Lib Dems Announce Suicide!

I know there are some in the Liberal Democrats who are in favor of euthanasia, but I though that was only in the case of terminal illness, yet it seems that there are clear signals that if there is a hung parliament after the next general election, then the Liberal Democrats could well form a coalition with Labour.

The BBC has this here.

It seems that Menzies Campbell wants to bash David Cameron and the Conservative party, whilst making overtures to Gordon Brown.

There is a problem with this. Whilst I can see it as an attractive way of squeezing Labour votes in Conservative/Liberal Democrat marginals, it assumes, wrongly that all people who vote Liberal Democrat are Liberal Democrats, who will hang around whilst Ming reaches out to Gordon. They won't. Any party's voters are a broad coalition, normally more centrist can conservative with a small c than the party they are voting for.

Much Liberal Democrat support comes from disaffected Conservative voters put off by the perceived harshness of the Thatcher years, and squabbling of the major years. Cameron is attracting those back, slowly at first. If there is any danger of a Lib Lab pact, then I expect them to come back in their droves.

What is more there is the question that will be in voters minds, why vote Liberal Democrat if you are going to get a Labour government? Why not vote Labour instead?

lastly why would anyone want to get into bed with a corpse of a government? As I said in this post, Labour clearly has the stench of death about it.

The policy of keeping very quiet on the coalition question. Breaking that silence was a mistake.

It should be noted however that some senior Liberal Democrats are looking to down play the story and the BBC has edited it's story from the original. Maybe it's senior source went off message. However if the daily newspapers pick it up next week, and some will, then the damage will have been done. Next May's locals will be interesting indeed!

There is also more comment on politicalbetting.com here.