already fought, the question was now what to do with Thatcher's legacy. The middle class was an increasingly important voting bloc and Labour needed to appeal to them. New Labour emerged and basically imitated everything the Lib Dems had said in the decade before but as the nominally most left wing party still retained the working class voting bloc. Meanwhile the Lib Dems continued to get fucked by FPTP because they could reliably get second in a bunch of constituencies against both Labour and the Tories but couldn't win many.
In 1997 Blair's new Labour made an electoral pact with the Lib Dems to game the system and have Lib Dems vote Labour where the Lib Dems couldn't win and Labour vote Lib Dems where Labour couldn't win to unseat Conservatives. If the election was close they were to enter coalition government and FPTP was to be replaced with proportional representation, PR. Labour won a landslide and the Lib Dems were cast back into the wilderness as Blair had enough seats to do whatever the fuck he liked. The plans for PR were abandoned, Labour moved further to the right than the Lib Dems on healthcare, education and invading places because it turned out that Blair was actually a closet insane religious zealot. The Lib Dems led the anti-war movement against Labour and represented the interests of the left wing competently and diligently but nobody really cared because Labour had a massive majority and after two decades of Conservative rule they were still the default opposition and people didn't really notice that Labour had stolen the Conservative's ground.
Labour succeeded in spending over a decade ostracising everyone who ever voted for them, they invaded a bunch of places, introduced fees for higher education, privatised areas of the NHS, created huge deficits because they claimed that they had created a boom that would last forever and mismanaged everything they touched. Meanwhile the Lib Dems, having the virtue of not being associated with Labour, were looking pretty fucking amazing in comparison. They ran on the platform of not invading random places, not privatising education/healthcare and generally not being huge dicks. However people didn't really take them as seriously as they should have because they had no real experience of government having never been in government and had never achieved anything.
In 2010 Labour couldn't linger on any longer and held an election. Again FPTP fucked the Lib Dems but this time Labour and the Conservatives were both so incredibly unpopular that even with FPTP amplifying the impact of anyone popular no clear victor emerged. The Conservatives were promising to steer the sinking ship through the storms of the financial crisis by tossing people overboard while Labour, the helmsman who had sailed into it, promised that if we just kept on sailing further into the storm it'd all work out okay. The Lib Dems did as badly as usual on seats, winning just 9.1% of them, but because no clear majority emerged they held the deciding vote. They could side with the Conservatives, who had won the plurality and had the clearest mandate of anyone but could not rule alone, Labour, who had lost the election but would be able to cling on with an unworkable majority in coalition, or could force a new election. If they chose the first they would be cursed forever by the left wing and tainted by the decisions of a government that they couldn't control (nor had any mandate to control making up just 20% of the MPs in it), if they chose the second they would get nothing for it, be as ineffectual as ever and prove that the Lib Dems couldn't run a government, if they chose the third then they would prove that a three party system is a waste of time and cannot create a government, people would pick Labour or the Conservatives to avoid endless split elections. After three decades in the wilderness the Lib Dems were finally offered the chance to actually walk in the corridors of power, have their voices heard and enact some policies, if they shied away from it then they would prove to everyone that everything the Lib Dems had been claiming about them not being a wasted vote and actually being able to represent the opinions of Lib Dem voters was nonsense. If they refused the ability to make a difference then nobody would vote for them again, people do not vote for principles in sufficient numbers to win elections, they vote for results and if you promise results and then run from power they will not vote again. So, the Lib Dems joined a coalition with the Conservative party although they did extract the promise of a referendum on electoral reform, their ancient enemy. Labour had previously promised PR and reneged on it because having won a landslide in 97 they decided they quite liked FPTP, the most they could get from the Tories was the offer of a referendum and Clegg (leader of the Lib Dems) felt it was worth a deal with the devil.
The Conservatives mismanaged shit horribly. They came up with a plan whereby if they tossed enough people overboard the ship would fly away out of the storm. Unfortunately the plan involved tossing all the sailors overboard first and then the ship ground to a halt and left them all looking rather silly. The plan was that by now we'd be paying down the deficit with our budget surplus. The goalposts were moved constantly as things got from bad to worse to really worse and rather than paying down the deficit with our surplus we were increasing it faster than ever while unemployment went up and we went into a triple dip recession. We had the referendum on PR vs FPTP and the Lib Dems lost it decisively meanwhile their supporters felt betrayed by their votes in the election being for MPs who were now supporting the Conservative cuts. Lib Dem voters vowed never to vote Lib Dem again and the Lib Dem backbenchers, fearing for their jobs and their souls, rebelled against Clegg for leading them down this path of doom. Then the Conservatives started invading places too because "why not" and the animals could no longer tell the pigs and the humans apart. And that brings us to the present day and the Lib Dems, the party which just wanted to be centre left and run a decent economy without fucking everyone over or invading anywhere, being completely and utterly fucked. And it's not even their fault. They didn't even do anything wrong.
So now we're gonna be stuck with Labour, the Tories and God help us, UKIP.
Haha nice overview, just wrong with most of the analysis .
Yeah i might stick this into the OP as an opinion piece. I disagree with alot of it and i still hold that they have made some pretty stupid errors in both strategy and execution that have alienated their core voter base and made them look incredibly incompetent and dishonest. Not that i can think of any current political parties who aren't both incompetent and dishonest.
And it's not even their fault. They didn't even do anything wrong.
They could have refused to partner with Cameron and forced the Tories to run a minority government or force another election or done something other than attach themselves to the quivering mass of New Labour-lite goo that is the Conservative Party. Which I guess isn't actually worse than the reactionary and inept "organization" that is New Labour, but I can't see how it's much better.
Also, the whole premise of the Lib Dem party is to go back to some kind of mythical post-war pre-Thatcher consensus that never was, and if it ever was, the 1970s put a bullet in its brain and this isn't a comic book so it isn't coming back. It's a hodge-podge of the most successful platitudes of the two major parties for the last 30ish years. The Liberal Democratic Party is King Solomon actually trying to cut the baby in half and telling the competing mothers it's a good idea.
Only when one of the major parties has been in the wilderness for a generation to the point where it winning a victory is almost inconceivable and the other one more or less totally discredits itself in the eyes of the public in the space of a few years do such parties seem attractive and have limited success. I mean really, if the Conservatives were even the slightest bit competent at politicking they would have crushed the 2010 elections and won an outright majority, and the Lib Dems would have been an afterthought.
Nick Clegg being (somehow) dumber than David Cameron hasn't helped the Lib Dems either. So now the frustrated and bewildered public has (sort of) started flirting with Nigel Farage, who might possibly be the world's least self-aware human being. Either that or he is the reincarnation of some raving Whiggist circa 1704.
And it's not even their fault. They didn't even do anything wrong.
They could have refused to partner with Cameron and forced the Tories to run a minority government or force another election or done something other than attach themselves to the quivering mass of New Labour-lite goo that is the Conservative Party. Which I guess isn't actually worse than the reactionary and inept "organization" that is New Labour, but I can't see how it's much better.
Also, the whole premise of the Lib Dem party is to go back to some kind of mythical post-war pre-Thatcher consensus that never was, and if it ever was, the 1970s put a bullet in its brain and this isn't a comic book so it isn't coming back. It's a hodge-podge of the most successful platitudes of the two major parties for the last 30ish years. The Liberal Democratic Party is King Solomon actually trying to cut the baby in half and telling the competing mothers it's a good idea.
Only when one of the major parties has been in the wilderness for a generation to the point where it winning a victory is almost inconceivable and the other one more or less totally discredits itself in the eyes of the public in the space of a few years do such parties seem attractive and have limited success. I mean really, if the Conservatives were even the slightest bit competent at politicking they would have crushed the 2010 elections and won an outright majority, and the Lib Dems would have been an afterthought.
Nick Clegg being (somehow) dumber than David Cameron hasn't helped the Lib Dems either. So now the frustrated and bewildered public has (sort of) started flirting with Nigel Farage, who might possibly be the world's least self-aware human being. Either that or he is the reincarnation of some raving Whiggist circa 1704.
If the one thing everyone says about the Lib Dems is that it's a wasted vote for people with no experience of power who will never get any power because they're a third party in a two party system and cannot ever make a difference then you cannot decline power. It's that simple. For decades the Lib Dems told their left wing supporters that they were an alternative to Labour and all that happened was they split the vote and the Tories pulled through (1983, 1987, 1992). Likewise for decades they told centrists that they were an alternative to the Tories that wouldn't destroy the economy the way Labour would and Labour won landslides with the split vote (2001, 2005). The Lib Dems did very well in the local elections because they always enjoyed an awful lot of popular support but in the general elections people knew voting Lib Dem would split the vote and potentially let the worse of two evils in so they voted for their preferred of the two main parties. Meanwhile the Lib Dems begged and pleaded with them to vote Lib Dem in the general elections and to believe that a third party could make a difference in a two party system. In this context the Lib Dems simply cannot say "sorry chaps, it turns out that we've split the vote, we have to do this whole thing all over again until we get a winner". If they say that then they prove not only that third parties don't produce governments and encourage their supporters to switch to one of the big two in the general elections but also that this "vote for us and we'll actually make a difference" thing was bullshit, when offered power they refused it. It would force voters to vote elsewhere in the repeat election to create a lesser of two evils government, it would validate the argument that the Lib Dems were a wasted vote and if the Lib Dems were not going to enter coalition there was literally no purpose in voting for them because they had no realistic hope of an overall victory.
The Lib Dems had to enter a coalition government with the Conservatives. The worst case scenario for them is not being tainted by association, it's being ineffectual. If everyone thinks that you're incapable of doing anything and won't support you because of it then it's better to do something wrong and appear incompetent than refuse to do anything.
On July 01 2013 07:14 {CC}StealthBlue wrote: So whatever happened to the leadership challenge Cameron was facing?
A bit of tough talk on Europe seems to have saved his butt for now. Seriously though, what's with Balls saying he won't borrow more to fund stimulus? I thought Labour were meant to be the anti-austerity party nowadays.
If the one thing everyone says about the Lib Dems is that it's a wasted vote for people with no experience of power who will never get any power because they're a third party in a two party system and cannot ever make a difference then you cannot decline power. It's that simple. For decades the Lib Dems told their left wing supporters that they were an alternative to Labour and all that happened was they split the vote and the Tories pulled through (1983, 1987, 1992). Likewise for decades they told centrists that they were an alternative to the Tories that wouldn't destroy the economy the way Labour would and Labour won landslides with the split vote (2001, 2005). The Lib Dems did very well in the local elections because they always enjoyed an awful lot of popular support but in the general elections people knew voting Lib Dem would split the vote and potentially let the worse of two evils in so they voted for their preferred of the two main parties. Meanwhile the Lib Dems begged and pleaded with them to vote Lib Dem in the general elections and to believe that a third party could make a difference in a two party system. In this context the Lib Dems simply cannot say "sorry chaps, it turns out that we've split the vote, we have to do this whole thing all over again until we get a winner". If they say that then they prove not only that third parties don't produce governments and encourage their supporters to switch to one of the big two in the general elections but also that this "vote for us and we'll actually make a difference" thing was bullshit, when offered power they refused it. It would force voters to vote elsewhere in the repeat election to create a lesser of two evils government, it would validate the argument that the Lib Dems were a wasted vote and if the Lib Dems were not going to enter coalition there was literally no purpose in voting for them because they had no realistic hope of an overall victory.
That's the conventional way of looking at it from a politico's point of view but we seem to be in a moment where the politico way of looking at politics is failing.
The Lib Dems had to enter a coalition government with the Conservatives. The worst case scenario for them is not being tainted by association, it's being ineffectual. If everyone thinks that you're incapable of doing anything and won't support you because of it then it's better to do something wrong and appear incompetent than refuse to do anything.
I don't know, I would think that any impression of being ineffectual would have been forgotten if David Cameron were forced to shoulder things by himself. He and the Tories would be perceived as having full responsibility for the triple dip and would take all the heat for it. And so the Lib Dems would have been better positioned for the next election, instead of taking flak that should have been aimed entirely at the Conservative Party but wasn't because the Lib Dems have followed your advice precisely and are now paying for it. Nick Clegg is Deputy Prime Minister or whatever the fuck Cameron calls him when he pats him on the head like the good boy he is and now he and his party's fortunes get to rise and fall - more like exclusively fall - with the fortunes of the Conservative Party.
You are making the assumption that the Tories could have done all the same things without the Lib Dems in coalition. That assumption doesn't hold up. If the Lib Dems refuse coalition with either party then the most likely course of events is that a new election is called as the current MPs cannot form an effective government. In this situation the Tories go "that was a close run thing, we almost didn't get in to save the economy, you had your fun right leaning Lib Dem voters but now it's time to come back to the natural party of government", Labour say exactly the same thing towards the left leaning ones and both sides say "see, Lib Dems told you it wasn't a wasted vote, we both offered them coalitions and they refused to participate in actually running the country, all talk, no action". The Lib Dems implode, get very, very few seats (because in FPTP as a third party your majority is basically non existent in the seats you do have) and from then on it's damn near impossible to salvage. Once you stop winning seats people stop paying attention to you and you never regain momentum.
Alternatively if the Tories attempted a minority government it would have collapsed at the first hurdle at which point they would say "we are the only people with a mandate here, the Labour party lost the election, we got the plurality but we can't govern due to Lib Dem obstructionism" and call another election. If the house won't pass your manifesto promises that's a vote of no confidence by tradition, a new election must be called. The Tories wouldn't be accountable for anything that happened by then and wouldn't really have been able to do anything yet anyway, the Lib Dems would be tainted by their refusal to actually have power and participate and still get fucked.
It's important to remember that in 2010 not a single MP on the Lib Dem front bench had any ministerial experience. The last generation of heavy hitting politicians to be Lib Dems were the gang of four three decades previously. Since then all they'd done is criticised the people making decisions while promising that if they ever got the chance it'd all be different. If they appeared afraid to actually hold power and instead wanted to remain on the side lines shouting criticism it'd discredit them.
On July 01 2013 07:14 {CC}StealthBlue wrote: So whatever happened to the leadership challenge Cameron was facing?
A bit of tough talk on Europe seems to have saved his butt for now. Seriously though, what's with Balls saying he won't borrow more to fund stimulus? I thought Labour were meant to be the anti-austerity party nowadays.
Aha I know, like I said - it was a leading question. But seriously, certain international observers underestimate the amount of support for the conservatives in a lot of areas in Britain, if Labour win its probably going to be because of the unions.
On July 01 2013 12:06 KwarK wrote: Labour won a landslide and the Lib Dems were cast back into the wilderness as Blair had enough seats to do whatever the fuck he liked. The plans for PR were abandoned, Labour moved further to the right than the Lib Dems on healthcare, education and invading places because it turned out that Blair was actually a closet insane religious zealot.
Brilliant. Though have a general problem with the narrative "the 70's were bad, stagflation was because of socialist malaise" thing, but it's widely accepted.
On July 01 2013 12:06 KwarK wrote: even with FPTP amplifying the impact of anyone popular
On July 01 2013 20:28 KwarK wrote: because in FPTP as a third party your majority is basically non existent in the seats you do have
FPTP (First Past The Post) does not inherently favour a 2 party result. Other aspects of the British parliamentary system do but this one doesn't. What it does mean is that country wide movements can be effectively invisible in parliament. That if you want to have an any impact in the house of commons you need to win locally. That if you want to have a significant impact you need to win locally in many localities at once.
Compare the Green Party of England and Wales who currently have 1 seat in the house of commons (Brighton Pavilion) and UKIP and the BNP who both have none. Brighton is basically hippy central (or the British home of free thinking, whatever loaded term you like - it's very San-Francisco), the Greens focused a great deal of resources there and won the seat. The Greens get to vote on policy and UKIP and the BNP don't.
However in the last election UKIP actually was the 4th most voted for party over all and the BNP was the 5th. The Greens were 7th.
On July 01 2013 19:40 DeepElemBlues wrote: The Liberal Democratic Party is King Solomon actually trying to cut the baby in half and telling the competing mothers it's a good idea.
The article then goes on to say a few things about borrowing that are fucking obvious but which are, in the main, undiscussed. However I think the writer is over dressing the problem.
Largely politicians and the media seem to have nothing but contempt for the voting public. At some point someone made this argument "DURRRR YU CARNT BORROW URE WAI OUT OF DET" and no public figure could come up with a counter argument in the roughly the same terms i.e. in the kind of terms you'd explain it to a pot plant or a sandwich - Reducing the complexity of an entire nation's fiscal situation to what you see in your bank statement. All it would take attributing to the public the intelligence of only a common-or-garden moron to ask the question:
"Does that mean that if I am £500 overdrawn I shouldn't never, under any circumstances, take out a mortgage or get a student loan?"
But hey, when has an economist ever said anything in a sentence that they couldn't say in a book? If you're going to guess and call it science best to do it in a convoluted form so you can get paid.
I'm not sure how you can argue FPTP doesn't favour a two party system. Assuming national parties, which is fair to assume because government requires large political parties capable of winning a majority and having a meaningful whip, the emergence of two centrist alternatives is inevitable by FPTP. Any split in the vote of either will guarantee the intact alternative wins while further fragmentation will result in MPs winning with 20 or so percent of the popular vote. In that situation related parties will do exactly what the Lib Dems and Labour did in 97 and encourage tactical voting to dethrone the common enemy. FPTP rewards wide voting blocs and tactical voting while punishing division by allowing a common enemy to win. Third parties are always, always underrepresented by FPTP, something which you can see in every election result.
On July 01 2013 10:03 Souma wrote: I wish we had something like PMQ in the U.S. lol. It's always so interesting to me.
it really isn't. it's partisan childishness of the highest degree and i cannot recall the prime minister (any of them) ever answering a question directly, or going more than a minute without blaming the previous government for everything