Saturday, July 10, 2010

The death of the Liberal Democrats?

Former Lib Dem leader of Liverpool council Warren Bradley has said what we all suspect to be true: that in adding their name to the vicious ideological cuts of the Tory government, the Lib Dems have signed their own suicide note. It is not often that I agree with a Lib Dem but I agree with Bradley. There is now no reason for a Lib Dem vote.

Bradley himself said in a letter to the Liverpool Daily Post: "we’re in a weak coalition, that will deliver nothing to the Lib-Dems except total electoral decimation. I give you that absolute guarantee, we will be wiped out by Labour in the North and the Tories in the South, and at last the media will have that two-party system that they have always craved.”

The cancelling of Building Schools for the Future programme was just the sort of once in a lifetime investment that shows Labour was serious about changing the fabric of the country. Bradley says Gove's pre-meditated decision to scrap is made him feel "physically sick". Again we've seen from the Tories that they put short termism first, ideology first and don't care about fairness or planning for the future.

What next for the Lib Dems? Why bother voting for them when they are little more than collaborators in the nastiest government in memory?

3 comments:

Richiedaw said...

It still amazes me that supposedly intelligent people don't really understand that a coalition is a compromise and this one is a blend of Lib Dem and Conservative policy.

Clearly Mr Bradley still has an opposition mind set and is covering his own backside !

What about him having some balls and explaining to people what a Coalition means and explaining that government means tough decisions unlike the luxury of opposition .

How about explaining to everybody that Labour are cowards who would be making exactly the same deep cuts but bottled out at the election !

Our government makes the cuts or the IMF or EU come in and make them for us-you choose .

Warren should resign and join the Liberals .They will suit him best he clearly doesn't understand what is going on and are best off out of the Lib Dems.

Bradley is a hypocrite standing for a party that has always advocated coalition politics but now you can't stomach the painful reality.

Lib Dem support will dip as the cuts bite but after 5 years of sucessful govt we'll increase our vote and seats (especially under AV)

LDs have been written off many many times before so its comforting to see such headlines .

The mood amoungst core supporters and members is very positive and party membership is growing strongly .

I am going to enjoy watching bloggers like you eats your words at the next GE

Idle Pen Pusher said...

"Again we've seen from the Tories that they put short termism first, ideology first and don't care about fairness or planning for the future."

I can swallow short termism and ideology. Just. Although it's not as if Labour weren't spending for short-termist and ideological reasons. But 'planning for the future' is seriously head-in-the-clouds. £150 000 000 000. One hundred and fifty billion pounds. One hundred and fifty thousand million pounds. What kind of 'planning for the future' is that? A future of debt repayment and sovereign debt crisis?

Tim - you need to be honest about the scale of profligacy of the second half of the Labour administration, especially near the end when Brown took over. A government can't take 40% of the economy in taxes and spend 50%. Something has to give. And the utterly discredited BSF programme is as good a place to start as any. If even the chief of the RIBA, an organisation which has a vested interest in over-specified, overly expensive building programmes thinks it was horrendously wasteful, surely you can too?

Anonymous said...

The problem is that the Lib Dems where not open or honest about which parts of their manifesto where negotiable and which where not. As one Lib Dem voter I can quite categorically say I will never vote for them again and I know many others that hold a simmilar veiw. You just do not know what policies you are voting for.