What will be the result of the upcoming GE?

  • Conservative majority

    Votes: 6 30.0%
  • Conservative minority

    Votes: 4 20.0%
  • Labour majority

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Labour minority

    Votes: 6 30.0%
  • The Lib Dems are a force for evil

    Votes: 2 10.0%
  • Fuck the lot of em, we're going to to hell in a handcart

    Votes: 6 30.0%

  • Total voters
    20

version

Well-known member
A Lib Dem candidate just said they'd be standing aside in Canterbury in an effort to prevent the Tories from winning and the party have decided to run another candidate in his place within a matter of hours.


NEW: Serious unrest in Canterbury Lib Dems over national party’s decision to find a candidate to replace @ThatTimWalker, who stood down to give @RosieDuffield1 a chance to unite the Remain vote and beat the Conservatives.

A senior Lib Dem source in the local party tells me members had a vote amongst themselves, deciding not to field a candidate, but this was overruled by HQ. So @ThatTimWalker was selected, subsequently receiving “animosity and vitriol” from local members.

Deadline to select a new candidate is Thursday. There are four local Lib Dems who are approved candidates but not a single one is willing to stand. So the national party would have to impose a candidate on Canterbury from outside. I’m told “they wouldn’t get a warm welcome”.

Understand most members simply won’t go out and campaign for a new Lib Dem candidate. So who on earth would want to stand?! It’s possible there’s no candidate, or just paper one. “Canterbury does not want the Tories to get in again”, says my source, “so we’re backing Rosie”.

All of this points to the mess the Remain alliance is in. In failing to team up with Labour Remainers, local campaigners from Lib Dems and probably from Greens/Plaid feel torn.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I know, it's bizarre in a public figure normally so renowned for his honesty and integrity
Some people actually think that though... or they did until yesterday.
 
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IdleRich

IdleRich
Yeah that particular LD move hasn't gone down too well... they're saying it was the candidate's decision not party policy which is probably true but... fucking hell, it feels as though there is a kind of evil alliance that is getting ready to roll over the whole country and the only people who can possibly stop it are too busy arguing with each other to actually get their act together. I honestly think that Labour consider LDs and Greens as basically just as bad as Tories and the LDs have pretty much said that they view Labour and Tories as equal enemies. It's this kind of shit that is gonna mean that the Leave parties win the fucking election even though most people apparently want to remain. It's awful and depressing and incredibly frustrating.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Some people actually think that though... or they did until yesterday.

Would be great, on a purely emotional level, to see this lead to a complete embarrassment for his party in the election - apart from the fact you know almost everyone who might have voted for it is going to vote Tory instead.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
Also - the idea that the Tories are the same as the ones in the last coalition is dead wrong. They're much more extreme and the Lib Dems would fuck themselves with their party members and voters by going into coalition with them. Their main sell to wavering Tory voters is that they're not Johnson.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I think an argument could be made that the Lib Dems under Swinson are a lot like the Tories under Cameron. But you look at today's Tory party and it's on another level of nastiness and lunacy altogether.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
Shades of liberalism overlap at either edge of both parties, but that doesn't mean that both parties are the same. Orange Book Lib Dems were temperamentally and politically sympathetic to the Cameroon Tories, but both were tendencies in their own parties. The Lib Dems sold out a lot of their positions in the Coalition as a price worth paying for the AV Referendum, which if they won would solve everything for them (they believed). And they even fucked that up.
 

subvert47

I don't fight, I run away
I think an argument could be made that the Lib Dems under Swinson are a lot like the Tories under Cameron. But you look at today's Tory party and it's on another level of nastiness and lunacy altogether.

Yes, that seems right. The Lib Dems are now the Tories. And the Tories are now the Brexit Party.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
worth remembering that in 2017 the lib dems were more progressive in terms of benefits than corbyn's labour

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similarly there are labour policies that intuitively feel progressive when in fact they're not. scrapping uni tuition fees means that poorer, non-university educated people are taxed to pay for people to go to university. rail fare caps likewise benefit predominantly middle class railway commuters.
 

luka

Well-known member
It's cool that Barty has come out as a liberal deomocrat I don't think we've had one of those before.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
similarly there are labour policies that intuitively feel progressive when in fact they're not. scrapping uni tuition fees means that poorer, non-university educated people are taxed to pay for people to go to university. rail fare caps likewise benefit predominantly middle class railway commuters.

I'm strongly opposed to the idea that there's a progressive argument for tuition fees. For one thing, doesn't it put the cart before the horse? In that, if not many people from less well-off backgrounds go to university, isn't that in large part a direct result of tuition fees? Rather than an argument for them.

The fact that you're now looking at a typical job's yearly gross salary just for fees for a basic three-year degree (which qualifies you for jobs you'd have got with A-levels a couple of decades ago), before you even think about accommodation, food or anything else - I don't see how that can be anything other than a huge obstacle to social mobility.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
I think the key argument is that if you get rid of 'em now, it'll fuck funding which is already super-precarious. To bring in alternative funding will require an act of Parliament which is going to be tough for a minority govt to pull off. Thread here:
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
The LibDems are Tories. Tory remainers, but still Tories.
So they are the same apart from being diametrically opposed on the single most important issue?
Honestly I'd vote for Remain Tories over Leave Labour at this stage now
 
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version

Well-known member
The Lib Dem position on stuff like privacy/mass surveillance and the war on drugs is markedly different from the Tory position.
 

version

Well-known member

The Lib Dem candidate in High Peak, @GuyKiddey says he may stand down.

It's over a row in the party that began yesterday when Canterbury candidate @ThatTimWalker decided to stand aside, to avoid splitting the remain vote.

Guy Kiddey says he's extremely upset about it and his election agent has already resigned his membership.

He says the party's response to Tim Walker has "done more damage to the party and its membership than anything else that's happened so far. A real cack-handed move."

Guy Kiddey says he'll pull out: "unless the party retracts its implicit threat to candidates, drops its intended disciplinary proceedings against Mr Walker & apologises unreservedly. I doubt it will, in which case I too will stand down & resign my membership & I will vote Labour"
 
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