What would you rather the LibDems have done:
a) Have all 57 MPs valiantly keep to their pledge and vote against the unfettered, uncompromising and unprogressive (Labour-initiated) Browne proposals for a cap-less full free market in tuition fees with no allowances for poorer students and then valiantly see these proposals go through with the votes of 500 Tory and Labour MPs (to be fair, now they are in opposition I'm sure some Labour MPs will now abstain but not enough to change the result).
or
b) Trade our votes with our coalition partners to make the Browne package better, fairer and more progressive for Students
Any rants/comments are expected to start with an answer and working. I thank you!
Having said that, I don't think having Vince denying there is a trust issue with breaking the pledge (and it was/will be broken, however justified) is particularly right or helpful. I don't know what our press operation has been doing all this time. Surely they could have seen this coming? The leadership should have been out there explaining this (along the lines above) a long time ago instead of putting their heads in the sand and hoping this would all go away and allowing this "betrayal" narrative to develop (which the media are only too happy to perpetuate).
But then, in my opinion, this is just a continuation as we also had an appalling election campaign (okay that's over-stating it a tad, but it was just the usual depressing long line of missed opportunities) starting with that appallingly bland slogan and logo and then that embarrassingly misjudged VAT bombshell poster (when even your own politicians look embarrassed unveiling it you have to ask - oh and that hasn't caused us any problems at all...) just making us look like any other party. Yes the first debate was great but we didn't seem to move foward in the subsequent two or capitalise on them (evidentally).
Er... I digress but only slightly as the tuition fees problems were all eminently foreseeable and have done us tremendous damage but not, I would argue, by the facts themselves but by the mishandling of them.
UPDATE: Also, what he said.
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7 comments:
I think most students who voted for the Liberal Democrats would rather that the party stuck to the policies in its manifesto. They voted for the Liberal Democrats because they oppose higher tuition fees, and would probably like tuition fees to be abolished. If the Liberal Democrats want to do what the students want them to do, they should stick to the promises they made to students.
Senior,
But if they do this then the tuition fees package (that will be voted through regardless) would have been worse for students. If by "sticking to the manifesto" you mean not go into coalition, we would have had an election within three months and a Tory majority government (with predictable results). It's a tricky one but with my logical pragmatic LibDem brain on I think we did the right thing on balance.
Isn't there still time? Start working with labour, the greens and the nationalists develop an alternative coalition, then swap.
You could ease off on some of the cuts, replacing them with banking and land taxes, cancelling trident and reducing tax avoidance. With some of the income from that not devoted to stopping cuts, you could agree to pay off a portion of student's loans if they stay in this country.
Obviously there's the issue of the green and nationalist price for this coalition, but I imagine the cause of stopping the tories and reducing the cuts would reduce that.
Anonymous,
Except Labour wouldn't go for any of those things! How come people still have John Smith (just imagine if he hadn't died!) perceptions of/hopes for Labour even after 16 years despite the evidence of the intervening years? In the days after the election, Labour made it very clear (and rudely so) that they woudln't work with the SNP and half of their senior members said they wouldn't work with the LibDems! Do you think they've changed so much? Ed Milliband still put the vile Phil Woolas in his cabinet (not to mention Ed Balls, I could go on...).
The Lib Dems have just been shown to be a party of Liars
Deal with it
Anonymous (2),
Sigh, you didn't read the instructions did you? FAIL.
The wording of the pledge has turned out to be self-defeating in coalition. It commits the LibDem MPs to voting against any rise in fees, thus depriving them of the currency (their vote) that they need to achieve the second part of the pledge (pressuring the Government)!
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