Please note that the post below was published more than ten year ago on 21st November 2009 Nick Herbert MP, shadow cabinet member for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, was in Cumbria this morning to see the areas affected by the flooding. He writes on Conservative Home about his visit. Here is an extract. I’ve been in Cumbria today to see the areas affected by the floods. I arrived early in Keswick where I met officials from the Environment Agency. Although the river levels had fallen considerably and homes were no longer flooded, the damage to homes had been done. And the water which had got into houses wasn’t just from the river – it was foul water which had risen from the drains. I talked to fire crews who were pumping flood water back into the river, and discovered that they were from Tyne & Wear and Lancashire. They had been called in at an hours’ notice and had been working on the scene ever since, staying at a local hotel. You cannot fail to be impressed by the
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“To the selfish morons who voted for Cameron et al: I hope you are proud of yourselves,”
well, firstly thanks for calling me a selfish moron, after i have spent the last 24 years of my life working, and being taxed up the ying yang to pay your benefits. Yes, now you mention it I am quite proud of myself, though i never voted for Cameron, i actually voted for Rozila Kana, who did not win a seat. But yes, i am quite proud of doing that, and am even prouder of my fellow countrymen and women who finally voted in a party who will give our EU referendum.
UKIP wont learn, yes they gained a lot of protest votes, but not so many in seats where they had a hope, they wont learn from this, they will just keep on beating the same tired immigration drum
Conservatives wont learn - they will take it as a mandate, rather than seeing the truth it was a pre vote to allow a referendum vote.
Labour wont learn - they never do, they will look upon it and try to decide what the electorate "really meant" when they withdrew support.
Lib Dem - Actually out of all the parties the Lib Dems may learn something from this, that is dont make promises you can not keep.
SNP - they wont learn anything, they got their power base and are on a high, it was handed to them on a golden plate really, but they will never see that
Unfortunately people sometimes learn the wrong lesson from a victory and think it means their party are popular when the reality may be that they were merely the least worst.
I'm sure all parties including the Conservatives need to listen more.
And yes, I'm sure you're right that the promise of a referendum was one of the reasons many people voted Conservative.
I think the lib dems are a bit of a dark horse though, I just have the feeling they will be back. Its like knowing that you mean to do something, but you don't know what something is. its one of those.
They can either remain, as they have been for the past five years, a party which tries to live in the real world.
That would be the brave option, it's the one that might mean they cease to exist at all but also gives them a just a faint chance of being back in position to influence government, maybe even back in government, by 2025. If they go down that route there is just a chance the electorate might notice that they could be a far better alternative to the Conservatives than the current Labour party is.
Or they can try to return to their comfort zone as a protest party. In which case they will survive, but will stay at the level where you could fit all their MPs in one minibus for a long time, just as the Liberal party did for a large part of the 20th century.
In either event I suspect you are right that they will be more careful what they promise in future, which would be a very great improvement.