Just been listening to Ed Miliband on the Politics Show, he either does not understand coalition politics or he is trying to fool the country!
Ed Miliband’s protestations on the Politics Show that the coalition has no mandate for a lot of what is is doing with the NHS, GP’s, Education and the cuts in general shows either a naivety towards the working of coalitions or simply a ploy to fool the electorate, probably just treading water because he knows not what to do!
The very fact that a coalition is a number of parties, with differing views, joining together to form a coalition of parties means that they will always have no electoral mandate for a lot of the policies being implemented, policy is decided after the election through hard and sometimes ruthless bargaining, the policies which can get agreement can only be decided once the make up of any coalition has been decided.
So the current situation in the coalition is pretty standard, might have been more agreement in a Labour/Lib Dem coalition as they are virtually the same party but there was not sufficient support for it in parliament or the country, it would have been better for the Conservative Party but David Cameron, quite rightly, put country before party.
Ed Miliband is simply trying to preserve his party, can’t blame him for that, he knows that a lot of what the Conservatives are pushing through are 100% correct and that in 3 years time when the deficit has gone and the country booming the public will remember that it was the Conservatives that forced the issues and dragged the Lib Dem’s kicking and screaming for tha sake of the country.
Mr Miliband knows that his chances of being elected in 4 years time are near zero and sees his only chance is a coalition with the Lib Dem’s if the result is near enough and that is why he is supporting AV, what he has not factored in is that, although they will still be essentially failures at the next general election, under AV the Libs will have the wip hand, as the 3rd party they could hold the balance of power.
This is why under a full PR system it would be practically impossible to get the Libs out of power, which of course is why they want AV and eventually PR, under ‘First Past the Post’ you can always kick the government out, under AV/PR the government stays just slight changes in complexion!
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