In the 2010 general election, the Liberal Democrats built their campaign around a pledge to abolish tuition fees. By the end of that year, however, they had tripled them instead. The Liberal Democrats had made young people feel as if they were on their side. They were not.
During the 2010 election campaign, Liberal Democrat candidates, including Swinson, signed the National Union of Students pledge to vote against tuition fees. Looking back, students were among the first to see the reality of the Liberal Democrats in government.
Admittedly, no Republican can get elected statewide in California anymore, but nor can what we think of as, nationally, the Democratic Party. There are no Joe Bidens running; it is not working-class Democrats vs. liberal Democrats, or whatever their division is these days. It is Hispanic Democrats vs. Asian Democrats.
If any further proof were needed that the Liberal Democrats live up to neither part of their name, then the treatment of Roman Catholic Robert Flello would have provided it. They were glad enough to have him when he defected from Labour but have now deselected him because he supports neither abortion nor gay marriage.
We Liberal Democrats believe in dialogue. We believe in cooperation with both sides of industry and between both sides of industry. And we believe in the language of cooperation. We reject the language of confrontation.
You won't catch Liberal Democrats describing trade unionists as wreckers.
As Liberal Democrats and proponents of federalism, we must put our heads above the parapet and recapture and disseminate the true meaning of federalism. We have to win the vocabulary before we succeed in the vision.
Just as we Liberal Democrats opposed the flawed logic of that war in Iraq - we will oppose the flawed government claim that we have to surrender our fundamental rights in order to improve our security.
Only the Liberal Democrats have probed the government's failings consistently, thoroughly and effectively.
We Liberal Democrats don't believe we should use the tax structure to champion just one type of family.
