captain red dog wrote:Moggy wrote:captain red dog wrote:I've never understood why a Tory and Lib Dem pact always seems more possible than a Labour one. For as long a so can remember, generally Lib Dem and Labour have been pretty much aligned on policy. The only big disagreement I remember was over the Iraq war.
But when you compare Lib Dem policy to Tory policy, there are very little similarities.
Has anybody said a Tory/LD pact is more possible?
I’d say that was utterly impossible at the moment with their Brexit stances.
Left wingers see the LDs as centre-right, right wingers see them as centre-left. They are either Tory stooges or loony lefties.
Sorry Moggy, didn't see this until this morning. I meant outside of the Brexit debate, it always seems more likely the LDs would go in with the Tories rather than Labour. It always baffles me. When you look at the coalition in 2010, LD support was destroyed because they followed Tory policy which was so completely at odds with their own values, and indeed manifesto.
Take the tuition fee debacle. They'd probably have got that policy through, or something very close to it, if they went into power with Labour in 2010. Instead they found themselves wedded to austerity and doing the exact opposite.
I think the Lib Dem support was closer to Labour in 2010 but Clegg saw the chance of an electoral reform referendum and a chance of being in government and betrayed his voters.
After a period in the wilderness they have regained some support thanks to their anti-Brexit stance. Which again means their support is anti-Tory. Hopefully they’ve realised getting into bed with Tories is a bad idea if the chance of another coalition comes along.
I think Swinson and Johnson are so opposed on Brexit that they wouldn’t be able to betray voters again. But a sniff of power and a Brexit referendum? Who knows, I wouldn’t put it past her.