What governing has shown up is that the Lib Dems were a group of political opportunists held together by a few expensive policies designed to appeal to a few interest groups.
Suddenly they have to agree priorities and trade offs. The old saying is right, to govern is to choose. (Of course it's also more than that.)
Now it's dawning on their MPs that the luxury of ineffectual posturing was probably better for their prospects of political survival than the serious grind of governing and choosing.
You can tell from their bleatings to Telegraph journalists how much they hate it already, and how scared they are.
This isn't because the government they're in is a coalition: they would also have had to make choices if they'd formed a single party government.
Some - Clegg, Alexander, Laws, Teather(?) - want to get on with it and even relish it.
Others - step forward windbags Menzies and Kennedy - are desperate always to stay on the sidelines. And Hughes is too in love with himself to make any serious choices at all.
2 comments:
Great minds, John, although we have approached the same topic from different angles at virtually the same time.
And the still consider they should have our respect and be considered 'honourable'.
Pah!
The Lib Dems unique selling proposition used to have two parts
1. We are the NICE people
2. Unlike those awful other parties,lie who are always squabbling for the sake of it, we are RATIONAL and PRINCIPLED.
In local government, this often went down well in areas which were corrupt, one-party fiefdoms. They have/had some very good people. But the mask tends to slip when they have/had any power. The libertarian tradition of real liberalism was jettisoned for authoritarian, Social-Democrat style managerialism, greenery and global warmism etc. EU-worship is another facet of this aspect.
Now they are tainted with national office, they will have to think up a new story.
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