There’s a pretty shocking and disgraceful piece about the equally shocking and disgraceful Liberal Democrat Party over on Graham Linehan’s Substack. The piece concerns the capture of the Lib Dems by gender ideologues and by the supporters of gender ideology along with the acceptance by the party of gross misogyny which has led to a situation where Lib Dem Officers and candidates can say things like ‘Fuck Terfs’ or compare gender critical women to ‘pubic lice’ and get away with it.
The article is well worth reading if you need, yet more, reasons not to support the Liberal Democrats but what caught my eye was a BTL comment by a person with the screen name of ‘ThoughSheBeButLittle on the subject of local elections.
This commentator said:
I was looking at the results in my local area. The difference in votes was a few hundred in who won one seat. Looking at the spoiled or blank papers, there were more of those than the winning margin, so if those people had been able to vote or not felt they needed to spoil their ballots, another person might have been elected. These margins are tiny and the amount of power some are given based on a 20 to 30% turnout.
I try to encourage others to vote and be engaged in local (and national) politics but I’ve not seen this level of ‘they’re all the same what’s the point’ at any point in my whole life. Older and younger people. The LibDems benefit from ‘not being the Tories’ (or Labour) which infuriates me as not many seem to make the leap to look at what they do profess to stand for – in this case the abuse and harassment of children and women. Hardly a ringing endorsement if anyone truly understood, read and heard what they are busily and proudly promoting. How those politicians conducted themselves on social media and were allowed to stay in the party and were re-elected shows what a closed shop it is.
In my opinion this commentator is correct. She (I’m pretty certain that this poster is a woman) is right to point out that there is a disengagement from politics and this is being reflected in the number of spoilt ballots and low turnouts. I’m also in agreement with her that the level of cynicism and dissatisfaction among the population for politics is the worst in my memory as well.
This lady is also bang on about why the Lib Dems pick up votes. They pick up votes because they are not the Tories and are also not Labour. The problem as I see it with voting in this way is that people are voting without doing any research into what the Lib Dems actually stand for. Maybe if people realised that the Lib Dems are the party of misogynistic troon loons then it’s quite possible that those disenchanted by Labour and the Tories would vote instead for high quality independent candidates or for one of the challenger parties like the Social Democrats or Reform? I know enough about the Lib Dems to not vote for them and maybe its time for others to look into the cesspit that is the Lib Dems and make a similar decision.
Well yes of course, the Lib Dems are something of a third force in British parliamentary politics appealing to voters on the fence wanting a mainstream party outside the Conservatives or Labour. They lost a lot of supporters when Nick Clegg made the alliance with David Cameron, but they now seem to be re-emerging. The next GE is going to be so interesting!
As I recall it was the abandonment of the tuition fees promise that did for Clegg. Personally I think that university should be fully funded by the taxpayer but only for the very top 10% of sixth form leavers and then only those reading STEM subjects or other subjects deemed to be useful to society and the economy. We also need a cull of universities as Blair’s idea of 50% of the population attending university has been an utter disaster.
Agree 100% on culling the uni’s and non-serious subjects (anything with ‘studies’ in the title is not worth spending £9k a year on)
Oh I agree with taking a long hard look at anything with the word ‘studies’ in the subject title. I did read somewhere once, I cannot recall where I’m afraid, about job applications to media companies from media studies graduates, basically they go straight on the spike. Not worth the debt to do these sorts of degrees. Mind you if itwas possible I wouldn’t mind doing a degree in Politics but then it would be a case of how long would I last before the Left kicked me out, possibly for denying the existence of the ‘female penis’.
I was considering Reform, but since Andrew Bridgen (a conspiracy theory loon and liar) joined I wouldn’t touch then with a barge-pole.
I think that you are misunderstanding. Bridgen joined Reclaim not Reform. From what I can gather, Bridgen approached Reform and Reform said no thanks to him.
You are right. I did get confused between the two – what a relief! I might be able to cast a vote (if Reform stand in my area, which they didn’t last time).
I thought that Laurence Fox and Reclaim have done the right things when they’ve stood up for free speech and against politically motivated cops as well as criticising lockdowns. However they are a bit dillitante at times and I don’t think that jumping down rabbit holes where Bridgen might drag them, will do them that many favours. Even from reading his Wiki page it’s clear to see that Bridgen has a bad judgement problem. He’s been caught out breaking the rules on MP’s external interests and is also a passenger on the anti Israel train along with other dubious MP’s and interfered in a local authority matter when he had no right to do so. He has also been caught lying under oath in a court case regarding his family’s agricultural business. There’s a few things that I can say is positive about the man such as that he’s supported Brexit and criticised the Television Licence, but he’s likely to be a liability for Reclaim. It will be interesting to see if Bridgen can get re-elected. He’s had a steadily climbing majority since 2010 going from 44% to nearly 63%, but the constituents might be fed up with his antics and the scandals associated with him even though he appears to be a reasonably effective constituency MP. With the Tories so unpopular at the moment the key thing for me is will his prior popularity and the Tory party in the electoral gutter be enough to get him elected in a constituency that has for thirteen years returned a tory?
In my area we had to choose 3 Councillors from a choice of 7 – 3 Conservatives, 2 Independents (although, around here, ‘Independent’ often turns out to be a closet Liberal Democrat later on), a Liberal (remember them?) and a Labour man who dresses as a woman. I’m sorry, but I voted for the Apathy party. I couldn’t even be bothered to spoil my paper. Why encourage them?
Sounds like you had a bit of ‘Hobson’s Choice’ there on your local ballot paper. In my ward we had a Tory, a lib dem who I won’t vote for because of his party and an independent who was basically a green but too nutty apparently for the local Green Party. Sometimes you can be really really lucky with Independents, other times you can have what you were offered, independents who might as well be Lib Dems or who will opportunistically move to the lib dems later.
I turned up and voted even though I spoiled my ballot paper as at least these sort of protests are noted and counted. The problem with opting out of politics is that even if you take no notice of politics and politicians, you can be damned well sure that the pollies will take an interest in you and that interest isn’t always something positive.