Party conferences are inevitably focused on all that is good
about a political party, but these last three years must really have had the
Lib Dem spin doctors scratching their heads in search of inspiration.
What can you say about a party which has repeatedly sold out
on its promises, failed to deliver a single manifesto commitment in government
while wholeheartedly backing Tory policy and tainted its reputation forever
through complicity in the social wrongs of David Cameron and Co.
And it is that last point which must really make Lib Dem
voters squirm. Let’s face it, the
Tory-led Government would not have been able to do anything without the votes
of Lib Dem MPs.
That means Nick Clegg and his Lib Dems are responsible for
wages falling by £1,500 since the last election, for more than a million young
people being out of work and record levels of long-term unemployment.
Spiralling energy bills while providers’ profits soar, the
loss of 5,000 nurses in struggling hospitals, the housing crisis, the list goes
on and on.
For with every Tory cut, every family forced into poverty,
every individual struggling to cope, every small business forced to close and
every public service that falls, there in the background lingers the Lib Dem
stamp of approval.
And for all his pre-election bluster and impassioned pleas
back in 2010, their shameful leader Nick Clegg has proved without any doubt
that he is nothing but a charlatan; the man who promised the earth but
delivered the Tories.
Of course, the writing was on the wall pretty early in their
relationship. The first sign came at
their press conference as they announced their union in the gardens of 10 Downing
Street.
While Mr Cameron laughingly brushed aside previous insults
he had fired at his Lib Dem counterpart, a humiliated Mr Clegg stood alongside
him with an uncomfortable look on his face.
It was clear back then who was wearing the trousers.
And it didn’t take long for that to come to fruition, as the
Lib Dems disgracefully reversed the pre-election pledge to scrap tuition fees,
voting in favour of a Tory commitment to treble them.
They also warned of a Tory VAT rise before helping their
allies deliver one, as well as pledging 3,000 more police before voting through
a cut of more than 15,000 officers.
Their duplicity is almost beyond words.
But even the most fervent Lib Dem supporter may have been
prepared to swallow all of this, to accept subservience to their Tory masters,
to sell their voters down the river and to break their pre-election promises,
if there had been a reward in return.
In coalition arrangements, that reward is supposed to come
in the form of policy.
One would presume that at some stage in the discussions
before forming a coalition, Mr Cameron would have said to Mr Clegg: “We’ll help
you deliver on some of the speculative, unrealistic drivel you’ve been pledging
in opposition for the last 20 years, if you help us cripple society, shrink the
economy and make our funders richer at the expense of the vulnerable, poor and
public services.”
Well, OK, perhaps not using those words, but you get the
idea.
Yet there has been nothing in return for the Lib Dems. The Tories have got on with delivering their
ideologically-driven social experiment, but what about the Lib Dems?
The electoral reform they have talked about endlessly was
made partially possible by a referendum on an alternative vote system, but
fundamentally undermined by the Tories enabling the vote but making their
opposition clear.
The Tories went even further with the Lib Dems’ House of
Lords reform, refusing to back it and forcing Mr Clegg to embarrassingly
abandon it.
And then there is the mansion tax, which the Lib Dems set
out as policy but even they voted against it in Parliament.
The whole thing brings shame on the Lib Dem leadership who
have stuck two fingers up at their voters and said: “Thanks for the mandate,
but actually being in power matters more than the promises we made to you.”
Not that the abundant promises Lib Dems have frivolously
made in opposition, believing they’ll never have to deliver them anyway, are
necessarily wholly sensible. But that’s
hardly the point.
The point is that they have shown once and for all that they
are not to be trusted. They’ve had their
crack at power but have absolutely nothing positive to show for it.
Party conferences must get harder and harder to stomach for
even their loyalist backers.
Three years holding up a Government, which has punished the
poor while giving millionaires a tax break.
Three years supporting Tory policies like the £3bn top-down
reorganisation of the NHS while delivering not a single policy of their own.
Three years in which they’ve shown their true colours – and
if yellow certainly symbolises the cowardly way they have submitted to their
Tory masters, blue is the colour that will define their disgraceful term in
Government.
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