Voted Lib Dem, Got Tory
I picked up a few leaflets from a friend on the Wirral and scanned them thismorning.
Exhibit A is this fine LibDem attack panel condemning the party for joining a coalition with the Conservative Party.
Thus they have automatically transferred their [Parliamentary] votes to the Tories.
There were no Lib Dem leaflets in the house. I don’t know if any are being delivered.
Listen, we need some grown-up talk about coalition governments.
I can remember as far back as last year when the coalition agreement was formed in haste because we didn’t want to be like Belgium.
No one can argue that the LibDems would not have preferred to form a coalition with the Labour Party, but the problem was they had lost the election big time. And they lost it, not because of the existence of a third party, but because people wanted to get rid of Gordon Brown. (Who he?)
People who truly hate the Tory-LibDem coalition government (brought to us under a First Past the Post election) have got to tell us whether they would prefer a pure Tory government instead. I doubt that. Really.
For one thing, a coalition government can collapse in the way that one-party governments do not.
And there is no better reason to collapse than if one of the parties dumps so comprehensibly and heavily on the other party that it threatens its very existence.
What would the campaign look like:
“Vote for us, we broke the coalition and saved you from 3 more years of Tory government.”
And they’d bring in the same team as the ones selling the YesToAV campaign and lose it so comprehensibly we really would get a pure Tory government after that next election.
That would at least show up if there was a difference.