Vote 2012: Elections in England, Wales and Scotland

[dutchman]

[Spuffler]

And now it seems that the far right of the Tories want even deeper cuts - a really good winning formula - NOT!!! Then there is Clegg..... How he dare show his face, I don't know. If only he'd had the guts and the principles to genuinely oppose his mates in the Tory party over the extremes they've foisted on us all. But he appears only to have one principle - self interest. And the electorate doesn't react well to blatant self-interest.....

[dutchman]

And now it seems that the far right of the Tories want even deeper cuts

Yep, and there are many cuts still in the pipeline, the devastating effect of which many people have yet to feel.

Then there is Clegg..... How he dare show his face, I don't know. If only he'd had the guts and the principles to genuinely oppose his mates in the Tory party over the extremes they've foisted on us all. But he appears only to have one principle - self interest. And the electorate doesn't react well to blatant self-interest.....

Yep, totally agree. Many people voted Liberal-Democrat because they didn't want the extreme policies of either left or right, but ended up with Clegg backing the extreme right anyway.

[Spuffler]

What the voters got, Flapdoodle, was a Tory party conning the LibDems - well, Clegg, in particular - into believing that they would play a strong part in a coming together of the two parties, when in fact, the LibDems were just exploited so that Cameron and Osborne could get their hands on power, and a party that couldn't get enough votes to take power effectively usurped it.

A true and democratic coalition would have involved all three parties - a National Government, as we had in the 1930s, under similar circumstances.

The bottom line now is that there is not a lot to choose between all three major parties. Even Labour are to the right of the Conservatives that preceded Thatcher. In my view that is bad for the country. Whoever is in power needs to be counterbalanced with a strong opposition; otherwise, it just becomes a dictatorship. In many parts of the country, and especially where I live, the only "opposition" to the ruling Tories at council level is the LibDems - and they're the same party now. If that's democracy, I'm a banana!

[dutchman]

The bottom line now is that there is not a lot to choose between all three major parties. Even Labour are to the right of the Conservatives that preceded Thatcher. In my view that is bad for the country. Whoever is in power needs to be counterbalanced with a strong opposition; otherwise, it just becomes a dictatorship.

Agreed, there is no real opposition in the UK which leads to poor government and voter disillusion. In countries where there is a genuine alternative you get massive turnouts because the electorate believes their vote makes a real difference.

The UK is also almost unique in that mid-term elections have absolutely no bearing at national level. Once elected a government is safe for at least five years and can do pretty much as it pleases.