Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson has stressed that “on so many grounds, David Cameron cannot be forgiven”. But in doing so, she seemed to gloss over the damning fact that she and her party propped Cameron up for five years between 2010 and 2015. And Labour’s Angela Rayner, for one, was not going to let that go.
The shadow education minister insisted:
Sorry Jo we can’t forgive you either as you propped Cameron up and his rotten austerity government which caused millions such misery, now you won’t even rule out a new coalition with this current Tory shower of right wing failures! https://t.co/FKRgSykXQa
— Angela Rayner (@AngelaRayner) September 15, 2019
And she’s spot on. Because Swinson has a terrible record of supporting the Tories’ ideological austerity – from opposing higher taxes for the super-rich to backing privatisation and welfare cuts. As shadow chancellor John McDonnell has said:
Jo Swinson was willing to work with the Tories, introduce some of the most savage austerity cuts that cost people their lives… But she won’t work with a Labour leader who opposed all those austerity measures.
Never forget
In recent years, the pro-austerity neoliberal wing of the Lib Dems has been dominant. So the party has cosied up to the Tories. As a result, it propped up a vicious regime which oversaw skyrocketing food bank usage, attacked some of the most vulnerable people in Britain, and managed the decline of the NHS.
Just one of the Tory-led austerity policies – cutting public health spending – has led to over 130,000 premature deaths in the UK. A 2018 UN investigation, meanwhile, found that “14 million people, a fifth of the population” now “live in poverty”.
Shocking evidence of the rise of foodbanks in Cameron's Britain via Trussell Trust in @bmj_latest pic.twitter.com/e2KlGFSxrh" & there are others
— Julia Seath (@Julia_agent007) April 17, 2015
The Lib Dems enabled all of this by joining forces with the Tories. And we must never forget that.
Featured image via Rwendland/Wikimedia
