El Barbudo wrote:
This is the bit that, to me, is lacking in democratic authenticity.
The central offices of the parties and small local cliques decide who we can vote for.
That wasn't quite how it went. There was plenty of choice but as it turned out there was what you might call the establishment candidate. I am still not sure which bit of establishment the candidate was a member of so perhaps it would be better to say he was a member of a clique of Labour party activists with a particular set of views.
I had a postal vote and after I had sent mine in I got a mailshot with several people urging me to support the eventual winner. Names who I recognised so I reckon he certainly had far more of an election machine behind him than any of the others.
So it was "one man and his dog candidates" v's someone with some organisation behind him.
On the abstention issue, I would have much less of a problem if the LimpDems (for which read "Nick Clegg") and the Tories had made it clear when they formed a coalition just what the deal was.
As it stands, the deal seems to benefit only the Tories.
What Clegg should have done in 2010 was to only agree to vote yes on issues that they agree with, to abstain on stated issues they disagree with and vote no on stated issues that are beyond the line.
Clegg didn't do that.
He dishonestly U-turned on the issues where his manifesto differed from that of the Tories (that I consider were the ones for which he got general election votes in 2010).
Add to that the hopelessly ineffectual performances of Clegg and Cable since 2010 and Danny Alexander's Damascene conversion to the Tory cause, and they have right royally fecked it up for 2015.
I'd agree with most of that and for me the NHS "reforms" are the big red line the Lib Dems should never have crossed. Instead we had Shirley Williams running around trying to suggest it wasn't all that bad and Lansey didn't really mean what he said in an attempt to get the party to back the reforms. She and they seemed far too wrapped up as being a party in government and toeing the collective responsibility line than exerting the kind of influence people rightly expected them to do.
Where it went wrong was the simply divvying up of various policies and departments. What that meant was the Tories got the NHS to do as they wished with and so when the Tories pulled the reforms out of the hat, as it is a Tory department, the Lib Dems support them in ramming through a right wing agenda. In exchange for what I am not sure!
The whole coalition agreement was a rush job without the proper kind of negotiations that countries who are used to coalitions enter into and boy does it show what a mess was made of it from the Lib Dem perspective.
I am sure most people didn't expect the coalition to work as it has done with Tory policies for which there is no mandate being implemented seemingly without challenge.
When they can't even support Labour over the bedroom tax when the Lib Dem conference disowns it then you have to wonder what on earth foes through the heads of the Lib Dem MP's.
