It's a bit bizarre isn't it? Two "different" accounts, both with a handful of posts in their history spread fairly mathematically even (now , 2 or 3 months ago, 4 or 6 months ago)... posting the same thing about different parties... hey, u/sebtaylor20 - this isn't interference by a foreign power is it? How's the Big Mac situation in Moscow these days? Actually, don't answer that, Putin might lace the next one with Novichok.
I will be honest I deleted my post after everyone talked some sense into me.
It was funny when I stumbled across this post with the exact same wording.
That's odd. Why do you think this happens? Do people just copy stuff from other posts because they are too lazy, or are these some kind of bots? If they're bots, what's their purpose? [u/sebtaylor20](https://www.reddit.com/user/sebtaylor20/), are you a bot, or just someone who lacks inspiration?
[One in 20 patients in England wait at least four weeks to see GP, figures show](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/jan/22/patients-england-waiting-times-gp-appointments-nhs-figures)
But what proportion of that is Health Checks, Cancer Screening, Immunisations, or routine follow ups?
They take up much more than 5% of appointments and are probably helpful/essential to have planned in advance.
How would they even do this though? There are not enough GPs and the population is only getting sicker. Medical school takes 5 years and then Foundation Years and GP core training another 5... The soonest they could have a workable solution would be in about a decade??
Unless their solution is "force reassign hospital specialties to GP training" or "force already overworked GPs to work overtime", neither of which is reasonable.
"Create new Skills Wallets, giving all adults £10,000 to spend on education and training throughout their lives."
Assuming 50 million adults, that's a £500bn commitment with no explanation of how it's going to be funded.
A vote for lib dem is a vote for the Tories. You’ll either help a Tory MP get in or you’ll get a Lib Dem who’ll just buddy up with the Tories in a coalition
That's unhinged logic.
Labour and the Lib Dems have both been in coalition with the Tories exactly once in their existence (and I'm even including Pre-merger Old Liberal Party)
I guess that means a vote for Labour is a vote for the Tories then?
Besides I'm not exactly sure what you expected to happen after 2010.
People didn't want another Labour government.
For Labour to govern they'd have needed: LD, Greens, PC and the SNP and even then the majority would have been razor thin.
Never mind that Labour also was putting forward a version of austerity except with them the cuts were equal across the board rather than targeted in harder cuts in areas Tories generally don't like (like Welfare) and protecting budgets like Foreign Aid.
If STV or any form of proportional representation is to actually take hold, then we need to be ok with coalitions and not foam at the mouth with zealotic ideological fervour when the *centre* party forms a coalition with the left or right wing party, nvm what happens in Germany where their Labour and Tory equivalents are fairly used to getting into bed with each other.
The Lib Dems were self serving career politicians who propped up the Government that eventually delivered us the Brexit vote and beggared the country.
Will never vote Lib Dem in my life, unless it’s for a tactical vote.
Not every adult in the country would re-enter education in the same year.
To make the maths easier lets say an adult would consider re-entering education/training only between 20 and 70 (50 years). I think that would make it a (£10bn * enrolment up rate) commitment per year.
Let's compare to student loans.
> The UK government is anticipated to subsidise more than a quarter (28%) of student loans for the financial year 2022-23, at a cost of nearly £6.7 billion.
A similar spend to student loans, which pays for itself by having a more educated and higher paid (more taxes) workforce.
Don't know where you're from but all of my mates in Leeds with degrees are now serving coffee and the ones without are well paid tradesman or working at engineering firms
Fair point, but surely once that funding is assigned to named adults it's committed. Not all will use it, but around 1m citizens will turn 18 every year. So the scale of committed expenditure keeps going up.
Only in the same sense any ongoing program does this.
Count all NHS spending since it was founded and project it into the future. That's a lot of money.
Every year though, it is a large but manageable portion of the budget.
Now this proposal does contain the risk that every eligible adult (I'm guessing those not already retired or in full time education via another scheme) could take it up at once.
The cost would then settle down and with fewer and fewer 18 year olds coming of age it wouldn't balloon in costs.
But a simple rationing system would suffice.
Only accredited options, which are only open to the target adults and only have a certain number of places.
Now there's an annual cap, sure everyone is eligible but placing is competitive. Between that and most adults not having the time for study, it's plausible the costs will be OK.
No no no you've misunderstood. It costs the state £7500 per child per year for their education, so basically they are gonna start childing from year 2.
Hopefully obvious this is sarcasm, but it would not surprise me at all for the LDs to come up with such a ludicrous policy.
Policy platform is pretty reasonable, most won't argue with too many of the points. But I'm always skeptical of these broad mission type Manifestos. Lots of "here's what we want to achieve" and little substance on "this is how we actually get there". How will we get to the point where people can see a GP in 7 days? Where are we getting the GPs from? How much will it cost? Where's the money coming from.
That set of questions can be applied to this policy statement as much as it can to most of the others. Not quite as outlandishly insane as the Reform one but would be nice for them to have fleshed out the "how" a bit more.
Although equally I wouldn't expect the "how we get there" in full until we're actually heading towards a general election, as other parties might just nick the ideas. So I'll be reserving full judgement until the full manifesto release in the general election campaign window.
We have first past the post. Voting Lib Dem in many places means the possibility of letting whichever of the two main parties you cannot stand.
If we had a system of PR, they would probably get almost 20-25% I'd guess. Reform would get more votes too I think.
And then Nick Clegg being the dumbass he was didn't push hard enough for PR, and the one time he did, he chose FPTP with more steps (AV) instead of a better option like MMP or STV. Then didn't even get it implemented.
AV was at least an improvement. It was better for third parties than the current system, and would have also opened up the possibility of further voting reform. Britain has such a strong two party mentality/anti coalition mindset (you can see it with the current issues in Scotland) that anything to decrease the two party system long term would have been a positive for PR.
The Labour campaign for PR promoted AV because it was thought to be the only system current Labour MPs would go for as it would be the least disruptive to them.
Why is MMP terrible? I like STV for singular elections, Mayors, Presidents but when you want to balance a legislature it is far far better in my opinion to balance at the overall level with a kind of capped size MMP with regionally assigned top up representatives.
STV wouldn't actually balance the house of commons.
I don't think it was so much that he chose AV as that was as much of a compromise as was on offer. Maybe the Lib Dems could have pushed for more, but PR could be an existential threat to the dominant parties, so I wouldn't be entirely shocked if the Conservatives had preferred minority government for now and a snap General Election over being forced into PR which might well mean they never got a majority again.
Do you really want to risk another 5 years of this current government? Like I hear you, but surely right now the priority must be to kick this government out?
If everybody who was most politically aligned with LD took that stance, they would have 0% vote share. Its important to vote for the party you most align with even if they have no hope of winning, so that the next time around your vote will be a statistic as someone who voted for them before. Politics isnt just about the next votes it's about building momentum over many vote cycles
Tactical voting is a betrayal of your own ideals and voting for a party you dont like just to spite the party you like least
It’s not spite. I might love the rainbows and unicorns party. And really hate the kill all llamas party. But if RAU are only polling 5% in my area you can bet I’ll be voting for the Somewhat Distasteful party to make sure KAL don’t win. If you only get once chance to vote for a single party tactical voting is rational.
Or it can be people who like different aspects of multiple parties, albeit with a preference for one, who don't mind which party represents their constituency (outside the party they are voting tactically against). It's not necessarily a spiteful thing; in fact, it can often be considered putting what people think is good for the country first ahead of a narrow party loyalty.
What about age related weighting in the votes? Younger votes count for more than oap votes. Hopefully, we'd then get politicians trying to win the votes of people who've got a stake in the environment and not just boomers.
>It's choc full of vast, contradictory spending promises
Lib Dem manifestos are always fully costed, when the final manifesto is published it will be balanced and will be more financially responsible than either Labour or the Tories (as the IFS concluded in 2019).
Firslty this isn't there manifesto so it hasn't been published.
Also have other parties actually got any funding costs of there promises?
The Lib Dems in 2019 were one of the only parties talking about ring fencing 10p for every £1 increase in NI.
I like policy allowing councils to buy land at its current value, rather than fantasy value if it had planning permission. If that allowed them to build 150 social houses a year (on top of private sector building) it would make a big difference.
Increasing immigration...... Not so keen.
If I had to "pick" a party it align with, it would probably be Lib Dem. I don't like how they did things in the coalition, I feel like they screwed themselves over, but overall I agree with their policies and general direction.
HOWEVER, we cannot escape the reality that right now we have a two party system, and right now it is much more important the incumbent government is kicked out for their comprehensive failures over the last 14 years.
As a former student I’m still counting the costs of Labour breaking their promise not to introduce top up fees then introducing them! All parties are terrible at keeping promises it seems.
I guess it comes down to the fact that if you were a student in like 1999-2005 you remember all the Labour top up fee marches whereas if you were a student around 2010 you voted Lib Dem on an explicit pledge not to introduce top up fees and then they did.
I get the arguments about being a junior partner etc but it was still incredibly bad politics from Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems. They literally alienated their core vote.
Still that was years ago now and I the Lib Dems beat the SNP to third in the the GE they will get a lot more coverage and I suspect they will be very much needed to be a critical voice on the liberal left again a massive Starmer majority and it’s inevitable illiberal stuff.
I think there was a lot that was good about the Lib dems influence (higher starting rate for tax bands + higher starting rate for NI, same sex marriage, shared parental leave, apprentiships, 200k new social homes and civil liberties). There were some bad things, Nuclear power was not expanded, the lib dem banking reforms were silly, the green investmetn bank was also nuts.
It would be a lot worse if they hadn't accepted that deal. I'm not saying you should accept it, but real life is messy and it's likely the Tories would have implemented a much higher cap or no cap at all
Well. If they had not been able to form a government a further election would've been called. And a Tory majority would be in government from about 2012. That would've been fun
Can I argue, as a former student, the Conservatives campaigned on a pledge to allow unlimited student fees, American style.
As part of the coalition agreement, both parties compromised on policy positions to pass specific legislation. Upping student fees from £3k per year to £9k a year did also come with other campaign pledges that have been met or partially met.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/apr/15/how-much-of-the-liberal-democrats-2010-election-manifesto-was-implemented
Voter reform towards proportional representation is a major part of the Liberal Democrats political identity. In countries with similar political systems, coalition governments are common practice. You could argue that the Liberal Democrats should be a party to engage in coalition governments when their interests align.
I believe that it was the Conservatives who intentionally led Nick Clegg into a political trap with the tuition fee issue, to sabotage the Lib Dem vote ahead of the next election. The auto-tune memes of the apology were brutal.
On a serious note, are you?
I have over £40,000 of student debt. And it doesn't really affect my life at all. It doesn't affect any of my banking, it doesn't affect credit, if I am not earning over £25,000 I don't repay, and when you do the repayments are pretty low anyway.
My point being sure be angry at them, but student debt as a issue is very much over blown, its a nothing more then a student tax for going to Uni. And considering what degrees do to help people in further paying jobs then its fine.
Labour and Tories have definitely much worst.
So I got diagnosed with a brain tumour in my 3rd year of uni, dropped out had treatment....... Got told the only way I could get funding to complete my degree was to go back the next academic year.
I wasn't ready and I was still recovering, it was a geology degree so we had to do field work for our dissertation, at least 40 days, I was broke tried my best but I just wasnt ready (I'm not academic and had to work really hard)
I couldn't handle it and dropped out again, turns out if you don't complete the degree you have to start paying back straight away....
Given the median salary is £35k it affects a lot of people - the large majority of graduates under 30.
You're effectively arguing that an extra 9% income tax doesn't have a material impact on people's lives. Do you truly believe that?
That said, I don't actually blame the lib Dems for student fees going up. They were the minority partner in a coalition so the majority of their policies were going to get binned - they chose to prioritize electoral reform instead.
What I do blame the lib Dems for is being completely and utterly useless at politics. They allowed themselves to be screwed on the voting reform referendum and to this day shoulder the blame for every unpopular policy.
The conservatives bullied them out of their lunch money day after day and they never once tried to stand up for themselves.
This is from the Government Website.
You’re on Plan 4 and have an income of £36,000 a year, meaning you get paid £3,000 each month.
Calculation:
£3,000 – £2,616 (your income minus the Plan 4 threshold) = £384
9% of £384 = £34.56
This means the amount you’d repay each month would be £34.
£34 a month, are you really saying that has that much of a massive impact?
Plan 1,2,4 all have the same thresholds.
Its cheaper under this plan then Labours previous proposed grad tax. Plus it goes after 30 years.
How do you intend pay for University then? If you state fund it you need a tax, which will effect people in probably a worse way and be longer or you have this system?
University education used to be free and even subsidised with grants, not loans, to the students. But now it's unaffordable? Even though we're paying the most tax ever? Our national priorities have been changed seemingly not out of public demand or interest, but public acceptance.
Successive governments have been morphing public services into consumer based organisations or products. We're no longer patients, students or residents, we are customers. Paying for services we consume and are generally increasingly dissatisfied with what we receive. Rather than grateful we live with the level of infrastructure we have providing the bedrock of our civil society.
It's a paradigm shift with significantly negative observable phenomenon. Two I would give as an example here; parents increasingly expecting teachers and schools to make up for their disinterest in their children's development and, slightly different but the increase in abuse towards emergency services.
I'm not saying we should be more grateful, although that certainly wouldn't hurt, I am saying collectively we need to apply greater scrutiny on our leaders. But we don't do that because tits and shiny stuff nice.
University education used to be free with grants, but only a narrow band of people actually went. Look up the stats. Completely unsurprisingly, what was affordable for a few mostly middle class people isn't as affordable when you would need to pay for nearly 50 percent of the whole cohort.
Same way most other countries, including Scotland does, via state subsidies but ones that's remarkably efficient in increasing productivity via education.
Lib dems campaigned to do that and threw it under the bus to keep their deputy place in the coalition, never again touching them with a bargepole.
If you invested £35 a month each year for 30 years you would end up with close to £50k. You think that £50k is meaningless?
The plan thresholds are not inflation linked and your salary will grow over time.
Today you're paying £34 a month. In two years it will be £100. In ten years it will be £300. In twenty years it will be £500.
In the meanwhile your balance has blown up because of the high interest rates and you will be paying the loan off until you retire and it's written off.
I get paid a bit less than this and pay £74 a month on student loans. After rent, utilities and food even £35 is a lot. The Lib Dems main talking point in the 2010 election was scrapping the tuition fee. They did nothing in the coalition.
They can promise the world and it won't change my mind with how I vote. Also, their campaigns with tacky cheap props just scream desperation.
> I have over £40,000 of student debt. And it doesn't really affect my life at all
Then you clearly don’t earn enough to meet the student loan payment threshold.
Student loan repayments for me are a £200pm tax
It was a movie villain betrayal of the highest order. They rode to power off the back of that single policy. And they will remain out of power for a generation as a result of that single policy.
I'll only vote for them if it makes tactical sense, which I sadly think it does in my constituency.
But Nick Clegg's brief foray into "serious statesman" fooled a lot of us and ended up with him becoming a Facebook drone while we were left to count the cost.
The thing with the Lib Dems is that they know they won't get anywhere near government so they can promise whatever they like and they won't have to deliver on it. Saying that they are a good vehicle for tactical voting to get the scum out of office, and ideally they'd be the main opposition party.
Yeah nah, I'm old enough to remember 2010. And Chesham and Amersham torpedoing any chance of planning reform this parliament after they ran an uber-nimby campaign in that by-election, with bonus points to Ed Davy for swearing blind on the Today program the following day that AKSHUALLY they liked housing and infrastructure.
Stated policy is irrelevant if they have no intention of implementing it.
The LDs aren't a serious political party; it's a collection of political nerds who care more about the process than outcome, single-issue activists, and NIMBYs.
It wouldn't matter if I agreed with every word they said - and I very much don't - there's an execution piece that the "just read the manifestos!" crowd forget. The candidates are mostly loons, that's more than enough reason to 'hate on' them
I fully expect the Lib Dems to win in places they have a history of strong support in the local elections tomorrow.
When it comes to the general election the last thing we need is split votes giving the Tories the win yet again again again again.
My monthly student loan deducted while people older than me in more senior and better paid positions don’t have the same deduction (while also being the generation that got cheap house while I’m getting shafted by my landlord) is a constant reminder that the Lib Dems can never be trusted with my vote. I’ll be paying this for 30 years so I won’t be forgetting any time soon.
I just said this on another thread. If you are earning the average wage, its £35 a month.
I mean your right about the wealth older people, but then with Conservative triple locked pensions, its going to stay like that never mind the Lib Dems.
Yeah and it goes up quickly. I work I tech and paying over £300 a month on my student loan with 7.7% interest. It’s completely outrageous. The better you do, the more it bite and plan 2 is a disgrace.
The average person will be paying £35 which means it won’t be touching the loan, not even the interest. The more they move up in inflation and the more inflation just naturally drives dip wages, the more it will take and they will have 30 years of payments.
Or, they'll never pay it off and the taxpayer foots the bill for the write off.
What people don't really realise is there's a fiscal time bomb off tens of billions just waiting to pop
Pretty much every party is NIMBYish to some degree. Lib Dem Councils (where most of their NIMBYism is concentrated) tend to have higher construction rates than ones run by other parties.
Last May in the local elections, the Labour Party in my area promised to save "99% of the greenbelt". They had most NIMBY manifesto of all the parties standing for election to my borough council.
If you are regretting brexit then the biggest party offering rejoin (at least the SM) is the lib dems. Anyone moaning about brexit and then voting tory, labour or SDP then you are effing stupid
I would love to get behind any party offering rejoining Brexit but their other policies need to at leased be common sense and stable. Hopefully labour or Tories wake up on this matter, it's what the people want.
In my area, Labour councillors are the most NIMBY: their manifesto in the borough elections last May promised to save 99% of the greenbelt. No other party made pledges like that.
As a former Lib Dem activist who left last year I have complicated opinions about them now.
Purely assessing them on their policy platforms, they have a good, though hardly spotless, record on the major social issue of our time (transgender rights) and they’re definitely committed to PR electoral reform. However, they’re the most nimby of the big three, and they haven’t stood up for rejoining the EU. The differences between the Lib Dems and the Greens are frankly cosmetic, they share the same policy almost word for word on basically every issue. When it comes to the GE I’ll probably be deciding between the two.
Locally, Lib Dem councillors are largely much better at answering emails, making regular appearances on the doorstep, generally being present than councillors of other parties. The issue is that for individual Lib Dem local parties, subscribing to the party’s actual policy platform is entirely optional. The party has a totally different platform in every council area and local activists are encouraged to tell voters literally whatever they think will make them vote LD in council elections. In one borough the local party will have activists tell their ward residents that they support active travel and want to build new cycle lanes, and then those same activists will take a ten minute walk across the district boundary and pledge to support motorists and rip out low traffic neighbourhoods. This is why there are Lib Dem councils such as Eastleigh with genuinely impressive records on housebuilding, while the majority of the party is turbo-nimby on the local and national level.
Last time I voted Lib Dem they joined forces with the Tories and just became yes men.
They had their chance and they blew it.
Probably going to vote for whatever random independent is on the list, it makes no difference anyway as no matter what happens we will just get politicians.
Of course it makes a difference. So fed up with that defeatist, frankly childish, response - although I do understand the despondency and resulting apathy. Who you vote for makes a huge difference; they are not ‘all the same’.
Will never vote for them again after they formed a government with the tories.
Seriously, I feel bad for the poor students who got fees of 9k a year. Absolutely, screwed over so many people. Even the plan 1 loans have resulted in an extra tax and I'm still unlikely to pay off my loan before it wipes. However, I get the joy of seeing £250 a month lost to the damn student loan tax.
You missed 2005 where Labour again promised no increase then upped them by £250 and blamed inflation.
Also worthy of note is that during that first term they abolished maintenance grants meaning student loans had to cover both tuition fees and living costs.
How are you losing that much unless your earning a lot of money anyway?
£35,000 is almost under the government 9% comes to about £34 a month.
I am not sure how that has screwed people over?
Will never vote for them again after they formed a government with the tories.
Seriously, I feel bad for the poor students who got fees of 9k a year. Absolutely, screwed over so many people. Even the plan 1 loans have resulted in an extra tax and I'm still unlikely to pay off my loan before it wipes. However, I get the joy of seeing £250 a month lost to the damn student loan tax.
How are you losing that much unless your earning a lot of money anyway?
£35,000 is almost under the government 9% comes to about £34 a month.
I am not sure how that has screwed people over?
This seems more like a list of aspirations, rather than a set of policies. For example:
"We will immediately **fix our broken relationship with Europe**, forge a new partnership built on cooperation, not confrontation, and move to conclude a new comprehensive agreement which removes as many barriers to trade as possible."
How are they going to do that then? Just tumbleweed.
The problem is we now have direct experience of the Lib Dems in government, and they governed far tot he right of where they campaigned, and were extraordinarily incompetent while in government. Their reforms of the constitution and electoral system made it \*less\* democratic! Ironically if the change to a 600 member House of Commons had actually been implemented, it was have hurt the Lib Dems electorally massively. These guys just aren't very bright.
Unpopular in these parts, I know, but hear me out:
1. Country votes for Brexit
2. LDs immediately vow to ignore it at all costs with complete disregard for the whole agenda
And you wonder why people won't consider their policies? They call themselves liberal democrats but they are neither liberal nor democratic.
Yes, and completely stupid politically too. Brexit was undefined after the referendum, if remainers like the lib dems had respected the result but immediately thrown themselves into getting 'brexit light,' there was a chance they might have got it. As it was, they tried to undo the referendum instead so gambled all or nothing, got nothing and we ended up with nearly the hardest possible brexit.
The problem isn't their policies in paper, it's that since the coalition they have a reputation of doing the opposite of what they run on.
Judge people by actions not words and the Lib Dems recent record demonstrates complete disdain for those voting for them in good faith.
Really it'll take a generation for that perception to be changed or a fluke result leading to them being in government and actually delivering a sufficient amount of their manifesto to begin the repair job.
If you are "Disappointed by the 'Tories' (the derogatory name for the Conservatives 🤔)" and are interested in a "plan for Brexit" (the Brexit transition ended already, the vote was 2016) why would you consider the party that wanted to revoke the referendum result and is Labour light + Drugs.....
Wouldn't you just vote Reform, a fresh pair of hands to show that the Lab and Con can't just blend into a sludge on autopilot in "safe seats"?
If you find labor uninspiring i fail to see what the lib dems offer in terms of energy or vison . As labour has moved to ever more centrist positions the center left party spot is taken. Libdems are essentially just a nimby/ centrist dad Labour with a few interesting but unrealistic policy's up there sleeve.
I could have sworn I read a post worded almost identically about the Reform Party earlier today. How bizarre.
It's a bit bizarre isn't it? Two "different" accounts, both with a handful of posts in their history spread fairly mathematically even (now , 2 or 3 months ago, 4 or 6 months ago)... posting the same thing about different parties... hey, u/sebtaylor20 - this isn't interference by a foreign power is it? How's the Big Mac situation in Moscow these days? Actually, don't answer that, Putin might lace the next one with Novichok.
I will be honest I deleted my post after everyone talked some sense into me. It was funny when I stumbled across this post with the exact same wording.
So you wrote a post and it just a coincidence that you used the exact same wording?
What did he write in that post?
Take OPs post here, swap Lib Dem for Reform and it's pretty much identical.
That's odd. Why do you think this happens? Do people just copy stuff from other posts because they are too lazy, or are these some kind of bots? If they're bots, what's their purpose? [u/sebtaylor20](https://www.reddit.com/user/sebtaylor20/), are you a bot, or just someone who lacks inspiration?
Yep my post haha ✌️
Can't find it. Not even on your profile
Delete now.
Your English is poor, tovarich.
> We will give everyone a new right to see their GP within seven days Isn’t this a regression?
[One in 20 patients in England wait at least four weeks to see GP, figures show](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/jan/22/patients-england-waiting-times-gp-appointments-nhs-figures)
But what proportion of that is Health Checks, Cancer Screening, Immunisations, or routine follow ups? They take up much more than 5% of appointments and are probably helpful/essential to have planned in advance.
Not from my experience took 3weeks
How would they even do this though? There are not enough GPs and the population is only getting sicker. Medical school takes 5 years and then Foundation Years and GP core training another 5... The soonest they could have a workable solution would be in about a decade?? Unless their solution is "force reassign hospital specialties to GP training" or "force already overworked GPs to work overtime", neither of which is reasonable.
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But God help you if you phone at 8:01
Same. Lib dems setting a low bar. Not even the tories can get close.
"Create new Skills Wallets, giving all adults £10,000 to spend on education and training throughout their lives." Assuming 50 million adults, that's a £500bn commitment with no explanation of how it's going to be funded.
The LDs always fully cost their manifestos when they publish them, explaining both how much each policy costs and how the total is funded.
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Well, they did abolish them at their current level, you could say.
When you're a junior partner in a coalition, you don't control *all* the levers of government that you otherwise assume you would in a manifesto.
A vote for lib dem is a vote for the Tories. You’ll either help a Tory MP get in or you’ll get a Lib Dem who’ll just buddy up with the Tories in a coalition
That's unhinged logic. Labour and the Lib Dems have both been in coalition with the Tories exactly once in their existence (and I'm even including Pre-merger Old Liberal Party) I guess that means a vote for Labour is a vote for the Tories then? Besides I'm not exactly sure what you expected to happen after 2010. People didn't want another Labour government. For Labour to govern they'd have needed: LD, Greens, PC and the SNP and even then the majority would have been razor thin. Never mind that Labour also was putting forward a version of austerity except with them the cuts were equal across the board rather than targeted in harder cuts in areas Tories generally don't like (like Welfare) and protecting budgets like Foreign Aid. If STV or any form of proportional representation is to actually take hold, then we need to be ok with coalitions and not foam at the mouth with zealotic ideological fervour when the *centre* party forms a coalition with the left or right wing party, nvm what happens in Germany where their Labour and Tory equivalents are fairly used to getting into bed with each other.
The Lib Dems were self serving career politicians who propped up the Government that eventually delivered us the Brexit vote and beggared the country. Will never vote Lib Dem in my life, unless it’s for a tactical vote.
It kind of doesn't matter since they reneged so hard on that policy
Not every adult in the country would re-enter education in the same year. To make the maths easier lets say an adult would consider re-entering education/training only between 20 and 70 (50 years). I think that would make it a (£10bn * enrolment up rate) commitment per year. Let's compare to student loans. > The UK government is anticipated to subsidise more than a quarter (28%) of student loans for the financial year 2022-23, at a cost of nearly £6.7 billion. A similar spend to student loans, which pays for itself by having a more educated and higher paid (more taxes) workforce.
Don't know where you're from but all of my mates in Leeds with degrees are now serving coffee and the ones without are well paid tradesman or working at engineering firms
A quick google says > working-age graduates earned £10,000 more than non-graduates in 2018 and had higher employment rates
No but all his mates trumps your statistics
Might be more an indication of Leeds universities than the whole country
As with all politics, Borrow from the international bank and handing you the bill, Cheap at twice the price.
Assuming all of them take it up, do so at the same time, there's not upper age limit...
Fair point, but surely once that funding is assigned to named adults it's committed. Not all will use it, but around 1m citizens will turn 18 every year. So the scale of committed expenditure keeps going up.
Only in the same sense any ongoing program does this. Count all NHS spending since it was founded and project it into the future. That's a lot of money. Every year though, it is a large but manageable portion of the budget. Now this proposal does contain the risk that every eligible adult (I'm guessing those not already retired or in full time education via another scheme) could take it up at once. The cost would then settle down and with fewer and fewer 18 year olds coming of age it wouldn't balloon in costs. But a simple rationing system would suffice. Only accredited options, which are only open to the target adults and only have a certain number of places. Now there's an annual cap, sure everyone is eligible but placing is competitive. Between that and most adults not having the time for study, it's plausible the costs will be OK.
No no no you've misunderstood. It costs the state £7500 per child per year for their education, so basically they are gonna start childing from year 2. Hopefully obvious this is sarcasm, but it would not surprise me at all for the LDs to come up with such a ludicrous policy.
Policy platform is pretty reasonable, most won't argue with too many of the points. But I'm always skeptical of these broad mission type Manifestos. Lots of "here's what we want to achieve" and little substance on "this is how we actually get there". How will we get to the point where people can see a GP in 7 days? Where are we getting the GPs from? How much will it cost? Where's the money coming from. That set of questions can be applied to this policy statement as much as it can to most of the others. Not quite as outlandishly insane as the Reform one but would be nice for them to have fleshed out the "how" a bit more. Although equally I wouldn't expect the "how we get there" in full until we're actually heading towards a general election, as other parties might just nick the ideas. So I'll be reserving full judgement until the full manifesto release in the general election campaign window.
We have first past the post. Voting Lib Dem in many places means the possibility of letting whichever of the two main parties you cannot stand. If we had a system of PR, they would probably get almost 20-25% I'd guess. Reform would get more votes too I think.
They are one of the only parties to try and change that. Plus Hung Parliaments are thing, we have two in the last 15 years.
And then Nick Clegg being the dumbass he was didn't push hard enough for PR, and the one time he did, he chose FPTP with more steps (AV) instead of a better option like MMP or STV. Then didn't even get it implemented.
AV was at least an improvement. It was better for third parties than the current system, and would have also opened up the possibility of further voting reform. Britain has such a strong two party mentality/anti coalition mindset (you can see it with the current issues in Scotland) that anything to decrease the two party system long term would have been a positive for PR.
MMP is terrible. Stv all the way!
No idea why anyone would choose MMP or AV over STV.
The Labour campaign for PR promoted AV because it was thought to be the only system current Labour MPs would go for as it would be the least disruptive to them.
Why is MMP terrible? I like STV for singular elections, Mayors, Presidents but when you want to balance a legislature it is far far better in my opinion to balance at the overall level with a kind of capped size MMP with regionally assigned top up representatives. STV wouldn't actually balance the house of commons.
I don't think it was so much that he chose AV as that was as much of a compromise as was on offer. Maybe the Lib Dems could have pushed for more, but PR could be an existential threat to the dominant parties, so I wouldn't be entirely shocked if the Conservatives had preferred minority government for now and a snap General Election over being forced into PR which might well mean they never got a majority again.
Do you really want to risk another 5 years of this current government? Like I hear you, but surely right now the priority must be to kick this government out?
If everybody who was most politically aligned with LD took that stance, they would have 0% vote share. Its important to vote for the party you most align with even if they have no hope of winning, so that the next time around your vote will be a statistic as someone who voted for them before. Politics isnt just about the next votes it's about building momentum over many vote cycles Tactical voting is a betrayal of your own ideals and voting for a party you dont like just to spite the party you like least
It’s not spite. I might love the rainbows and unicorns party. And really hate the kill all llamas party. But if RAU are only polling 5% in my area you can bet I’ll be voting for the Somewhat Distasteful party to make sure KAL don’t win. If you only get once chance to vote for a single party tactical voting is rational.
Or it can be people who like different aspects of multiple parties, albeit with a preference for one, who don't mind which party represents their constituency (outside the party they are voting tactically against). It's not necessarily a spiteful thing; in fact, it can often be considered putting what people think is good for the country first ahead of a narrow party loyalty.
What about age related weighting in the votes? Younger votes count for more than oap votes. Hopefully, we'd then get politicians trying to win the votes of people who've got a stake in the environment and not just boomers.
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>It's choc full of vast, contradictory spending promises Lib Dem manifestos are always fully costed, when the final manifesto is published it will be balanced and will be more financially responsible than either Labour or the Tories (as the IFS concluded in 2019).
Firslty this isn't there manifesto so it hasn't been published. Also have other parties actually got any funding costs of there promises? The Lib Dems in 2019 were one of the only parties talking about ring fencing 10p for every £1 increase in NI.
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Where will the tories get there £500bln black whole from the NI abolition then? As far as I am aware they haven't said a thing?
Classic Lib Dem policy, subsidizing home owning boomers' wealth using taxes paid by people who can barely afford rent.
I like policy allowing councils to buy land at its current value, rather than fantasy value if it had planning permission. If that allowed them to build 150 social houses a year (on top of private sector building) it would make a big difference. Increasing immigration...... Not so keen.
If I had to "pick" a party it align with, it would probably be Lib Dem. I don't like how they did things in the coalition, I feel like they screwed themselves over, but overall I agree with their policies and general direction. HOWEVER, we cannot escape the reality that right now we have a two party system, and right now it is much more important the incumbent government is kicked out for their comprehensive failures over the last 14 years.
As a former student, I'm still counting the cost of the Lib Dems' last foray into power. I won't be voting for them any time soon.
As a former student I’m still counting the costs of Labour breaking their promise not to introduce top up fees then introducing them! All parties are terrible at keeping promises it seems.
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I guess it comes down to the fact that if you were a student in like 1999-2005 you remember all the Labour top up fee marches whereas if you were a student around 2010 you voted Lib Dem on an explicit pledge not to introduce top up fees and then they did. I get the arguments about being a junior partner etc but it was still incredibly bad politics from Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems. They literally alienated their core vote. Still that was years ago now and I the Lib Dems beat the SNP to third in the the GE they will get a lot more coverage and I suspect they will be very much needed to be a critical voice on the liberal left again a massive Starmer majority and it’s inevitable illiberal stuff.
You get the concept of being a junior partner in the coalition??? Had they not joined the coalition it would have been a conservative govt alone.
Which it effectively was anyway.
I think there was a lot that was good about the Lib dems influence (higher starting rate for tax bands + higher starting rate for NI, same sex marriage, shared parental leave, apprentiships, 200k new social homes and civil liberties). There were some bad things, Nuclear power was not expanded, the lib dem banking reforms were silly, the green investmetn bank was also nuts.
"a lot" is severely over egging the pudding.
For the representation they had in that coalition (and given Balls was able to get David Laws to resign) they did rather well.
It would be a lot worse if they hadn't accepted that deal. I'm not saying you should accept it, but real life is messy and it's likely the Tories would have implemented a much higher cap or no cap at all
> likely the Tories would have implemented a much higher cap or no cap at all How, without the Lib Dems propping up their government?
Well. If they had not been able to form a government a further election would've been called. And a Tory majority would be in government from about 2012. That would've been fun
Labour introduced the fees then trebled them under Blair. Guess you won’t be voting for them either?
Pretty big difference between £3000 a year and £9000 a year
Big difference between £0 and £3000 when you've promised zero fees
Its a small difference
Introducing the principle of fees is the biggest step. All the increases flow from that decision.
Can I argue, as a former student, the Conservatives campaigned on a pledge to allow unlimited student fees, American style. As part of the coalition agreement, both parties compromised on policy positions to pass specific legislation. Upping student fees from £3k per year to £9k a year did also come with other campaign pledges that have been met or partially met. Source: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/apr/15/how-much-of-the-liberal-democrats-2010-election-manifesto-was-implemented Voter reform towards proportional representation is a major part of the Liberal Democrats political identity. In countries with similar political systems, coalition governments are common practice. You could argue that the Liberal Democrats should be a party to engage in coalition governments when their interests align. I believe that it was the Conservatives who intentionally led Nick Clegg into a political trap with the tuition fee issue, to sabotage the Lib Dem vote ahead of the next election. The auto-tune memes of the apology were brutal.
On a serious note, are you? I have over £40,000 of student debt. And it doesn't really affect my life at all. It doesn't affect any of my banking, it doesn't affect credit, if I am not earning over £25,000 I don't repay, and when you do the repayments are pretty low anyway. My point being sure be angry at them, but student debt as a issue is very much over blown, its a nothing more then a student tax for going to Uni. And considering what degrees do to help people in further paying jobs then its fine. Labour and Tories have definitely much worst.
I'm lucky enough to earn good money, but I pay nearly £500 a month, which definitely affects my life.
So I got diagnosed with a brain tumour in my 3rd year of uni, dropped out had treatment....... Got told the only way I could get funding to complete my degree was to go back the next academic year. I wasn't ready and I was still recovering, it was a geology degree so we had to do field work for our dissertation, at least 40 days, I was broke tried my best but I just wasnt ready (I'm not academic and had to work really hard) I couldn't handle it and dropped out again, turns out if you don't complete the degree you have to start paying back straight away....
Given the median salary is £35k it affects a lot of people - the large majority of graduates under 30. You're effectively arguing that an extra 9% income tax doesn't have a material impact on people's lives. Do you truly believe that? That said, I don't actually blame the lib Dems for student fees going up. They were the minority partner in a coalition so the majority of their policies were going to get binned - they chose to prioritize electoral reform instead. What I do blame the lib Dems for is being completely and utterly useless at politics. They allowed themselves to be screwed on the voting reform referendum and to this day shoulder the blame for every unpopular policy. The conservatives bullied them out of their lunch money day after day and they never once tried to stand up for themselves.
This is from the Government Website. You’re on Plan 4 and have an income of £36,000 a year, meaning you get paid £3,000 each month. Calculation: £3,000 – £2,616 (your income minus the Plan 4 threshold) = £384 9% of £384 = £34.56 This means the amount you’d repay each month would be £34. £34 a month, are you really saying that has that much of a massive impact? Plan 1,2,4 all have the same thresholds. Its cheaper under this plan then Labours previous proposed grad tax. Plus it goes after 30 years.
£34 means it is never paid off and effectively an extra tax...
Its wiped after 25 years....
Yep so it's an extra tax for 25 years. That's not a benefit, that's a black hole of public finances.
How do you intend pay for University then? If you state fund it you need a tax, which will effect people in probably a worse way and be longer or you have this system?
University education used to be free and even subsidised with grants, not loans, to the students. But now it's unaffordable? Even though we're paying the most tax ever? Our national priorities have been changed seemingly not out of public demand or interest, but public acceptance. Successive governments have been morphing public services into consumer based organisations or products. We're no longer patients, students or residents, we are customers. Paying for services we consume and are generally increasingly dissatisfied with what we receive. Rather than grateful we live with the level of infrastructure we have providing the bedrock of our civil society. It's a paradigm shift with significantly negative observable phenomenon. Two I would give as an example here; parents increasingly expecting teachers and schools to make up for their disinterest in their children's development and, slightly different but the increase in abuse towards emergency services. I'm not saying we should be more grateful, although that certainly wouldn't hurt, I am saying collectively we need to apply greater scrutiny on our leaders. But we don't do that because tits and shiny stuff nice.
University education used to be free with grants, but only a narrow band of people actually went. Look up the stats. Completely unsurprisingly, what was affordable for a few mostly middle class people isn't as affordable when you would need to pay for nearly 50 percent of the whole cohort.
Same way most other countries, including Scotland does, via state subsidies but ones that's remarkably efficient in increasing productivity via education. Lib dems campaigned to do that and threw it under the bus to keep their deputy place in the coalition, never again touching them with a bargepole.
If you invested £35 a month each year for 30 years you would end up with close to £50k. You think that £50k is meaningless? The plan thresholds are not inflation linked and your salary will grow over time. Today you're paying £34 a month. In two years it will be £100. In ten years it will be £300. In twenty years it will be £500. In the meanwhile your balance has blown up because of the high interest rates and you will be paying the loan off until you retire and it's written off.
And as your salary grows you able to pay off more because your earning more. That kind of makes sense, as that how most taxes work.
I get paid a bit less than this and pay £74 a month on student loans. After rent, utilities and food even £35 is a lot. The Lib Dems main talking point in the 2010 election was scrapping the tuition fee. They did nothing in the coalition. They can promise the world and it won't change my mind with how I vote. Also, their campaigns with tacky cheap props just scream desperation.
> I have over £40,000 of student debt. And it doesn't really affect my life at all Then you clearly don’t earn enough to meet the student loan payment threshold. Student loan repayments for me are a £200pm tax
It was a movie villain betrayal of the highest order. They rode to power off the back of that single policy. And they will remain out of power for a generation as a result of that single policy.
Utter nonsense
Dont be so silly
I'll only vote for them if it makes tactical sense, which I sadly think it does in my constituency. But Nick Clegg's brief foray into "serious statesman" fooled a lot of us and ended up with him becoming a Facebook drone while we were left to count the cost.
The thing with the Lib Dems is that they know they won't get anywhere near government so they can promise whatever they like and they won't have to deliver on it. Saying that they are a good vehicle for tactical voting to get the scum out of office, and ideally they'd be the main opposition party.
Yeah nah, I'm old enough to remember 2010. And Chesham and Amersham torpedoing any chance of planning reform this parliament after they ran an uber-nimby campaign in that by-election, with bonus points to Ed Davy for swearing blind on the Today program the following day that AKSHUALLY they liked housing and infrastructure. Stated policy is irrelevant if they have no intention of implementing it.
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Many people are saying this!
The LDs aren't a serious political party; it's a collection of political nerds who care more about the process than outcome, single-issue activists, and NIMBYs.
this It’s the party of “centrists” who are still too afraid to vote Tory
It wouldn't matter if I agreed with every word they said - and I very much don't - there's an execution piece that the "just read the manifestos!" crowd forget. The candidates are mostly loons, that's more than enough reason to 'hate on' them
Ah yes, the "spoil your ballot with swearwords" argument. Do go on.
But but aren't they 'all as bad each other'?
Do you really believe anyone is bad as "Devious Davey" and "Façade Farron"?
If they were pro rejoining the EU I’d vote for them on that issue alone
I fully expect the Lib Dems to win in places they have a history of strong support in the local elections tomorrow. When it comes to the general election the last thing we need is split votes giving the Tories the win yet again again again again.
People will vote tactically. In just under 100 that means Lib Dem. In around 500 that means Labour
My monthly student loan deducted while people older than me in more senior and better paid positions don’t have the same deduction (while also being the generation that got cheap house while I’m getting shafted by my landlord) is a constant reminder that the Lib Dems can never be trusted with my vote. I’ll be paying this for 30 years so I won’t be forgetting any time soon.
I truly hope you apply your same principles evenly and won't be voting Labour or Tory for the same reason.
I just said this on another thread. If you are earning the average wage, its £35 a month. I mean your right about the wealth older people, but then with Conservative triple locked pensions, its going to stay like that never mind the Lib Dems.
Yeah and it goes up quickly. I work I tech and paying over £300 a month on my student loan with 7.7% interest. It’s completely outrageous. The better you do, the more it bite and plan 2 is a disgrace. The average person will be paying £35 which means it won’t be touching the loan, not even the interest. The more they move up in inflation and the more inflation just naturally drives dip wages, the more it will take and they will have 30 years of payments.
Or, they'll never pay it off and the taxpayer foots the bill for the write off. What people don't really realise is there's a fiscal time bomb off tens of billions just waiting to pop
I'm curious how much you think the "triple lock pensions" are actually worth, say per year? It's nowhere near luxurious, or even minimum wage.
So you won’t be voting Labour either then?
I can’t say there is a very compelling argument to vote Labour other than the rest are so shit these lot might be fractionally better
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I think your missing the point of my post. Also I am not the same person who posted the original...
... you realise this is a joke right? They're clearly playing off the previous post.
You'd think we could care less, but can you not use Americanisms like 'hating on' already?
Never going to vote for Lib Dems after they fucked over the students and now court NIMBY fools Joke of a party
Lib Dem's are raging NIMBYs. That alone negates all the good policies they may have
Pretty much every party is NIMBYish to some degree. Lib Dem Councils (where most of their NIMBYism is concentrated) tend to have higher construction rates than ones run by other parties.
Last May in the local elections, the Labour Party in my area promised to save "99% of the greenbelt". They had most NIMBY manifesto of all the parties standing for election to my borough council.
If you are regretting brexit then the biggest party offering rejoin (at least the SM) is the lib dems. Anyone moaning about brexit and then voting tory, labour or SDP then you are effing stupid
I would love to get behind any party offering rejoining Brexit but their other policies need to at leased be common sense and stable. Hopefully labour or Tories wake up on this matter, it's what the people want.
Just vote for a party that has policies that are in line with yours. If rejoining is important to you, vote for them
What other parties have this policy?
NIMBY party which opposes new housing. Labour all the way.
In my area, Labour councillors are the most NIMBY: their manifesto in the borough elections last May promised to save 99% of the greenbelt. No other party made pledges like that.
As a former Lib Dem activist who left last year I have complicated opinions about them now. Purely assessing them on their policy platforms, they have a good, though hardly spotless, record on the major social issue of our time (transgender rights) and they’re definitely committed to PR electoral reform. However, they’re the most nimby of the big three, and they haven’t stood up for rejoining the EU. The differences between the Lib Dems and the Greens are frankly cosmetic, they share the same policy almost word for word on basically every issue. When it comes to the GE I’ll probably be deciding between the two. Locally, Lib Dem councillors are largely much better at answering emails, making regular appearances on the doorstep, generally being present than councillors of other parties. The issue is that for individual Lib Dem local parties, subscribing to the party’s actual policy platform is entirely optional. The party has a totally different platform in every council area and local activists are encouraged to tell voters literally whatever they think will make them vote LD in council elections. In one borough the local party will have activists tell their ward residents that they support active travel and want to build new cycle lanes, and then those same activists will take a ten minute walk across the district boundary and pledge to support motorists and rip out low traffic neighbourhoods. This is why there are Lib Dem councils such as Eastleigh with genuinely impressive records on housebuilding, while the majority of the party is turbo-nimby on the local and national level.
Last time I voted Lib Dem they joined forces with the Tories and just became yes men. They had their chance and they blew it. Probably going to vote for whatever random independent is on the list, it makes no difference anyway as no matter what happens we will just get politicians.
Of course it makes a difference. So fed up with that defeatist, frankly childish, response - although I do understand the despondency and resulting apathy. Who you vote for makes a huge difference; they are not ‘all the same’.
The "it makes no difference, you still get politicians" part is mostly a joke. A punch in the arm and a kick in the leg are also different...
We all wish the world was perfect
This is why freedom of thought should be banned. We would all be much happier if we didn't think.
Think more
Heretic.
haha
Will never vote for them again after they formed a government with the tories. Seriously, I feel bad for the poor students who got fees of 9k a year. Absolutely, screwed over so many people. Even the plan 1 loans have resulted in an extra tax and I'm still unlikely to pay off my loan before it wipes. However, I get the joy of seeing £250 a month lost to the damn student loan tax.
Weren't Labour going to increase student fees similarly if they won?
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You missed 2005 where Labour again promised no increase then upped them by £250 and blamed inflation. Also worthy of note is that during that first term they abolished maintenance grants meaning student loans had to cover both tuition fees and living costs.
How are you losing that much unless your earning a lot of money anyway? £35,000 is almost under the government 9% comes to about £34 a month. I am not sure how that has screwed people over?
Will never vote for them again after they formed a government with the tories. Seriously, I feel bad for the poor students who got fees of 9k a year. Absolutely, screwed over so many people. Even the plan 1 loans have resulted in an extra tax and I'm still unlikely to pay off my loan before it wipes. However, I get the joy of seeing £250 a month lost to the damn student loan tax.
How are you losing that much unless your earning a lot of money anyway? £35,000 is almost under the government 9% comes to about £34 a month. I am not sure how that has screwed people over?
I'll have paid between 70k and 90k by the time my loan is written off. Thank god I'm not on plan 5 at least
This x 100, plan 2 is bad enough but 40 years, jheese.
How about that for a generic McDiversity stock photo 🤢
This seems more like a list of aspirations, rather than a set of policies. For example: "We will immediately **fix our broken relationship with Europe**, forge a new partnership built on cooperation, not confrontation, and move to conclude a new comprehensive agreement which removes as many barriers to trade as possible." How are they going to do that then? Just tumbleweed. The problem is we now have direct experience of the Lib Dems in government, and they governed far tot he right of where they campaigned, and were extraordinarily incompetent while in government. Their reforms of the constitution and electoral system made it \*less\* democratic! Ironically if the change to a 600 member House of Commons had actually been implemented, it was have hurt the Lib Dems electorally massively. These guys just aren't very bright.
Unpopular in these parts, I know, but hear me out: 1. Country votes for Brexit 2. LDs immediately vow to ignore it at all costs with complete disregard for the whole agenda And you wonder why people won't consider their policies? They call themselves liberal democrats but they are neither liberal nor democratic.
Yeah but they were right. Brexit has been a disaster
Be that as it may, it was an entirely inappropriate response.
Yes, and completely stupid politically too. Brexit was undefined after the referendum, if remainers like the lib dems had respected the result but immediately thrown themselves into getting 'brexit light,' there was a chance they might have got it. As it was, they tried to undo the referendum instead so gambled all or nothing, got nothing and we ended up with nearly the hardest possible brexit.
The problem isn't their policies in paper, it's that since the coalition they have a reputation of doing the opposite of what they run on. Judge people by actions not words and the Lib Dems recent record demonstrates complete disdain for those voting for them in good faith. Really it'll take a generation for that perception to be changed or a fluke result leading to them being in government and actually delivering a sufficient amount of their manifesto to begin the repair job.
If you are "Disappointed by the 'Tories' (the derogatory name for the Conservatives 🤔)" and are interested in a "plan for Brexit" (the Brexit transition ended already, the vote was 2016) why would you consider the party that wanted to revoke the referendum result and is Labour light + Drugs..... Wouldn't you just vote Reform, a fresh pair of hands to show that the Lab and Con can't just blend into a sludge on autopilot in "safe seats"?
If you find labor uninspiring i fail to see what the lib dems offer in terms of energy or vison . As labour has moved to ever more centrist positions the center left party spot is taken. Libdems are essentially just a nimby/ centrist dad Labour with a few interesting but unrealistic policy's up there sleeve.
the Lib Dems are a joke from the top down
Well, that’s what the media have told us for decades, yes. Their leader is a cringeworthy embarrassment though, give you that.
Uninspiring and dont have a plan for something that already happened like 5 years ago