Baffle2 said:
It didn't bother them last time to go into a party with policies that were directly opposed to their own (see tuition fees).
Virtually any political alliance requires parties supporting others with directly opposing policies. That's what being a different party is about. An alliance is agreeing that some concessions need to be made where policies clash.
I wouldn't deny the importance of tuition fees to many individuals, particularly those of studenty age around 2010. But in the greater scheme of the whole country - economy, health service, social services or even primary and secondary education - it's quite a small issue. Nor do I really get how it is the Tories and Labour routinely break promises when in office, yet the Lib Dems do it once and are never to be forgiven.
And Swinson's voting record on benefits is sufficiently damning that she's pretty much a Tory in my eyes. (Disclosure: I voted Lib Dem once without really knowing enough about them. Won't happen again.)
Let's also bear in mind most of those welfare votes are 2010-2015 when the Lib Dems were part of the government and thus to all intents and purposes honour-bound to support the policies of the government, so I think her voting record is not entirely a fair representation of where she would stand if she had control over welfare policy. I think it's more that it's useful for Labour and the left to ignore that context and characterise her that way.
That said, the Lib Dems approach welfare differently from Labour. They approach welfare more in terms of improving opportunities (supporting education, skills, etc.) and incentivising than increasing basic safety net supports.
Anyway, current LD welfare policy stuff:
https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/libdems/pages/46346/attachments/original/1564404756/136_-_A_fairer_share_for_all.pdf?1564404756
Silvanus said:
I'm often inclined to believe this, but then I see that the press are simultaneously calling him authoritarian, threatening, cruel etc. Its not even a consistent theme; its anything.
It's not necessarily inconsistent, it may depend on the sphere being referred to.
From time to time I start to think its sheer volume. Endless slander and character-assassination has gone on for so long, at such a pitch, that the image has stuck. And it's not even a specific image, it's just "bad".
Whenever criticism of Corbyn comes up, it doesn't usually start with policy. The platform is not discussed, but the term "extreme" is trotted out mindlessly anyway. Much the same happened with "Red Ed" Miliband, a milquetoast centrist. So to a degree, I don't think it matters who it is or what the platform is. The press have their horse and they'll spend inordinate amounts of money to make sure its opponent is hobbled.
The press doesn't have unlimited ability to trash people. Miliband was able to vastly improve his approval rating with the right attention paid to how he came across.
Corbyn's reputation in the last election improved enormously when the public got to see him properly and unfiltered, he was around evens. But then how the hell has he managed to go from that in 2017 to about -50-60 now? How has that been left to slip? It's not just the press, it's more than that and a failing that goes right to the top.