Comments by "J Drake1994" (@JDrakeify) on "'Westminster is worse than I feared' | Owen Jones meets Mhairi Black" video.

+Robert Durdin In case you havent noticed, they are only in charge of Scotland. If they offered free tuition to every student in the British isles, they would have most of the UK student population to pay for, which would cripple Scotland.
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Finn Keaney they still have 8 seats, that can make all the difference in a close hung parliament situation. And if the Tories are in a position to lose power, they are likely to increase that tally. Labour needs them to as well, as they can take rural seats where Labour would have no chance. That is why the Tories struggled to get past 200 seats in the New Labour years. Their collapse is what enabled the Tories to win a majority. Labour needs a strong Lib Dem party. That is why Labour needs to explore the possibility of an electoral pact with them and the Greens.
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Lily Hendron New parties get slaughtered under FPTP, it is not a viable option while the voting system remains in place. It is perfectly possible for parties to get a fifth or a quarter of the vote and remain in single digits seat wise. I for one would love the possibility of the left in this country finally getting a natural party for us all to coalesce around. At least since the beginning of New Labour, we havent had that. It would probably be for the best too, as the experience of Corbyn thus far has taught us that we cannot have a unified left wing party as the SNP have because most of the PLP is not all that left wing. It is probably better in the long run that the left and the right of the party go there separate ways. That is why the next Labour government, whether it is led by a Corbynista, or a Blairite, or anything in between, needs to embrace PR. Without that, no new parties can exist.
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TheEvilAdventurer Seeing as tuition fees were first implemented before the national assemblies came into existence, they also voted to introduce tuition fees in Scotland at the same time. Besides, that was all the way back in the late nineties, the policy of the SNP on tuition fees in the rest of the UK may well have changed since then. Labour and the Tories have changed massively on policy since the late nineties, it would not be all that remarkable if the SNP did so too.
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+DynamiteShovel1 The SNP are willing to work with Labour in 2020, in fact if Labour remain toward the left then Corbyn or, more likely, an other left leaning leader would have better friends in them than they would on their own backbenches. The only way the SNP can stop a Labour government is by spooking English voters by the prospect of a coalition with them, which in fairness to them is hardly the SNP's fault. Besides, they are going to have a large number of seats in Scotland even if they lose half of them, which is unlikely, so they will be a factor whether Labour like it or not. The best they can do is have a strong leader who has clear line on any deal from as early as possible. One option would be for Labour to say they will work with the SNP, but not give away any more powers to Scotland as part of any deal. They might not like it, but they do not have much of an option other than to work with the Tories.
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Finn Keaney In fairness, a Labour-Lib Dem coalition in 2010 still did not have enough seats together for an overall majority.A coalition between them would have fallen apart pretty quickly. Clegg didnt like Brown and preferred to work with Cameron and the Tories, but that was not true for the rest of the party. Vince Cable later said that a deal with Labour would have been preferable but the maths wouldnt work so he backed one with the Tories. Maybe Clegg still would have opted for Cameron if the Lib Dems and Labour had enough seats together for a majority, but the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition we got was not purely because Clegg just didnt feel like working with Brown, there were practical considerations too.
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Finn Keaney But 'spite' for what? Whilst the likes of Clegg might have been more open to the Tories, that didnt mean he hated Labour especially. If any part of the party was particularly against one of the two options, then it was the left against the Tories. There was some pretty strong resistance to a deal from them, considering the mathematics of the situation, and there likely would have been more if Labour was a viable option. And I wouldnt say the decision to go into a coalition with the Tories was particularly career minded. Under a deal with Labour, there is every reason to believe the Lib Dems would have just as many jobs in the cabinet. What's more, Labour were the more open to electoral reform.Had they got that accomplished they would have won far more seats in the long run. Not only that, but the fact that many Lib Dem supporters were left leaning would soften the blow of a coalition, they could tolerate them getting into bed with Labor, but the Tories they despised, and that contributed to a feeling of betrayal from there voters, along with the whole tuition fee debacle. So if I were a Lib Dem in 2010, a deal with Labour would offer the best prospects for strengthening my party in the long run, and thus furthering my career.
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