the long awaited B & T endorsement

Outsourced to Porter: 

The party will introduce a freedom bill, regulate CCTV, reduce local council surveillance, restore the right to protest, protect free speech, offer guarantees to investigative journalism, scrap ID cards, end plans to spy on email and internet connections, scrap ContactPoint, reduce pre-charge detention to 14 days and scrap secret evidence. The Lib Dems go much further than the Tories on the DNA database and offer wholehearted support for the HRA. 

On civil liberties, the Lib Dems win hands down.

I’m not a Lib Dem. I’m really just parking my vote there. I’ll probably vote Green once the crusties are ready for prime time. Good luck to the folk further left, but I don’t do movements. I’m a retail politics guy. 

Meanwhile, if you think that this stuff matters you should vote for it when it’s offered by a major party, especially since we’re now at the stage when it clearly doesn’t matter to either the government or the opposition. It’s way past time that social authoritarianism stopped being a cost free political option. And voting Lib Dem is the only realistic way I can see that you can at least try to make that happen.

Comments

[Igor Belanov]

I'd love to vote for a party committed to massive redistribution of wealth, but in the absence of that I voted for the Greens in the Euro elections and would have been happy to do so again. Unfortunately they seem to have a policy of not contesting seats in areas other than leafy suburbs and the odd bohemian enclave. Thus cementing, it seems, their unfortunate reputation of being a party catering mainly for middle-class causes.

Given that the choice in my constituency is between a centre party, two centre-right parties and two far-right parties, I might well consider a Lib Dem vote if I drag myself off to the polling station.

[Phil]

Yeah but, no but, I mean, come on... vote Lib Dem? Vote for my Lib Dem MP? I won't be voting Labour, God knows - and the Lib Dems have got a lot of good policies (not to mention Alex and Nick), and young Leech has got a pretty good voting record - but it would really go against the grain to vote for the bugger. He just rubs me up the wrong way (see above links), and his party does too.

As it goes, I don't think the Lib Dems will do that well in May - I'm pretty sure our MP got his seat in 2005 on what was basically an anti-Iraq vote, and I'm 100% sure he's not going to keep it. I see them making a few gains from Tories, but balancing gains from Labour with losses (or reversions) to them. I'm currently betting on a hung parliament with Labour as the largest party, at or not much below 300 seats. (In which case, of course, the Lib Dems will do very well indeed out of the election, but that's another story.)

[jamie]

I think the LD's might do alright. That Vince Cable comment about people being nauseated by businessmen dictating the agenda was quite clever: it helps up here in Withington and Rochdale, and it also helps with getting Labour voters to switch in LD/Tory marginals. As for the rest, fuck knows.

[Tom]

"I think the LD's might do alright"

The other slight point is that voting Lib Dem gives them a bit more clout when it comes to making PR the price of the papers for a coalition. Naturally this only applies if you're in a place where you vote is useless in preventing one side getting a thumping majority - round here we get the choice of a loyal Brownite or a quite appalling banker-Tory financed by charming people like Henry Angest and Lord Laidlaw, who for some reason quite unconnected with their avowed tax-hating views have taken up the cause of Brentford & Isleworth going blue. Bugger that for a laugh.

[Phil]

it helps up here in Withington and Rochdale

I don't know about Rochdale (is there still a Smithite vote, I wonder?) but Withington's my constituency - or the one my street has been moved into since the last election - and I'd be amazed if the LDs held it, even with an unknown neo-Blairite first-timer standing for Labour. The posters were running something like 3:1 LD to Labour last time; at the moment they're more like 6:1 Labour to LD.

[Cian]

What's the status of the Orange book in the LibDems these days? Aren't the LibDems actually quite right wing where it counts (party leadership).

Technically I live in a marginal, but its a majority of 200, the Labour MP is pretty crap and the Tory candidate is a local and quite well known. So I'll probably stay at home and drink heavily.

[jamie]

Well they seem to be running to the left of the two major parties, so I don't know. I suspect the whole thing's pretty cynical. The LDs would probably just drop the civil liberties stuff if it didn't work for them so the time to make it an issue is while it still preoccupies the party mainly known for the achievement of saving its deposits.

So: Vote Liberal Democrat, then go home and drink heavily.