Monday 20 May 2019

Why are so many Remainers voting for the Lib-Dem austerity-enablers?


So apparently the UK political scene is so banjaxed that we're actually trusting Lib-Dems again, and it's not even four years since their disastrous coalition with the Tories came to an end!

Maybe Remainers flocking to support the pro-austerity, pro-privatisation, social safety net-trashing Lib-Dems would make some kind of sense if the Lib-Dems had shown any kind of remorse for what they wilfully helped the Tories to do to the United Kingdom. But no. There's no remorse at all. 

  • There's no remorse over the brutal Tory sanctions regime, nor the despicable disability denial system that has resulted in literally thousands of people dying within weeks of being declared "fit for work" and thrown off their disability benefits.
  • There's no remorse over Lib-Dem votes in favour of deeply illiberal policies like secret courts, the gagging law, bedroom tax, dripa, Theresa May's Hostile Environment, and the catastrophic strategy of turning Libya into a lawless terrorism breeding ground like Blair and Bush did to Iraq.
  • And worst of all there's no remorse about the way the far-right blamed the collapsing living standards these disgusting policies causes on immigrants and the EU in order to promote Brexit, and the Lib-Dems just bit their tongues, because any effort to explain that the real causes of the living standards collapse (austerity, wage repression, infrastructure under-investment, public service cuts, vandalism of the social safety net) would have illustrated their own complicity. So they just stayed silent and let the far-right win.
And now just look at the delight on the faces of Danny Alexander, Nick Clegg, and George Osborne in the photo above.

These three men impoverished literally millions of their fellow countrymen, and deliberately trashed the future economic potential of the UK in order to fund a disgusting sequence of tax cuts and handouts to corporations and the mega-rich.

They raked in lavish six figure salaries while they were doing it, and now all three have quit politics to rake in even more extravagant salaries from private sector employers.

They don't give a shit about all the people they trampled into destitution, nor the fact that their ruinous economic policies created the dramatic collapse in living standards that led directly to Brexit.

But somehow, even when there are plenty of explicitly anti-austerity options for Remainers to choose from (Green Party, SNP, Plaid Cymru) Remainers are flocking to support the austerity-enabling Lib-Dems.

Assuming that people aren't completely gullible idiots with goldfish-memories, the only possible conclusion is that an awful lot of Remainers are the comfortably well off who never suffered the truly dire consequences of austerity dogma, wage repression, welfare cuts, and public service destruction.

They want to reward the party that enabled all of this malice in the first half of this decade because they were comfortably well-to-do during that period, and quite content at the time because the impoverishment was happening to other people below them on the social ladder.

They want to go back to the way things were before because they were perfectly comfortable when the destitution was being forced on "the lower orders" in order to fund tax cuts and handouts for corporations and the mega rich.

And they certainly don't want to consider that the vile poverty-spreading policies the Lib-Dems enabled were one of the main causal factors in the Brexit chaos in the first place.

They're like lung cancer sufferers dramatically increasing the amount of cigarettes they smoke in the hope that it'll somehow cure the disease they've given themselves.

By supporting a party that enabled so much ideological malice against the poor, working classes, disabled people, local communities, they're actually intent on making themselves look exactly like the aloof metropolitan elitists that the Leave camp always love to portray Remainers as.

Every time they turn up in comments sections to proudly brag that they're voting Lib-Dem because they "don't care about anything else except stopping Brexit", they're displaying their outright contempt for the people who actually suffered under the Tory/Lib-Dem coalition.

If these people can afford to not care about austerity dogma, wage repression, public service cuts, vandalism of the social safety net, etc, then they can hardly complain when left behind communities say that Remainers don't give a shit about them and their problems can they?

And what makes it so much worse is that they're so mindlessly optimistic that the Lib-Dems won't just completely shaft them again.

How exactly does electing a load of pro-austerity pro-privatisation neoliberals into the European Parliament do anything to stop Brexit when the only place it can actually be stopped is Westminster?


Voting for the austerity-enablers who helped create the Brexit backlash in the first place is nonsense, especially since boosting the number of austerity-enforcing neoliberals in the European Parliament does nothing practical to actually stop Brexit whatever.

But then the Brexit Party Faragists are ridiculous nonsense on the other side of the Brexit spectrum, so I guess maybe the thinking of these Lib-Dem supporters is as simple as "if Brexit supporters are going to vote for a polarised right-wing nonsense party, then so will we"!


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20 comments:

Mr. Magoo said...

If the SNP & Plaid Cymru aren't popular in Scotland & Wales, respectively, then I can only guess it's because the people of those countries don't want everyone to think they want independence (even if they agree with those 2 parties on everything else).

As Gavin Andrews commented under a previous AAV blog post: the Green party want to remain in a very different EU to the Liberal Demoncraps & Status Quo UK (bear in mind we only have 11 years left to stop global warming, and social and environmental justice are interlocked).

Anonymous said...

Thomas, you could have saved yourself an awful lot of time if you had the awareness that you finally demonstrated in your last paragraph. You wrote "if Brexit supporters are going to vote for a polarised right-wing nonsense party, then so will we"!

All the rest of your article was the normal "labour good" everyone else are "fascists/Austerity loving/poor hating/greedy ... bas****s" .

I am pretty sure that so many Remainers are voting for the Lib Dems simply because they are clear in their position and are the party that is most likely to pick up Remain voters. Those that are "leavers", are flocking to the Brexit Party for the same reason.

Its really not hard to understand.

As was my prophecy back in early April, I wrote, on another thread, that the council elections and then later, the EU elections, would be when both Labour and the Tories got their comeuppance for their mendacity, duplicity and complete uselessness. And now, they are reaping what they sowed!

Many of you now need to take serious stock of the situation that you have created. It is probable that the UK's two major parties are now increasingly unlikely to get 25% of the EU vote between them!

Watching the various Labour spokespersons on the political shows yesterday morning each stating that there position is absolutely "clear" with respect to Brexit. Well, Labour are currently polling around 15% on the EU elections .... so either their message is indeed very "clear" ... and 85% of voters think the message is rubbish .... or the party's message isn't at all clear, and 85% of the electorate don't trust them.

I wrote to a "gulliver Foyle" on a previous thread. Mr Foyle demonstrated that he was very elequent and clever ... but completely naive and uninformed. Mr Foyle believed that if you can attract 500,000 members then you must be very popular with the traditional Labour voter.

So wrong! 500,000 mostly trot, Marxist, Maoist Momentum nut jobs, that paid £3 to become members and influence party policy, are well on the way to destroying the party by alienating the traditional Labour voter.

... Can't wait until the EU election results and listening to the Labour and Tory Party post poll excuses, revisionism and uselessness. More popcorn please!


Unknown said...

Who cares about the European elections? Meaningless protest-voting twaddle.

Anonymous said...

... comment at 00.30 above

Haha! You demonstrate all the insight and attitude of a petulant toddler!

Unknown said...

They are all cheeks of the same backside, we are enabling these clowns into a position of power and control. stop funding them go common law, stop contracting with them until a proper democracy is declared and the rule of law is returned to our institutes, not fictitious courts..

Gulliver Foyle said...

@Anonymous - 20 May, 2019 21:21.

"I wrote to a "gulliver Foyle" on a previous thread. Mr Foyle demonstrated that he was very elequent and clever ... but completely naive and uninformed"

Actually....Spud...you, and I assume it's you (it'as hard to tell when you only post as 'Anonymous') called me "disingenuous and dishonest" followed by a whole plethora of insults when I had the audacity of asking you to point out where I had been "disingenuous and dishonest". You failed by the way, the link I included in my original reply was chock full of those pesky things known as facts but as far as I can tell you're only commenting on here because you don't have anything else meaningful to do with you life.

Do us all a favour and get yourself a proper, more identifiable, user name so we can all ignore you a bit easier. I think either "Brian Miles" or "Sensible Dave" are not being used at the moment so perhaps try one of those........

Anonymous said...

Spud?

I note your general annoyance at being "called out" Mr Foyle, but the meat of my point remains unanswered. Lets put the jousting to one side and actually comment on the actual state of the major parties.

It pains me that our right of centre government are totally ineffectual on almost all fronts. They are paying the price for May's hopeless leadership since becoming Prime minister. Her performance with respect to honouring the referendum outcome has been beyond useless. They only comfort I take is that the Labour Party, Her Majesty's Opposition, have demonstrated equal ineptitude.

This awful uselessness, demonstrated by May and Corbyn, has created a vacuum and voters need/want to show their contempt for the way the two major parties have conducted themselves. The Tories have imploded by showing their contempt for their Brexit voting supporters whilst the Labour Party have achieved similar by assuming (as you did Mr Foyle) that the average Labour voter holds similar values to the average Momentum supporter. They absolutely do not, and are showing you they don't.

The Brexit Party and the Lib Dems are the beneficiaries of the mendacity and duplicity of the two major parties. I made a prediction a few weeks ago about %s that the various parties will achieve in the EU elections and asked for others to speculate - but no takers!

As discussed above, it now looks like 1 person in 10 will support the Conservatives and 1.5 people in 10 will support the Labour position in the EU Election. Both voted by a huge majority to hold a referendum on our membership of the EU, parties fought the GE on a Brexit ticket, both parties voted by a huge majority to invoke Article 50. But the Remainers in both the parties have conspired to stop Brexit.

As I wrote above. Now they reap what they sowed.

There is a possibility that come the next GE then voters may return to their original parties. If I was to guess at this time though, I think it more likely that we will end up with Labour getting around 25% of the vote with the Tories getting, say 20% .. whilst the Brexit Party will pull 20/25%. That suggests a Brexit/Tory coalition government with, probably, quite a large majority. Corbyn will resign. McDonnell will become leader (because the numpty Mementum members will make sure) and Labour will be consigned to the wilderness for another 5 years.

Well played Labour!!!

Mr. Magoo said...

(@Unknown)

"Who cares about the European elections? Meaningless protest-voting twaddle."

Don't be like that. Since we are NOT leaving the EU and they use proportional representation (in the UK, at least), these elections are a great opportunity for us to improve the EU.

The 2 worst things about Brexit are: it's a massive distraction from much more important issues; and it's helped make the Liberal Demoncraps popular again (grr).

Anonymous said...

We can use the elections to "improve the e.u". Honest question: seeing as all the policies are decided upon by unelected officials and not the m.e.ps, how in any practical way can the e.u be improved by any m.e.p elections?

Anonymous said...

Your point that a free trade deal was simply impossible was never backed up by your citation. I provided a video of Donald Tusk actually offering a free trade deal prior to the extension, however it was ignored by westminister who currently have a massive bias of 73% of MPs in favour of remain. Brexit is being betrayed by the political establishment because it does not suit their own interests and all you've done in these pages is shill for them.

Your arguments are fucking laughable. Spud.

Anonymous said...

It's simple. This is a single issue election and it is not full PR. Remainers will vote for the party that is unequivocally remain with the most chance of winning a seat in their region. That narrows things down to Green or Lib Dem.
Any other policies are irrelevant at the moment - that's why the Brexit party does not need to publish a manifesto.

Unknown said...

It can't and the Brexit Party and Lib Dem vote will collapse again at a general election (as beyond harping on about Brexit they dont represent anything of substance). So when referring to Meaningless Protest-voting twaddle the reference was to the result of these elections (not the EU elections in general) followed by their annulment once Brexit is delivered in whatever form and both benefactor parties return to the obscurity that this pointless ongoing polemia dragged them out of. Of course the best way to avoid that happening is by holding a 2nd referendum and ensuring that the Lib Dems get to call themselves the Remain Party ad nauseum forever and the Brexit Party get to continue their work on dismantling any kind of political infrastructure that might remain, whilst BoJo romps to victory in the Tory leadership elections. So yes, meaningless, protest-voting twaddle UNLESS you give it the kind of attention that these power hungry charlatans want you to give it and create the kind of mess you claim that only Brexit can deliver. I beg to disagree.

Anonymous said...

Good to see that you have included the disastrous intervention in Libya on the charge sheet. That intervention was based on lies.


Here are a list of UK MPs who voted against intervention in 2011 (source = Hansard):

Allen, Mr Graham
Baron, Mr John
Campbell, Mr Ronnie
Corbyn, Jeremy
Durkan, Mark
Gardiner, Barry
Godsiff, Mr Roger
Lucas, Caroline
McDonnell, John
Riordan, Mrs Linda
Ritchie, Ms Margaret
Skinner, Mr Dennis
Wood, Mike

Anonymous said...

Hilary Clinton masterminded Libya, to think people thought shed be a better alternative to Trump is hilarious.

Anonymous said...

Why do people believe the poll ratings most of them are a waste of time...the proper results will be when people actually go to their polling stations.

Mr. Magoo said...

(@ Unknown)

Brexit is not going to happen. Parliament doesn't like the deal; the EU has refused to re-negotiate the deal; and nobody sensible wants us to leave with no deal.

The reason why Labour aren't popular (in regards to Brexit) is because they are trying to please everyone, by supporting a soft-Brexit, but instead disappointing everyone. To put it colourfully, both Leavers and Remainers don't want the UK to be the EU's bitch; meaning Leavers want a hard-Brexit* and Remainers want to be an equal member at the table regarding Single Market rules and trade deals.

* They don't have a solution to the Irish border problem, though.

George Carty said...

I voted Labour yesterday, but this was in large part because I live in the North East, which only has 3 MEPs and therefore has little chance of electing one from any explicitly pro-Remain party: I therefore felt that a Labour vote was the most effective way of voting against Farage: hopefully his mob will only get one of the North East seats rather than two!

And I'm strongly sceptical of the supposed anti-austerity credentials of the Greens, given that ending economic growth in the name of environmental preservation is a key part of Green politics. In a zero-growth economy (unlike the postwar era) it is only possible to improve the masses' standard of living by outright confiscating the wealth of the rich, which historically rarely happens without civil war or violent revolution.

From Arse to Elbow: Social Mobility or Barbarism

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