Whether you’re into tribal politics or not, the way the Liberal Democrats have acted in Government has been an utter disgrace for democracy. Of course, they refused to contemplate what might happen in a ‘hung parliament’, but wasted no time in getting their trousers down and getting into government with the Conservatives in 2010. If it were not for their votes in key House of Commons votes, the more damaging statutory instruments would never have entered the statute books. As a party they are completely washed up, and they will find it impossible to “differentiate” themselves as they are so-locked into a disastrous set of policies which have been to the disgrace of the UK.
Many Labour activists are frightened to admit that the Liberal Democrats are a sickening influence in UK politics, on account of the fact Labour may need to build a Coalition with them in 2015. Save for the fact that people would rather emigrate than to see Clegg be Miliband’s Deputy Prime Minister, aspirations for a ‘progressive left’, providing cover for an otherwise extinct Liberal Democrat party, must surely have experienced a traumatic death by now. This was in a way ‘a once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity’ for the Liberal Democrats to prove that they could ‘handle’ government. They have merely proved that they can be the “whipping boy”, and for them the answer to the command ‘Jump’ is truly ‘how high?’.
The defining point in the suicide pact of the Liberal Democrats was to change gear from second, as the car had just got out of first gear in a very fragile recovery, and jack the handbrake so hard the car engine stalled nearly catapulting the drivers through the windscreen. The car had most definitely gone into reverse, only to resume in first gear through the Jubilee and the Olympics. And now it’s about to go into reverse again, as we enter an unprecedented ‘triple dip’. The question on most people’s lips, and indeed asked by James Landale off Ed Miliband on “The Andrew Marr Show” at the weekend was why people still preferred the Conservatives on the economy despite an ‘omnishambles’ of an economic policy and a budget. Good question. Oh not it’s not. Journalists, including the BBC, have refused to tell the public the truth. The truth is that Labour’s deficit was comparable to Norman Lamont’s and Ken Clarke’s, had it not been for the emergency bailout of the banks. Simon Hughes MP continued violently lying on last Friday’s “Any Questions” with the same pack of garbage, hoping that nobody would notice.
The Liberal Democrats have lied entirely fraudulently to get themselves into Government, and they deserve completely to be annihilated in the 2015 general election. Their inability to tell the truth on the economy, and over an Act of parliament which throws the NHS to the private market, speaks volumes. They have screwed up royally their one chance to ‘make a difference’, by bending over and experiencing such a painful political rogering this really did hurt. They have absolutely no credibility in that nobody would dare to vote for them at the next General Election in full knowledge of what they actually did in Government. Their ‘Rent a Gimp’ stance on supplying MPs for any Coalition going simply serves to widen the democrat deficit.
Labour enacted the Freedom of Information Act, and yet the “Liberal Democrats” lie easy in a Tory-led government which have increasingly refused Freedom of Information Requests, and have indeed changed the rules to make it easier for an FOI request to be refused. These “Liberal” values are illustrated by chief ministerial-seat-bagger Lynne Featherstone MP calling for a freelance journalist to be sacked. The Liberal Democrats are so discredited that nobody knows how they’re going to vote on secret courts, the “snoopers charter” or control orders, once whipped by Nick Clegg and Danny Alexander. The Liberal Democrats commitment to giving children a head-start in life through the education system has also been utterly abysmal. More than 400 Sure Start Children Centres have now been shut under the Tories, this from a party who promised not only to protect them but to extend them.
Liberal Democrats have also colluded in the toxic language of treating those in need as parasites of the State, when the true parasites politically are the Liberal Democrats. Once their host dies (the Conservatives), they will die too. The Tories spent a year demonising benefit claimants with their “curtain pulling” stigma, even though £66bn goes unclaimed every Parliament in benefits. George Osborne even boasted of benefit claimants lying in bed, just months before Jessops and HMV fell into financial difficulty. The Equality Act (2010) was one of the final contributions of a dying Labour administration, but David Cameron has now abolished Equality Impact Assessments thus guaranteeing less equal services for disabled, elderly, LGBT, and BAME voters. The contemptible record continues: 250,000 Disabled People have been forced onto Unpaid Workfare with a 2% job success rate, and 40% of ‘fit-for-work’ decisions are overturned at appeal. This current government have finally abolished Remploy, and sacked 5,000 disabled workers in one day. Completely oblivious to the sensitivities of what they were doing, the workers were formally sacked on international day for disabled people: it either takes a very nasty government to do that, or a very incompetent one.
The “flagship” policy of the Conservatives, entirely aided and abetted by the Liberal Democrats, is “the economy stupid”, and has been an unprecedented fiasco of truly momental proportions. The Tories finally admitted they will now have to borrow at least £150 billion extra this parliament because of their failed growth. They further have failed to make permanent the Bankers’ Bonus Tax and profiteers in the City of London are still being rewarded, disproportionately, for taking unnecessary risks. The Work Programme has delivered just a 2% success rate. Furthermore, for all the ranting of Nick Clegg and ministerial colleagues, he has delivered a £2bn NHS reorganisation that nobody as such voted for. This will see it much easier for an oligopoly of private companies to run the services for the NHS under a NHS logo (not under their own corporate identities), delivering massive shareholder value as has happened in the electricity and railways industries. This, by far, has to be the most deceitful of legislative measures taken by this Government, to outsource the Welfare State. The result will be a fragmented, non-comprehensive, service, and many voters (thanks to a near-complete media blackout) are indeed oblivious to the changes which are occurring. Andrew Lansley and David Cameron ignored a Tribunal Ruling to publish Risk Register. This Risk Register if published could have saved lives as it would have led to an improved mitigation response to the Tories’ new NHS ‘forced changes’.
There is now a sense for counting the minutes until June 2015, when the Liberal Democrats will be, and deserve to be, annihilated off the Electoral map. They can try reminded the public about Greece, or warning that we will go bankrupt, but by that stage Nick Clegg will be packing his bags to the Lords, having failed to abolish the Lords, and Danny Alexander will be on a one-ticket to the Caingorms hopefully.
