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UK Politics: Trumpy Cat Trumpy Cat Where Have You Been?


mormont

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4 hours ago, Lord Sidious said:

I find myself missing Cameron's leadership now, can't stand Theresa May.

She appears to have disappeared for the last fortnight or so. An interesting tactic.

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Yes, I saw a debate about this on Newsnight. The Tories call it "going dark", the aim being to force the media to look for political stories elsewhere, inevitably causing the focus to shift to the Labour leadership, and then to grab attention when they actually want it, with a major initiative or piece of good news.

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15 minutes ago, Horse of Kent said:

I miss Nick Clegg. History will judge him well.

Don't know about that. I fear his failure to stick to his core campaign promise allowed Brexit to happen (because it gave the Tories the majority). Of course, he couldn't know that would happen, but sadly, his failure indirectly caused a lot of harm.

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20 minutes ago, theguyfromtheVale said:

Don't know about that. I fear his failure to stick to his core campaign promise allowed Brexit to happen (because it gave the Tories the majority). Of course, he couldn't know that would happen, but sadly, his failure indirectly caused a lot of harm.

You mean PR? I don't think there would have been any appetite for it. It may have done better than AV in the referendum but that isn't saying much. It would never have been implemented without a referendum, given it's been such a major change and coming from a minor coalition partner's manifesto.

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No. I mean tuition fees. Although you have a point on the AV/PR debate, too.

The referendum was basically following PR rules. So that's not the point. But AV, coupled with the weakness of the Lib Dems, allowed the Tories to get a majority in '15, which in turn led to the referendum and hence, Brexit. With stronger Lib Dems and/or an election following PR rules and a subsequent second coalition government for Cameron, Brexit wouldn't have happened (except if Cameron had gone for a Tory/UKIP alliance, which I find unlikely - although admittedly not impossible)

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10 minutes ago, theguyfromtheVale said:

No. I mean tuition fees. Although you have a point on the AV/PR debate, too.

The referendum was basically following PR rules. So that's not the point. But AV, coupled with the weakness of the Lib Dems, allowed the Tories to get a majority in '15, which in turn led to the referendum and hence, Brexit. With stronger Lib Dems and/or an election following PR rules and a subsequent second coalition government for Cameron, Brexit wouldn't have happened (except if Cameron had gone for a Tory/UKIP alliance, which I find unlikely - although admittedly not impossible)

That assumes a coalition would have meant no referendum. I'm not sure that's true though. It would have been a subject for coalition talks. The liberals would not have resisted at any price. And how would a Tory-UKIP alliance work or make sense? UKIP have one MP, and he's an ex-Tory who defected to influence UKIP.

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Well, yes. I base this mainly on the referendum being Cameron's attempt to placate the right wing of his party, who would have had far less power in a coalition government.

 

Even if I'm wrong, the result of the referendum would have meant the end of the coalition and new elections immediately instead of continued Tory control, with less of a "hard Brexit" disaster as a result, and possibly an instant reversal if the anti-Brexit parties had gained a majority afterwards.

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1 minute ago, Chaircat Meow said:

That assumes a coalition would have meant no referendum. I'm not sure that's true though. It would have been a subject for coalition talks. The liberals would not have resisted at any price.

Well, they are firmly pro Remain. The refendum came into being as Cameron's attempt to appease the right wing of his own party. So why would a strongly pro-European party agree to a referendum in which they have nothing to gain, but everything to lose, just to help Davey Boy bring his party to heel?

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19 minutes ago, theguyfromtheVale said:

No. I mean tuition fees. Although you have a point on the AV/PR debate, too.

The referendum was basically following PR rules. So that's not the point. But AV, coupled with the weakness of the Lib Dems, allowed the Tories to get a majority in '15, which in turn led to the referendum and hence, Brexit. With stronger Lib Dems and/or an election following PR rules and a subsequent second coalition government for Cameron, Brexit wouldn't have happened (except if Cameron had gone for a Tory/UKIP alliance, which I find unlikely - although admittedly not impossible)

I meant that PR would not have been chosen as the voting system over FPTP in the 2011 referendum. It would have lost like AV did, but probably not as heavily.

As for the tuition fees, they weren't a major manifesto pledge. Their big two were to introduce PR (which they got the referendum on) and to increase the income tax threshold (which they got). The tuition fees were one of the more minor policies they had, which naturally were going to be largely lost in negotiations. True, lots of people voted for the Lib Dems because of it, but I doubt many switched to the Tories in 2015 as a result.

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17 hours ago, Werthead said:

She appears to have disappeared for the last fortnight or so. An interesting tactic.

Submarine May strikes again.

1 hour ago, Horse of Kent said:

I miss Nick Clegg. History will judge him well.

While I didn't always agree with Cameron or Clegg I do think they both had some good qualities, and as someone who finds myself agreeing with some Tory and some Liberal policies I liked the coalition government, I don't think I could bring myself to vote for either party at the moment, both Theresa May and Tim Farron are terrible!.

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3 minutes ago, Horse of Kent said:

As for the tuition fees, they weren't a major manifesto pledge. Their big two were to introduce PR (which they got the referendum on) and to increase the income tax threshold (which they got).

I will bet you that if you asked any voter which of the latter two policies was a 'major manifesto pledge' they'd have gone with tuition fees. I can't fathom what criteria you're using to say that tuition fees wasn't a major manifesto pledge. Voters, the Lib Dem leadership, the media, the other parties, everyone treated it as a major pledge.

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12 minutes ago, Horse of Kent said:

As for the tuition fees, they weren't a major manifesto pledge. Their big two were to introduce PR (which they got the referendum on) and to increase the income tax threshold (which they got). The tuition fees were one of the more minor policies they had, which naturally were going to be largely lost in negotiations. True, lots of people voted for the Lib Dems because of it, but I doubt many switched to the Tories in 2015 as a result.

What?

Remember how hard the LibDems toured the campuses. That was their Major Selling Point (and later Selling Out Point). 

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2 hours ago, theguyfromtheVale said:

Well, yes. I base this mainly on the referendum being Cameron's attempt to placate the right wing of his party, who would have had far less power in a coalition government.

I don't know what the liberals would have done. I'm just far from certain a new coalition would have meant the referendum would have been dropped. In the event of a coalition Cameron still has to manage his party, even though he could have tried to hide behind the liberals. He was also concerned about the threat from UKIP, not just his own right-wing. The forces fed off each other.

2 hours ago, theguyfromtheVale said:

Even if I'm wrong, the result of the referendum would have meant the end of the coalition and new elections immediately instead of continued Tory control, with less of a "hard Brexit" disaster as a result, and possibly an instant reversal if the anti-Brexit parties had gained a majority afterwards.

If Leave won the referendum and the government was actually a Tory-Lib coalition I think the chances of a major constitutional crisis would have been higher. But, in this scenario, the liberals would have given their blessings to a referendum as part of the government, and going back on the result would have been hard.

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I think Cameron has to take full blame for the referendum. I'd like to think that in a coalition someone in the Lib Dems would have at least said 'whoa, we can't rush into this without a clue what Brexit would actually look like just because you're in a hurry to buy off your backbenchers' but that may be wishful thinking. As things stand, that was Cameron's call, one that historians will be genuinely perplexed by.

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Yes, I saw a debate about this on Newsnight. The Tories call it "going dark", the aim being to force the media to look for political stories elsewhere, inevitably causing the focus to shift to the Labour leadership, and then to grab attention when they actually want it, with a major initiative or piece of good news.

On the other hand, with the prisons, trains and NHS in meltdown, it risks looking like weak leadership. And the talk at the moment is of all the amendments the Lords are tabling on Brexit and what May does if it gets kicked back to the Commons again, Labour's utter lack of profile means the media isn't really interested in them at the moment (next week, when the by-elections kick off, will be a different story).

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3 hours ago, mormont said:

I will bet you that if you asked any voter which of the latter two policies was a 'major manifesto pledge' they'd have gone with tuition fees. I can't fathom what criteria you're using to say that tuition fees wasn't a major manifesto pledge. Voters, the Lib Dem leadership, the media, the other parties, everyone treated it as a major pledge.

 

3 hours ago, Notone said:

What?

Remember how hard the LibDems toured the campuses. That was their Major Selling Point (and later Selling Out Point). 

Given how little it is actually discussed in their manifesto. It is only mentioned a couple of times right in the middle. Yes, they ended up campaigning hard on it, as it was working well with the voters, but it was not prominent on their stated list of priorities. I would agree that far more people knew about and voted for them on based on tuition fees than on income tax reform.

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41 minutes ago, Horse of Kent said:

Given how little it is actually discussed in their manifesto. It is only mentioned a couple of times right in the middle. Yes, they ended up campaigning hard on it, as it was working well with the voters,

Relatively few people read the manifestos or platforms in detail. Of course you can take the positions, that's the stupid voters fault, who listen to the promises (and in that case pledges) politician make, instead of just reading their damn manifestos. But it was in their manifesto. A lot of the LibDems voters felt the betrayal that the LibDems did not deliver on their tuition fee pledge in their hearts and arguably more importantly in their pockets (without putting up too much of a fight). 

I bet if you had asked an average sub-sample of LibDems voters that cycle, they would have given the following answer.

1. Absolutely stick with the bloody tuition fee pledge. Don't you even dare to think of just backing down on that one.

2. Try to get the PR in if possible.

3. Feel free to compromise on the income tax entry level. 

The income tax entry level did not remotely cover the costs for their electorate on the broken tuition fee pledge.

In all seriousness, if I had been a British citizen, who had voted for Clegg, I would have pelted him (and any other LibDem who signed that pledge) with rotten eggs the next time he showed his face to campaign for an election.

 

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15 hours ago, Notone said:

In all seriousness, if I had been a British citizen, who had voted for Clegg, I would have pelted him (and any other LibDem who signed that pledge) with rotten eggs the next time he showed his face to campaign for an election.

I hate to sound like the LibDem spin department, but I believe the argument runs thusly; the LibDem manifesto was a list of things they would do if they were voted into power by themselves. They weren't. They were part of a coalition government. I'm certainly not saying I have no problems at all with everything they did, but the whole LibDem manifesto was never gonna get implemented 100%. I find it hard to see a path that Nick Clegg could've trodden and come out of things well regarded, he couldn't have turned down the coalition cos then what?

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