Can we talk about the collapse of Lib Dems?

[heylilbunny]

I was reading that the Lib Dems had strong support in areas that had many university students and professional educators as well as with well educated voters. It seems so unintelligent and short-sightened of them to support the increase in university fees. That is the one issue everyone remembers that overshadowed any other policies they were advancing. Do you think they would have recovered if they had ejected Clegg earlier or was their choice to go into coalition fatal?

I am very interested because they received such a significant amount of votes in 2010 and were truly the third party at that time. I did think like everyone I know that Clegg was a dead man walking but wondered if the Lib Dems would retain support at the local level. Instead so much of their support - say in the West of the country - went to the Conservatives, taking them over the top.

What's your opinion?

I think getting into bed with the tories for a bit of power did them no favours. All it said to me was that they want power no matter what. Also the tuition fee fiasco was a joke. They didn't need to support it, it would have happened regardless, they could have just said yes it's happening no we don't like it. As it stands it made nick clegg seem like a snake in the grass and since he's the face of the party they all got tarred with the same brush.v

I read an interesting article the other day saying that they have lost a lot of support to the Greens, and that many Green supporters aren't actually as radically left wing as the policies & are more in tune with Lib Dem policies.

I think they may recover a lot of support over the next 5 years as people realise how they did actually hold the Tories back. Austerity with a full mandate is not going to be pretty. In the next few months we're going to see the dumping of the human rights act - something the lib Dems blocked

A lot of people have joined the lib Dems (& greens) over the weekend - thousands in both cases. I actually joined the lib Dems last night although I didn't vote for them (voted labour/green in general/locals). I think many people feel the need to do something and they will recover.

There's an interesting '2nd place' map floating around Twitter - and thete's a lot of Orange on there still. The next elections will be interesting.

But yes clambering in with the Tories was unforgivable for many of their supporters.

I also think while they did hd the Tories back they weren't as effective at that as many of their supporters would have wanted.

I think a lot of people voted for the in 2010 as another version of labour, but one without brown and who hadn't just fucked up royally with the economy. (And vince cable back then was one of the few MPs that seemed to have a good grasp of economics).

Many of those people missed that the word "Liberal" in their title puts them ideologically rather closer to the Tories than many had thought.

They were never "Labour lite", and that has shocked a lot of people.

Now people voting for them are voting for them, not as a protest vote, not as a "want labour, they can't win here, libdems are exactly the same".

I also think if they hadn't gone into coallision, they would have been slaughtered this time round, I could easily imagine hearing "one chance of power and they didn't take it, it's a wasted vote for them, they only want to be on the sidelines"

It will be interesting to see how SNP and UKIP do in the future, they have been the protest votes of choice this time round but while SNP have a lot of seats, they aren't in a coallision, there's no minority government to do deals with, the "vote SNP, get Tory" message might hit them hard.

While I thought he was odious, Farage was charismatic, interesting to see if UKIP can find a suitable replacement. If the Tories do offer an "in out" EU referendum, a lot of the reason for voting UKIP will fall away.

I live in one of the (very few) Lib Dem seats which are left, so their approach to rebuilding interests me - particularly as I didn't want my MP contesting the leadership. He is an excellent constituency MP and I'd like him to get the hell on with that.

I think to some extent they are being punished for having been willing to go into coalition. We clearly don't really do coalition politics yet - everyone expected another one this time around and it may be that this polarised the vote. Tuition fees were a major gaffe (and indeed my MP even in his acceptance speech was calling for distancing the party from those responsible for that decision) but coalition politics are hard. And every major party has made u-turns whilst in office, but I think people believed or expected more from the Lib Dems because until then they had been entirely a party of opposition.

I also agree Dinosaurs - if they had rejected the offer of a coalition in 2010 they would still have got slaughtered this time around. But perhaps if they had anticipated a bit more the scale of the slaughter they could have been more forceful during their one term in government - it's going to be a bloody long time before they get another, I suspect.

I don't see many Lib Dems becoming UKIP supporters or do you disagree? My assumption (which of course could be wrong) is that UKIP supporters are a mash-up of disaffected Tory and Labour voters. Mostly I get the impression they are working class and lower middle, predominantly white who don't identify with London politics (diverse, highly urban, socially liberal etc.) and feel noone is representing them anymore. They are characterised as racist but I think it's more that they just don't see anyone like them in the political elite and feel disenfranchised. Policy is being advanced that they feel they had no say in.

I imagine they must've picked up some Lib Dems but as I mentioned earlier most of the LD votes seemed to go back to mostly the Conservatives and then Labour and other parties.

I agree with all this. My DIL summed it up in 2010 by saying that she will never vote for them again and was true to her word. We didn't vote for them to put the Tories in.

I gave them the benefit of the doubt this time. Made not a fat lot of difference. I am in a real dilemma now - do I go back to them and help them rebuild, or do I go Green?

I think they would have won here without clegg, in fact I was asked if I would vote for them here if they had a different leader. I suspect the answer is no, but I am not sure as my previous lib dem mp was very good, and hard working. (To be fair I didn't vote lind em in 2010 either, but have done in the previous 2 elections). I suspect that's why he got very close 600 votes, to labour who won.

In the end it was the policies which pushed me back to Labour, rather than over to green. And it was unforgivable how many of their 2010 policies they gave up on, they went to the country with a broadly left wing manifesto in 2010, and then propped up the Tories. I do not think that was in the national interest, I think it was in the Tories interest, not those who voted for them in 2010. Mind you the reason I decided not to vote libdem in 2010 was clegg had said prior to the election that he didn't rule out a coalition with the Tories, but that never got much coverage.

As regards what they do next, they have to work out what they stand for, and if that's the centre they have to work out whether there is or will be space there if the Tories move right and so do labour!

I think being the minor party in a coalition is an incredibly difficult position to be in. You don't have that much influence but you still get the blame. I feel they didn't deserve the outcome last week.

I don't think Libdem voters would have gone to UKIP. I just think going into coalition made people think what's the point of the Libdems?

I still voted libdem like usual. I also think they did the right thing going in to coalition. But I can imagine people thinking if the libdems are going to hook up with either conservative or labour to form a coalition, then the voters themselves might as well decide between conservative and labour and be done with it.

They needed to campaign on a very different agenda and really differentiate themselves from the others, rather than just being that something in between. That was their problem.

Interestingly - Lib Dem membership has been shooting up since the election.
According to their website
"Membership of the Liberal Democrats is now at more than 54,240.
Since polls closed on Thursday, 7296 new members have joined the Liberal Democrats."

That's more than 15% in 3 days.
I wonder what is motivating the new members? Is it realising how fragile democracy is?

Tuition fees didn't apply and they still lost all but one of their seats here. (The one they did win was only by 800 votes! And that was with the Secretary of State for Scotland as their mp!)

From what I can remember of 2010 people voted lib dem expecting them to go into coalition with labour. If they had done that where would we be now??

NC just seemed to have a personality clash with brown and preferred to chum up to fellow public school/Oxbridge/Londoner DC. They became the Tory-lite party, who made decisions to further their own careers.

NC always came across to me as very anti-Scottish, more so than DC.

I don't think there's any certainty they will ever come back from this.

As a result of this thread (and some general thinking over the last few days) I've just joined the Lib Dems! I feel good

I thought the coalition was a great move for GB politics. I much prefer it to one party having the majority. I hoped the coalition would lead to socially liberal, but fiscally conservative policies (note, small "c"! I.e., requiring the books to balance). And in some aspects I think it did, and i don't think for a minute that the Lib Dems ever stopped trying.

I'm with Paddy Ashdown. He was eloquent on Question Time when he talked about the fact that, if the voting public punish parties for trying to make a coalition work, then who is ever going to want to sign up for a coalition again (not those exact words, obviously).

I'm really disappointed because Labour Tory Tory Labour doesn't seem to get anywhere. It leads to political debate being all about attacking the other party, rather than looking for the best ways to get things done.

I feel really sad for Nick Clegg and his team. I think the long term analysis of what they achieved will be very favourable. Just think their election strategy if distancing themselves from the coalition did them no favours.

But it's very frustrating all this talk of "let's not stand for this, let's challenge this result". Absolutely people now need to join pressure groups, lobby and be part of the political system. But we're a democracy, and this is the result of a free and fair democratic election. Challenge FPTP if you want, but not the result of this election.

Rant over, off to do the dishes!!

I feel sorry for Nick Clegg. I hope history will be kind to him. He took a fall for the country basically. He had to form a coalition with someone. If he'd gone with Labour, their first budget would have been voted down, which in 2010 would have been disastrous. Plus he did get some concessions/ block some things.

Great point Still Everyone bags on about how they want PR but they dont want the party they voted for to compromise on anything. How will that work then?

Agree with Still and Aggressive. History will look more kindly on Nick Clegg and the LDs. People also forget that by going into Government they actually got some of their policies implemented such as raising the tax threshold and pupil premium. A coalition with Labour would not have been seen as legitimate.

I think that because of the huge exposure of the left of centre parties in this election (Greens, SNP and Plaid) and indeed UKIP the election became very much about Left vs Right thus putting the LDs and their centre ground messages in an unwinnable position.

"He had to form a coalition with someone. If he'd gone with Labour, their first budget would have been voted down, "

How would it have been voted down?

I'm wondering if I've missed something fundamental here, because I thought the whole point was whichever coalition the Lib Dems anointed would then have an overall Parliamentary majority, which could pass anything it liked as long as it could persuade its own MPs to vote for it. (Or at least get it as far as the Lords.)

Isn't that how it works?

Nick Clegg is of the opinion that the largest party should have the first chance to form a coalition. And he is quite correct on this. To do otherwise would be distinctly undemocratic. I think they did absolutely the right thing to get into bed with the Tories. The economy was in an awful mess. Labour had no mandate to continue as they were. The result has turned out disastrously for the LD party, but it was the right thing to do. To form a Labour - LD coalition would have been undemocratic, by not respecting the wishes of the electorate, and would have also fucked the economy.

I think History will be kind to Clegg.

I think the membership leap is, the voters wanted to protest their upset and now they want to work together again.

As majesticwine said above, Nick Clegg and the LDs stand for democracy and on joining the Tories in coalition they were reflecting this. NC did (IMO) an excellent interview on radio 2 explaining this. He also very eloquently explained the decision to support tuition fee increases (although I still didng agree with this). I think it's a shame that these messages weren't broadcasted soon enough - I didn't really think the message came through. All of the election campaigns seemed to focus on scare mongering about who would end up teaming up with who, which was a shame.
On the PR thing, lots of people seem to forget that we had a referendum on changing the system in 2011, but it was rejected by the electorate.

One final thing, if we did have PR, then the UKIP vote would also have increased. The UKIP candidate in my area got 10% of the votes; would people really want 50 odd seats controlled by them?

I am gutted by the result but accept it as it was democratically decided by the electorate.
I am looking for a new job though (I'm a teacher...)

It's daft though-as someone said on question time last week (I forget who)--'Who introduced tuition fees? Labour. Who increased tuition fees? Labour? Who tripled tuition fees? Conservatives. Who's blamed for the tuition fees? The Lib Dems.'

I actually really liked Nick Clegg-I can't see them finding a better leader in a hurry.