Thread 27 Starmer: He's a very clever cat

[DuncinToffee]

A nod to the Chief Mouser

Previous thread
www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/5361166-thread-26-starmer-cats-rebels-and-orange-chaos?page=40&reply=145615445

@SerendipityJane it's obvious that Clegg made a humongous mistake. Own it and move on.

Ed Davey is proving to be good in opposition and I would like to think he's done a lot to reverse the damage Clegg did, with the help of the other MPs in his party.

2010 was a real sliding doors moment. I wonder if Clegg ever reflects on the world of pain he could have saved this country if he’d turned left.

Agree Clegg made a mistake. 16 Conservatives ministers and 5 Lib Dems. the Lib Dems were never going to be able to exert the sort of influence Clegg presented it as. Perhaps Cameron was more persuasive than we give him credit for or just a better liar.

But I highly doubt a coalition between Labour, the Lib Dems and SNP was viable and certainly not stable. There were some points of overlap but also significant differences.

I voted for Labour under Brown. Stand by that vote happily now. Would vote for him again in any capacity frankly. But in 2010 after 13 years of Government the baggage - fairly or otherwise - was significant.

@Notonthestairs If LibDems went with Labour in 2010 it would have been 315 plus 3 from SDLP so 318 as opposed to Conservative and Unionist Party total 314. A small majority but a workable one. The SNP (6) didn't figure in the coalition and were not needed.

The impression I have is that the Conservatives did a far better job at engaging with the Lib Dems than Labour did - or when Labour tried it was already too late. Clegg was naive/dumb. Cameron was pleasant faced liar and Osborne was fucking ruthless. It was a mistake but again I dont believe that a coalition with Labour - and the SDLP or anyone else would have been stable - regardless of my personal views of Brown.

I rather take those with the Lib Dems fucked up and will forever be unworthy with the same view of those that won't vote Labour because of Iraq. Convenient.

But all of that is a distraction from this mornings announcement which I am very pleased about.

The SDLP take the Labour Party whip and the DUP would have to go into negotiation as when Teresa May did in 2017. @Notonthestairs

DUP not Unionist Party.

But yes today's news is good for democracy.

The problem was (as even Gordon Brown admitted) the electorate had rejected Labour.

And because we don't do grown up politics in the UK (just look at the asinine "debate" over the fact we had a coalition) the optics of two smaller parties going into coalition to keep a larger one out of power would have been problematic.

So the LibDems - with apprx 1/6th the power of the Tories had to work with that ratio. Publicly we got the FTPA, a referendum (nobbled by the Tories) on electoral reform. Behind closed doors I shudder to imagine what horrors the LibDems held off. But we only have to look at subsequent Tory pronouncements to begin to imagine.

Yes, tuition fees etc. I get it. But punishing the LibDems for it also punished every single young person in the UK thanks to Brexit. So slow hand clap there. Well done with your "principles". You certainly taught Nick Clegg a lesson didn't you ?

And I have to correct you on the negotiation part. Nick Clegg famously said he wouldn't want to work with Gordon Brown. But agree that his negotiating skills regarding LibDems place within the Cameron led government was dire. Not that it harmed Clegg's future career outside of his Parliamentary career.

I suspect like me, Nick Clegg lived in the real world.

It does rather spike the guns of the "poster" who argued that parents needed extra votes for their children.

He certainly had his eyes on greater things for him personally and neglected his voters and party.

... is one way of looking at it.

However if you really wanted power, you'd have eschewed a formal coalition in favour of a much more informal "let's see what we can do" sort of arrangement.. Which would have been power for Clegg but disastrous for a UK trying to navigate the aftermath of the 2008 crash

None of this is supposition - it was openly debated at the time. And eventually the Lib Dems were persuaded for the UK as a whole, a formal coalition was the best option. A decision I agreed with and agree with. And as history shows that came at a terrible cost for them - and they were also aware of that. In fact the dog that didn't bark in the night has been the lack of whining from the LibDems over that decision.

Having lived through it (I voted Labour, by the way and got a Labour MP as a result) I know what I read and thought. And even at the time I believed the whole tuition fees furore was being secretly whipped up by a Tory media who wanted to remove the danger of a coalition next time round.

As soon as you realise that a coalition cannot serve the privileged classes as well as a Tory majority, a lot of things make sense.

Clegg was a weak idiot, only interested in getting into power... he had the means to do as he wanted and get what he wanted.... Cameron wanted power and all Clegg had to do was to bargain a little harder, with the threat to withdraw and probably another GE.

Don't understand anyone defending him, he fucked the country by allowing so much austerity and his party.

A lot of things do make sense @SerendipityJane but I find your posts do not.

And I have to correct you on the negotiation part. Nick Clegg famously said he wouldn't want to work with Gordon Brown.

The logic was that having been in power, and now losing, the electorate had rejected Labour and it wasn't the Lib Dems place to reverse that decision.

I invite readers to reflect on the fact that faced with exactly the same situation, the DUP were more than happy to prop up Theresa May and have never stopped whining since. Suggesting they are thick as pigshit and can't be told.

If you say so.

I have no feelings for him personally. However I repeat: if raw naked power was what he wanted, then all he had to do was avoid a formal coalition and used nudges and winks to advance himself.

And yes, 2010-2015 was no picnic. However thanks to the "principles" of the voters that abandoned the LibDems, we got:

2015: Small Tory majority - meaning Cameron had to keep the only political promise any Tory has ever made to have that fucking referendum.

2016: That referendum, Which will be debated by scholars for at least as long as the Reformation has been thus far.

2016: Theresa May - whose only goal was to ensure that no matter what happened to the UK, there would be Tory party to lord over it into the future.

2017: Theresa May having to be propped up by the most lunatic political party in the Western Hemisphere. And even that failed.

2020: Boris Johnson. The most venally corrupt, lazy self serving and ineffectual Prime Minister of the 21st century and possibly of the past 200 years.

Now I am wary of counterfactuals. Even if Remain had won the referendum, I still think the UK would have left the EU. But if you want to play that game, thems my stakes 🤓

The DUP have always been disruptive and disrespectful. That's never in doubt. May's coalition, costing over a Billion pounds, was short termism and highly speculative. Perhaps that was the catalyst for the 2019 Tory government which failed miserably. Farage refused to stand any party members the then Brexit Party to facilitate Boris Johnson.

So Farage and parties - UKIP then Brexit Party that officially changed name to Reform UK in 2021.

"The DUP" became an official measurement of currency on the international tech site "The Register"

https://www.theregister.com/2017/06/27/dup_one_billion_standards/

Putting £1 Billion into a party that is disreputable is a crazy thing to do to stay in power. It never translated into better services, especially the NHS in Northern Ireland. Totally failed.

For things that really mattered to his party and its voters - PR and tuition fees, for eg, he absolutely could have put the collective Lib Dem foot down and got them. He decided not to for reasons I will never understand - or forgive, given that I lent my vote to the Lib Dems to keep the Tories out at that election.
Which isn’t to say I can never forgive the Lib Dems themselves.

I am in favour of 16 and 17 year olds getting the vote.
It does matter very much when making policy decisions.
I agree with a pp that Sir Ed is excellent in opposition and I don't actually see Kemi Badenoch as the opposition.
Tories are sinking fast.

Can you cite the part of teh coalition agreement that supports that ?

Meanwhile - in other news - the implications that todays 13 year olds may well vote in the next election are going to throw up some interesting plot twists.

How will the parties appeal to teenage boys and girls ?