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The Coalition so far
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
What do people think about the Coalition, Cameron, Osbourne, Clegg etc.
What are people's views ?
What are people's views ?
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PM Cameroon enjoying power- formed a government for his party after so long pushed back by Tony Blair's success. Lets wait for the budget on 21st March before saying anything about Mr Osbourne
However taking the idea on its statistics, 50% of the people who did unpaid placements ended up with a job so it does actually work.
The tripling of university fees is a rather silly idea, as universities get directly funded less by the government, but the money still goes out in student loans. I am guessing the idea is they will see a return on it all. The part that irked me was the open university course I was going to take as a 3 year course went from £2100 to £15000 overnight.
The tuition fees policy is also the thing which will tear the coalition apart, not because of any rebellion from lib dems, they had their opportunity and betrayed their central policy and single most important election promise.
At the next election it does not take a political genius to see that the lib dems will be voted out, they had their chance at power and decision making and they blew it completely by either directly lying to people in the terms of their 'No to tuition fee increase' or by being so spineless they simply towed the line and voted how they were told to vote.
If they had stood up to their election promises they would have stopped the increase, instead the 27 who voted for it after saying they would vote against it killed the idea of democracy.
So yeah, overall it is not going too badly for us (in my opinion) and it will be nice to see which way the votes go at the next election, either to labour or to the tories and then we shall see where the country is going to!
Doubt there will be an early general election. As the libdem leadership knows their vote will fall, Nick Clegg and his ministers want to enjoy the longevity of power and government. They will sell themshelves to the nation as to how they modified right wing Tory policies with their centre left approach hence benefiting the nation. Clegg will say the libdems achieved in the Coalition as opposed to the party always staying at the side and outside of the two main political parties- he will show whats the point of good libdem policies without real power
Yes.
Also he'll want to show coalition Government will work. Lib-Dems are never go to win a majority on their own and their only hope is hung Government. If they pull out it will say that coalitons are unstable and LDs untrustworthy.
Theoretically it'd be in the Tories better interests for the LDs to pull out, but I'm not sure that Cameron is totally against having some LDs in Govt as it reduces pressure from the Nadine Dorries et al on pushing the Tories in a socially conservative direction (which is political suicide)
That said, whilst a lot has been said on what divides the Tories and Lib-Dems, there is also a lot they supported - both were opposed to ID cards, both had very similar visions on decentralising power and getting rid of regional Government and both have historically formed coalitions at local government level (I'm not sure if this is still true, but before 2010 the LDs were in more coalition agreement with Tory than Lab by quiet a wide margin).
If you ignored tribalism, you'd find that people like David Laws, David Cameron, George Osbourne, Danny Alexander would have compatible views on economic liberalism being a good thing, limited power of the state and that the Government has a limited role in regulating moral actions - though they might differ on specifics (of course the old social-democratic wing such as Cable and Huhne would often fit well into a post-Blair labour party and its them, or their voting equivalents, that Miliband needs to attract)
It will be interesting if there is another hung parliament at the next general election and if a Labour-libdem Coalition is formed how two centre-left political parties work together. Whether such a partnership would be more appealing to the libdem grass roots
I don't think the LDs is a centre-left party, rather it is a centre party - I think the mistake sometimes made is to see it is as purer form of the Labour party, but has been seen this was never sustainable. if you are centre left you'd be better supporting the Labour Party (though that doesn't mean that you wouldn't vote Lib Dem, same as Tories may also be better voting for Lib-Dem in many constituencies)
In the longer term however the risk to the Lib Dems is that the old SDP wing head back to their natural home in the Labour Party and that as the conservatives become more and more socially liberal that the liberal economic wing are attracted more and more to them (especially if the Euro continues on its downward trajectory, removing any argument for the UK joining it)
many grass root members have deserted the libdems and signed up their subscriptions to the Labour party after the last general election. Yeah, Labour is traditionally the more lefty of the two parties. But in political ideology the libdems are a world apart from Conservative thinking
The LDs have lost those members who thought they were a purer Labour party - some of these were people who deserted Labour under Blair and Iraq, others were those who were SDP members who left Labour under Foot. What seems to be happening is that the Liberals are realigning to their pre-79 position of being a 'liberal' party rather than 'Labour lite'. Whether that saves them if people like Nadine Dorries becoming increasingly sidelined in the Tory party and the Tories move to a more liberal conservatism (which would attract many econmic and social liberals who currently dislike the social authoriatarianism of elements of the Conservative party)
It also depends what you mean by political ideology -
Decentralising Power from Central to Local Govt - closer to the Tories
Civil Liberities - generally closer to the Tories (despite arguments over whether we need a Bill of Rights or a Human Rights Act - which in reality in dancing in pinhead stuff)
Europe - marginally closer to Labour (though Labour and the Tories are closer than either are to the LDs)
Trident - close to neither (Tories and Labour have so similar a policy you couldn't put a sheet of paper between them)
Economics - this is the LD fault line, Cable and Hune are natural Govt spending and regulation (ie close to Labour), Clegg, Alexander and Laws are economic liberals (closer to the Tories). Certainly upping the tax threshold for the low paid to take them out of tax (instead of centrally managed tax credits) is an economically liberal idea and would fit as well with the Tories as LDs (and I know some Tories were strongly arguing for adopting it as a policy before the election) and the Mansion Tax is very much an economically liberal idea if it replaces taxes on income (which penalises the income rich, but asset poor (ie workers) and rewards the asset rich, but income poor (ie those with inherited wealth)
As a slight aside: I was watching Question Time a few weeks back and the salient sentiment expressed by one of the panellists went something like: when a party loses after a long time in office it has a huge crisis - a kind of a nervous breakdown - and is forced to consider its past record, which is very unpopular. It happened to the Tories and it's happening to Labour now. I don't criticise Labour, but nobody should pay them any attention for quite a long time.