Attempting to portray the Lib Dems as gallantly and selflessly holding rampant Toryism in check is by now the well-worn excuse offered for entering into coalition with the Tories, and just doesn’t wash (Ian Dickins, Letters. Their eager grasping for cabinet seats, big offices and limos had even party members appalled.
Had the offer of coalition been refused, the option for Cameron of calling another instant election was a non-starter, as having failed to secure the expected victory his position as leader was far from safe from his right-wing critics, leaving a minority administration as his best bet for saving his neck.
Without collusion by the Lib Dems, the manifesto pledge which ruled out “top-down reform” and piecemeal privatisation of the NHS could not have been attempted, along with the dilution of the welfare state by the privatisation of other public bodies: infinitely better than the alleged restraining influence exerted by the Lib Dems. Ian Dickins concludes: “Politics is the ‘art of the possible’, and the Lib Dems should be given credit for their achievements in government, not vilified for policies outside their control.” But what was “possible” for a party determined to preserve the life of the coalition was precious little. A coalition was better than a Tory government, but that’s a false choice: there was a superior, option.
Eddie Dougall
Bury St. Edmunds
Suffolk
Ian Dickins says: “The Lib Dems should be given credit for their achievements in government.” Credit for what? So the weak, vulnerable and poor are given a kicking with size eight boots instead of size 10? The bedroom tax, tuition fees, benefit sanctions? I used to respect some Lib Dems such as Vince Cable but I hope the British people will remember their broken promises at next year’s election.
Barry Norman
Drighlington
W Yorkshire
Ian Dickins argues that if the Lib Dems had not agreed to enter into coalition with the Conservatives in 2010 the UK would have, by default, had to suffer a majority Conservative right-wing government later in the year. It is the same proposition that I’ve had robotically dictated to me by canvassers on my doorstep almost word for word: positing that no other “events” would have taken place, no other actors taken the stage, no changes in public attitudes to Brown, Miliband, Cameron; no attempts by MPs from all sides to behave in the public interest, nor even for Nick Clegg to have been given a boost in the ratings by holding to his principles, not taking the shilling, and proving himself above treachery to those that voted for him.
While it’s interesting to note that almost the entire Liberal Democrat party seem able to understand “what if” scenarios that fan out to infinity and beyond, they seem unable to grasp the relatively more simple mathematics of probability and chaos; the various formulae that make even predicting the weather in two weeks’ time a near impossibility, let alone establishing the behaviour of the entire country’s population, media and financial institutions. I suggest that the next time we on our doorsteps receive the Official Lib Dem Future Was Saved Warning we all point out the equally possible scenario of Bruce Willis failing to divert an asteroid hurtling toward the planet on an unstable orbit so that it collides with us with a bang on the twelfth of never. This is speculative fantasy in the extreme .
Simon-Peter Trimarco
Kings Langley
Herts
Do the Lib Dem “achievements in government” include voting alongside the Tories to continue the bedroom tax which they and the Tories jointly introduced in 2013, despite now hypocritically claiming to oppose it? And if they regard the resulting £360 million annual cut in the housing benefit bill as indispensable, why did they vote for the Tories’ £3bn a year tax cut for top earners? The Conservatives know perfectly well what they are doing by this series of measures; the pathetic Liberals are just dragged along behind them.
Phil Tate
Chester
