Cheap talk

Surely the Lib Dems are the best bet to send a message to Labour. They represent an actual electoral threat to Labour (unlike say Respect), their policies are, as you say, targetted nicely to the disillusioned Guardian reading middle-class Labour voter, yet they aren’t going to get in, so you don’t have to worry about whether they’ll carry it out.

It seems to me that this criticism is better directed at ‘free beer’ policies that don’t meet a budget constraint or are in some other way implausible than at the policies you mention.

Why do you think a Lib Dem government would have gone into the Iraq war, for example? Looking at the process as a whole, I’d say that if it weren’t for Blair’s personal commitment on the issue, and willingness to subvert a whole range of processes, Britain would have kept out.

ID cards and anti-immigrant policies are trickier because these have more popular support, but it’s still plausible to imagine that a Lib-Dem government (or, more realistically, a Labour minority government relying on Lib-Dem support) would be an improvement on Blair and Blunkett.

“nobody [..].expects them to form the next government”

Surely the situation is bit more complex than this, and surely not as one-dimensional as you present. Despite the tragic voting system, the situation in parliament is more colourful, and as D^2 pointed out, each local constituency presents different choices. Cheap talk indeed Chris.

Isn’t it possible that with tactical voting that you could get to a hung parliment. that would lead to a Lib Lab coalition (lets not even think about the alternative…).
Then you’d get PR in future parliments.
If not now when?

By the way, the £280m that was recently pledged to Jamie Oliver’s school dinners campaign as a pretty transparent vote-buying exercise, could have bought 3.5 pints of beer for every adult in England (assuming that it was distributed under a government program and the government didn’t pay VAT and excise). The £628m spent on the Mllennium dome would have bought us eight pints each, which would have sorted me out for New Year’s Eve. I’m surprised that more political parties don’t run on a “free beer” platform.

You need to divide the issues. On civil liberties issues it is unfair to call them into question: for 40 years the Libs and LibDems have been absolutely consistently liberal on these issues, and have used what little power they have to advance the cause.

On the economy they have an air of unreality about them; would they increase taxes much , if actually in power? Probably not as much as they say. They don’t appear to understand the problems in pubic services, and, like Chris, I think they’re stance on tuition fees is cynical and wrong.

But many Lib Dems are sincerely left and if voting in your cosntitutenvy doesn’t risk letting the Tory in, and you have a sincerely left LibDem, you would be strengthening the left pole within the party, especially if aforementioned candidate won.

Furthermore, a larger LibDem presences with a smaller Lab majority just will exert left pressure; it will embloden the Labour left.

And Chris, if you are voting expressively, votiong LibDem is the only way to express the following thought: ‘I’m really pissed off with Labour and the Tories, but I am not impressed by Saddam Hussein supporters in fancy clothes, the SWP are completely unprincipled, and the Greens make me kind of queasy’ — which is the thought I have long wanted to express in the polling booth.

If Labour are going to win anyway you might as well not vote. On the other hand if you do vote, and do vote Lib Dem, then it might increase their share of the vote so much that next time around another load of people who “do actually believe that stuff but just don’t see the point of voting for it” might actually get up and go vote too.

No UK general election, as far as I know, has ever been decided on a single vote. So I could stay home every time without impacting results. Now go explain that to two relatively stupid Labour voters and convince them they don’t need to bother voting. Thus you will triple the value of your vote!

It is unthinkable to vote Labour after the Iraq war – this has nothing to do with giving Blair a bloody nose. It’s the approximate equivalent of another generation being unable to vote CP after Kronstadt/Molotov-Ribbentrop/Hungary/Prague/you-name-it. How you then chose to vote (if at all) should surely be based upon your sympathy with their policies. But to paraphrase Norman Tebbitt – ‘No-one with a conscience votes Labour’.

It’s also worth noting that if people don’t vote for a party with policies to the left of the current incarnation of the Labour party then it’s unlikely that any move back from a ‘centre’ that is now significantly further right than for a very long while will happen.

I don’t doubt that there were people in the early 1920s warning us not to vote Labour as the Liberal party were the only party with a chance of beating the Tories.

I think we all know that if the Blair government does win this election with a significant majority then this will be trumpeted by Blair loyalists as a vindication of the policies of the past few years and as an affirmation of Blair’s leadership. That cannot be allowed to happen.

Don’t come the raw prawn, Michael – Kim Beazley has his faults, but “mindless anti-Americanism” ain’t one of them. As for “Blair clearly doing the right thing etc”, I’d ask a Popperian question – what would it take to convince you that it was the wrong thing? The honest answer to that question is “nothing ever could”.

But enough of that – if UK Labour is 20/1 On in a two horse race, where can I put my money on the Tories? Elections – especially first-past-the-post with voluntary voting – are inherently more uncertain than that.

Well, Michael, if these unnamed “mindless” anti-Americans had any wit they’d back GWB to the hilt – he’s done more to ruin American power than they ever could. And it is chutzpah to describe opposition to the war as ‘indefensible’ and ‘hypocritical’ when the case for war rested on wilful ignorance at best and brazen lies at worst.

I might concede Blair’s stand was principled if he’d had the honesty to fall on his sword when it became clear the war was predicated on lies that he’d repeated. I wonder if that pious Christian sleeps well at night?

If this is really intended to be a demonstration of the value of talk, it is a feeble effort. Indeed, it is not within the bounds of rational political decision-making – it consists of ventilation of emotion and prejudice (albeit the emotions and prejudices that politically engaged intellectuals have). There is no point trying to decide who might or might not win when you are only assessing visceral attitudes. What determines the votes of all who have commented here is intense self-obsession: an exaggerated sense of their own significance; anger and resentment at lacking influence in proportion to their self-importance. It’s all about how it will make them feel – and not really that, but how telling people how they have voted and why will make them feel. That’s fine – but why should anyone else care a toss? Least of all, why take any notice at all of anyone who (a) dismisses the Conservatives without feeling any need to explain that; (b) sctually considers voting for George Galloway’s candidates.

It doesn’t take tomes to make sharp political points about real electoral politics. Two nice little pieces appear today:
Camilla Cavendish in the Times (on the NHS bureaucracy)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1072-1578275,00.html

James Blitz in the FT on Labour’s tactics
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/97a37074-b202-11d9-8c61-00000e2511c8.html

Strangely, neither worries about their own prescious conscience!

dave’s right, with one qualification: they are simultaneously trying to collapse the Labour vote in those Tory constituencies, as that is a promising way to win Tory seats. They’re (entirely wrong in my view) policy on tuition fees plays well with both camps.