Laid bare: The Liberal Democrats' latest acts of stooge-ism

Ladies and gentlemen, despite what they have lost as a result of their collusion with the Conservatives on almost every important issue this Parliament, the Liberal Democrats have yet again acted as pro-free market stooges to the Conservatives and will do so again-and this time, it is getting serious.

 On the evening of Monday 10th, almost all the Liberal Democrat MPs (with one exception, Greg Mulholland) present in the House of Commons sided with the Conservatives on the infamous new clause 119 of the Health and Social Care Act, which will allow the Secretary of State for Health to close down hospitals 'if a neighbouring trust is struggling financially' without any proper consultation or scrutiny. As for health minister Paul Burstow's attempt to amend it (when the clause needed to be scrapped altogether), that failed miserably and Mr. Burstow himself did not even vote in the lobby for his own amendment!

Also, a leaked memo from the Lib Dems has revealed on how they plan to attack the Greens in the Euro elections by claiming that opposing the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership will cost thousands of British jobs (in fact, evidence shows that free trade agreements which TTIP is based on are costing even more jobs) and also that the TTIP will add £10,000,000,000 to the UK economy. What we can reveal is that TTIP completely undermines democracy by stacking the odds in favour of corporations and that TTIP's effects will actually make some current Liberal Democrat policies impossible to implement in practice in light of the investor-state dispute settlement clause. 

 In light of these two pieces of important news, if the Liberal Democrats do indeed suffer a wipe-out at the European elections this May as Tim Farron (their president) fears, it will be exactly what they deserve, and I hope that will consequently quicken this rotten coalition's downfall.

 Alan.


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