The Red Flag's flagging a bit... Lol.

[french frank]

I think you're missing the point - no-one voted for a coalition.

The option wasn't on the ballot paper. On the other hand, the public was hugely supportive of the coalition deal when it was first announced.Quote Originally Posted by french frank View Post
And the point about birdseed wasn't a jibe. It was simply saying that even if the policy had been a very minor one, it would have been denounced as a breach of faith.

You don't know that - let's stick to the known facts, shall we?

But I am sticking to the known facts: what people bat on about endlessly is not the raising of the tuition fees, but the 'fact' that the LibDems broke their election pledge. You've repeated it in your last sence: "But the broken pledge is fundamental to the coalition; they are inextricably linked. You can't have the coalition without the broken pledge." But since when have parties in government not broken pledges? - yet people eventually vote for them again.

Mandryka: it will be two separate parties at the next election. People will have the option to kill off the LibDems and get back to the good old politics again!

[Mandryka]

I'm a bit troubled by not knowing what my voting choices will be in 2015. Will the Coalition be fighting the election as 'one party', or will we get to choose between Tories and LDs? Or will an 'arrangement' be reached, by which one Party doesn't put up candidates in seats the other Party looks most likely to win? I suspect the latter.

[amateur51]

The option wasn't on the ballot paper. On the other hand, the public was hugely supportive of the coalition deal when it was first announced.

Really? I would have thought that most people would have been reasonably and perhaps inevitably 'don't know'

P'raps is was an expression of relief - that it was all over

[amateur51]

[QUOTE=french frank;87763]

But since when have parties in government not broken pledges? - yet people eventually vote for them again.

Quite!

Such cynicism in one so young

[french frank]

Really? I would have thought that most people would have been reasonably and perhaps inevitably 'don't know'

P'raps is was an expression of relief - that it was all over

Well, 64% of adults, according to YouGov thought the proposed coalition deal 'the best way forward' for the UK (so I temper 'hugely supportive' with 'very supportive' though I think the press stories at the time suggested more general satisfaction). Certainly, there was no outcry about it 'not being what we voted for'.

On broken manifesto promises, if only the ERS had had the nous in 1997 to mount a high profile campaign to publicise Blair's promise of a voting reform referendum during his first Parliament ... we might now have PR and a coalition of LibDems and Tories . And that might sound the same as we have, but there would have been one crucial difference!


Edit: Misremembered - my tendency to underestimate 66% of adults supported the agreement.

[amateur51]

Interesting stuff, ff - I can't get the link to open but that seems to be true of a lot of YouGov surveys - I was trying to find out the size of the sample and who paid for the research.

On 14 May 2010 YouGov reported that:

"The British public broadly approve of the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition that, under Tory David Cameron, now forms the Government at Westminster. 60% of the British public say they approve of the Conservative-LibDem coalition, following an unprecedented week in British politics. This is just under double the percentage of those who disapprove (33%), and it seems that, Labour supporters excepted, the majority of those across the nation either strongly approve or tend to approve of the controversial union between these hitherto political rivals."

http://today.yougov.co.uk/politics/approval-rates-high-coalition

But I accept your point.

Perhaps I'm the cynical one

[Flosshilde]

Then there's the extra money being put into schools, targeted on the most disadvantaged children as a 'pupil premium' - Clegg's baby which he said openly he thought was more important than taking what at best was no more than a moral stand on university fees.

Along with cutting the allowance which encouraged, and helped, young people to stay in education beyond the school leaving age. And setting up free schools, which drain money (and pupils) from the state sector.

You deride the changes made to the NHS reforms, which is your right, but the objection just goes back to the same old point: if you hadn't gone into coalition there wouldn't have been such reforms to water down in the first place.

I don't quite understand this - the so-called 'reforms' (nothing of the kind, in reality) would have still appeared in a health Bill; any improvements the LDs claim are so minimal that the bill will still have a massive impact on the NHS.

[Ariosto]

Then there's the extra money being put into schools

You can only mean the private sector schools which are being set up exclusivley for the children of Tory parents? (Academies).

Money has been taken from education and further education, and many valued institutions are facing closure. Everything is being cut to the bone and eventually everyone will realise this and punish the LibDems because they supported the Tories slash and burn policy. Come the next election I would imagine that the LibDems will cease to exist in parliament.

[french frank]

any improvements the LDs claim are so minimal that the bill will still have a massive impact on the NHS.

What are they? I've never paid a lot of attention to the NHS so can't claim to understand much about the reforms.

[french frank]

You can only mean the private sector schools which are being set up exclusivley for the children of Tory parents? (Academies).

No, that isn't what the 'pupil premium' is about. It's about putting funding into existing schools.

"Currently, 17% of pupils in England are eligible for free school meals. They, and children who have been in care for more than six months, are allocated a pupil premium of £430 each. " The argument against is here.

[french frank]

Along with cutting the allowance which encouraged, and helped, young people to stay in education beyond the school leaving age. And setting up free schools, which drain money (and pupils) from the state sector.

I omitted to comment on this because I was under the impression you were asking, specifically, about the Liberal Democrat influence on coalition legislation, not the Tory policies that had been passed by the Tory/LibDem coalition. I also failed to mention the shelving of a like-for-like replacement for Trident (against Labour and Tory policy) because for some reason which I've now forgotten even that was being rubbished at one point. And I didn't mention the scrapping of ID cards and the raising of the Overseas Development funding (both of which I applaud) because I think both were also Tory manifesto policy - though not Labour's.

I understand certain sections of the Tory rank and file were unhappy about giving more money to brown people in other countries when our own old people are dying in squalor in their hundreds of thousands in NHS hospitals but, thankfully, they have not been heeded.

[scottycelt]

So what exactly are these policies? I don't see that the LibDems have had much, or any, impact on Osborne's disastrous economic policies - the area that really matters. Inother areas their much-vaunted changes to the NHS Bill, for example, have still basically left the NHS open to massive privatisation.

Arguments have been put forward that without the LibDems the Tories would have run a minority government, called an election, won a majority and introduced even worse policies. That may be so, but after people had seen (& felt) the impact of them would the Tories have won the next election? As it is we have a guaranteed 5 year government, which will come to the same thing.

Scotty, if you think a coalition is such a good thing, why were you so opposed to a fair voting system - one of the main arguments used against it was that it would only result in coalitions? (not to revive an argument, but you did mention it)

Floss, I simply do not believe that a Tory government on its own would have increased the UK aid budget for under-developed countries in times of comparative 'austerity'. That along with a more constructive role in dealing with our European partners ( the odd, occasional 'Little Englander' stance of Cameron and Hague to appear 'tough', notwithstanding) suggests clear and most welcome Liberal Democrat influence. Then there's the greater tax relief for the lower paid, another policy which one might hardly associate with modern Conservatism. I also have this feeling (no more than that) that Osborne may well have scrapped the 50p tax rate for the rich but probably considered it wiser to retain it for fear of rocking the coalition.

Personally, I think Clegg's Liberal democrats drove quite a hard bargain from the Tories and the idea that he is Cameron's 'poodle' is simply not supported by the evidence, imv.

I'm not opposed to 'a fair voting system' .I am however very much opposed to replacing our current arrangements with one which I (and the overwhelming majority of those who voted) consider to be even worse than the one we already have. I reject FF's rather tame protestations that people 'fell' for some sort of black propaganda. There was nonsense uttered on both sides of the argument but the UK electorate is sophisticated enough to see through all that and make up their own minds on the relative merits of any voting system.

Finally, I've never said that coalition government is 'a good thing' (usually best avoided, if possible), though I do consider the current one was virtually inevitable. However, there are clouds and silver linings even with coalition governments ...

[french frank]

I reject FF's rather tame protestations that people 'fell' for some sort of black propaganda. There was nonsense uttered on both sides of the argument

The arguments in favour of AV were not as strong as the the ones for STV would have been. But weak arguments aren't the same as arguments that are simply untrue. E.g.

to say that AV would make MPs work harder is a weak one, but it has some basis of reason in that it is necessary for MPs to rely on more than their natural 'automatic' supporters. To get the votes of people who would not normally support them under FPTP - that is, their second or third preference - they have to impress as hard-working 'good' constituency MPs. An ever-absent, lazy or controversial Tory MP may get the Tory vote automatically but he needs to get the LibDem, UKIP, even Labour, second preferences to win the seat. Under AV the winner must win 50% of the votes cast in the final round, although it is possible that that won't be 50% of the number cast in the first round if voters exercise their right not to an express a preference before the final round. That allowed the opposition to say it wasn't true that the winner had to win 50% of the vote - but failed to specify 50% of what.

to say AV would cost £250m for electronic counting machines was simply untrue; to say that the candidate who comes second can win (and compare with an athlete in a race) is distortion to the point of untruth, since under AV the winner is the one with 50% of the vote and winning the first round may be a 'win' under FPTP but it isn't under AV. To say that some voters can keep on voting in subsequent rounds whereas others only get a single vote is untrue: every voter has a vote in every round right up until the last one (unless they opt to stop at any point before the final round).

Even you say the system is 'ludicrously complicated' when most people can cope with putting a number opposite a name to express their favourites.

[MrGongGong]

Maybe if Clegg hadn't been so dishonest of the student fees issue then we might have had a slim chance of actually getting long overdue electoral reform but sadly he seems to have blown that one as well

[Flosshilde]

the Tory policies that had been passed by the Tory/LibDem coalition.

Oh come on, Frenchy. There's no such thing as 'Tory policies passed by the Tory/LibDem coalition'. They are Government policies & Bills, passed by a Government made up of Tories and LibDems.