Really really fed up of the 'we didn't win the election' argument, particularly with respect to tuition fees

[LilyBolero]

This is all I hear from the Lib Dems; "We didn't win the election, we are in a COALITION, we can't implement all of our manifesto."

I accept that. But each of the MPs DID win their constituency election, and that was where they campaigned on a ticket of " I promise "...(note, not "The LibDems will abolish fees)..." to VOTE AGAINST any rise in tuition fees ".

I read that as a PERSONAL promise, not a manifesto promise. If my kids say "I promise to tidy my room today" that means they will do it, it's not dependent on whether their new best friend does or not.

And if the LDs had won the election, there wouldn't have been a vote in which to vote against a rise, as they would be implementing their manifesto to abolish them (I'm being generous here). So the pledge would have been meaningless.

Phil Woolas has lost his seat for campaigning and winning votes based on lies. Shouldn't the LDs who vote to treble fees therefore have to fight their by-elections again (particularly those in university areas - one LD beat Charles Clarke by only 130 votes, student votes may well have made ALL the difference there.)

I don't think you're taking into account coalition politics. Not all policies/pledges/promises can be kept in a coalition. Concessions must be made and the Lib Dems gave up on their tuition fee policy.

Our Lib Dem MP, when confronted by angry students, despite signing the pledge not to vote for an increase in tuition fees, says, 'I stood as a Lib Dem candidate, not as an NUS candidate...'

Not good.

Kokolp, no they cannot all be kept but the ConDems could vote against the rises and those with any honour will.

As a long term LibDem supporter I am beyond disgusted with them, I will campaign against them at the local elections which will be difficult as our local LibDem councillor is a good councillor but a message must be sent.

I'm a Lib Dem supporter and I'm strongly opposed to tuition fees but kokolp is right, compromises must be made in a coalition.
Still doesn't make it feel any better though

Wrong, wrong, wrong, compromises do not have to be made when it comes to a central plank of your manifesto, the LD's CAN vote against the rises.

I fucking hate Glegg now, to think i got taken ion by him during the debates (hits head on wall)

Clegg, clegg, we see you
Your just a fucking Tory to

You have to make compromises in a coalition and to be honest I wouldn't say that abolishing tuition fees was a central plank of our manifesto anyway.

This isn't about the manifesto though, I accept that in a coalition each party has to compromise and cannot implement its full manifesto. But each individual Lib Dem candidate signed a personal pledge that they (as an individual MP, not their party) would vote against a rise in tuition fees. This was not dependent on them being in power or in opposition, the wording was simply: ?I pledge to vote against any increase in fees in the next parliament and to pressure the government to introduce a fairer alternative?

They won many votes because of this pledge and were happy to sign it and have their photographs taken beside it. I think it's fair to say that some of the candidates in university areas were probably elected because of this promise. Therefore I cannot understand how they can now stand up and vote for an increase in fees without losing integrity.

But, they didn't win enough votes through that pledge to form a government based on their manifesto so they published the coalition agreement instead. This agreement REPLACED the manifestos on which the Lib Dems and Conservatives ran on for a limited period of time (duration of the Parliament) and said :

We will await Lord Browne?s final report into higher education funding, and will judge its proposals against the need to:
? increase social mobility;
? take into account the impact on student debt;
? ensure a properly funded university sector;
? improve the quality of teaching;
? advance scholarship; and
? attract a higher proportion of students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

If the response of the Government to Lord Browne?s report is one that Liberal Democrats cannot accept, then arrangements will be made to enable Liberal Democrat MPs to abstain in any vote.

I'm a disappointed Lib Dem voter too, and I'd have liked to see the pledge kept. But I think the OP doesn't fully take account of the way in which coalitions have to work. They have a new agreement now and have to work with that.

I would like more consistency, though - some Lib Dem ministers cite the realpolitik of coalition, others not realising how bad the state of the country's finances was. Pick one line and stick to it!

I'd like to see them handle the press better.

It should have been easy for someone to say something like:
The Liberal Democrats have been and still are opposed to tution fees. We had costed plans to phase them out over a number of years under a Lib Dem majority government. However compromise in a coalition means prioritising some policies over others and in order to have the key 4 manifesto promises, which we said we not form a coalition without, we have had to sacrifice other policies despite the fact they remain important to our party.

We are looking at other ways to incorporate our aspiration to phase out tutition fees into the recommendations in the Browne Report which will replace our previous plan to phase out the higher years fees first - we envisage working with the Conservatives on a progressive (blah, hate the word)plan which would link lower incomes to reduced or no tution fees - perhaps through the pupil premium or salary after graduation, which could be gradually extended to more graduates regardless of income should the Liberal Democrats gain a greater proportion of MPs in 2015.

They bought votes based on promises they didn't keep. Each LibDem MP made a PERSONAL promise on a pledge, nothing to do with the manifesto.

And they could have said to Tories "we cannot renege on that particular promise" - the tories would have had to accept that, the Lib dems held the trump cards of the balance of power.

I was under the impression we lived in a democracy - the coalition programme has never been voted on by the public.

If you're going to buy votes with simplistc promises (which it was) then you should stand by them.

There's compromise and there's capitulation.

To me, coalition politics means moving forwards on the areas you agree on and leaving the areas you disagree on well alone, not steamrolling over promises which were a large part of the election platform of one party.

AFAIK the Tories did not win lots of votes by promising to increase tuition fees, so I don't see why it's necessary to do this using the excuse of coalition.

We currently spend less than 1% of GDP on higher education, that's less than even the USA FFS! There's no way fees are unaffordable in the grand scheme of things, it's pure ideology and it makes me sick.

AND what's more, the pledge (to vote against any rise in tuition fees) is only relevant in the event of them NOT WINNING the election.

Scenario 1 - LibDems win outright - implement manifesto to abolish student fees - no proposal to raise fees, therefore no opportunity to vote against rise

Scenario 2 - LibDems don't win election - governing party put forward to proposal to raise tuition fees - LD MPs have opportunity to keep their pledge and vote against rise, or to break their promise (and go against the reason many of them were elected) and vote for fee rise.

That's why it's disingenuous to say it's 'because they didn't win the election' - they were only ever going to be able to vote against fee rise if they lost the election. And yes, compromises are made in a coalition agreement, but when you have bought yourself thousands of votes, you don't betray those voters the second you get into power. When some LibDems were elected by slim margins (Simon Wright won by 310 votes - they could easily have been student votes), they have simply GOT to understand that their mandate is to vote AGAINST student fees, they have NO mandate to treble them.

And by the time the fees are starting to be paid, the deficit will be eliminated by George Osborne's calculations. It is not because of the deficit that this cut is being made.

Clegg should have stuck to his guns during the coalition negotiations. Except according to David Laws' papers, he never had any intention of holding out for this - he always intended to sacrifice the students, even before he signed the pledge and appeared on youtube saying he would abolish them.

But the Tories would have allowed them to vote against and retain some integrity - they NEEDED the LibDems.

I expect the tories to be self centered, unfeeling, selfish, bigoted, uncaring, pompous, jingoistic, filth, they always have been and always will, it's part of the tory DNA. The tories are not called the "nasty party" for nothing BUT i dont expect the LD's to support them in their attempt to destroy society.

They are attempting to demonise the poor and umemployed, to turn then into the new "Gypsies" someone to be despised and marginalised.

the rise in tuition fees is NOTHING to do with the 'unexpectedly bad state of the country's finances'- that is a total pile of bs. As is the other lie that this is the only way to get more money into universities.

1. the increased fees won't be brought back into the country's finances until AFTER the country is into the 'black' again - several years down the line.

1. the money isn't going into the universities. funding to the universities is being slashed.

1. the public finances are in fact in a better state than predicted prior to the election.

bunch of lying deceitful and - thankfully - now UNELECTABLE losers.

Nick Clegg should be absolutely ashamed of himself, he is a disgrace to politics. David Cameron and Gideon are behaving exactly as I would expect a Tory to, though even with that proviso I am staggered at their arrogance in stating ill thought out policy, and then asserting it to be 'fair'. But Nick Clegg has failed to grasp that;
i) his party came THIRD in the election - he has much less mandate than Gordon Brown would have had
ii) he campaigned on a manifesto of slower cuts, and NO deficit reduction this year - if you total the LD and Labour (who also went for this slower approach) votes, they total far more votes than the Tories, therefore the mandate is for SLOWER reduction of the deficit
iii) he campaigned on a lie, a bare-faced lie, and I hope this will come back to haunt him
iv) he is an unpleasant individual and I hate him

The policy on tuition fees is the tory one. The Lib Dems have accepted the Conservative policy on HE funding. This is just part of being in coalition, although I don't like the policy I accept it.

The NUS are trying to start an anti LD MP in university constituencies to out them. The LD spokesperson has the bloody cheek to call this a "partisan" act. The NUS have said any LD MP who votea against the increase in fees will not be targeted.

I can see Clegg and his LD ministerial colleagues being wiped out at the next election

But huddspur, they gained votes, not for a policy they would implement in power, but for a promise on how they would vote in any debate in the house. The promise was not to implement an abolition of fees, were they to win, and I would agree they would have no hope of persuading the Tories to do this. The promise was on how they as INDIVIDUALLY ELECTED MPs would vote on ANY proposal to raise tuition fees.

I honestly don't think it would have been a deal-breaker with the Tories. I think they would have had to accept that the LDs couldn't vote to treble the fees.

It wasn't a dealbreaker with the Conservatives but it wasn't one of our main priorities. I would much rather have the raising of the income tax threshold or an electoral reform referendum over the abolition or no raising of tuition fees for students.

The electoral reform referendum is a bit of a non-issue though - note that the Tories are allowed to campaign against it, and I'm pretty sure Labour will campaign against it as well. And I think the LibDems are deeply unpopular now, and people won't vote for something they perceive as being a 'Liberal' policy.

Raising of the income tax threshold - again, I think this is a bit of a disingenuous policy; it doesn't help the poorest in society, because they don't pay tax anyway, the HRT tax threshold is being lowered so that HRT payers don't benefit from this, but the result is that people who weren't previously HRT payers will now become HRT payers, with massive financial penalties via the CB cuts. Ill thought out.

The rights and wrongs of student finance can be debated all day - it is a worthwhile debate, and something did need to be done. What I object to is the way LibDem MPs have shown zero integrity, by buying votes and then reneging on their promises. And then some try and justify it by saying things like "well this is better than the current scheme" or "for some students we HAVE abolished tuition fees".

That was not what the implication to students was. You HAVE to retain integrity in my view, and if you have made a high-profile pledge like that (a personal pledge not a manifesto pledge), then you have a moral duty to stick to it.

I am broadly supportive of the new arrangements.

But the arguments the Lib Demss are using to justify their u-turn are ludicrous! How likely, exactly, was a Lib Dem majority government? On the other hand, a hung Parliament was always on the cards.

They knew they were going to have to make a deal with either Labour or the Tories - both of whom weren't going to give up any of their cherished policy platforms to fund Lib Dem positions on tuition fees.

Signing those pledges was so stupid. It is the sort of shameless opportunistic politics they have played for so long, knowing they weren't going to be in government - except this time, there was a real chance that they could end up in government.

They messed it up. Clegg and Cable could see this coming, tried to ditch the position at their conference, but didn't have the guts to stand up to their party.

Thankfully, the right decision now seems to have been made. The Lib Dems could pay a heavy political price, but they are, at least on this matter, governing in the national interest.

"I can see Clegg and his LD ministerial colleagues being wiped out at the next election"

Yup. Politics is about trust and they have blown it. No-one will ever believe a word they say.

Why are we wasting time on the Bill for AV cos AV isn't going to happen. The country was never interested and will only use the vote as a way to kick the LibDems where it hurts.