The annihilation of the UK's Liberal Democrats

boing
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Quick question, what do people think the overall effect of the coalition changes to tuition fees were on these two examples?

  1. Teaching professional, starts five year course at 18 on max fees, max loan and no grant. Starts job at £22k and earns median salary for the profession through working life until retiring (peaks at £42k in early 40s).
  2. Manager/Director/Senior Official, starts five year course at 18 on max fees, max loan and no grant. Starts job at £22k and tracks 75th percentile of salary for the profession until retiring (peaks at £67k in late 40s).

The answer (and what people seem to think the answer is) is an example of why we got a horrendous kicking at the 2015 election, rather than just the massive one we expected. We’re crap at public relations and spinning stuff.

  1. The teacher. Old Labour system had them borrowing £42k, starting paying back at £15k threshold, no interest above inflation, and paying back a total of £37k (or 3.82% of their earnings over 30 years). The remainder is written off at 47, 25 years after they graduated. Coalition system had them borrowing £85,045, starting paying back at the £21k threshold, a grading interest above inflation from 0% at £21k earnings to 3% at £41k, end up paying back a total of £30k (or 3.14% of their earnings over 30 years). The remainder is written off at 52, 30 years after they graduated. Impact: pay back £7k / 0.68% less over 30 years

  2. The Manager. Old Labour system had them borrowing £42k, starting paying back at £15k threshold, no interest above inflation, and paying back a total of £53k (or 2.6% of their earnings over 30 years). They’d paid it off at age 39 before the 25 year write off kicked in. Coalition system had them borrowing £85,045, starting paying back at the £21k threshold, a grading interest above inflation from 0% at £21k earnings to 3% at £41k, end up paying back a total of £88k (or 5.46% of their earnings over 30 years). The remainder is written off at 52, 30 years after they graduated. Impact: pay back £46k / 2.86% more over 30 years

There’s two groups who suffered from the impact of the coalition changes. Those who go into higher paying professions, and those who the NUS and Labour convinced that they couldn’t afford to go to university because of this or rushed to attend under the old system. Made great simple headlines for them to pretend it wasn’t an improvement for worse off people, but they’ve potentially damaged the lives of people for a political point scoring exercise. Oddly enough, I suspect that senior members of the NUS will be going into those higher paying jobs. Not that I’m suggesting that would influence their actions.

We had the option to make the system fairer by voting for something which went against our manifesto text but had an effect to make things fairer, or of sticking to the letter of a commitment and leaving the poorest to contribute more than the richest. I still think it was the right decision.

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There’s still that whole ‘coalition with the Tories’ thing, to factor in, though. You know, the destructive austerity policies, the demonisation and harrassment of the sick and disabled, the homelessness and stress caused by the bedroom tax and other welfare cuts, the fire sale of state assets, all that good stuff.

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Omitted, of course is the other option.

Stick by the original pledge and vote to abolish fees altogether. As was done in Scotland, notably not by the lib dems

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There’s also the option of not making promises you haven’t thought through.
Reneging on a promise was arguably a worse sin than the vote to increase fees was.
Being seen as untrustworthy in one area leads people to the conclusion that you’re untrustworthy in other areas.

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The rise in the personal tax allowance that the other two parties said was completely unaffordable, taking a lot of low paid people completely out of tax. The triple lock on pensions meaning that pensioners no longer get real terms income cuts each year. The pupil premium helping disadvantaged children. Protecting civil liberties from the fun Tory/Labour ideas like the Snoopers Charter, extended detention without trial, ID cards.

Yeah, all that good stuff. Not bad for a junior partner in a coalition. Oh, and the entire thing of stopping the Tories doing the extremes of what they’re up to now. At least we can lay the entire “they’re just the same as the Tories” argument to bed…

Right. That was a third option, with a potential parliamentary majority that could be carried, was it? Or was it something which wouldn’t be passed by parliament without a Lib Dem majority, and the actual options were the bill negotiated with the Tories, or leaving the system that Labour created in place?

You’re a bit inaccurate in your history with Scotland there though. It was the Lib Dems in the Labour/Lib Dem coalition in the first Scottish Government that made the Cubie Committee happen, and started the road through the Graduate Endowment to the abolition in Scotland.

Aye, making that promise was a mistake. It wasn’t imaginative enough to envision a situation where increasing tuition fees would mean people paying back less. That’s the sin - voting to increase fees and make the other changes had a better practical effect (people in lower paid jobs paying less) than keeping the NUS pledge to not vote to increase fees and scuppering the other changes.

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Not with me, you can’t. The Lib Dems cheerfully voted through all that stuff. People have had their lives ruined, their homes taken from them and, in fact, have died due to policies you supported. How could they have been worse without you? They wouldn’t have been in power.

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Then surely an abstention in the vote would have still carried it through whilst somewhat preserving their credibility.

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Nope. Fees weren’t abolished while the lib dems were in power there. What actually happened (as you’re eliding here) is that “up-front” fees were abolished, and replaced by a slightly different fee by another name, which had to be paid before graduation. Quite sneaky, I thought. Actual abolition of fees (and not just changes in timing) had to wait until they were out of office. At which point, the Scottish nationalists delivered the real thing, even without an overall majority.

That’s the sort of feigned helplessness that we got throughout the coalition. As if the alliance with the tories was something inevitable, decreed from on high, and as if the lib dems didn’t actually hold the balance of power. What could have been done? Block all parliamentary business until you delivered what was promised to the voters.

Unfortunately, the truth of the matter is that Clegg and co. reneged on their promises because they didn’t actually believe in them The orange bookers stabbed Kennedy in the back, then used the voter base he built up to get into power at all costs. And what a price.

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Bull. Shit. They’d have had a minority government, called a snap election when they felt they could have won a majority, and we’d have had the same worse policies that are being implemented now. It’s re-writing history to suggest that it was a choice between Tories or no Tories.

If you’re honestly telling me you see no difference between the current administration’s actions and the ones of the coalition, then you’re an idiot. Snooper’s Charter coming back, planning to trash the Human Rights Act, ‘English votes for English laws’ and boundary gerrymandering, trashing of green subsidies, cutting housing benefit for the young, raising the inheritance tax thresholds for millionaires, raising the higher boundary for income tax, trashing social housing with more right to buy, screwing trade unions, etc, etc.

The last administration wasn’t what we wanted, what we wanted was a Lib Dem government and Lib Dem policies enacted. We didn’t get that. So you bargain, you try to get what you can through and you try to stop the worst of what the other side is trying to get through. If you think people died because of the policies that made it through in the coalition, be fucking grateful that we were there and prepared to take a hit, because it would have been a lot worse otherwise.

That’d be wrong. If you’re given a vote to cut costs for poorer people and raise them for richer people, you should vote for it, not abstain because it’ll ‘look bad’. Do it and own it. This is what I’m getting at - the changes to tuition fees were a Good Thing. They weren’t the best thing (scrap tuition fees, fund through general taxation), but they were massive improvement on what Labour introduced. What kind of world is it when not voting for an outcome you want would be seen as a credibility boosting measure? “Hey should we vote to cut the cost of higher education for people who earn less?” “Nah, won’t play well in the press.”

The Graduate Endowment was an improvement on tuition fees that we could get through in coalition with Labour, and no costs was an improvement on the Graduate Endowment. You’re right that it got scrapped when the SNP were forming a minority government with 47 MSPs. It got scrapped in a 67 to 61 vote against opposition from Labour and the Conservatives (and 65 to 63 against a delaying amendment for an independent commission). Guess who the other large party who made it possible for it to be brought it through the Scottish Parliament was? I’ll give you a clue, it’s a party who use orange as a colour, have the initials L and D, and insisted on an amendment that the SNP include a Minimum Income Guarantee for students in the support consultation. It wouldn’t have gone through without Lib Dem support.

You think that the Lib Dems (third largest party) could have sat there going “no, no, no” and blocking the passing of anything in Parliament, and the Tories (largest party) would have agreed to implement all of the Lib Dem’s manifesto instead of any of their own? Not sure exactly how that makes any sense as to why the Tories would abandon what their own electorate voted for, nor to be honest, how it sounds at all democratic.

As to why an “alliance with the tories was something inevitable, decreed from on high” - that would be thanks to statements from people like David Blunkett and John Reid immediately after the 2010 election. The talked about ‘rainbow coalition’ needed the full support of all of the Labour party, because otherwise it would not have enough votes to pass legislation. It was scuppered when they started saying they wouldn’t support it or actively opposed it. That left the choice of coalition, or a minority Tory government able to call a snap election when they felt able to win a majority.

If you have a majority of seats in parliament and don’t manage to deliver all of your manifesto, that’s hard to justify. If you have 8.8% of the seats in parliament and don’t manage to deliver all of your manifesto, then that’s how democracy works. A party that doesn’t win a majority does not get to implement its own manifesto. Sorry if this is a shock to you.

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They voted for it and now they’ve had to own it by being slaughtered. I was a supporter of the LibDems in the 2010 election, as were many, and I understand the good they did whilst in coalition, but it was taken as a brazen lie when they u-turned with the vote, and people really, really don’t like that, especially as a large number of their support came from students on the back of that promise. It was the wrong move on the wrong vote and now they’re paying the price.
Nobody expected them to deliver all of their manifesto, just the one point that gained them all their support in the first place.
Don’t make promises you can’t keep.
Simple really.
Next up, Jeremy Corbyn.

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Given the massive unpopularity they ha for most of their term (the election win was depressing, but mainly Milliband’s fault for waging such a hopeless campaign, that and Cameron being too wily to actually defend his policies on the televised debates, IMO) would they have dared hold a snap election? Would they have been in such a strong position that they would have won this one without Clegg’s help? I voted Lib Dem in 2010 because I couldn’t stand to vote Labour, this is why I’m so pissed off with the coalition and the destructive social policies voted through on your watch. You may call me an idiot, I say you utterly betrayed the voter base you gained through disaffection with Blairite Labour, and you deserve the loss of support that followed those actions. It’s not a lack of PR skills that did it, it’s getting into bed with the Tories and screwing your electorate.

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Yeah, I’m happy with us owning it and getting slaughtered for it, because voting for it was still the right thing to do. It saved poorer graduates thousands of pounds and cost richer ones thousands of pounds. What pisses me off is anyone who’s been convinced by the NUS or Labour that it did the opposite and cost poorer people more. It’s that which I hate, and what I mean when I say we should have got the message over better. Yes, we voted to for a package including an increase in tuition fees, but the impact was to improve the lot of the majority of students over the existing system. Getting slaughtered on that basis is fine.

Okay, this is either revisionism, a really poor memory or a complete lack of knowledge. Let’s be generous and assume it’s not the first.

The Tories may not be the party you or I would support, but they had just gained 97 seats to end up only 20 short of an outright majority (6 if you assume a Tory/DUP voting block like in Major’s day), got 36% of the popular vote on 3.7% swing, had the support of large sections of the press (Murdoch papers, Mail, Express, etc), and would have had the ability to shape the news through parliamentary actions. They wouldn’t have to carry out any massively unpopular programmes immediately, and it would have been really easy for them to engineer roadblocks to portray the Lib Dems and Labour as stopping them getting on with the process of government and damaging the country.

Who do you think would stop them in a snap election in the autumn of 2010? Gordon Brown had quit, Labour would have been in the midst of a leadership campaign, or would have had to have had a rushed one to get one selected in time for the election. Neither of those would inspire people particularly. They’d just seen a corresponding massive slump in their support from the last election as well. The Lib Dem vote would probably not hold up after the opinion poll/electoral result mismatch - the massive “I agree with Nick” surge in polling resulted in the Lib Dems losing seats after all. That was disheartening, and wouldn’t have motivated people in a second election.

Tell me how the Tories could fail to win an election in that situation. The country would have been as fucked then as it is now.

The reason I’m saying it’s a failure in getting the message across is because you’re telling me that this government is the same as the coalition government. If you genuinely believe that, then it’s an absolute failure to get the record across. Like I said above, as soon as we’re out the Tories have rammed the tiller to the right:

Snooper’s Charter coming back, planning to trash the Human Rights Act, ‘English votes for English laws’ and boundary gerrymandering, trashing of green subsidies, cutting housing benefit for the young, raising the inheritance tax thresholds for millionaires, raising the higher boundary for income tax, trashing social housing with more right to buy, screwing trade unions, etc, etc.

We stopped them doing those and more after 2010, and we made them carry through Lib Dem policies that were nowhere near their manifesto (even things like the £10k personal tax allowance which they said were impossible before the election). If you don’t see that, and genuinely believe that the 2015 Tory government is on the same ideological and practical route as the 2010 coalition government, that’s a sign to me that we didn’t get the message across.

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You fucked your ‘message’, you threw the supporters you gained through Blair’s egregiousness under the bus, and you got into bed with the most vicious, hateful group in mainstream UK politics for a chance at power, and you blew it. Good luck clawing your way back to relevance from that. You’re certainly earning your paycheque today, mind. I don’t suppose you used to have an account by the name asuffield on here, did you? Or was that your predecessor in the LD social media brigade?

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Nope. Use this anywhere and everywhere, and have done for years. You consider that maybe the reason I’m arguing with you is because I believe in this? You know, actually voting for and supporting a party because I agree with them, rather than “I can’t stand Labour”?

We knew for decades we weren’t likely to form a majority Lib Dem government, and anything was going to be coalition politics and the compromises it entails. I’d rather we’d been able to do a Lib/Lab coalition, but the numbers simply weren’t there. We knew we’d get a shafting after the coalition (junior partners almost always do), but it’s the scale of it that surprised people. We knew it wouldn’t be popular, and still thought it was the right thing to do. Want to know something though? It’s worth it to have stopped the Tories doing what they’re doing now, and it’s worth it for what we got through.

I’ll ask you again, who do you think would have beaten the Tories if we had left them to form a minority government, they’d deliberately held back on unpopular policies and then called a snap election in the autumn of 2010? If you’re going to rage and storm on here, tell me what you think would have had a better outcome for the last five years, tell me why I’m wrong to think we stopped the country having a five years of a Tory majority government and all that we’re currently seeing that that entails.

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Because you didn’t stop them. You abetted them, just as Blairites who voted for the austerity measures did. I’m sure you do believe in the LD cause (whatever that might be). I don’t. Neither do a lot of people now, it seems.

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