Skip to main content

Shed no tears for the Liberal Democrats

Yesterday, a rather desperate canvasser came knocking on my door in the outskirts of London. My Labour poster had obviously not done enough to deter this beleaguered emissary of the former Business Secretary, Vince Cable. In fact, it seems that showing my colours may actually have acted as something of a magnet to the Lib Dems. Just a day or two before, I’d had a leaflet spinning the rather unlikely story that The Daily Mirror was advising me to vote for Cable. I’d also had a letter from the Cabinet Minister telling me how much he understood my desire to get rid of the Tories.

Today, Labour and Green supporters in this leafy suburban constituency may be wondering if they did the right thing. They’ll see that Dr Tania Matthias – a GP in the NHS, who must surely need treatment for the cognitive dissonance associated with supporting the Conservatives – has swept Dr Cable aside.

As we pick up the pieces the morning after the night before, it’s quite natural to ask whether we perhaps should have voted tactically and saved Cable’s skin. My answer is a categorical no.

I’ve always been impressed with my dealings with the guy at a personal level. He is incredibly bright and has a razor-sharp memory for detail. On a couple of occasions, he stepped in to help with quite difficult issues and made representations on our behalf. I couldn’t fault his work as a constituency MP.

At the 2010 election, however, he told Labour voters to support him to keep the Tories out in Twickenham – a call echoed by his colleagues in other local seats such as Kingston & Surbiton and Sutton & Cheam. Many natural Labour supporters gritted their teeth and did what they were told. Cable then jumped into the bed with the very Tories he had denounced.

Five years go by. Five years in which the use of food banks has increased hugely, while the public has been fed a dubious diet of austerity. And then Cable has the nerve – the barefaced and unashamed cheek – to come back to me and say I should vote for him because he’s the only man who can beat the Tories.

I may be desperate, but I’m not signing up to join the cast of the Muppets. Cable is a bright man, but he insults the intelligence of his constituents with his opportunism and lack of principle. The Liberal Democrats have been utterly decimated in the 2015 general election, but they have only themselves to blame.
   

  
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

After more than 30 years, I leave Labour at 11.46am tomorrow.

Barring some kind of minor miracle - on a par perhaps with CETI announcing first contact with the Vulcans or the Great British Bake Off returning to the BBC – Jeremy Corbyn will be re-elected on Saturday as Leader of the Labour Party. The announcement is due at around 11.45 am. So after three decades or so of membership, my association with the party will end at 11.46. Yes, that’s all folks.  I’m afraid I really do mean it this time.  Party card in the shredder.  Standing order cancelled.  It’s goodnight from me. And it’s goodnight Vienna from Labour.  I threatened to quit when the Jezster was first elected, but people persuaded me to stay on in the hope that the situation could be rescued.  I wanted to go when Angela Eagle was unceremoniously dumped in favour of Owen Smith, but was told I couldn’t desert at such a critical moment and should rally behind the PLP’s chosen challenger. Stay and fight, my friends say.  But...
26 comments
Read more

Time for Red Ken to head into the sunset

Voice for 2012: Oona best represents modern Londoners Pin there, done that: Livingstone's campaign is a throwback to the 1980s Ken Livingstone may have lost his grip on power, but he hasn’t lost his chutzpah. The former London mayor was full of chirpy bluster a week ago in Southall, west London, when I popped over to listen to him debate with his rival for the current Labour nomination, Oona King. The contrast between two candidates couldn’t be more striking. Oona is chic, whereas Ken is pure cheek. She talks passionately about the threat posed by gang warfare which currently divides kids in her East London neighbourhood, while he waxes nostalgically about his working-class childhood in post-war council housing. It’s clear that Livingstone has been cryogenically preserved and then defrosted. The only question is when exactly the wily old geezer was put in the freezer. The mid-1980s would be a fair bet, which is when I remember him on a stage in Jubilee Gardens on the south bank ...
3 comments
Read more

As isolation and decline looms, confusion reigns in Covid Britain...

There are certainly countries in the world even more divided than the UK. But there is no country more dazed and confused. To move in the past 15 years from the certainty and solidity of the Blair premiership to the sorry state of affairs that passes for government today is an almost unimaginable decline. This is a country particularly badly hit by the financial crisis, demoralised by years of austerity and seemingly unable to prevent every administration we elect being significantly worse than the one that preceded it. We’ve witnessed a growth of nationalism which culminated in the murder of a British MP shortly before the tragic decision to leave the EU. We endured the years of torment and torpor that followed, when Brexit was the only endless topic of conversation. We saw the major opposition party taken over by a leftist sect, while the governing Tories drifted ever further to the right. And now, as a corollary of all the above – or perhaps as a punishment for it – we hav...
Post a Comment
Read more