The Western Daily Press this week said “Liberal Democrat Jeremy Browne, MP for Taunton Deane and a former minister, has suggested that his party has become pointless and that Nick Clegg has abandoned the principles that got the party to power in the coalition.” After all the hard work they put in to win the last election (for the Tories) we were sure that couldn’t be true so we asked someone who lives and works at the heart of Lib Dem Somerset for his opinion. Cllr Graham Forsyth from Chard picks up the story….
Have You Been Clegged?
This is a new term meaning that you have been totally betrayed by voting for Nick Clegg and his party. So what did happen? Well, the Lib Dems in forming part of this coalition have turned their back on any claim to be the voice of liberalism. They have chosen to support the party of privilege and patronage over liberty and equality. They have treated with contempt the voters who chose to vote LibDem in direct rejection of the Conservative agenda. They have disowned those who made a positive choice to vote LibDem in order to see their policies implemented. They have betrayed the party workers who have worked hard promote the centre left of politics by rushing to the rescue of the Wealthy Tories.
Having watched Norman Lamb on ‘Any Questions’ in Chard on Friday 11th April, he gave a very poor performance, but now seeks to make up for it again like a ‘good Tory‘ by blaming Labour for the NHS failing in Mental Health Care. He is the current Health Care Minister and has been for the last 18 months but, like a feeble pleb, mutters out an old excuse which was probably fed to him by his Etonian Tory NHS boss Jeremy Hunt.
Is Alexander more right wing than Osborne?
With Nick Clegg’s poor debate with the UKIP leader I can see no way for this party to move forward and re-connect with it’s membership and supporters base, which tends to be made up of moderate fair minded people from both the working class and lower middle classes.
The comment that many grass root supporters make about their Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander being more right wing that the cost-cutting Tory Chancellor George Osborne just resonates the unease that many Lib Dem supporters feel within this coalition partnership of doom.
My very own Lib Dem MP in Yeovil area is David Laws who was always on the right of the Lib Dem party so he seems to sit easy with his Tory colleagues. I assume that he travels up on the train each week to Westminster with the like of West Country Tory MPs; Hugo Squire, Richard Grosvenor Plunkett-Ernie-Erie-Drax and Oliver Letwin, all old Etonians and of course like Mr Laws all millionaires.
It is hard to believe that the current Liberal Democrat party is still claiming to be the centre to centre-left, socially liberal party which they were when they formed in 1988 via the merger of the Social Democrat Party and the Liberal Party.
The current leadership has changed all that with Nick Clegg’s Spanish wife reportedly earning a whopping £500,000 a year as a corporate lawyer and alledgedly commissioned by US food giant Crafts to help in the takeover of Cadbury a few years ago in Bristol. But that’s history, rather like the old Cadbury factory that used to be in Bristol.
Cllr Graham Forsyth
Avishayes Ward
Chard