13 September 2008
Lib Dems Drowning In Irony.
Does anybody else find it laughable that the Lib Dems on 18% support in most polls have a leader pronouncing that Labour (on 28% support) do not 'have the support of the people' and are 'finished'. Does this guff actually win votes? Clegg is the invisible man, better than Campbell (who wouldn't be) but his attempt to save Lib Dem seats in the Tory shores by positioning the Lib Dems to the right of the Tories is a big mistake.
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Unfortunately you are finished as a party. Labour are the most self serving, corrupt leadership this country has ever seen. The people hate you and your party.
ReplyDeleteCheckout the bbc HYS:
http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?forumID=5337&edition=1&ttl=20080914071033
thats what people really think.
shaun: How hated must the Lib Dems be, to be 10% behind Labour in the polls?
ReplyDeleteLabour have to take responsibility for everything that goes wrong in government - whether it be the financial crisis in the US or some admin guy who loses data (something that 10 years ago couldn't happen because it then filled an archive room now it fits on a memory stick - far easier to misplace). The press are relentless in their pursuit of any non-Tory government. It is the equivalent of £100bn of free advertising against Labour and for the Tories every year (if you consider the space given to anti-Labour stories). No brand could survive that - imagine if coca-cola had a negative headline about its product on the front page and most other pages of every national and local newspaper every day. Nobody would drink coke, they would be ruined. Yet Labour are STILL more popular than the Lib Dems - I wouldn't go squawking too loudly if I were you. The Lib Dems are in a mess - you are currently facing losing half of your 63 seats to the Torie at the next GE. You have missed a trick to capitalise on both parties misfortunes. It is sad because a strong left-of-centre Lib Dems are good counters to the Tory bullshit in the press. Sadly you have gone all Daily Mail under Clegg and it will lose you masses of votes.
"... something that 10 years ago couldn't happen because ... " the government hadn't implemented so much of their surveillance state apparatus. If the government didn't cream itself over mega-databases with all the people's information, its operatives wouldn't have the opportunity to lose or steal the data. The blame lies totally with the government.
ReplyDeleteLabour made its faustian pact with the media, and got an easy ride for years. Now Mephistopheles is coming to collect.
NH, the fact that Bush's policies vis a vis house price bubble and credit bubble are just as reckless and crap as Labour's does not excuse Labour in the slightest.
ReplyDeleteThe nigh worldwide credit/property price bubble had to burst sooner or later (just like it did in 1973 or 1989).
And as TT says, Nulab had a very easy ride from the MSM until recently.
"Sadly you have gone all Daily Mail under Clegg and it will lose you masses of votes."
ReplyDeleteYou must not have read the Daily Mail recently, or actually listened to what Clegg has said, rather than what he was reported as saying/what you want him to have said if you think that.
Clegg policies
ReplyDelete4p cut in income tax - regressive.
scrapping student loans and grants - regressive.
increasing inheritance tax allowance - very regressive
'green taxes' - very regressive
paying elderly care - regressive
local income tax - too expensive to administrate and difficult to collect
'social democracy has failed' - says it all
Cutting public spending is just going to mean cuts to services that the poorest rely on - once again regressive.
The Lib Dems don't get it.
I'm not liberal at all; and I definitiely would vote Lib Dem! Sorry if i gave that impression.
ReplyDeleteI just stumbled across your blog, read your piece and wanted to say mine.
People are fed up of Labour for 3 reasons, placed in any order you like:
Crime, immigration and taxation.
To take just one of your points about stripping public spending being 'regressive and hurting the poor'. I'm afraid we dont have poor in this country, poor is begging on the streets of Bangalore and living under tarpaulin.
What we have in the UK is sections of society in 'benefit bondage', too well off to work through ample benefit and too comfortable to improve their lot. All courtesy of Labour who consider these people 'poor'.
More stick and less carrot would improve the lives of a great many. Accomplishment gives pride and pride in ones self improves behaviour.
If removing the ludicrous amount of money spent on public services, by which i mean the quangos, focus groups etc is regressive and puts the squeeze on these people then I'm very regressive.
Before you accuse of me of wanting to liquidate the unemployed I'm very aware that some people are genuinely out of work; but how many people in this country under 30 have been unemployed for a year or more? What do Labour do about this nothing. Who supports them, people like me.
The problem with Labour is they have forgot they are there to serve the people not dictate to them. They just dont listen. Remember the referendum anyone?
I very much doubt if Labour will ever see power again in my lifetime and I'm only 30.
The 3 party system we have at the moment doesn't work, nor will it ever work again. Same trough, different pigs each and every time.
One final thing, just because 28% of people support you doesnt mean your popular. If only 1 quarter of people who knew me liked me I'd class myself as decidedly unpopular!
Oh, I dont read the Mail either for precisely the reasons you allude to! I make up my own opinion and unfortunately for Labour so do a lot of other people.
I do not see how cutting tax on the work & consumption of low & middle earners, & levying it on pollution, is "regressive". It is in fact extremely progressive & redistributive to shift the tax burden.
ReplyDeleteMaking the poorest in society bear the burden for extravagant spending, on income tax & VAT, is reactionary, & is what New Labour have been doing, much to your chagrin, if you'll recall.
I agree with you on IHT, & Clegg is mistaken if he wants to raise the threshold to please the usual twats, but he has otherwise got it right, especially on green taxes. What's "regressive" about green taxes? Is a pupil premium right-wing?
Several programmes could easily be abolished, for example ID cards, & tax credits could be replaced with a higher threshold, thus keeping incomes the same (& benefiting young, single people) with the only loss being to the admin department of HMRC.
The difference between Clegg & Camoron is obvious, Clegg wants to extend opportunity & Camoron wants to entrench his mates at the top.
As for social democracy having failed, the massive increases in public spending for so little result testifies to that. The Liberal Democrats are progressive, not despite but because of the fact that they do not cleave to your left stereotypes. I am glad that Clegg ignores La Toynbee, & it's your own problem if you choose to regard any view different to hers as deviant.
& I'm not a member or even necessarily a supporter of the Liberal Democrats, I'm just saying.
Shaun, Asquith - the problem with rejecting Labour is inevitably getting a Tory government instead. You ask about benefit culture, but it was Thatcher that gave us 17 year old beggars on the streets and put millions on welfare. Major entrenched this and Labour have largely stopped the acceleration of inequality. I fully expect Cameron to continue where Major left off and worsen inequality even more. This talk of reducing the state is Tory rhetoric and yet their policies are responsible for welfare dependency not Labour who have put more people back into work despite 18 years of Tory entrenched unemployed and criminal generations.
ReplyDeleteYou can hate Labour as much as you like (and I sometimes do), but still realise they are worth voting for to stop the Tories.
Final comment from me.
ReplyDeleteThe lesser of two evils is still an evil.
The whole system needs reform, the sooner we get rid of the 3 (2?) party system the better.
Sadly I don't think it will ever happen.
I understand you defending Labour; but a party that allows this:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article4749183.ece
is completely indefensible and about to implode under its own PC rhetoric.
I resent bitterly that kind of rhetoric. I accept that some compromises have to be made, which is the whole reason I will probably end up putting my x next to the Liberal Democrats. Perhaps I will vote Green in the Euro elections, but I don't actually support them & disagree with swathes of what they say.
ReplyDeleteYours is the attitude that got Bliar to a narrow victory in 2005. I want no part of it. If Labour want my support they'll have to get it on their own merits, which would mean developing some merits, as they posess very few at the moment & these are outweighed greatly by their authoritarian, wasteful, bullying approach.
I am not the sort of person who is scared by some Tory bogeyman into voting Labour, out of some belief that they're on the same side as me, another implication which I resent.
I know you're doing the best you can in an iniqitious voting system, but I still don't like it.
Does anybody else find it laughable that the Lib Dems on 18% support in most polls have a leader pronouncing that Labour (on 28% support) do not 'have the support of the people' and are 'finished'
ReplyDeleteYes well there a lot of tribal Labourites around, who will vote Labour whatever it does in government. I don't know why you bother to comment on Clegg's comments - they are just the usual lame political knockabout. Labour isn't 'finished' but it will be out of office for at least two terms and deservedly so. The challenge for it will be whether it can become a moderate social democratic party or whether it will continue to be an extremist authoritarian party.
You can hate Labour as much as you like (and I sometimes do), but still realise they are worth voting for to stop the Tories
ReplyDeleteConsidering that Labour want to put me in jail for refusing to have an ID Card, that's pretty high price for voting Labour. I think I shall vote in such a way that I am not sent to jail.
There's also the fact that so long as people vote for the 2 main parties, a more equitable voting system is never going to be introduced. We're only hearing about PR because something like 30% of voters go elsewhere. The answer is to vote Liberal Democrat or Green, thus forcing it onto Labour's agenda & wiping the smirk off Camoron's face when he realises how few people share his "vision" of making the poor subsidise his mates.
ReplyDelete'How hated must the Lib Dems be, to be 10% behind Labour in the polls?'
ReplyDeleteIt's simple really
There are more thick people than clever people
Most of Labour's support comes from thick people
But a lot of thick people have enough sense to hate Labour, even if they are too stupid to support the Lib Dems
But I wouldn't expect you to be able to work that out
As for why people hate Labour, I should hate to tax your brain unduly, as the list of reasons is quite long
"The lesser of two evils is still an evil." (Shaun)
ReplyDeleteIndeed, but we are stuck with an idiotic first-past-the-post system that forces the voter to choose whatever is, from his or her point of view, the least of all the available evils in his or her constituency. That is the only way of maximising your effect as a voter. To do otherwise is to waste your vote.
Thus, if you live in a Tory seat where the Lib Dems are in second place, you have no option but to vote Lib Dem if you want to try and get the Tory out. Conversely, if you are a Tory in a Labour seat where the Lib Dems are in second place, you still have to vote Lib Dem to maximise your prospects of getting the Labour person out. The answer is not to artificially change from a 3-party system to a 2-party one; rather, the answer is to have a sensible voting system, and then we can let a thousand flowers bloom, and people can vote as they really think.
"People are fed up of Labour for 3 reasons, placed in any order you like:
ReplyDeleteCrime, immigration and taxation." (Shaun)
If you look over the decades, there is very little evidence that crime rates are much affected by who is in government. For what it may be worth, overall crime rates have actually gone down quite substantially in recent years.
As for immigration, Labour governments over the decades have been at least as restrictive as Tory ones -- wrongly in both cases, in my view. Immigration is only perceived to be a "problem" because the gutter press, of which all governments are frightened, keeps saying so. In reality, we need these people to keep the economy going, especially when so many of the indigenous population are bone idle and don't want to work.