Callum's Rambles

My Big Decision

I’ve been a Lib Dem for more than a quarter of my life. I joined when I was 14 after hearing Ming Campbell speak with such passion about civil liberties and personal freedom, but also about being a party that speaks up for the disadvantaged and vulnerable.

Now, after being twice a candidate and campaigning in five elections, I find myself weighing up whether or not to renew my membership.

Being in this coalition has been tough, no one would dispute that. I’ve supported it in the main - I saw the logic on tuition fees, I didn’t react hysterically to the NHS Bill, and I accepted the general horsetrading of coalition. Now, it’s getting to the stage where I feel the balance is shifting, and a disconnect is appearing.

I have fundamental and deep concerns with the coalition’s policy towards benefits. The removal of welfare from cancer patients, MS sufferers and AIDS victims really stuck in my throat. I spent most of my childhood being looked after by a woman who’s husband had MS having previously been in the Armed Forces. In my earliest memories, he was able to get himself from his wheelchair to the sofa. Now, he can barely swallow for himself. The thought that he and thousands like him should be assessed for work capability and potentially deemed fit to work, as was the case once before for him, leaves me cold. How dare we treat these people so callously.

Housing benefit, which has been in the news again this weekend, has also been attacked. Again, I agreed with the logic of a benefits cap, but to see benefits being attacked so readily is exactly the sort of rhetoric I hated from the last Labour Government. “Scroungers”. “Make Work Pay”. Frankly it makes me want to vomit.

Speaking of housing benefit, why oh why have I not seen a single senior Lib Dem coming out and calling David Cameron’s policy idea what it is - batshit crazy and evil! If it isn’t ever going to be coalition policy and is simply part of the Tory platform for the next election, all the more reason to attack it. While we’re on this – why doesn’t Nick Clegg get to float crazy Lib Dem ideas to appease our base??

One of the things that makes this party great is the influence party members have over policy. Conference is sovereign, and has ultimate policy making power. However, this is being eroded by our MPs not abiding by conference mandates, and in some cases voting directly in contradiction. If it ain’t in the coalition agreement, we don’t have to do anything to help the Tories, simple.

Theresa May’s immigration proposals – you can marry who you love so long as you earn enough money – are just another proposal that has gone unchallenged by our leaders. The snooping bill will no doubt be another that we will see dangerously nodded through. I have said previously that that would be a final straw for me, and I’m sure I won’t be the only one.

Another thing I’ve noticed as a “leading Lib Dem” (which I’m constantly being told I am) is the amount of control the party machinery now tries to exert on us. I have on several occasions been told off for what I’ve said on social media – sometimes because I have used some ‘colourful’ language, but sometimes just for voicing opinions which don’t fit the line. A friend tells me of the lengths the federal policy committee now go to control what people work on, and what is discussed at conference. It’s a very worrying state of affairs.

I suppose what is fundamentally most concerning is the shift I see in party members. Take Michael Gove’s O-Levels proposal for example, another batshit crazy idea. I saw a good number of (almost entirely English) Lib Dems endorsing it as an idea they had been waiting for – we need tougher exams! Yet another vomit inducing use of authoritarian Labour rhetoric. This is just one example of what I’m seeing on social media every day – the party is becoming more right wing, and more conservative. The amount of people who wet themselves every time David Laws opens his mouth makes me want to cry. A couple of people have suggested that I should stay to try and defeat the people who hold this ideology, but what if that would merely be trying to hold back the tide?

I’ve suffered through two elections as a candidate and a good foot soldier, watching friends and colleagues lose their jobs. This doesn’t seem to have had any effect on the direction of the party or the Government, almost as if those were seen as acceptable losses, a necessary party of being in the coalition. This has been the thing has hurt me most.

So, here I am at the crossroads. I’ve already decided I won’t go anywhere else - there frankly isn’t anywhere else for me. I have to weigh up sacrificing a good number of friendships, against potentially having to watch the party I love become entirely different from the party I joined.

I don’t want to be one of those people who just resigns in a flurry of heated blogposts, and who doesn’t talk to anyone about the decision. At the end of the day the decision is mine, but I do want to listen to those in the party who feel I should stay – and indeed those who feel I should not.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading. 

4 Exams Down…

…1 to go. Get ready to suck my balls, Social History 2.2. 

Nine days staying with Sarah.

I’d be excited if it wasn’t because I had ALL of the exams.