Disclaimer: I am not a Lib Dem member; I am a centre-left floating voter who will be voting tactically against Brexit this December.

1. “The Lib Dems went into coalition with the Tories!”

Many people think that the largest party (in this case, the Tories) have a right to be in government. Regardless of what you think about this, a coalition with Labour wouldn’t have been possible. They would have needed to form a ‘rainbow coalition’ with smaller parties, that would have been very likely to collapse, and even more likely to bring in a Tory majority after such collapse.

2. “Jo Swinson’s voting record is terrible! She voted with the Tories more than Michael Gove during the coalition!”

When you form a coalition, you vote together. That is exactly the point of forming the coalition. Lib Dems got the Tories to raise the lowest income tax threshold, which stopped 3 million people paying any income tax whatsoever. This would be included in Michael Gove’s voting record, although it was a Lib Dem idea!

3. “They will join a coalition with the Tories again!”

The Tory and Lib Dem Brexit policies are diametrically opposed — one is ‘get brexit done’, and the other is ‘stop brexit’. Either of these parties accepting the opposite result would be committing electoral suicide. They would be ruined, so it wouldn’t happen.

The only way for a con/lib coalition to happen after this election would be for the Tories to accept a people’s vote. I seriously doubt that this will happen.

4. “The Lib Dems brought in years of austerity!”

All 3 major parties had austerity in their 2010 manifestos. Labour’s chancellor Alistair Darling famously said that they would ‘cut deeper than Thatcher’ if they won the 2010 election. All 3 parties knew that continuing the budget deficit after the 2008 financial crash wasn’t possible, and so cuts needed to be made.

I seriously believe that if Labour had have won the 2010 election, today the Lib Dems would be attacking the austerity of the Labour government.

5. “But the Lib Dems were in government and so they are to blame! 120'00 people were killed by Tory/Lib Dem austerity!”

Even though Labour said that they would bring in austerity too, yes, you could definitely blame the coalition for how and where the austerity was carried out. It is pure speculation to imagine it in a different way.

As for the 120'00 number, this is the definition of a half-truth. The original study that this number was taken from says that if previous trends had continued, there may have been 120'000 less deaths. To change this to ‘120'000 killed by austerity’ is just incorrect. Channel 4 and FullFact have both commented on the inaccuracies of this number.

6. “They are yellow Tories!”

In terms of economic policy, Libs may be more similar to the Tories. Of course, this is the whole idea of classical liberalism — low taxes and less government control over people’s lives. But apart from the economy, there isn’t much overlap between the two.

Here are some huge ways that this isn’t true.

Lib Dems want to get rid of Trident.

<EDIT:04/11/19 I was wrong about this, sorry, Lib Dems no longer have a Trident policy> Lib Dems want to change FPTP election system to proportional representation. Lib dems want to extend votes to 16 year olds. LDs want to stop arms sales to Saudi Arabia.

5. LDs will guarantee teacher’s pay never falls below inflation.

6. LDs want to put a penny from a pound on income tax that goes directly to the NHS.

7…..

7. “But when they were in coalition they didn’t do anything! They just went along with Tory policies!”

ok…

7. Lib Dems raised the lowest income tax threshold — stopping 3 million of the lowest earners from paying any income tax at all.

8. Lib Dems brought in the original legislation to legalize gay marriage.

9. Brought in free school meals for all children up to 8 (they wanted to make it all primary but Tories kept them at ‘up to 8').

10. They brought in the pupil premium — extra funding for schools with children from underprivileged backgrounds.

11. They spent £1 billion on tax avoidance, which has in turn raised £9 billion.

12. They banned private-sector car clamping.

13. They introduced ‘the banking levy’ — effectively an extra tax for the banking sector. (Do you think the Tories would have done that?)

14. They extended the right for workers to request flexible working hours.

15. Despite the cuts, they doubled spending on dementia research during the coalition years. Psychological therapy spending also increased.

8. “But… tuition fees!”

Yep. You’ve got me there. Saying that they would scrap tuition fees and then agreeing to triple them was a really stupid thing to do. Electoral suicide. And they paid for it, losing most of their seats in 2015.

But just in case you’ve never heard this argument before, I will outline here why I think that our current ‘tuition fee’ system may be better and more fair than a ‘free university’ system.

In a ‘free university’ system, everything is paid for by taxes. This essentially means that everyone in the country, including people who have never shown any interest in going to university, are subsidising those who do go to university. Traditionally, this often means people of lower socioeconomic backgrounds subsidising people of better socioeconomic backgrounds.

In our current ‘tuition-fee’ system, anyone who wants to go to university goes without paying anything upfront. They are given loans, regardless of who they are, and are even given loans to help them live while at university. These loans do not have to be paid, until (and if) this person has a certain salary. And then they only pay it back relative to their salary (like an extra income tax). After 30 years, all debt is written off, and student loan debt is never taken into account when taking out other loans or mortgages etc.

I finished university 5 years ago. I have £40k of debt, and I don’t care at all. It has never affected my life. I haven’t paid any yet, because I haven’t had a salary over the threshold, and next year, when I will probably start paying it, I won’t mind. Because I had 3 great years at university, in which I was supported by the government, by taxes, by you, and I don’t mind paying a bit back for that, little by little, as an adult who has benefited from this system.

Sorry, rant over. I genuinely don’t know which of these systems is better.

9. “They abstained on Labour’s bill to stop the privatisation of the NHS!”

This is a half-truth. They abstained on a Labour bill that Labour claimed would stop the privatisation of the NHS, and the Lib Dems disagreed with parts of it, and said it wouldn’t stop the privatisation of the NHS. More on that here.

<EDIT:04/11/19: I have since found out that this wasn’t even a bill, it was just a ‘recommendation’.>

10. “They refuse to support Jeremy Corbyn in any way!”

This is something which annoys me. As a firm believer in compromise, I would be very happy to see a Lab/Lib coalition. I feel sorry for the media barrage that Jeremy Corbyn has sustained, especially after being an immense defender of human rights throughout his life.

However, I can understand why the Lib Dems would want to distance themselves. Particularly in these Brexit-oriented times, they are looking to win votes from both Labour and Tory voters. The reality is that Jeremy Corbyn is very unpopular, particularly among anyone right of centre. He is, indeed, the most socialist leader Labour has had for decades. Talk of reversing privatisation, and banning public schools, might go down well with Labour’s left, but it doesn’t ring many bells for a lot of people concerned with protecting the economy.

And I won’t get into the anti-semitism debate because I don’t understand it.

A Christmas miracle?

To conclude…

Firstly — the Lib Dems are not Tories — this is Labour propaganda. Is there Lib Dem propaganda against Labour? Definitely. Maybe I’ll save that for another article.

Secondly — this election is about Brexit. I wish it weren’t, but we all know it is. If there has ever been a time to stop the bickering and unite the centre-left, it is now. A lab/lib non-aggression pact in this election would be formidable. It would be even more formidable than a Con/Brx pact, that a certain asshole in the US described as unstoppable.

If the Lab/Lib leaders don’t pact, then the best we can do is vote tactically.