Amid the many postings from various bloggers who like me were disgusted with the Liberal Democrat Party line over the EU referendum yesterday, there has been a constant stream of unhappiness at the MP's who followed the party line and abstained on the vote. But is this fair ?
I didn't agree with the party line and had I been an MP I would most certainly have voted for the amendment, but should we be critical of MPs who stay loyal to the party and follow a three line whip ?
Loyalty is something that is easily lost, and we should admire our MPs for accepting they have pledged to support the party line and the leader. Sadly though, these MPs have been let down badly by the party, and not the other way round.
I disagree with the way they chose not to vote, indeed I think some of their constituents will also let their anger be known at some point in the future. But our anger should be aimed more at the incompetent leadership of the party that chose to steer this course.
Another point also worth reiterating is that the course chosen by Nick Clegg was also the policy shared by Chris Huhne. Sadly, understanding of the issues here and the way it played with the British public was something out leadership candidates had no idea about.
The loyalty of MPs to Nick Clegg has made the MPs look bad. In truth, the leadership has taken advantage of this loyalty in an appalling way.
6 comments:
Stop rationalising this Nich.
The loyalty of members of parliament should to the sovereign and her people. Also they should be honest and not deceive the people they were elected to represent.
As more power is lost from Westminster and passed to Brussels where we have very little influence our country is being quietly bleed to death.
Sitting on your hands whilst that goes on is unforgivable. Quite honestly all the MPs who obtained are unfit to represent their constituents.
In the end "I was only following orders" cannot be accepted as an excuse when a crime of the scale Gordon Brown is currently carrying out is considered.
Agreed completely with the Man in a shed here. We elect MPs to act in our interests not in the interests of individuals in power.
If there were no opportunity to rebel, and that we should indeed praise the actions of those loyal to "the party" then we'd essentially have a three way psuedo-dictatorship going on in parliament where three leaders of the main parties get to dictate to us all what we want and our say would be to share the power of their will as we see fit.
We don't elect parties, we elect MPs, I expect my MP to listen to myself and all other constituency members and take the fairest compromise forward when making his or her decision how to vote. Loyalty to the party is only therefore fine when it is by happenstance loyalty to their voters too.
This post is right, but then why have you put up the other one about disagreeing with the decision, and even in this one you have a go at Nick Clegg.
Nick had made his decision on this one and our MPs owe him, our directly elected leader, their loyalty - and it's shaming that 15 didn't - but also our members and supporters should not be criticising him in blogs.
Otherwise we look just as divided as the other two parties.
You clearly misunderstand, Mr Anonymous. I wrote this story whilst standing by the pother story I wrote because a leader who takes lolalty for granted is a poor one. A poor decision by Nick Clegg made the loyal MPs look stupid and means they have taken criticism because of his lack of awareness.
I understand aright, Nich.
It is not poor leadership to take loyalty for granted. Any leader is justified in taking loyalty for granted; especially a Lib Dem leader, where we are a much broader church than the other two parties (Tories shriek: "You must be a Europhobe!!"; Labour shout "You must declare class war on the Eton scum!!" - both hypocritical). MPs - and members - should agree to disagree but not wave their consciences around in public.
Nick Clegg made the decision. That was final. It is not some ordinary members' role to then give the Tories and Labour a lot of ammo to turn on Nick just because they don't agree.
If you just want to cause a fuss and discredit Nick just to get the likes of Iain Dale to give your ego a stroke why are you still a member?
I love taking lectures from anonymous people. Their bravery is always exceptional.
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