Archives: Politics
No more Clegg love or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the SNP
May 7, 2011 at 10:19 by Mike McQuaid
As some of you may remember, I was very positive about Clegg’s election to the Lib Dem leadership in 2007 and less positive about his role enabling Conservative cuts but still remained a member of the party. On Thursday I voted SNP in the Scottish elections and saw with delight as the Lib Dems lost more than 70% of their seats. I was prompted my a friend to examine quite what prompted my dramatic turnaround.
It’s hard to forget quite the level of betrayal I felt over the pledge-breaking tuition fees vote (admittedly one that does not affect us in Scotland). They signed a single campaign pledge in front of invited media attention, waved around that pledge all through that campaign, used it to court the student and academic vote by signing this pledge on a policy they had already supported for years. Unsurprising, their supporters didn’t take too kindly towards them not voting against, not abstaining, not quietly supporting but actively promoting the breaking of their pledge as something good for the country. This made me not want to vote Lib Dem for 10 years (if not more). People may accuse me (and others) of focusing on a single issue but, then again, the Lib Dems were practically doing that too.
Is it better for them to be in coalition than not in government? The political types and within their own party said it was. The voters have shown them in the Scottish and council elections that it was not. Many (former) members of the party are so fundamentally opposed to these cuts that the Lib Dem “moderating influence” and “compromises” feel like a “compromise” of supplying wine rather than vodka to an alcoholic bent on self-destruction (in this case, the Conservatives are bent on destruction of our public sector). The Lib Dems could have blocked these cuts. Instead all their principles seem to have been sold down the river in favour of an AV vote which has dramatically failed. Nice work Clegg (and the Lib Dem leadership); you’ve killed the party, possibly killed any chance at Commons voting reform, saddled the next generation of students with huge amounts of debt and been narrowly stopped in your first steps in privatising the NHS.
I honestly think the best thing now is to let the Conservatives form a minority government and support them on an issue-to-issue basis. They’ve hung the Lib Dems out to dry in English council elections and with the AV vote. This won’t happen, however. Power corrupts and the Lib Dem leadership will remain in denial until they are absolutely destroyed at the next election and wonder out loud where it all went wrong whilst their former members roll their eyes.
I think they underestimated the sheer extent to which the electorate would care about their pledge breaking. In my (limited) experience the majority of left-leaning voters were split into Lib Dems and Labour and (very generally) the prior have seemed to be more likely to be university educated and the latter (again, very generally) more likely to be working class. Unsurprisingly, academics, students and former graduates who value social mobility view an affordable university education as being somewhat important.
I’d found myself in a situation where I felt I could no longer support the Lib Dems so who to vote for in the Scottish elections? Obviously Conservatives were out so I was (limiting myself to somewhat major parties) choosing between the Greens, SNP and Labour. Labour’s campaign in the run up to the election was a farce. They seemed to focus on entirely why I shouldn’t vote for the SNP and gave me very little reason to vote for them (this is probably why the party leader only held onto his seat by 151 votes) and seemed further right of SNP and Greens with regards to renewable energy and certainly the Westminster party is more in favour with regards to foreign military intervention. This left me with two parties who both supported an independence referendum, both supported renewable investment but only one with a change of winning in my region or constituency (even my MP is an SNP, amusingly married to my MSP).
After voting SNP (choosing over Greens fairly late in the day) I was fairly overjoyed to see Scotland turn yellow on the electoral maps yesterday. We saw them make terrific gains and almost doubling their vote and meeting the magic 65 MSPs needed for a majority to finish with 69. This means they have their chance to show the Scottish electorate what they can do without needing cross-party support. Their last minority administration had very little power to institute any real change with this cross-party support and was denied their independence referendum as a result. The referendum is now on the cards in their next term and will begin a debate far more dramatic and interesting than that of AV or arguably even the Westminster elections: do the Scottish people want an independent Scotland? I do and I’ll elaborate on why in a future post. For now I’m just content with the first good election result since I’ve been able to vote.
Posted in Politics
Coalition Musings
September 26, 2010 at 14:52 by Mike McQuaid
It’s been over 4 months since the 2010 UK elections, the first election I’d say I researched to a significant level and followed closely. I watched many of the debates, interacted in many political discussions in person, on Facebook and on Twitter and consumed huge quantities of mainstream and social media discussion. It was a very strange election for a Liberal Democrat member; my party was thrust into the mainstream far more by the televised debates and ended up deciding who would form a government; finally deciding on forming one with the Conservatives.
I was initially pleased to think that the Lib Dems might provide a balancing influence to the Conservatives cuts and that the Conservatives approach to the deficit and cost-cutting was correct. The more I read and observed however the more I realised that looking through Keynesian economics paints another picture from that painted by Cameron and Osbourne. Seemingly overnight Clegg turned from being someone who has loudly condemned the Conservatives cuts to being the very man who has enabled them to happen. I would obviously prefer the current coalition over a Conservative government but, once all the LibDem flag-waving died down, I realised that this was one of three choices (LibLab coalition, LibCon coalition, minority Con government) and, as I see it today, Clegg chose the option I’m least happy with. The emergency budget and hard cuts simply could not have been made with a minority government and I’m not sure this would be a bad thing. After all, all parties seemed to agree cuts needed to be made, it was just a question of where and by how much.
If the massive cuts that are being pushed through cause the double-dip recession or society-breaking effect we all fear then it will hard to not look upon Clegg as similar to the main aspect of Blair I loathe: someone who should have been smart enough to avoid legitimising a horrible destruction of our values (Blair in Iraq, Clegg in the budget).
I’m glad the next election won’t be for quite a while as I’m currently conflicted about my Liberal Democrats membership. I doubt I will be renewing my membership this year and my vote could be anywhere from Labour (if Ed Miliband pulls the party left-ward) to the SNP (I believe an independent Scotland would be a more liberal one) to returning to the Lib Dems (if they manage to get some form of PR and the budget doesn’t decimate the services for the needy in society) in the next UK election.
I’m left with the increasing temptation toward apathy. The election was so frustrating in so many ways, particularly that no seat in Scotland changed hands and that the Lib Dems failed to turn brilliant results in the polls into actual parliamentary seats. However, if nothing else, hopefully this coalition signals an end of the Labour-Conservative back-and-forth that we’ve seen for all to long. I think the worse political situation for a country is the US-style two party system where you’re screwed if both parties agree on an issue and you don’t.
I live in hope that people like Johann Hari and the Labour leadership are proved wrong and the coalition don’t inflict huge wounds on our society. For the moment, hoping and staying aware seems all that can really be done.
Posted in Politics
