Obvious point, and not to undermine the message of the article, but aren’t you comparing the 5 years between the 2005 and 2010 elections with the almost 1 year between the 2010 election and now?

Given that they’ve had 1/5 of the time it sounds about right that being in government has allowed them to cram in the equivalent of 5 years’ opposition influence

When I click on the link I get

” Not Found

Apologies, but we were unable to find what you were looking for. Perhaps searching will help.”

How very appropriate

Terrible comparison.

the comparison is uneven because it compares a five year period with less than one year

That’s kind of a huge flaw!

Nice to see an article on Lib Con finally accepting that the Lib Dems haven’t sold out on everything and abandoned their polices.

“Obvious point, and not to undermine the message of the article, but aren’t you comparing the 5 years between the 2005 and 2010 elections with the almost 1 year between the 2010 election and now?”

Indeed, but I’ve given them credit where the intention to implement the manifesto pledge has been announced, even if it hasn’t yet happened. I couldn’t see much in the 2010 manifesto which is likely to be implemented but which hasn’t been mentioned yet. (Though in 2006, it wouldn’t have looked like the 50p tax rate would have been implemented, so there are always surprises).

It will be possible to revisit this in 2-3 years, though I would be amazed if by 2015 they had got anything near five times as many of their manifesto policies implemented – you tend to get a burst at the beginning, and then progressively fewer.

Lee – why is it a terrible comparison?

The problem is a great deal of that list are things that all parties in some sense want to do (eg: confront bullying). The real test is essentially what they manage to do that wouldn’t otherwise be done. The stuff that the tories are only doing to keep the agreement – for example raising the personal allowance is something you could have seen osbourne doing anyway, but its unlikely the tories would have a referendum on electoral reform.

Is there anyone still deluded enough to think Clegg is a Lib Dem?
Or indeed even even remotely competent after yesterdays intern hypocrisy shambles?

I admire the intention behind this exercise, but it’s a quite limited way of looking at what constitutes achievement, irrespective of the one year vs five year issue already picked up on. One glaring example:

In four weeks the British people will be asked for the first time ever to choose between one way of electing their representatives and another. The Tories really didn’t want this at all; Labour put it in their manifesto hoping that it was a post-election bargaining chip with the Lib Dems, but as we’ve seen since last May, quite a lot of their MPs and [Shadow] Cabinet members opposed it to begin with. AV is not, of course, the Lib Dems’ preferred system, but I am on the sensible side of the divide that a third of a loaf is better than no bread.

There is simply no credible viewpoint that this would be happening unless the Lib Dems were in government. We saw what happened twice under Labour in 1997 and 2001 when commitments to consult the people on voting systems faltered under a single party government which was at best ambivalent about electoral reform. You can argue that it (and other achievements listed on the website) were bought at too high a price; but you cannot reasonably argue that it could have happened otherwise.

Not only do I count this as an achievement, I count it as a major one. Yet this analysis ignores that, because AV was not in the Lib Dem manifesto. And this is also an enabling reform – it makes it slightly more likely that Lib Dem commitments have a greater chance of being implemented in later Parliaments, whether in government or in opposition.

“its unlikely the tories would have a referendum on electoral reform…”

A policy, indeed, which did not feature in the Lib Dem manifesto!

I think comparing a bare number of policies isn’t that helpful, as it takes no account of the importance of any given policy.

While we a playing with numbers, could you tell me how many of the 2005-2010 figure were not in the Labour manifesto?

I feel that some Lib Dems policies that were implemented are really useful and sensible for our society. They had some great financial and social ideas which I truly support.

Yes, the Lib Dems can *definitely* claim that they have improved conditions for unemployed disabled people and made great strides towards tackling tax avoidance and evasion. And setting out a clear renewables roadmap is pretty vague.

Also, not sure I would exactly *boast* about some of their other policy successes (which I’m pretty sure the Tories would have done anyway):

4) Restrict tax credits
5) Scrap Child Trust Fund
20) Allow establishment of new faith schools
21) Scrap 50% HE target
26) Scrap compulsory retirement age
32) Critically support afghan mission

Whereas some of the others are pretty uncontroversial, my favourite being:

33) Remain committed to peace Israel/Palestine

There are some more positive successes, and lots that are frankly fairly ‘meh’.

All of this pales into insignificance when compared with the decimation of the state that the LDs are conniving in, not to mention their staggering volte-face on tuition fees.

3/10, must try harder (or decapitate the leadership).

scrap the DTI? Im not sure that moving the energy bit of it into a new department and then changing the name of the rest of the department twice was really what the 2005 manifesto writers had in mind.
Would be interesting to compare this to a list of things the libdems had promised not to do and then have done as part of the coalition. The broken promises list is probably smaller but contains things that lib dem grassroots probably felt more passionately about….

The Guardian have done a far more thorough analysis of the Coalition Agreement for Conservative and Lib Dem influence: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/sep/17/coalition-agreement-programme-for-government

This found 171 policies that have Lib Dem origins (either where both Coalition partners agreed, or LDs got their way on an issue).

“This found 171 policies that have Lib Dem origins (either where both Coalition partners agreed, or LDs got their way on an issue).”

n.b. this longer list includes policies which weren’t in the Lib Dem manifesto like the AV referendum, and most are either “wait and see”, no info on progress or have already failed (in the case of the NHS stuff).

The Lib Dems would have had *far* more influence giving qualified support to a minority Tory government from the opposition benches.

They would have retained their separate identity.

They would have been able to negotiate publicly with both sides on particular issues. In particular they could have called for all-party agreement on deficit-reduction and scored points over whichever side refused to compromise.

They could have forced the government to concentrate on the important issues of the day instead of engaging in massively costly and time-consuming schemes such as the health service “reforms”.

Above all they should have concentrated on demonstrating that a parliament of minorities can really work. We’ve waited the best part of a century for electoral reform; we could have waited a bit longer. The LDs needed first to show they could operate really responsibly in a position of power – and gone on to win a larger block of seats in the next parliament – and then insist on referendum on something better than AV (personally I find the Jenkins Report’s case for AV+ compelling: http://bit.ly/ggGNAq, ch. 7).

As a very old LIberal I felt Clegg took the party in quite the wrong direction, and going into coalition with the Cons was signing its death warrant. The LDs will get the blame for everything that goes wrong, the Cons will grab the credit for anything that goes right. Hey ho.

I agree with Jonathan @18. The LDs didn’t have to go into coalition and the tories could have formed a minority government. We could have had a cross-party consensus on a less damaging way of dealing with the deficit instead of this mad righty radicalism the LDs have enabled to tories to foist upon us.

It strikes me as nothing more than a sort of desperate ego-tripping from the LD leadership for them to have joined the tories. I still think it will signal the end of the party for decades.

I can’t wait for the massacre of the LDs in May and the ensuing panic.

@19. Cherub

What would really put the cat among the pigeons would be a Yes in the referendum and dreadful results for the LDs (and poor ones for the Cons) in local, Scottish and Welsh elections. Result: everyone is pissed off, in one way or another, apart from Labour Yes and the non-partisan Yes camp. And since AV makes it much easier to vote both truthfully and effectively, we could show the lot of them exactly what we think in the next GE.

Don, the thing is (and I wasn’t a member in 2005), of the 2005 list you highlight, very few of them were central, core policies, and the rest weren’t implemented fully or in the way the LDs would like–the scrap the DTI thing being a big example, the idea is to abolish the whole dept, Cable put a lot of effort into t hat policy IIRC.

Whereas the 2010 list includes all of the key pledges to a large extent–you’re of course right tos ay AV wasn’t in the 2010 manifesto, if the LDs had won, then full electoral reform would’ve been implemented with a clear mandate. But electoral rform was part of the 4 main policy areas that were campaigned on, sure, it’s not as far as was wanted, but it is a significant step forward. And it’s linked to STV for HoL and similar.

So yeah, wot Lee said essentially, a lot more will come out, and (24) will be expanded on further over the Parliament (given that that one was originally my proposal, I’m quite happy with that).

It is, however, a nice idea and a good comparison.

Suffice to say we’ve got used to various Govts cherry picking bits of our easiest policies over the years, but this time it’s not someone else poorly understanding and cherry picking, which makes a massive difference–Lynne in Equalities is, for me, something worth having on its own.