One of our writers at the blog received an email from a senior local Liberal Democrat who was closely involved in Linda Wade's campaign. The blog is not going to name this individual at this stage, and it will not reproduce the email on this site. However, we feel it is important to share with our readers the tone and sentiments of this email inorder to refute some of the arguments that will be used by Liberal Democrats to justify what they will be doing both at the Town Hall and in national government to support their Conservative colleagues. The email could only be described as a hissy fit from this individual who clearly took exception to this blog's criticism of Linda Wade as not representing change but instead as being an appendage of the Conservative Party at the Town Hall, who will join with her Conservative colleagues in voting for the forthcoming policies of the Coalition government as they affect the borough. Our writer was then subjected to a patronising and sarcastic lesson in politics, the likes of which he never received even from his supervisor when he was writing his PhD. But our writer is used to Liberal Democrat pretensions to knowing everything about the art of politics. At the blog we believe that irritation with the Liberal Democrat tactics and opportunistic campaign techniques is shared by anybody who has had experience in fighting with them or against them in politics.
There are two parts to this email, one is the hissy fit and the other part is where some attempts at argument were made presumably after this individual had calmed down. The blog will deal with some of the criticisms made in this email. One of the criticisms was that the blog is too serious. We make no apology for that. The blog is serious because its primary purpose was to expose the sexualisation of young underage boys by the now ex-Councillor Barry Phelps. This blog would not be light hearted about such a serious issue. Councillor Phelps might have thought his emails sexualising young boys frivolous and witty, and one of his recipients, a member of the Committee of the National Liberal Club and an ex-Parliamentary candidate, might also have thought these emails witty, but we do not. We have discussed other issues on this blog, but we do not work to be light entertainment, but where it is appropriate, any satire or humour flows naturally from the topic under discussion and would not have to be worked at inorder to try to titillate our readers, who we believe are intelligent and sophisticated and would see through anything which was not just genuine journalism.
The Liberal Democrats are being wooed and screwed
In terms of a more serious argument put forward in this email, it was alleged by the Liberal Democrat that this blog has no understanding of the coalitions which have existed in local government between different parties for many years. Of course, we know about these coalitions. For example, when our writer was active in the Social Democratic Party in the 1980s, the SDP-Liberal Alliance as it was then known formed a coalition in one London borough with the Conservatives to keep out a left wing Labour Party from taking power. However, in this case there was no SDP-Liberal Alliance coalition with the Conservatives in national government. The SDP-Liberal Alliance was able to argue, convincingly, that it was supporting the Conservative group on the Council to avoid a radical left wing Labour administration, but there was no question of the SDP-Liberal Alliance providing more than just limited support for strictly local policies to help run the Council. There was no question of an ideological meeting of minds and camaraderie on the scale witnessed by the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives in the Coalition government. But of course there are many Councils which have been run by coalitions of different parties having to work together to form an administration. What is different now is that the context for these local government coalitions has changed along with the national political landscape. In areas where the Liberal Democrats are in control or in coalition, they will not be free to ignore or challenge or alleviate the policies of their government as they affect the local authority where they are in power. Party loyalty will now extend to loyalty to their government, and increasingly, loyalty to their coalition partners, the Conservatives. It's just practical politics, and does not involve any political insight. This blog could be accused of stating the obvious, but instead our Liberal Democrat has challenged this and states that this is nonsense. While the Liberal Democrat might wish to preserve the fiction that the Liberal Democrats locally are free agents from the party nationally, we should consider that maybe we would argue the same if we were members of a party which has slumped in the opinion polls for its actions in joining in government with the Conservatives. However much the Liberal Democrats might wish to run away from this new reality, for the rest of us the days of voting Liberal Democrat inorder to get the Tories out are over.
The changed political reality is that the Liberal Democrats are in Coalition with the Conservatives, they are the government and this government is bringing in spending cuts affecting many areas of local government services, including housing benefit and other important local services for vulnerable people. The Liberal Democrats will have to support what their government is doing in implementing these policies locally. It is not like before when the Liberal Democrats were not in government and were more free and independent in their position to oppose cuts in services. They have a bargain with the Conservatives to implement these very unpopular cuts inorder to get their referendum on the Alternative Vote. Both the Labour Party and the Conservative Party know that when their party is in government, they pay the price for the political failures of their party in local elections. The local situation is not hermetically sealed from what is happening to their party nationally.
The Liberal Democrat who wrote to our writer also accused the blog of supporting the Labour Party in the Earls Court by election. Some clarification is needed here. It is true that we recommended our readers to consider voting for the Labour candidate for a number of reasons. One of these reasons was the appalling lack of choice between the Conservative and the Liberal Democrat candidates and the prospect of no real change in how things are done at the Town Hall if either of them were elected. The blog was saddened by the lack of choice for the voters of Earls Court from among the main parties. The blog then did its best to inquire about whether there was a Labour candidate and to find out something about what his position was on some of the issues the blog has campaigned about. The blog believes that the Labour Party candidate raised some important issues about cuts in housing benefits for poor residents which the Conservative and the Liberal Democrats were quite understandably unwilling to highlight in their campaigns, not least because both parties agree on these cuts. The blog was open minded about which party to endorse at the beginning of the by election campaign, although it appeared unlikely that the Conservatives would be responsive to the issues that the blog was campaigning about. Indeed there is no natural antipathy of the writers of this blog towards the Liberal Democrats as most of us here actually voted for the Liberal Democrats in the general election. However, we all share a sense of betrayal by the Liberal Democrats by their conduct since the general election in joining a Coalition with the Conservatives and endorsing such a severe programme of cuts affecting the most vulnerable, the elderly, the sick and the disabled, in our society. This disllusionment with the Liberal Democrats is shared by many other voters, as we observe the Mephisto like zeal for power at the expense of their manifesto promises, their historic values, and the suffering the vulnerable and poor in our society will have to endure as the cuts take effect.
Nonetheless the blog gave the local Liberal Democrats a chance to see who their local candidate might be and if their campaign would be for real change locally. With their choice of Linda Wade, and her response to the litmus test of whether she would call for the resignation of her friend Jennifer Ware from the Standards Committee, this blog became convinced that the Liberal Democrat rhetoric about change at the Town Hall would not be substantiated by action. The Liberal Democrats appeared to be rather opportunistic in its condemnation of expenses at the Town Hall, but when it came to condemning Jennifer Ware for her conflict of interest, there was a reluctance to condemn her. This gives rise to the understandable suspicion that Linda Wade will not condemn Jennifer Ware because she is her friend and a fellow Liberal Democrat. We should remember that Jennfer Ware was on the Standards Committee which decided on the complaint made by Mr Donald Cameron against the then Councillor Phelps. She did not declare publicly her friendship with Phelps. This panel gave Phelps the lightest possible penalty of just making an apology to the Mayor for bringing the Council into disrepute. It is the most disgraceful example of failing the community in Earls Court and the borough, that a so called independent member of the panel should be on friendly terms with the accused to the detriment of providing a fair and unbiased hearing of Mr Cameron's complaint. Ordinary people do not have many means of holding their elected representatives to account, especially between elections, and when those elected representatives engage in misconduct towards an ordinary resident the Standards Committee is the main means by which to hold them accountable. Yet it seems that Linda Wade is happy for her friend Jennifer Ware to continue sitting on the Standards Committee despite this deplorable conduct and the fact that this violates all priniciples of fairness and transparency in the handling of complaints from members of the public against elected local councillors.
Finally, as it is the belief of this blog that the Liberal Democrats will not be able to maintain a charade of being an alternative to the Conservatives for much longer, whether in local government or nationally, they would do well to consider how they are being wooed and screwed by David Cameron, the Conservative leader. The love in at the moment is drawing the Liberal Democrats into a greater dependency on the Conservatives, until eventually the Liberal Democrats will be absorbed by the Conservatives, after having split with their more radical and social democratic wing of the party. It seems like there will be another chapter to include in George Dangerfield's The Strange Death of Liberal England.
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