Comment by smcl | Hacker News Reader

Comment by smcl | Hacker News Reader

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I originally posted a smartass one-liner response ("I don't think even the Lib Dems understand the Lib Dems") but deleted it as it was not constructive or particularly fair on you. I think that it is worth explaining what I meant however.

I genuinely admire that you are motivated enough to get involved with UK politics - and I wish you all the best. You've no idea the disappointment I had in the LDs though - I cheered them on in a handful of successive elections (they ousted the Tories in my home constituency West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine in '97 much to my family's delight) and in the run-in to 2010 was convinced they could rise up to challenge Labour and the Conservatives.

And then to join the Tories - it just boggles the mind, I cannot fathom how anyone didn't think "won't this completely kill us off?". For one this basically lost them the foothold they had Scotland (my home constituency was lost to the SNP, for example) and whatever was left of the younger supporters who weren't turned off by the association with the Conservatives were then burned by the Tuition Fee saga in England.

We'll never know what would have happened with Brexit if the Lib Dems were still in the coalition. But they completely capitulated on a single extremely simple promise in 2010. Now I (a previous Lib Dem voter) have no reason to believe they wouldn't do the exact same again.

But overall, yeah you are right. I do not understand the Lib Dems. And it fucking saddens me.

We're nerds. I've met very few Lib dems who aren't nerds. And some of us are nerds about transport, and some of us are nerds about budgets, and so on. That is who we are above all else. We're ravenclaws. (With some hufflepuffs). We write long complex policies with painstaking research only to have the other parties nick them, and then say "well at least the clever thing I designed is happening even if I don't get the credit".

Now, one thing we did with the coalition was do exactly what we'd been saying before the election. It wasn't what the media reported, but it is what we said. Which was that we'd consider coalition with any party that got the most votes and the most seats. Which was the Tories.

Now, you should also remember that the Lib Dems have a shared history with both the conservative and labour parties. The SDP may be much more recent, but the flight of the libertarians in the 1920s and 30s (along with the telegraph newspaper) lost us what was an originally liberal idea: the market. Suddenly we were no longer the party of the market. And the Tories were a mixture of market purists, capitalists and moral conservatives (political theists). They've purged most of the moral conservatives now, and we're just left with the capitalists (the libertarians forgot all about the social conscience of Adam Smith without the rest of the Liberal party to remind them.)

Now, the Liberals who were left in the 40s and onwards were several things. Social liberal, internationalist, a little bit CND, etc. Radicals. Protestors.

Then we got this influx from Labour in the 80s, the right wing of the Labour Party, the SDP. Vince Cable. Shirley Williams. We grew up and became less of a protest party and more professional. We started winning by-elections and having more than 6 seats.

It is important to distinguish us from a European Liberal (centre-right) party. It is also important to remember that we're internationalists. And it is important to remember that we're not too different from a European Liberal party; we definitely believe in free trade across borders.

So, the European project is a part of British Liberalism which cuts across both internationalism and market freedoms. It's in the political DNA of nearly all Lib Dems.

Brexit is one of the few things we pretty much all agree on (that it's a terrible catastrophe).

I hope that helps you understand us a bit better.

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