Depressed lefties sign in here...

[WilfSell]

...on the grounds that if we assume there will be a Tory govt, then the crowing triumphalism of all the Chinless Wonders and Thrusting Monetarists and Nasty Racists who'll poke in here to crow and gloat, will somehow force a cosmic rift in the time-space continuum. And it will be like 1992 all over again but the other way round.

I fear the best we can hope for is a hung parliament.

I've suggested hemlock for the Election Night supper thread...

I remember what it was like when Maggie won - I was at university then, and it was the first time I could vote.

I remember my (wealthy) university friends crowing about it, and feeling sick about it.

I feel sick about it this time and I worry -not for me (as a middle class family we probably won't really suffer) but for our society.

he isn't an ex-tory just cause he worked in europe for leon brittain (the rest is smear).

and OH OH OH for a quadrilingual, internationalist, europe focussed leader...yes!

and the libdems voted against the war remember? (tories will always vote pro war to keep BAE happy!)

Nick Clegg will not be the progressive Messiah. He really, really will not.

Socialists are always doomed to being betrayed - what they want isn't really possible.

It's the degree of betrayal, and the collateral good that is done. That's what counts. We had a progressive government who understood how global goverment worked, and we're about to chuck it, and the prospect of it's immediate reform, in the bin.

totally agree crackfox (are you a sexy crack addict? )

bloody hell you are cynical onebat.

I think I am going to go to bed on 6th May - about 9pm - and not get up for approx 6m. By which time the honeymoon will be over and they will have seriously fucked up in some way or other. I'll have to get up then because DH, being a teacher in a special school, will probably have been made redundant so I will need to earn some money.

libertarian vs liberal
That's the crux.

What distresses me is the thought the for Tories 'tough choices' aren't really tough at all as they don't give a stuff about those who will be most affected by these choices.

"Socialists are always doomed to being betrayed - what they want isn't really possible"

it was that kind of thinking that got us new labour. no thanks.

when hope for good dies and you start calibrating sort of ok, against shite, you might as well pack up and go home.

of course he's not the messiah. i imagine he is deeply flawed. however, you don't become a libdem activist because you're a power mad greedy bastard do you? until 3 weeks ago they were the running joke of british politics because of our fucked up electoral system which would never let them have a look in.

NC isn't the prize. electoral reform is.

To my mind sophable, the ultimately tragic and enraging thing about the decision to go to war was that nobody (except, and I do take your point, the Lib Dems- was Clegg one of them?) would have taken us out of the Coalition of the Willing at that point. Certainly not the Tories. And since Clegg is not likely to come to power without them now, this is what we're going to get for the next 4 years. Corporate warmongers with bells on.

It's not just the domestic employment agenda that worries me....it is the ghastly 'self-help' morality of the Tories. The shrinking of the state so that 'dependence' is 'discouraged' and social needs left to charity or to rot. The moral crusades against 'scrounging', the disturbing pushing of a traditionalist pro-marriage agenda alongside the spinechilling coalitions with homophobic nutters in Europe. Etc.

Totally agree onebat.

In fact, really surprised other folk more cynical than I don't think Nick Clegg is a chancer of the highest order.

sorry- I mean to ask was Clegg actually a Lib Dem back at time of war- when did he defect from the Tories?

no onebat that's too easy:

the libdems might encompass some libertarians amongst their ranks but i really don't think you can class them as such at all. their redistributive taxation policies aren't, nor their aim to protect higher education by scrapping tuition fees, nor smaller class sizes, nor increasing the lower taxation band: there is loads there about social justice, and the individual doesn't seem to me to take primacy against the collective at all. there is a balance, which is reflected i imagine in the party make up.

So many people on this thread far more articulate than me..shall just shut up and let you all talk!

I'm really not cynical. I don't care about the Iraq War as much as you do, but that doesn't make me cynical. The things I care about - social and sexual equality - I care about passionately, but pragmatically. Pragmatism is vastly different from cynicims.

The reason individuals get involved in LD politics is irrelevant, surely, however sincere.

I understand you value the prize of electoral reform, and now that my other options are so limited I am also interested in that prize. But from my perspective, it will be a consolation only.

he's been an MEP for the libdems since '98.

you've really swallowed the smears wholesale haven't you?

Clegg was elected in 2005.

I am incredibly nervous - not least because the Tory alternative to our hard-working, rebellious, bankbench Labour MP may win and she is Thatcher to the power of ten.

I think it's extremely unlikely that, had Clegg been PM, he would have stood with France against the US.

Hey Janos - there's surely room here for the inarticulate - you sit next to me - waaaah! Don't want a Conservative government.

OK - maybe it's defeatist talk - we are, bizarrely, closer than we've been in years to electoral reform - which, bizarrely might ensure no Conservative government for a very long time - but we are also extremely close to a Conservative government with a really, really alarming view on how to deal with the economic situation.

And I just want to wail. A lot.

sophable what did you think about the Kosovo war?

but the libdems go much much further than either of the other parties on both of those agendas! lets just start with their maternity/paternity leave policies!

you've just said that socialism can never happen. and you say you're not cynical!

i'm not actually having a go at you btw (i hope you know) just getting hot under the collar.

you've ALL swallowed murdoch's agenda wholesale....who says we're going to get a lib/con or con govt?

he wants you all to believe that, he wants you to despair and not vote, he wants you to vote tactically rather than from your gut.

and you're all nodding along even though it's from the other side of the political divide.

Yes. I just want to wail too, that's my honest, uncynical truth. I can't believe that (as I truly believe) we are about to have a New Conservative government, which is a paper-over-the-cracks, anti-society, individualist govt. That is what we will have on May 7th, in fact or in effect.

To be honest, I swallowed the line that we were getting a Labour goverment in 1992 and that was rubbish too. Perhaps it will all be OK (frantic finger crossing and bombarding my FB friends with reminders to vote when most of them care more about who will be Dorothy...)

Would it be inappropriate of me to sing;

Tory, Tory, Hallelujah...

on this thread?

Come on cheer up, you've had Labour screwing up the country for 13 years, if we don't get in power and balance the books where are they going to get all the money to spend in another 18 years?