Note to Lib Dem Parliamentarians: We Are Not Stupid. Please stop treating us like we are.

[miss_s_b]

As is my wont on a Saturday morning, I am listening to The Week in Westminster. One of the items they have had on it was about rumblings of discontent in the party that we are not having enough influence on the coalition. Stephen Gilbert, of the whip's office, tried to counter this by listing policies which we have had influence on which are currently being enacted... and the first one he came up with was also a Tory policy.

HOW FUCKING STUPID DO YOU THINK WE ARE?

The thing about being a Lib Dem is that you have to fight tooth and nail for every vote, and the thing about fighting tooth and nail for every vote is that you know the manifestos of your oppponents as well as you know your own. HOW DARE YOU try to hoodwink us? How dare you try to spin doctor those of us who campaigned like hell to get YOU elected?

Sandra Gidley was right, you cannot ignore the rumblings of discontent from within the party, or dismiss it by telling us we are not being grown up. I was one of those who voted enthusiastically for the coalition, I am fully aware that coalition involves compromise, but compromise, to my mind, does NOT involve pretending to be ecstatically happy about a desperate fudge that nobody actually wants (AV), and nor does it involve being an uncritical fawning abused partner in a marriage with very unequal power footings. I've seen where that leads, thank you, and I'm not going to participate enthusiastically in the macro version.

If you keep trying to dismiss and ignore the feelings of the grassroots of the party, you are going to reap a whirlwind in Liverpool, you smug, arrogant, dismissive tosser. And that's a long time before we get wiped out at the next election, which it's looking more and more like we will...

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Comments

[bagfish]

I too heard this and started shouting at the radio. What an utter fuckwit who is showing a complete loss of any contact with the reality of the party members and the activists at the grassroots who are horribly uncomfortable with what is happening.

On the other had I thought Sandra's comments were extremely good, especially the one about how we need to learn from our experience in local government, i.e. don't forget about the grassroots campaigners just because we now have some power.

My one ray of hope this weekend was Tim F's comments picked up by the BBC where he actually comes out and expresses some concern with the coalition.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-10740530

[miss_s_b]

I agree with him that we need to be clearer which policies are ours and which are compromise, as do the Tories. And I'd be a lot happier if we did that specifically with regard to av.