while i have a rather more charitable view of the LD's - i actually think its admirable that a political party that relies on a particular client base for a significant proportion of its votes will turn around to that client base and say 'sorry, but the thing we promised (rashly) turns out to be unafordable, but we'll tell you that rather than try and prop it up with funding from other budgets'.
the most amusing thing about the LD's in coalition is the 30 years of bearded, sandal-wearing, sanctimonious LD's telling all and sundry that proportional representation will mean a future of coalition governments which will be better governments than the two 'old' parties provide, and then as soon as they actually get to take part in a coalition they discover that coalition, particularly when you only bring 60 MP's to the government, is a rather more cut and thrust afair that they had rather arrogantly foreseen. its almost as if they believed that coalition meant 'take up the LD manifesto...'
in contrast to most (all?), i'm actually more likely to vote LD than i was in 2010 - in 2010 i considered them to be a wishy-washy protest party where you could believe absolutely anything and still be a LD, a kind of rest home for people without the strength to hold their nose over things either Labour or the Tories did that they didn't like in order to achieve some of the things they did like. however, while a good wedge of their members have been running to the hills over the messy reality of coalition, most of their MP's have been pretty solid. they are at least, now, a serious party of government rather than a mung-bean eating pressure group - broadly i like the things the LD's have achieved in government, and they appear to be reasonably competent at being ministers, so i will at least give them the time of day.
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