Oddbean

@5a78798a @4c04d469 @43d7c4ea Agreed It was impossible for them to support Labour after the GE, but their full-throated support of Tory policies for the full five years was a massive strategic and tactical mistake. One can't help but notice that the primary decision-maker promptly left politics for a very well paid job at Facebook. Was his priority ever the nation, or even his party? But let's not tar today's LibDems for Clegg's mistakes.

@419623b4 @5a78798a @4c04d469 @43d7c4ea Personally I think it's a bit of a stretch to call the LibDem's complicity with the 'austerity' programme a 'mistake'. Actually the Brown government had reacted to the crash in exactly the right way to minimise its impact, then along came the Tory/LibDem 'austerity', which many economists pointed out at the time was precisely the opposite of what should have been done. You can't call that 'a mistake' - it wasn't a little slip-up, but deliberately, disastrously, completely wrong-headed. A better interpretation of events, I'm afraid, is that Osborne and co didn't care, because they were ideologically fixated on shrinking the state anyway, and that the LibDems simply didn't understand.

@64af5594 @419623b4 @5a78798a @4c04d469 @43d7c4ea More than Austerity, I hold the Lib-Dems (New SDP) responsible for the Health and Social Care Act, allowing for fast track selling off of our NHS. I'll NEVER forgive them for that.