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Friday 24 December 2010

My response to Peter Lilley MP on joint Lib Dem/Con election ticket

Dear Peter Lilley MP,

On hearing your comment's on BBC Radio 4s Today Programme, I thought I would explain from a campaigning perspective, in Scotland, why you are wrong.

Initially when you said;
'I can conceive that we might fight as a coalition,'
I did think initially you had perhaps overdone the Christmas sherry somewhat, either that or you were talking out your backside. 

On closer inspection however, I feel it is because you have the Liberal Democrats in second place in your own Hitchin and Harpenden constituency and it would therefore provide you with a job for many years to come - dream on my friend, dream on (and no, you aren't my friend).

There is no way on this planet that the majority of Liberal Democrats (including this one), irrespective of the party leaderships view, would ever stand on a joint election ticket with the Conservatives, and so far Nick Clegg has never indicated we would.

This particular paid up member of the Liberal Democrats would never campaign to help the Conservatives and given your party only has the one MP in Scotland I'd rather campaign to get rid of that one, and make Scotland Tory free, as it should be.

Kind regards,

Andrew Reeves
Lib Dem Member

The views expressed in this blog post, as in the majority of my blog posts are of my own opinion and not necessarily those of my employer, because our Party does not dictate.

2 comments:

Tim Hall said...

It strikes me that your comment about making Scotland Tory free shows a very "illiberal" style and a very anti-democratic view in not recognising that the 14 to 20% of Scottish voters that vote Conservative are as entitled to representation in the same way that the 14 to 20% of Scottish voters who vote Liberal Democrat!

Unknown said...

Well said Andrew. As the Lib Dem challenger to Peter Lilley in 2010 I can confirm that he clearly feels no pressure from us under the current electoral system. His manner at our hustings clearly indicated he expected not to be terribly troubled by the whole process and he had not even read our manifesto. Nor was he aware that it contained costed proposals that the IFS had reviewed. Indeed a rather priceless episode in one of our hustings was when I actually handed him a copy so he could check some facts for himself.

We increased our vote to almost 15,000 but Peter sailed home on a tide of true blue fears of hung parliaments, Gordon Brown and coalition government.

This line that some senior Tories keep peddling that we could enter some sort of electoral alliance in 2015 are clearly designed to undermine the Liberal Democrats. Its about time some of our supposedly serious media commentators took them to task for it as no LibDem has so far suggested any credence should be attached to this idea, for very obvious reasons.

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