The Curmudgeon

YOU'LL COME FOR THE CURSES. YOU'LL STAY FOR THE MUDGEONRY.

Wednesday, October 30, 2019

Team Luciana Drops In

I am in receipt of an election communication on behalf of Luciana Berger, the Liberal Democrat candidate apparently parachuted into the constituency because the local party couldn't find one of their own. Berger makes much of having resigned from Labour over racism, which presumably explains why she chose to make her new home among the more loyal partisans of the Go Home Van Coalition. Still, notwithstanding Jo Swinson's CBE for services to the Bullingdon Club, it cannot be denied that the Liberal Democrats are campaigning against the Conservatives for now; in fact, Team Berger claims that the ex-Deputy Conservatives are the only viable opposition, having polled nearly three and a half thousand votes in 2017 and thereby casually obliterated Labour's puny 22,942.

Berger "understands our communities", although regrettably she does not show her working, and the ex-Deputy Conservatives as a whole remain unfortunately vague about which policies they supported until 2015 and now plan to reverse. There seems a lack of ambition in the pledge that an ex-Deputy Conservative Government would "fight for proper funding for our NHS and schools" - why would it have to fight? Why not just look at what Lansley, Hancock, Gove and the rest of the rabble have been doing and then do the opposite? There is also a promise to "deliver action to tackle the climate emergency," but detail is again skimpy. The ex-Deputy Conservatives might be planning to steal Labour's clothes and radically re-shape the entire economy; but with a parliamentary presence made up of the likes of Luciana Berger it seems at least equally possible that the party will consider its pledge fulfilled if a few more benefits claimants can be driven to suicide in return for a penny on the price of a plastic bag.

There is also no hint as to what might happen in the event of another hung parliament: aside from the fundamental right of the Liberal Democrat leader to choose the leader of the Labour Party, what would be the red lines? We are reminded that the Liberal Democrats are, for now, a Remain party, and only those would doubt it who are foolish or fanatical enough to recall what happened to the Liberal Democrats' previous unique selling point at Nick Clegg's first whiff of a red box.

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