To despair with universal enfranchisement

[bookworm1632]

I was chatting to my mum the other day (she's 80) and she brought up the local election. I asked her if she was voting and she said no because she didn't like any of the candidates.

We got chatting about stuff and the Liberals came up (NB I voted LibDem in the last GE to oppose the Tories, but I didn't vote for them this time) and she said she'd rather be dead than vote Liberal!

I was a little surprised at this and asked why, to which she replied "they didn't do much last time they were in power!"
"Do you mean the coalition government with Cameron?? It's not like they could.."
"NO! I mean last time they were in power!"
"Err Asquith?? 1910 ish??
"Yes!!"

So she's apparently furiously anti-Liberal due to the actions of a parliament 30 years before she was born....

And to think that some people say that 16 year olds aren't mature enough to be given the vote.....

some people carry a grudge

I couldn’t vote LD again, not after the betrayal of the coalition.

@Lottielovescake

I couldn’t vote LD again, not after the betrayal of the coalition.

Not relevant to the OP, but out of curiosity, what betrayal are you referring to?

What, the Liberal government that broke the power of the House of Lords, invented old-age pensions and laid all the foundations for the welfare state? That Liberal government? She wants the moon on a stick!

@bookworm1632

Well I just wanted to say she isn’t the only one that holds a grudge against the LD. They promised they’d never join the tories if people tactically voted and that ended up on the cards... then immediately went back on their word and signed up for a coalition with them. I am a bit of a swinging voter and try my best to vote in each election based upon the merits of the parties at that particular moment in time - but I struggle very much to trust the Lib Dem’s after such a big public betrayal. The local candidate around here was caught lying just last week on her pamphlet. Bunch of liars.

I'm not the other poster but I will also never vote LD again. The betrayal was tuition fees.

And before anyone starts, I've heard all the arguments about why they had to, they were the junior partners, etc etc. Doesn't sway me.

[quote Lottielovescake]@bookworm1632

Well I just wanted to say she isn’t the only one that holds a grudge against the LD. They promised they’d never join the tories if people tactically voted and that ended up on the cards... then immediately went back on their word and signed up for a coalition with them. I am a bit of a swinging voter and try my best to vote in each election based upon the merits of the parties at that particular moment in time - but I struggle very much to trust the Lib Dem’s after such a big public betrayal. The local candidate around here was caught lying just last week on her pamphlet. Bunch of liars.[/quote]
They promised they’d never join the tories if people tactically voted

I don't recall any such promise being made before the coalition government - in fact at the time, tactical voting wasn't a big thing.

I don't really think much of the current LD crowd - they're trying to be populist but failing, which is the worst of both worlds! However, that coalition government was great imo - Cameron was on the left of the Tories, and the right of the Tories were kept at bay by the Liberals. Aside from tuition fees, nothing particularly bad happened which is unusual for ANY government lol!

The Liberal government elected twice in 1910 sent young men to war in 1914 without adequate equipment. Regardless of the merits or otherwise of World War 1, that looks a betrayal to me.

Incidentally so did Tony Blair to Iraq, so the lessons were not learnt or remembered, and successive Tory governments including this one have reduced the armed forces. The Falklands task force could not have been sent had it been an invasion in 1992 not 1982, for example.

@Hont1986

I'm not the other poster but I will also never vote LD again. The betrayal was tuition fees.

And before anyone starts, I've heard all the arguments about why they had to, they were the junior partners, etc etc. Doesn't sway me.

The main argument is surely that if the coalition stopped working, then the Tories would have surely called another GE and it looked likelier that they'd win it outright if they did.

Personally I felt sorry for the Libs - they were damned whatever they did.

If they hadn't joined a coalition, they'd have been routed at the next election as irrelevant.

If they'd joined with Labour, they'd have been routed as anti-democratic since the Tories were the larger party.

If they'd stood their ground on all issues, then the Tory coalition would have flopped and they'd have been routed at the next GE, worse even than if they hadn't joined the coalition.

While their actual approach has also resulted in them being routed.

The result is that the party is dead and the only people left in it are those without an ounce of political astuteness.

TBH - I think it would probably have happened even if the coalition moment hadn't occurred. The RW press blast it as identical to Labour and the LW - Momentum etc, blast it as identical to the Tories. It's what happens in a two party state when a 3rd party becomes a concern.

@newnortherner111

The Liberal government elected twice in 1910 sent young men to war in 1914 without adequate equipment. Regardless of the merits or otherwise of World War 1, that looks a betrayal to me.

Incidentally so did Tony Blair to Iraq, so the lessons were not learnt or remembered, and successive Tory governments including this one have reduced the armed forces. The Falklands task force could not have been sent had it been an invasion in 1992 not 1982, for example.

Err nope - it was a coalition government - as was the case in WWII also.

It sounds like she knows her political history damn peasants and their pesky opinions and chose to abstain from abstain from voting on the basis that she supported none of the candidates put forth.

She doesn't sound ignorant at all, perhaps listen more closely to her.

I understand why they went into coalition. They made a promise about tuition fees, and broke it. I will not for them again.

not *vote

My ex FIL said after Thatcher, he would leave the country if 'another woman got in.' He's still here unfortunately.

@Hont1986

I understand why they went into coalition. They made a promise about tuition fees, and broke it. I will not for them again.

I’m exactly the same. I know most politicians and political parties lie, but they made such a big deal out of the tuition fees promise and then went back on it.

They’re a compete irrelevance now, anyway.

The more I hear people’s opinions - and the more people whose opinions I hear - the more convinced I am that we need basic education on critical thinking in schools. How to form and rebut an argument, logical fallacies, etc.

Some of the reasoning I see people come up with online makes me want to scream. Followed up with ‘it’s my opinion, and I’m allowed to have an opinion’. Same thing with politics - endless analysis of how rude and misguided it is to label voters’ views ignorant, how they end up digging their heels in.

It would be amazing to live in a world where reasoning was valued and we could engage on a level higher that ‘it’s my opinion, so I can say what I like’.

I'm a fairly solid LibDem voter.

No tuition fees was obviously a daft policy, glad they dropped it.

Coalition with the Tories put a leash on the Tories & gave LibDems valuable govt experience: very good. Coalition was a grown up solution to election outcome.

Voting should be voluntary and widely available.

Well of course it’s idiotic to base one’s voting preferences on decisions made over a hundred years ago by people long dead, who now, self-evidently, can have no influence whatsoever on the current party. It’s illogical to argue otherwise.

My grandfather, in his 90s, voted for Brexit on the basis that Germany had been against us in the war, but the lovely Russians had come in on our side, so we should leave the EU and ally ourselves with them instead. The history post 1945 didn’t weigh with him at all.

But these extremes aside, people do vote on all sorts of silly bugbears and preferences. People vote on emotion, rather than fact, however much they may convince themselves otherwise. They then retrofit their reasoning around the emotional decision.

I agree with pp that there’s clearly a huge lack of critical thinking skills in the current population that we would do well to address.