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Comment by corney91 | Hacker News Reader

> then there's the Lib Dems who had their shot at power, and immediately went back on their promises and raised student loans through the roof.

Does anybody (who can critically think) actually care about this? All political parties have made u-turns (for example, the current government changed their mind pretty damn quickly about the NI increase) and, at the end of the day, the Conservatives won a majority so it's their call.

I swear the whole "Lib Dem" == "Tuition fee liers" is just a meme created by journalists to sell papers and distract people from real issues.

Oh God, writing that out made me realise I sound like a bit of a conspiracy theorist...

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Also the tuition thing was if they won outright not formed a coalition, so they literally didn't go back on their word.

They also blunted a lot of what the conservatives wanted to do and fell on their own sword doing it.

Country before Party and I'm not traditionally a Liberal Democrat fan, frankly they deserve some admiration.

People forget too easily what the world was like back then, a massive financial crash and the banks looking very shaky.

> Also the tuition thing was if they won outright not formed a coalition, so they literally didn't go back on their word.

Hate to disagree here, but it wasn't the manifesto plan of free tuition (which is what they'd do in power) that was the problem, they also signed a pledge to vote against any increase in fees which half of them didn't follow through with (being part of government): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vote_for_Students_pledge

Agree with the rest of your comment though.

> Does anybody (who can critically think) actually care about this? All political parties have made u-turns (for example, the current government changed their mind pretty damn quickly about the NI increase) and, at the end of the day, the Conservatives won a majority so it's their call.

I care about it (and I barely read any newspapers, FWIW). Lib Dems MPs went above and beyond their manifesto and made direct, personal pledges not to vote to raise tuition fees. The coalition agreement did not require them to vote to raise tuition fees. Nevertheless, many did. This was an egregious deceit even by the standards of politicians. It absolutely deserved a massive electoral punishment, which thankfully seems to have been delivered.

(FWIW the NI U-turn was precisely because increasing it would have violated a manifesto promise, so not really comparable)

>The coalition agreement did not require them to vote to raise tuition fees.

Except the ones in government: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabinet_collective_responsibil...

Apparently being part of the cabinet means you're no longer representing your constituency but the government instead...

The left has an unfortunate willingness to expend more energy on fighting each other than the people that they truly oppose.

That might be changing (although I'm still not getting my hopes up about this year's GE...): http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-39693277 https://www.tactical2017.com/

How else do you explain the massive collapse in support last election?

They lost so much. 86% of their seats (57 to 8), 66% of their popular vote (23% to 15.2%).

Both of these, and the strange discrepancy between them, can in some part be explained by the archaic first-past-the-post election system.

Apparently many of their loses to the conservative party were caused by a last minute rush of voters to labour. In a three-way contest that had the perverse effect of sending things in the opposite political direction.

As far as I can tell it's their lowest vote share for decades and all the last few elections have been close.

What you're saying just doesn't ring true. People genuinely felt betrayed by the uni fees.

Because people thought they were "Tory enablers" and the tuition fee thing was the perfect example of that. But comparing the coalition with the current Conservative government, I think it's clear they were actually beneficial to the country. Will be interesting to see how that attitude changes with time...

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