Tursiops
Friday 23rd May 2014 11:56pm [Edited]
Welwyn Garden City
9,788 posts
Quote: Badge @ 24th May 2014, 12:09 AM BST
The Tories were not the only game in town for the LibDems. The game that should have been played out was what the election actually resulted in - no overall majority but the Tories forming a minority government. It would probably have resulted in another election soon after which the Tories would probably have won but then there would have been a mandate. Instead we ended up with promises of a new type of politics - we got that all right, a coalition manifesto drawn up on the back of a fag packet, one that absolutely nobody had voted for. But they had the gall to tell us this was what we had voted for and this was democracy in action. In fact is was a total bastardisation of democracy, but they span it so effectively the public swallowed it.
That is how coalition politics works, you get a bit of what you want, not all; if the LibDems had been in a stronger position they could have held out for more. In first past the post you get the manifesto that sixty per cent of the electorate voted against. There really is no such thing as a popular mandate with less than fifty per cent of the vote. If we had been ruled by a majority Tory government with no restraining influence for the past four years the country would be more f**ked than it is now, and it would still be against the wishes of the majority of the electorate.
In any case, in practice all political parties are coalitions and all manifestos get shredded once a party is in power. Government is always a big wake up call for the opposition. I doubt things would have been hugely different if we had had a Labour government these last four years; all the parties are constrained by the same economic realities which they respond to with the same tired economic dogmas.
