Creative Commons licensed photo courtesy of Flickr user jackhynes.

Many of us on the left feel jaded by the broken promises of New Labour and betrayed by university fees, private finance initiatives in healthcare and the Iraq War. Yet we are not ready to put our faith in David Cameron who is most politely described as a political lightweight and who has just flip flopped on his pledges to create 5000 more prison places and reduce income tax. So where do we turn now? Nick Clegg is not the figure of ridicule that Menzies Campbell was but perhaps that’s because we know nothing about him. How many of us could even pick him out of a line up? The Lib Dems may be the only party that voted against the Iraq War, university fees and ID cards but is there any point in voting for a party that we don’t truly believe has a chance of winning? Do we stick to our principles and accept the likelihood that our defection from Labour will cause a Conservative victory or do we stay on board the sinking ship captained by Gordon Brown that seems to have veered wildly to the right in the last 10 years?

Filed under: libdems on January 12th, 2010