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Again, I don't disagree with any of the above because we'll never know what we don't know.
Just as we can't know what would have happened if they buddied up to Labour, we can't also know how much, if at all, they dampened the effect of the Tories worst tendencies as we don't have a reality where they weren't involved.
My dislike for him and the party at the time is purely for being involved with what did happen which was a total clusterfuck.
Soul-
Just as we can't know what would have happened if they buddied up to Labour
Yeah yeah but they would never, ever have done this. Despite their lovable image - derived mostly from them never actually being in power in living memory - Liberal Conservatives are their natural bed-fellows, Labour, not so much. Not even a tiny bit. Not even New Labour.
we can't also know how much, if at all, they dampened the effect of the Tories worst tendencies
But we can - in the coalition, right to rent is blocked. Post coalition, immediate implementation of right to rent.
Howard
It was a reply to greenhell's points.
Firstly, that in spite of the Lib Dems tempering the Tories we still got evil shit X, Y, Z.
Sure, but that's the perfect solution fallacy. Just because the Tories weren't stopped from doing everything evil doesn't mean it was a failure. That's what I meant by "it's not black and white". It's not either a complete success or a complete failure. The Lib Dems stopped the Tories doing a load of evil stuff, but not everything evil.
I'm saying it to highlight that the only thing we know is what happened. Everything else is guess work.
The argument from some here seems to be that if the Lib Dems had not gone into coalition with the Tories then the outcome (whatever that would have been) would have magically been better because hindsight. But no-one knows that because it never played out for anyone to see. There are some scenarios where the outcome is better, and some that are worse.
All we know is that they did go into power and they did stop the Tories from pushing through a whole load of evil shit that the Tories wanted to (and eventually pushed through most of it when they next got into power).