Disgruntled Liberal Democrats, have a word with yourselves

Theresa May cites same-sex marriage & taking lowest-paid out of tax altogether as Cameron's legacy... pic.twitter.com/rJ46LvwRU5

— Rachel (@underthenettle) July 13, 2016

Plenty of this going around at the moment.  As David Cameron steps down as Prime Minister after six years at Number 10, his one-time coalition partners are clearly feeling a little left out.

In one sense, of course, this is entirely understandable; these things were Liberal Democrat manifesto promises, which were then delivered in government – they absolutely should take credit for making these policies happen.  But so should David Cameron.  After all, how far would these policies have got if the Lib Dems had tried to implement them on their own?

I have written before that I think the Lib Dems were very unfairly treated at last year's general election, and that history will generally be a lot kinder to Nick Clegg and his party's time in office than were the confused and angry public who seemingly couldn't get their heads around what 'coalition government' was actually all about.  But now, it is those same Lib Dems who seem to want to claim sole credit for government achievements between 2010-15; this is also not how coalition government works.

Ultimately, Cameron was the Prime Minister whose (coalition) government enacted policies like same-sex marriage.  It happened under his watch, and with his backing.  His actions as the leader of a coalition government will form a part of his legacy as Prime Minister; they will also form a part of Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats' legacy, too – after all, the same thing can appear in more than one legacy.  Trying to take credit away from Cameron for a policy like same-sex marriage is as churlish as to try and take credit away from Clegg – it would not, after all, have happened without either of them.

Another 'achievement' of the coalition administration was the Fixed Term Parliament Act of 2011.  Another Lib Dem policy enacted by Cameron.  Maybe Lib Dem activists and politicians who campaigned for this piece of legislation would like to stop agitating for new Prime Minister Theresa May to call an immediate election to seek her own mandate for a second, and consider that it is their actions (or, at least, their Act) which have made this a whole lot less likely?

#EUref: pick a side

A headline in yesterday's Telegraph that Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn will refuse to 'share a platform' with David Cameron when campaigning for Britain to remain in the European Union will have come as no surprise for anyone who has followed the rise of Corbyn, and seen him to be the lightweight, petulant egotist that he undoubtedly is.  However, it was – in my view – indicative of how widespread certain misconceptions about referendum campaigning have become.

In writing before about how the conflation of a national plebiscite with traditional party politics has seeped into the mainstream, I have laid much of the blame for this at the door of the SNP – but this way of thinking is becoming more and more prevalent across the political spectrum, and I think it bears another look.

Spoke with Osborne and Balls supporting Remain. Economic case becoming overwhelming. Happy to put old quarrels aside to support Remain.

— Vince Cable (@vincecable) May 16, 2016

He gets it…

For the benefit of those who haven't quite grasped this yet, it is worth making very clear that in a referendum, there are only two sides.  You do not get your own side, all to yourself.  This means that if you are a Labour MP or activist who is campaigning for 'Remain', you are on the same side as David Cameron; you are on the same side as George Osborne; you are on the same side as Theresa May; you are on the same side as Ryanair.  You may not like it, but you are – because, on this one issue (even if on nothing else), you want the same outcome as them.

You could avoid that by being a Labour MP or activist who is campaigning to 'Leave' the EU, of course.  But then you would be on the same side as Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson, George Galloway and Katie Hopkins.  Whether you like it or not.

It is a common obfuscation to claim that even if you agree with the Prime Minister that Britain should stay in the EU, you fundamentally disagree with him about what the EU should look like, and what Britain's role in the union should be – and that this makes your position distinct from his.

The referendum is not about that.  This is a single-issue vote; Remain, or Leave.  Pick a side.  There is no third option where you get to say "I'm basically Remain…  But not like he is!"  Remain is Remain; it's as simple as that.

This, after all, is surely the point of holding a referendum on the topic at all?  It (in theory, at least) allows the campaign to strip away all the other gumf and focus purely on the issue, getting away from the "we are the good people, and that makes us different from those bad people" bloviating that we see so often in day-to-day party politics.

In refusing to put aside his differences with the Prime Minister in order to campaign on their one point of common ground in the run-up to this vote, Corbyn shows us that keeping his image intact is more important to him than the cause he professes to support – and once again makes the conversation about him, rather than about the topic at hand.