Yep "national interest" b.s is the canary in the coal mine.
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UK General Election 2017 |OT2| No Government is better than a bad Government
- Thread starter Jezbollah
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Huw_Dawson
Member
This will be brought up about a thousand times in the leadership contest and it has to get through a special conference. I'd place our chances at going back into coalition as exactly zero - it'd almost certainly see most of the party walk out if it happened.
The wider boundary review is a much bigger threat to labour. The only hope is the lords hold it up.
Huw_Dawson
Member
The boundary review is pretty much dead.
Pancake Mix
Copied someone else's pancake recipe
The DUP probably won't want the new boundaries though, so there's that.
Surely the best case scenario would be for Cable to take the reigns, completely reconstitute the Lib Dems as a true centrist party and then hand it over to Swinson.
The primary issue is that to truly be successful from the centre, you need a dynamic and charismatic leader, as shown by Macron.
You honestly think they aren't chomping at the bit to get a nice jag? Rerun 2010 b.s about national interest time of crisis etc etc and the party will swallow it up imo.
Good, good. Cameron's failures continue to haunt Tories.
Huw_Dawson
Member
1000% agree with this. Cable clearly wants a new centrist party and that is what he'd be working on. He's absolutely despised by most in Labour (not only was he a coalition minister but he was a SDP defector) but he has a LOT of respect from the centre and centre-right.
Someone above said that, from Labour's perspective, the best thing the LDs could do right now is hoover up support from the centre-leaning Tory vote. Cable's the man for that.
OK, so 80% of our vote base or something stupid like that voted Remain, about half the membership joined after the coalition and Europe is the defining topic.
Going into any kind of deal with May is so idiotic as to not be worth considering. The likely next leader of the Tory party is a eurosceptic or someone pandering to that crowd, not a europhile.
Unlike 2010, where there was enough common ground for Cameron and Clegg to hash out a deal, there simply does not exist enough common ground between the eurosceptic Tories and europhile LDs to make any coalition work.
Plus the MP group supports Farron on the No Deals mantra.
One other thing: if we were to go back into a coalition with the Tories I would almost certainly quit the party - it was a bafflingly stupid decision last time I had major reservations over.
Theonik
Member
iirc that leaked document from 2015 when they were hoping to enter a coalition with the tories had a guaranteed minimum number of MPs for NI as a demand. Don't think they'd concede on that anyway.
Either way the problem and what held it up in the first place is it hurt more Tory MPs than the majority they held at the moment so they couldn't hope to whip it through.
Hammond. Car crash. Heh.
Hopefully you're right, I just have a huge amount of weariness in trusting lib Dems orange bookers to not align with their ideological cousins in the tory party.
Huw_Dawson
Member
I hope I'm right as well.
We're going to need a full decade to rebuild trust. We've had two, the next leader (or two) is going to have to carry on with rebuilding that trust. :\
Ideally you would have a leader that was largely untouched by the coalition such as Farron never taking up a position in coalition.
Having Cable and Swinson doesn't inspire confidence as both were gung ho for coalition (aside from when they were attempting to distance themselves in 2015)
Surely "the guy who mismanaged the sell-off of the Post Office" is a pretty suicidal pick for party leader regardless of how good he would be in general? It seems like he'd be the easiest target ever in an election.
I can't help but feel that regardless of whether they want to hoover up Left or Right votes, the Lib Dems need to move as far away as possible from memories of the coalition. That shit destroyed their party last election for a reason.
I can't help but feel that regardless of whether they want to hoover up Left or Right votes, the Lib Dems need to move as far away as possible from memories of the coalition. That shit destroyed their party last election for a reason.
Huw_Dawson
Member
You'd think so but he is very well known and has a habit of being able to make good quips and anecdotes. Bear in mind that fighting the populist/socialist/whatever-you-want-to-call-it Corbyn bandwagon from the left is going to be impossible with the exception of LNW and Hallam all our targets next time in England are Tory seats. I think Cable plays far better in Tory seats than Corbyn would.
As it stands though... I think you're on to something. There's *is* Layla Moran.
Billy_Pilgrim
Member
Nobody cares about the post office sell off.
Huw_Dawson
Member
I'd bet Corbyn and McDonnell, and their union backers, do. It'd be a core attack line by Labour.
Well it was a pointless sell off done in the same way as selling off the trains. Just a kinda "eh we've sold everything else might aswell sell off anything left behind the couch".
He predicted the 08 crash. He was very popular with the left until he went turn coat for an office.
Mainly because they forgot about it. You go into a scenario where he has to defend it again and you turn the Left against him for privatising things for no good reason, you turn the Right against him for doing it poorly.
Nobody cared about Farron's religious beliefs as they didn't impact his voting record until he had to defend them. This would at least be more politically relevant when facing off against a Labour whose manifesto was largely built around nationalising things again.
That makes sense, but I think the Tories would still argue he handled the Post Office sale poorly (even if in reality they would have done the same thing) and it'll play well for them. He seems like the guy you bring in to set up the next leader with a strong starting point when you know an election is a way off, which we don't.
I don't know who Layla Moran is, should I? Is she legit good?
Huw_Dawson
Member
OK, so this is how silly this is:
She's very good, has been working to become an MP for quite a while, former teacher... but absolutely no political experience. She has been an MP for exactly 9 days.
She's simply the most obvious out of the newbies. She's charismatic, she managed to win OxWAb on a huge swing, she knows her stuff, she's got experience reaching out to the Greens/Labour for votes. She's good but she's now in the conversation exactly because Swinson stood down. The party would like a young leader, ideally someone not connected to the coalition.
Ahhh. Putting someone who has been an MP for 9 days in charge might be too bold in the opposite direction haha
-Plasma Reus-
Service guarantees member status
What a joke. Oh gee, thanks. £5,500 to replace all my belongings, my lost family and friends and then probably be moved away from my community.
Huw_Dawson
Member
Macron.
That guy has fundamentally changed the notion of what you need to win big in politics - you don't need experience, you need fire and vision.
"Bugger off proles, and stop giving interviews or find yourself mysteriously sanctioned"
My understanding is that insurance will cover belongings etc. this is just compensation. Still a trifling amount of course, unless it's literally just 'money to survive the next couple of weeks, compensation to come later'.
My earlier statements on how K&C managed the emergency response were completely wrong by the way. It's an absolute mess over there, and other boroughs are having to take over and lead on various aspects. Something clearly very wrong.
Huw_Dawson
Member
If you combo the £5m government fund with the £5m raised via charity and other sources there should hopefully be a fair bit to help the Grenfell families. But TBH the government should have committed to a much, much larger chunk of cash.
Coriolanus
Banned
You also need to have both the right of center and the left alternative destroyed by gross incompetence and scandals leading up to the election.
Macron most likely wouldn't have ever even run for presidency, weren't Hollande's time such a grotesque clusterfuck, and the election could've played quite differently if Fillon's dirt hadn't come up when it did. It can very easily be argued that Macron benefitted from the competition shooting itself in the head repeatedly even more than Corbo did.
The majority of social tenants probably don't have insurance tbh.
Oh yeah I hope at least some had fire insurance because otherwise the material loss is going to set you back for years.
Miles Quaritch
Member
Expecting people to use the money to pay for funerals is pretty damn low.
Miles Quaritch
Member
I doubt many of them had insurance. Let's try to remember that these are people who were living in social housing, some were probably on benefits with others barely making ends meet.
Insurance is probably something that never crossed their minds.
Spuck-uk
Banned
Yes we really do. It was absolutely a shameless transfer of public assets at below cost to the Tories donors.
Spuck-uk
Banned
He's a product of their political system, people voted for him to keep Front Nationale out.
If we had a runoff between the Lib Dems and UKIP, I'd vote Lib Dems, it wouldn't mean I loved whoever is in charge.
Huw_Dawson
Member
He still did very well in the first round - I think he won? - so it's not just that.
He also had a proper job which is better than career politicians we seem to get.
It certainly didn't hurt him to be seen as the last line of defence for France.
Huw_Dawson
Member
This is something I never thought I'd see - a Labour politician calling on an LD one to reconsider on a leadership bid:
(Why oh why did Harman not run for Labour leader.
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(Why oh why did Harman not run for Labour leader.
)
Spuck-uk
Banned
This is something I never thought I'd see - a Labour politician calling on an LD one to reconsider on a leadership bid:
(Why oh why did Harman not run for Labour leader.
If Harman had run she would have lost to Corbyn, same as everyone else.
In her position be telling them to appoint Cable, way more of a threat to the tories than labour seats.
JonnyDBrit
Member
I still remember Osbourne's galling line about 'putting it back into private hands'. There was a reason 'Royal' was in the fucking name, and I don't believe Liz owns the majority of the stock.
I raise you the train sell off that Major only put in his manifesto because he didn't expect to win. Ofcourse he did and we've paid and paid ever since.
You know what gets me the most? And the thing that never (or at least rarely) gets brought up about this? That this was state money, TAXPAYERS money that built the utility industry, water, gas, electricity, strategic fuel pipeline, British Rail, forestry commission, Eurostar, Royal Mail etc etc AD FUCKING NAUSEUM.
It wasn't the government's to sell off. These all belonged to the people and in many cases should have remained so.
I don't know what more politicians (left and right) don't say this. This was not yours to sell. It was ours and you had no right.
And to not be naive (got taken for a ride by the Tories and made a scapegoat). Some might dismiss him as being merely lucky but you make your own luck and he chose his moment to perfection. He also tears to shreds anyone who gets it into a 1 on 1 debate with him which looks really good on TV and he always sticks to his guns and is unambiguous and unapologetic with policy; none of that wishy washy "let's have a second referendum on the deal!" bollocks with him.
We don't have anyone like that in the party.
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