You may be getting tired of this image, but it adequately describes the Liberal Democrat offer to the electorate.
This is awkward:
The Liberal Democrats are facing criticism over election campaign leaflets that look like local newspapers.
The party, led by Jo Swinson, has distributed material that mimics local papers as part of its election campaign leading to complaints from newspaper editors.
The Society of Editors has condemned the party for what it says “appears to be a concerted effort by the Liberal Democrats to mislead readers and voters”.
Ian Murray, executive director of the Society of Editors, suggested the move showed the party was taking a hypocritical stance on ‘fake news’.
He said: “It is ironic how it is often politicians who complain about fake news but then set out to at least blur the lines for readers – and in this case voters – by packaging their partial messages to ape independent newspapers.
“If political parties were genuine in their desire, often expressed, to both remove the effects of fake news and disinformation as well as support existing regional and local media they would take steps to ensure their political freesheets look markedly different to real newspapers.”
Indeed. This Writer received one through the door yesterday morning.
News from Jo Swinson’s Liberal Democrats, it thunders. When did Jo Swinson take ownership of the party as well as leadership?
And I wonder why Ms Swinson is being pushed as the bright beacon of the future, after her disastrous performances on the campaign trail and her disintegration in front of the BBC Question Time audience.
There’s a headline article about building a brighter future and a load of quotes from more and more people who are apparently backing the Liberal Democrats.
I’m willing to bet if I compared the quotes and the images with other Lib Dem election communications, I’d find the same things attributed to different images with different names. After all, they’ve done it before…
It’s all extremely propagandish and fake.
Still, at least it wasn’t a local leaflet ordering me to vote for them tactically, using a cleverly-inaccurate bar chart to convince me.
What a nauseating, patronising mob. Every time I receive one of their creepy leaflets I become even more determined to vote for someone else.
Need a miracle: but people in poverty won’t get it from the Tories or their little yellow helpers, the Liberal Democrats.
These are the facts:
Wages are still £20 per week below pre-financial crash levels; take the top 10 per cent of earners out of the calculation and they fall far below.
Household debt is at its highest.
The so-called “jobs miracle” doesn’t mean more people are in work; it means poor people are being driven to take on extra jobs.
Half of non-home owners now doubt they will ever be able to afford a house.
Food bank use has increased by the highest amount in five years.
Four in 10 people do not believe they’ll have a decent standard of living in 10 years’ time.
Debt and anxiety are on the rise – and those living below the poverty line have fallen a massive 30 per cent below the threshold (which, at 60 per cent of median income, has also dropped to a lower level of income than in 2010)
Those are important. But perhaps the personal story in Polly Toynbee’s article gets the point across in a better way.
She refers to Thiara Sanchez, who was the daughter of a cleaner at the Treasury during the 2010 election campaign.
Days before that poll, she made an important speech highlighting the effect of poverty pay on her mother and grandmother (also a Treasury cleaner) and the knock-on effect on the family.
She needed a laptop to do her homework but couldn’t afford it; sometimes her family spent a week eating lentils because that was all they could afford; she hardly saw her mother because that woman could not afford to use the tube and the three buses she used took a long time.
Both David Cameron and Nick Clegg (remember them?) made promises about poverty, and they slithered into government together as a coalition. And what happened to Ms Sanchez and her family?
The spent several months living rough after being evicted from a flat – sleeping on buses and park benches and missing school – until they were rescued by Catholic nuns.
Her mother died of pancreatic cancer at the painfully young age of 49. So much for NHS England’s record of cancer detection and treatment. Her grandmother has severe dementia and returned to Spain – because care in the UK has been run down so badly by the Tories and Lib Dems?
Ms Sanchez herself managed to get through university and has a first-class degree in human resource management – and an enormous student debt thanks to the Lib Dems, who reneged on their promise to end student tuition fees, the instant they got into government.
She cannot get a job; employers want experience. She hopes a Masters degree might help, but this means another £10,000 of student debt.
She shares a flat with three men she does not know, at a cost of £500 a month. It’s the cheapest she can find; so much for Tory/Lib Dem housing policies.
Her story is a nine-year saga that is an indictment against the Tories (and Lib Dems) – who haven’t failed, by the way.
The Tories and Liberal Democrats achieved exactly what they set out to do, which was to shrink state spending, make the rich richer and crush the poor beneath the weight of their own poverty.
And now they are carrying out a new election campaign with an air of triumphalism – completely ignoring the fact that they have harmed – or killed – millions of people for good of their own petty ambitions.
And there are still people who will vote for them. Why?
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You may be getting tired of this image, but it adequately describes the Liberal Democrat offer to the electorate.
The Liberal Democrats are apparently enjoying a surge in support in marginal London constituencies – why? In office, they were a disaster for the UK.
Do people really have such short memories that they have forgotten the legacy of the Coalition government? Liberal Democrats helped ruin the UK – especially for young voters such as those who are being targeted by the party now.
As Rhiannon Lucy Coslett points out in The Guardian, the very first thing the Liberal Democrats did in government was renege on their election promises.
Where they had promised to abolish tuition fees, they tripled those fees instead. Current Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson gleefully supported this policy.
The Liberal Democrats also supported the Tory imposition of austerity on people whose income fell below a certain level. Young people most of all.
For further details of Ms Swinson’s “record of shame”, see:
— MerryMichaelW 🎗 😷 #T & T #BlackLivesMatter #BDS (@MerryMichaelW) November 18, 2019
Result: “Now, there are homeless people everywhere, food bank use has skyrocketed, the housing crisis has worsened, the right is now the far right, zero-hours contracts are common, and just over half the country [actually just over half those who voted] has voted to take away its citizens’ ability to live and work in 27 European countries.
“Racism has become normalised. An MP has been murdered, many others threatened and harassed. Disabled people, migrants and black British citizens face a hostile environment.”
These are consequences of Liberal Democrats in government, made possible by people voting for the Liberal Democrats.
Now, the Lib Dems are promising to revoke Article 50 and put a stop to Brexit. They know they will never take enough Parliamentary seats to make this possible.
But they also know that it will take votes away from Labour – online tactical voting tools are advising people to vote Lib Dem in marginals where Labour has the only candidate that could beat the Conservative, according to the 2017 results.
This means that, in many constituencies, a vote for the Liberal Democrats is a vote for a Conservative government.
And we can see that the Lib Dems would support the Tories more than Labour. Jo Swinson loathes Jeremy Corbyn, even though – as Ms Coslett notes – Labour is offering what the Liberal Democrats said they wanted: a second referendum. She adds:
“Her party is not focused on reversing generational injustice; on the contrary, it has enabled it. The Lib Dems – with Swinson as a coalition government minister – were happy to work with the Conservatives to slash benefits, cut social care and play havoc with the health service. Their political conscience only seemed to return when Brexit threatened their world view and their interests. Ideologically, they largely overlap with the vanishing “moderate” wing of the Tories – whose MPs are now defecting to the Lib Dem party.”
The message is clear: If you vote Liberal Democrat, you will get Tory. For young people, that is tantamount to self-harm.
Also: what’s this about new evidence which confirms that the Liberal Democrats sold voter data to the Remain campaign in 2016 for almost £100,000 being withheld from public scrutiny by the Information Commissioner’s Office?
And what’s this about the Liberal Democrats spamming voters with junk mail?
Can everyone who is receiving unsolicited mail from Liberal democrats let it be known this is unsolicited mail using a third party which contravenes data protection and surely is breaking not only electoral laws but also laws relating to Data Protection @Liberaldemocrats
— Will Never Vote Labour Again **All Lives Matter** (@Isobel_waby) November 18, 2019
As I write this, the infamous Liberal Democrat policy – of putting bar charts on election literature claiming that their candidate is the only one who can beat the incumbents – is being ridiculed on the BBC’s Politics Live.
It seems they have been printing bar charts showing them as the biggest party in particular constituencies – by omitting the parties that had a higher vote share than them. The example quoted is notable for failing to show the Labour and Brexit Party vote.
So: take the evidence as a whole, rather than just Lib Dem literature, and the accurate picture of the Liberal Democrats is of a party that will promise anything to get into power and then break all those promises without compunction; a party that will lie to the electorate in order to secure votes; a party that will enable the Conservatives to get back into power, even though the majority of its supporters hate the Tories; and a party that will sell all our young people down the river once again – if it gets the opportunity.
You’d have to be crazy to vote Liberal Democrat.
Spread the word.
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Jo Swinson (left): she seems to be trying to steal Boris Johnson’s crown as the biggest liar in Parliament. But then, that is why her party’s nickname is the Fib Dems.
It’s a piece of electioneering by the Liberal Democrats that – on the face of it – presents a false impression of who are the main players in the North East Somerset constituency, running up to the general election in December.
The trick is in the small print. Congratulations if you can read it; I’ve got my specs on and the print is too small for me. Also – who is going to bother reading the small print when they haven’t been told they need to?
The gaff was well and truly blown by Sky’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday. Take a look at the video in Dawn Foster’s tweet – and note Helen Pender’s follow-up that the Lib Dems have done the same elsewhere.
Ms Swinson’s attempted defence is an embarrassment. “It’s labelled on there what the question is that it relates to so anyone looking at it can read what the question is”? Only if you’ve got a magnifying glass and obsessive compulsive disorder!
Still, what can you expect from the Liberal Democrats? Even when they’re directly quoting election results, they can’t resist using their infamous block graphs to mislead people.
In Brecon and Radnorshire, they came out with their usual “two-horse race” rubbish with a block graph – that completely misrepresented the differences between the parties’ standings. You can see the difference when their graph is juxtaposed with an accurate representation:
In the by-election on August 1, the Liberal Democrat candidate only won because the Brexit Party split the Conservative candidate’s vote – and the Tory was a convicted criminal.
Sophy Ridge seems to have a knack for showing Jo Swinson up. Take a look at the following clip, in which the Lib Dem leader is forced to acknowledge evidence showing that, in the Coalition government, she supported more Tory policies than some genuine Conservative MPs:
Priceless television. Jo Swinson made to listen to all the things she voted for with the Tories. pic.twitter.com/TjQurDypkc
Note also that she only ever seems to criticise Labour.
Perhaps it’s right that she is next to Boris Johnson in the image at the top of this article. She tries to mislead the public as much as he does, and she certainly supports Tory policies.
And that’s the hidden message – that Liberal Democrats will support the Conservatives, if there’s a hung Parliament and they end up with the balance of power.
In other words: Vote Liberal Democrat – get Tory.
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Crossing the floor: As Boris Johnson speaks, former Conservative MP Philip Lee crosses the floor of the House of Commons to join the Liberal Democrats.
MP Philip Lee stood up and crossed the floor of the House of Commons to sit with the Liberal Democrats as Boris Johnson was giving a statement on the G7 summit today (September 3).
His defection means that the Conservative government can no longer command any majority in the Commons, even with the help of the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party.
In a statement, Mr Lee said: “This Conservative government is aggressively pursuing a damaging Brexit in unprincipled ways. It is putting lives and livelihoods at risk unnecessarily and it is wantonly endangering the integrity of the United Kingdom. More widely, it is undermining our country’s economy, democracy and role in the world. It is using political manipulation, bullying and lies. And it is doing these things in a deliberate and considered way.
“That is why today I am joining Jo Swinson and the Liberal Democrats.”
Now it is impossible for Mr Johnson to – democratically – pass any legislation at all. I wonder what he will do next.
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Here’s a terrific Facebook post from Another Angry Voice that explains Jo Swinson’s policy and attitude.
I don’t know how any Liberal Democrat supporter could read this and still support their behaviour.
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Bye bye: Jo Swinson waves at supporters as she prepares to take her party back into the political no-one’s land it has occupied since 2015.
Congratulations to Jo Swinson on becoming the first female leader of the Liberal Democrats.
What a shame she seems determined to lead her party back into the obscurity it has endured since the end of the Coalition government in 2015.
She has already said she won’t go into any political alliance with Jeremy Corbyn. She claimed he was a “danger to our country.”
She also claimed that Mr Corbyn is a “Brexiter”, in the face of the evidence that shows the Labour Party is more committed to supporting the will of the people than her own Liberal Democrats.
(The Lib Dems want to force remaining in the EU on the UK, in denial of the result of the democratic EU referendum vote of 2016. In contrast, Labour has acknowledged that the referendum did not propose the manner of our exit from the bloc, and will support another vote to allow the public to decide on the possible options – or to remain in the EU after all. That is not the behaviour of a “Brexiter”.)
But Ms Swinson has also said that she cannot stomach another coalition with the Conservatives, describing Boris Johnson as “unfit to be prime minister”.
But what of Ms Swinson’s own qualifications?
I wrote about this quite recently. Here’s what I found:
Ms Swinson is a dedicated Liberal Democrat and has supported her party in the vast majority of votes.
She has supported the Bedroom Tax, benefit cuts, the persecution of the sick and disabled, and cuts to local authority support for council taxpayers, among other things:
She voted to increase tuition fees to £9,000 per year after the Liberal Democrats promised to abolish them, to bring schools into private ownership, and to cut financial support for students.
Her environmental credentials are similarly appalling: She voted to sell our state-owned forests into the hands of developers and commercial profiteers, in support of the badger cull, against green energy, and for fracking. On climate change, her position is ambiguous.
Finally… Ms Swinson voted to privatise the Royal Mail, to cut legal aid – putting court action beyond the reach of most people, and to create secret courts – at which defendants were not to be told the charges against them or even any of the evidence.
These are all right-wing policies that would make many Conservatives proud – and may even be too extreme for some.
Now Ms Swinson is Liberal Democrat leader, these will be her policy positions – or she’ll be a hypocrite.
It’s not much of an incitement to support her, or her party, is it?
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Brecon and Radnorshire seems to be disappearing into a weird consensus reality in which the Liberal Democrats are actually being considered a serious alternative to the Conservatives, capable of standing up to them in Parliament. Has everybody here gone mad?
No. They are just falling prey to a well-oiled propaganda machine that the party known as the Fib Dems is using to steamroller all opposition.
But it may well run out of steam before we reach polling day on August 1 – especially as some of us are getting very good at debunking the falsehoods.
For example:
Yesterday (July 7), This Writer received a letter from Liberal Democrat candidate Jane Dodds, asking me to sign her petition to improve access to dentists in Llandrindod Wells. This is actually a genuine issue here.
But it is a devolved issue. Ms Dodds states: “My colleague Kirsty Williams AM has been working with Powys Teaching Health Board to tackle access to dentists and I will work with her and all parties to help resolve these issues” but it is nothing to do with her. If she becomes MP and the issue is resolved, it seems likely that she will try to take credit for something she won’t have done.
This seems to be the pattern with all of the policies so far announced by this charlatan. I have already detailed reasons why we should doubt her claims about bringing improved broadband and more investment into the constituency.
Elsewhere on the social media, This Writer has become involved in several discussions about Liberal Democrat policy positions. As readers of This Site will know, I characterise the Liberal Democrats as a right-wing, authoritarian, neoliberal, austerity-supporting, privatising party – based on their record – and it infuriates me when their supporters describe them as centrist or even as a party of the left.
I eventually had to dig out the voting record of LD leadership candidate Jo Swinson to demonstrate the facts of the matter.
Ms Swinson is a dedicated Liberal Democrat and has supported her party in the vast majority of votes.
She has supported the Bedroom Tax, benefit cuts, the persecution of the sick and disabled, and cuts to local authority support for council taxpayers, among other things:
She voted to increase tuition fees to £9,000 per year after the Liberal Democrats promised to abolish them, to bring schools into private ownership, and to cut financial support for students.
Her environmental credentials are similarly appalling: She voted to sell our state-owned forests into the hands of developers and commercial profiteers, in support of the badger cull, against green energy, and for fracking. On climate change, her position is ambiguous – and we should take heed of that when Jane Dodds makes wild claims about wanting to fight climate change as Brecon and Radnorshire’s MP.
Finally, I pointed out that Ms Swinson voted to privatise the Royal Mail, to cut legal aid – putting court action beyond the reach of most people, and to create secret courts – at which defendants were not to be told the charges against them or even any of the evidence.
These are all right-wing policies that would make many Conservatives proud – and may even be too extreme for some.
If Ms Swinson becomes Liberal Democrat leader, these will be her policy positions – or she’ll be a hypocrite. And the bad news is that the other leadership candidate, Ed Davey, differs only in that he has a better record on climate change (but not on fracking).
We also touched on another policy issue – the Liberal Democrats’ opposition to the Iraq War. This came about in an extremely bizarre manner, from a comment by a person who, told that Labour was “negative”, said they wanted “to stop seeing children going to school hungry and coming home to parents exhausted by irregular work or ridiculous DWP requirement and either homeless or terrified of becoming so… Its negativity to want children not to starve?”
The response was to claim that Labour was responsible for the deaths of children. Under challenge, this was justified by reference to the Iraq War.
My response: “That is a war against another country, not a policy enacted here. If you’re determined to invoke it, how many children died in Libya, due to the Coalition government’s intervention there? You might also consider the fact that airstrikes against Syria were only called off – famously – because of intervention from the Labour Party, supported by rebel Tories. The Liberal Democrats voted to support them, including current leader candidates Ed Davey and Jo Swinson.”
It seems the Liberal Democrats’ anti-war credentials aren’t all that they’re said to be, either!
So we came to the fall-back that has been the basis of the entire Liberal Democrat campaign in Brecon and Radnorshire – and across the UK: That it’s a “two-horse race” and they are the only party capable of beating the Conservatives.
This is a lie.
I can demonstrate that it is a lie with reference to just one sentence by a Lib Dem supporter: “How are you going to convince Tory voters to vote Labour? It is unrealistic to think that they will.”
My answer is that there is no need to get hardcore Tories to vote for Labour.
No less than six candidates are standing in the Brecon and Radnorshire by-election, of which four are right-wing.
Leaving aside the Liberal Democrats for a moment, that means the right-wing vote will be split between Conservative Chris Davies, the Brexit Party’s Desmond Parkinson and UKIP’s Liz Phillips. It won’t be an even split but, considering the core Tory vote is around 9,000, it should be enough to stop any of them from winning.
The Monster Raving Loony Party will have a representative in Lady Lily the Pink, and she’ll pick up the votes protesting at the lunacy of politics in the UK at the moment.
That leaves Labour and the Liberal Democrats. The Lib Dems are trying hard to convince people that giving them a 13th MP will make them a formidable force to convince Parliament to revoke Article 50 so we can all remain in the European Union. That is not going to happen.
Take a look at the graph at the top of this article. Liberal Democrats have just 1.8 per cent of the MPs in the House of Commons. That’s 12 MPs. A 13th will give them exactly two per cent of sitting MPs. That isn’t enough to achieve any such radical change of policy.
Alternatively, the Liberal Democrats are trying to convince people that giving them another MP will stop a Brexiteer from taking the seat and steering us towards a disastrous departure from the EU. That is not going to happen either. Not only will the vote be split between three Brexiteer parties but there wasn’t enough consensus on Brexit to make it happen when Brexiteer Chris Davies was the MP here, so having another Brexiteer won’t make any difference.
So what is this really about?
I’ll tell you. It’s about stealing votes from Labour.
The Liberal Democrats have traditionally pressganged Lavbour supporters into supporting them in Brecon and Radnorshire, with the threat that – if they don’t – a Tory will take the seat.
Their infamous “two-horse race” block graph is set at false levels to make it seem the distance between the Labour and Liberal Democrat votes is greater than it is, precisely to encourage this belief. A friend of This Writer has created a more accurate graph and it is damning for the Lib Dems:
Put it all together and you’ll see that the best place for floating voters who want to defeat the Conservatives, and the other right-wingers, is Labour.
It’s a genuinely left-wing party, with policies that most people support, as I stated in a previous article. But for the benefit of those who missed it, a vote for Labour would be a vote to:
Ensure that at least 60 per cent of the UK’s heat and electricity will come from low-carbon or renewable sources by 2030 (polling suggests this was supported by 79 per cent of the electorate);
Cap rents at the rate of inflation (74 per cent);
Increase income tax for the top five per cent of earners (68 per cent);
Require businesses to reserve a proportion of seats on their boards for workers (63 per cent);
Re-nationalise the railways (60 per cent);
Re-nationalise utility companies like the energy and water firms (57 per cent);
Provide free university tuition for all students (55 per cent);
Prevent the UK from participating in military interventions in other countries (52 per cent).
And the party’s policy on Brexit is to let the people decide between ‘no deal’, any deal agreed by Parliament, and the possibility of remaining in the EU – which is more than anybody else is willing to offer, including the Liberal Democrats!
Labour’s 247 MPs totals only 38 per cent of the Commons, and another will increase that total only slightly. But 248 is a lot more than 13, and may attract support from other parties and even – in the case of Brexit/remain – from Conservatives.
And Labour’s Tom Davies isn’t misrepresenting himself, his party or his policies.
Put all these elements together and there’s a chance to make a genuine change for the better in Brecon and Radnorshire – and send a meaningful message back to Westminster.
That will be by returning a Labour MP to Parliament.
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Lib Dem candidate Jane Dodds with the party’s Assembly member for Brecon and Radnorshire, Kirsty Williams, in Llandrindod Wells. One constituent stated: “Jane Dodds doesn’t have original thoughts..its all ‘Kirsty says…'”
They’ve started early but those of us who live in Brecon and Radnorshire need to brace ourselves against the leaflet onslaught from the Liberal Democrats in advance of the by-election here later this year.
Somebody has already made a video about that party’s electoral habits:
The observations in the video are absolutely right.
Their leaflets are full of the same quotes being attributed to different people. For example: “The work that Mark Williams/Jane Dodds/Roger Williams* is doing for our area is really amazing and that’s why I’m backing him/her*” – apparently Jamie of Aberystwyth, Frank of Welshpool and Kirsty Williams AM all came up with the exact same wording to describe those three candidates – including current Lib Dem candidate for Brecon and Radnorshire, Jane Dodds.
Do you honestly believe that is credible?
They demand that supporters of other parties who might want to rid their constituency of a Tory/Labour* incumbent vote tactically for them instead, thus denying their own favourite parties the chance to build up a foothold. Genuine example: “I usually vote Conservative/Labour*, but I can’t risk Plaid/the Tories* winning this time.”
Do you think that is honourable?
And when challenged, they always – always – make it personal. This Writer has already been told that if the Tory (or, heaven forbid, the Brexit Party) gets the Brecon and Radnorshire seat it will be because I split the left vote by appealing for people to vote for the party they want, rather than the party that wants to trick them.
Do you think that is acceptable?
I don’t. For one thing, the Liberal Democrats are not a left-wing party. They are right-wingers. That’s why they found it so easy to go into coalition with the Conservatives in 2010.
It seems they don’t have any policies, unless you count “Bollocks to Brexit!” – which will play poorly in a constituency that voted ‘Leave’ in 2016. As about local issues and you get a lot of flannel about “supporting farmers” and suchlike without actually explaining how this support will be carried out.
Yet the opinion polls being touted by their supporters suggest they have managed to hoodwink around one-third of voters with this drivel.
If it really was a two-horse race, it seems that race would be between the Party of Brexit and the Party of Bullsh*t.
*delete as applicable
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Appropriate: Liberal Democrat Jane Dodds’ leaflet in the best place I could find for it – my cat’s litter tray.
The debate about how to avoid a right-wing MP in the Brecon and Radnorshire constituency of disgraced former Tory Chris Davies began the instant he was ousted by a Parliamentary recall petition – and Liberal Democrats are pushing hard for their candidate, Jane Dodds.
There are just two problems: This would be replacing one right-winger with another, and it would be an attempt to install a ‘Remain’-supporting MP in a ‘Leave’-voting constituency.
Here’s the most recent ‘Political Compass’ graph showing the attitudes of the main UK political parties:
It’s from 2017 but the positions of the main parties haven’t changed. The Brexit Party would be firmly on the “right-wing/authoritarian” axis.
It seems no coincidence that the Liberal Democrat leaflet (pretending to be a newspaper) posted through This Writer’s letterbox today had nothing to say about Liberal Democrat political views or what they would do with an MP.
Let’s look at Parliamentary arithmetic: The House of Commons has 650 elected MPs, of whom seven are members of Sinn Fein who choose not to take their seats or vote. That means there are only 643 active MPs, one of whom is the Speaker. So we’re down to 642. The Conservatives have 312 of those MPs, and are currently in a confidence-and-supply arrangement with the Democratic Unionist Party (also right-wing/authoritarian) who have 10 MPs. That gives them a majority of three MPs in Parliament; the other parties and independents total 319 and the Brecon and Radnorshire seat is vacant.
Another Liberal Democrat won’t make much difference – unless they offer to go into coalition with the Conservatives again.
Meanwhile, in Brecon and Radnorshire, cruel Tory policies – initiated with the support of Liberal Democrats – are biting hard with services cut to the bone. Schools are suffering tremendous budget pressures. Social Services are falling apart. And Universal Credit is making the safety net disappear for those that are poorly paid or without work.
You wouldn’t think that, though, if you read the comments from the LDs on a Facebook group called Powys Progressive Alliance.
According to these members, the Liberal Democrats represent the only viable alternative to the Tories or the Brexit Party (which doesn’t even have any policies at all, yet), because they “have taken a few Labour voters cos of Brexit plus they already had a decent base here”, or “it’s easier to get disillusioned Tories to vote Lib Dem than Corbyn’s Labour”.
Here’s a cracking howler: “To get Labour to win you have to convince Lib Dems to vote Labour. To get Lib Dems in you have to convince Tories to vote Lib Dem. This second choice is a better/ easier / higher chance of success tactic (if your aim is to stop a Tory MP). You are not going to convince many Tories to vote Labour.” In which case, why are these Liberal Democrats trying to persuade genuine progressives from Labour, Plaid and the Greens to vote for them, rather than working on the Tories?
None of them have suggested that the Liberal Democrats could change their policies to make them more acceptable for genuine left-wingers. They would remain an authoritarian, right-wing party with authoritarian, right-wing policies, and would simply be asking people like This Writer to lend them enough votes to beat the Tories and the Brexit Party – in order, most likely, to allow them to go into another coalition to the Tories.
I’m not here to further Lib Dem ambitions for power, bought with the betrayal of Brecon and Radnorshire – again.
In any case, Brecon and Radnorshire is a ‘Leave’ constituency and that skews every vote further even than the tactical voting we’ve seen here in the past.
In the recent past, voters have turned to the Liberal Democrats because they have merrily sold us the unicorn of a chance to stay in the European Union – that simply won’t happen. The LDs picked up one European Parliament seat after another with this lie. They knew that the EU Parliament can’t vote to stop Brexit; it simply doesn’t have any power in that respect. But that’s what they told the public.
In the Westminster Parliament, as previously stated, the Liberal Democrats have just 13 MPs and one more won’t make a blind bit of difference.
The fact is that, no matter what happens in Brecon and Radnorshire, the UK is set to leave the EU – because that was the decision of the UK’s people as a whole.
Under the Conservatives, who want to leave with a deal that helps Conservatives and harms everyone else, ordinary voters like those in Brecon and Radnorshire will be harmed badly.
The Brexit Party would leave without any deal with the EU, causing even worse harm to voters (not that this is likely, even if that organisation did manage to scrape a single MP in this constituency).
As matters stand, the best – and most realistic – plan for Brexit is Labour’s. This would demand that any deal decided in Parliament – along with no deal and the possibility of remaining in the EU – would be put back to the people in a confirmatory referendum.
A vote for Labour would be a vote for a sensible solution to the Brexit dilemma – and would signal clear support for policies that 70 per cent of the people of the UK want, according to polls: Re-nationalised public services; a properly-funded, publicly-provided National Health Service; high environmental standards; high standards of goods such as groceries; a decent standard of living for everybody.
But that won’t mean anything if the signal Labour sends out is jammed by the noise of “Labour can’t win here!” and “Only the Lib Dems can stop the Tories/Brexit Party!”
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
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