Richard Allen
Banned
Four time loser in VUKPOTY finals
Posts: 19,052
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Post by Richard Allen on Jun 13, 2021 18:36:46 GMT
You voted 3 of the last 5 elections for a party whose fundamental statement of beliefs you can now dismiss as sanctimonious drivel. Maybe says something about the evel of your political understanding? No, it really doesn't. The Yardley LibDem vote was a shallow alliance of various different voter groups and its unsurprising that post-Coalition and post-Brexit that it fell apart. Richard, I believe, would be partly voting anti-Labour and partly voting for the candidate rather than voting for the party and for the local party which generally had a good record with its councillors.The contempt we appear to hold some of our former voters in is an issue that we badly need to address. Labour has this problem as well, but appears to be damn well less snobbish about it. And in 2005 on the basis of the Lib Dems strong opposition to ID cards at a time when the Tories were at best ambivalent on the matter.
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Post by Adam in Stroud on Jun 13, 2021 18:37:38 GMT
You voted 3 of the last 5 elections for a party whose fundamental statement of beliefs you can now dismiss as sanctimonious drivel. Maybe says something about the evel of your political understanding? No, it really doesn't. The Yardley LibDem vote was a shallow alliance of various different voter groups and its unsurprising that post-Coalition and post-Brexit that it fell apart. Richard, I believe, would be partly voting anti-Labour and partly voting for the candidate rather than voting for the party and for the local party which generally had a good record with its councillors. The contempt we appear to hold some of our former voters in is an issue that we badly need to address. Labour has this problem as well, but appears to be damn well less snobbish about it.Well, that's fair enough. I'm not big on contempt for any voters, ours or anyone else's. But the limitations of a party built on shallow alliances of disparate groups is shown up in the end of your first sentence. It will never allow you to do anything without alienating key parts. You need to distinguish between a core who hold a belief in an ideology and a larger group who vote on a transactional basis. The core isn't big enough and never has been partly because we've spent too much time making transactional bargains and not enough bothering to tell people what the core belief is.
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Post by yellowperil on Jun 13, 2021 18:59:33 GMT
I think the opening to their constitution contains some very worthwhile goals and sentiments. It's just a pity that not one single LibDem member actually believes a word of it Manifestly untrue.
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Post by andrew111 on Jun 13, 2021 19:03:02 GMT
I am very glad to hear you don't like it! Good to know that you enjoy alienating people who once had a lot of sympathy for your party and voted for it in 3 of the last 5 general elections. You can take comfort in that as your party's irrelevance to national politics because ever more clear. Well, the preamble has not changed in that time (as others have pointed out), and neither have my views on it, and most Lib Dems I know like it. But pardon me for feeling that someone who calls me a "cunt" online is already well past any alienation threshold.
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Post by minionofmidas on Jun 13, 2021 19:14:28 GMT
No, it really doesn't. The Yardley LibDem vote was a shallow alliance of various different voter groups and its unsurprising that post-Coalition and post-Brexit that it fell apart. Richard, I believe, would be partly voting anti-Labour and partly voting for the candidate rather than voting for the party and for the local party which generally had a good record with its councillors.The contempt we appear to hold some of our former voters in is an issue that we badly need to address. Labour has this problem as well, but appears to be damn well less snobbish about it. And in 2005 on the basis of the Lib Dems strong opposition to ID cards at a time when the Tories were at best ambivalent on the matter. Seems to me that the vote that asks for an explanation is 2015, not 2005!
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Richard Allen
Banned
Four time loser in VUKPOTY finals
Posts: 19,052
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Post by Richard Allen on Jun 13, 2021 19:17:52 GMT
And in 2005 on the basis of the Lib Dems strong opposition to ID cards at a time when the Tories were at best ambivalent on the matter. Seems to me that the vote that asks for an explanation is 2015, not 2005! I would have thought that my 2017 vote for the Lib Dems would be the one that required most explanation. In any event iainbhx correctly deduced the reasons behind most of my Lib Dems votes.
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Jun 13, 2021 19:23:36 GMT
Just to answer Pete Whitehead - when I wrote that I was remembering being with Colin Rosenstiel when a Trot threatened him with death if he went down the next street, to which a justifiable response would have been "go f... yourself". Yes of course that is justifiable but that is because you are meeting abuse with abuse and london(ex)tory would equally have been justified in responding to the Lib Dem activists here in that way, but that has nothing to do with how extreme the views of the person is (not directly anyway..)
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Post by minionofmidas on Jun 13, 2021 19:25:07 GMT
Seems to me that the vote that asks for an explanation is 2015, not 2005! I would have thought that my 2017 vote for the Lib Dems would be the one that required most explanation. heh. yes, I figured as much.
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Post by seanryanj on Jun 14, 2021 0:12:14 GMT
Love a bit of focus on things how do people think it will go? I have a few quid on it
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Post by Andrew_S on Jun 14, 2021 0:58:24 GMT
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Post by seanryanj on Jun 14, 2021 1:10:46 GMT
I was more saying how did the people on the ground feel!
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Post by elinorhelyn on Jun 14, 2021 2:34:41 GMT
I think an LD performance of 40% plus would scare the Tories, especially those more marginal Con/LD seats
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Post by markgoodair on Jun 14, 2021 2:55:47 GMT
How many people have already voted using postal votes.
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Post by Daft H'a'porth A'peth A'pith on Jun 14, 2021 5:01:13 GMT
Love a bit of focus on things how do people think it will go? I have a few quid on it You've got a few quid on how the weather will go? Thunder and lightning very very frightening. But not for the Tories who will hold the seat, with a reduced majority and a reduced percentage of the vote.
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Toylyyev
Mebyon Kernow
CJ Fox avatar
Posts: 1,067
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Post by Toylyyev on Jun 14, 2021 5:12:39 GMT
If you're a Classical Liberal, you'd be a Lib Dem, as we are a fundamentally Liberal party. As Liberalism isn't a economic based ideology, if you decide to define Liberalism on economic lines you've kind of missed the point. Economics is the means to an end to deliver Liberalism, the debate within the movement is how much economic intervention you need to get there. There's precious little social difference between wings of the movement, based as it is on the autonomy and agency of the individual. Yes Liberalism is about more than economics. I do however struggle to line up Classical Liberal thought and policies with the Liberal Democrats. Maybe it depends on how one defines Classic Liberalism and therefore how it links to current LibDemism. Maybe you could elucidate on all this either here or on a new thread. It'll be here as i've stopped logging in to read stuff for the time being. My apologies to the unsuspecting reader. After taking the precaution to reiterate the intrinsic value and risks of political ideology, i make two exceptions where the ten-foot pole becomes the tool of choice. They are economics and communality. Though i am quite happy with the usage of political economy within a strictly philosophical discipline. A disinclination to treat gordic knots with swords has so far made me prefer the effort of having to reinvent the proverbial wheel for new situations to the damage that uncautioned abstraction tends to cause in these fields. Thats not to discourage economic theory, to the contrary, but wholehartedly subscribing to a quote by apparently some Mr Smith that business should stay out of politics. Incidentally i have had a relatively thorough drill in classical economics that should be able to hold up against the core of the teachings during first year university in the UK system. Perhaps a tad less math-oriented, but given the endemic standards for math and geometry that may well have been my luck. The one thing that does stand out in a quite messy body of findings is monopoly theory, to the extent that in a lost moment i may try to have another look at how that got pulled together. I'd still happily swap what i had with an equally thorough schooling in Keynesian economics.
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sirbenjamin
IFP
True fame is reading your name written in graffiti, but without the words 'is a wanker' after it.
Posts: 4,979
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Post by sirbenjamin on Jun 14, 2021 9:27:31 GMT
No, it really doesn't. The Yardley LibDem vote was a shallow alliance of various different voter groups and its unsurprising that post-Coalition and post-Brexit that it fell apart. Richard, I believe, would be partly voting anti-Labour and partly voting for the candidate rather than voting for the party and for the local party which generally had a good record with its councillors.The contempt we appear to hold some of our former voters in is an issue that we badly need to address. Labour has this problem as well, but appears to be damn well less snobbish about it. And in 2005 on the basis of the Lib Dems strong opposition to ID cards at a time when the Tories were at best ambivalent on the matter.
It is baffling to the point of absurdity that a party which was so strongly opposed to impositions on individual freedoms then chose 'remaining in the EU against the express wishes of the people' as the hill on which to die...
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Post by islington on Jun 14, 2021 9:40:44 GMT
And in 2005 on the basis of the Lib Dems strong opposition to ID cards at a time when the Tories were at best ambivalent on the matter.
It is baffling to the point of absurdity that a party which was so strongly opposed to impositions on individual freedoms then chose 'remaining in the EU against the express wishes of the people' as the hill on which to die...
Didn't one of their most prominent MPs work before going into Parliament for an organization campaigning for press censorship?
Maybe it's just me but this doesn't seem to be a particularly liberal cause.
Also, they seem to be in favour of free movement in Europe and to take a positive view of immigration generally. This is not an inherently unreasonable position in itself, but they also seem, at least in C&A, to be adamantly opposed to all the new housing and other infrastructure the country will require to accommodate the needs of a larger population. Maybe their position is that we should welcome new migrants but only on the condition that they sleep in tents or under bridges and never use public transport.
That aside, their only policies appear to be hankering after EU membership and of course PR.
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polupolu
Lib Dem
Liberal (Democrat). Socially Liberal, Economically Keynesian.
Posts: 1,165
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Post by polupolu on Jun 14, 2021 9:50:58 GMT
The idealogical core of the Lib Dems for me is perfectly well summarised in the preamble to the Lib Dem Constitution, and I suggest anyone who wants to know has a read. It is not a secret document.. Well that's a minute of my life that I will never get back. What an appallingly sanctimonious load of drivel. The foundation of the philosophy of modern British Liberalism goes back to J.S. Mill. One way of looking at it is that he turned the philosophy of Utilitarianism in which he was schooled (greatest good for greatest number) inside out to be: least harm to smallest number of people of any action (or lack of action). You are free to do anything that does not harm another's liberties.
One key element is the idea that almost all political choices come down to a clash of liberties and that is the basis of any analysis - the classic example being right to smoke vs right to not inhale other people's smoke.
One consequence is that the analysis means weighing up the relevant importance of those liberties: which is, unfortunately, almost entirely subjective. Two Liberals can look at the same analysis and weigh them differently, coming to different conclusions about the action to take; but both will still be Liberals because of the approach to analysis. This is one of the reasons you can have both Economic Liberals and Social Liberals depending on how they prioritise.
Another important aspect of the British Liberal tradition, one that is different to some other traditions, is that Freedoms From (as opposed to Freedoms To) are considered important. Hence the preamble to the old Liberal party "to build a society where none shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity", which are freedoms from.
This emphasis was watered down somewhat with the merger with the SDP, but it is still part of the bedrock of the party. I suspect it is also one of the reasons we still survive at all.
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The Bishop
Labour
Down With Factionalism!
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Post by The Bishop on Jun 14, 2021 10:27:22 GMT
Absolutely right about any candidate. But tactically I would think the LD campaign is hoping ReformUK take away a good number of Tory votes. Won’t be booing him at the count if they do and it matters. In the interests of fairness and balance I’m also happy to point out I had a very friendly conversation today with a Lib Dem canvasser who for this very reason was perfectly happy to see me out campaigning!! I wonder if they were actually a local LibDem, whereas the people who gave you stick were "imported" #FBPEers.
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Post by Richard Cromwell on Jun 14, 2021 10:54:38 GMT
A good piece from a LD activist who will be staying out of the campaign here. I think the issue of NIMBYism obviously endemic to all the major parties, of course, and that it will only intensify over the next four to five years. link
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