So the Lib Dem leadership’s wrecking amendment to make the party pro-Brexit while continuing to say it’s anti-Brexit won, despite even the amendment itself being unconstitutional (wrecking amendments are not allowed normally), and despite the policy itself contradicting the Lib Dem constitution.
I still intend to fight this within the party, and I still intend to fight for the party, but I accept both those fights currently seem futile. However, fighting for futile things is basically the story of my life. The alternative would be suicide.
As far as I can tell, the Lib Dems today voted both for Britain to become an authoritarian dystopia and for the party itself not to have a single policy that can actually be sold on the doorstep in a way to persuade *anyone* to vote for it. I fear 2017’s election results may come to look like some great golden age when compared to future ones.
(Those of you who are not Lib Dems will be glad to know this concludes the posts on Lib Dem conference for this year).
Nonetheless, the fight continues.
Sci-Ence! Justice Leak! 
Your assesment of the situation comes across as bad-tempered, illiberal & frankly loony. I say that as a fanatical anti-Brexiteer.
Perhaps a lonf lie-down ina darkened room is called for, it works for me.
Fuck off.
i don’t have a dog in this race (i’m Corbyn Despite It All) — but paulbarkerart….could you BE any more patronising?
The leadership seems to have gone mad.They cannot change the party’s stance on Brexit without some evidence that it is going to be a roaring success. But I haven’t seen any good news yet.
We SHOULD be opposing Brexit, because in 10 years time the electorate are going to ask why the political parties did not, at least, hold a serious and informed debate about it. If my worst fears are confirmed then all the parties who supported Brexit will be dead.
Even if Brexit does turn out to be a moderate success, I am sure that people will wish that we had done some things differently, and will still ask why there was not a serious debate about the things that went wrong. Or do our leaders want a seat in another coalition?. I’m sure a few years travel in a Ministerial Limousine must be tempting! Perhaps they have gone native, and don’t care about our children,,,,,,,GRRRRRR, I’d better stop, now….
My problems with Labour are not dissimilar, why is an opposition so unwilling to oppose? Isn’t Labour an International movement, it should be arguing for membership in an improved fairer EU, not running squealing from our obligations to others. And being willing to be ‘like’ or ‘in alliance with’ or ‘in a big tent with’ the Tories has surely proved disasterous.
I absolutely agree. I believe the problem with Labour on that front, right now, is that Corbyn hasn’t updated his political beliefs in forty years, and in the 1970s opposition to EEC membership made some kind of sense for socialists in light of its then-undemocratic nature and the commitment to capitalism in the Treaty of Rome.
Now, with the world totally changed, it makes no sense at all unless you’re in the intersection of fascism and libertarianism, and Corbyn appears not to have noticed the changes.
(There’s also, of course, a couple of outright fascists in Labour — the Graham Stringer types).
Also unfortunately, most of the pro-EU voices in Labour come from the Blairite wing, which is obviously unpopular with very good reason.
If Labour made Clive Lewis leader, as he shares almost all of Corbyn’s views but is better on Europe, civil liberties, and democracy, they’d be in with a good chance of destroying the Lib Dems and Greens altogether and collecting the entirety of the progressive vote.
Completely agree. I am kicking myself for not having thought in time that the amendment should have been challenged on technical grounds.