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Post 2015 general election init

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.

Liberal Conservatives are their natural bed-fellows, Labour, not so much. Not even a tiny bit. Not even New Labour.

Why do you say this specifically? I find it interesting as I'd say they seem closer to the left than the right - e.g. happy to increase taxes to fund public expenditure (look at their proposals re. The NHS in last prospectus, for example).

They don't have an ideological drive for a small state, which is one of the main factors I'd identify with the Tories.

They could have formed a minority government with Labour

They couldn't. Brown was about as popular as May.

don't have an ideological drive for a small state

Is that true?

I'd have said practically they don't have a drive for a small state. Ideologically they have a fairly libitarian streak, with issues like civil liberties being particularly important - in a way which Labour can't be because of the inheritantly coercive nature of socialism.

^ all that said, my memory of the Lib Dems from the Blair-Brown years was they were left of Labour.

From the BBC's summary of their 2017 manifesto, these are shown as the key policies:

Second EU referendum on Brexit deal
1p in the pound on income tax to raise £6bn for NHS and social care services
End the 1% public sector pay cap
Invest nearly £7bn extra in education
Ban the sale of diesel cars and small vans in the UK by 2025
Scrap the planned expansion of grammar schools
End imprisonment for possession of illegal drugs for personal use
Reinstate university maintenance grants for the poorest students
Job-sharing arrangements for MPs
Increase maximum sentence for animal cruelty from six months to five years, and a ban on caged hens
Extend free childcare to all two-year-olds and introduce an additional month's paid paternity leave for dads
Reverse cuts to work allowances in universal credit and housing benefit for 18-21 year olds
Levy up to 200% council tax on second homes
Take over the running of Southern Rail and Govia Thameslink
£300m for community policing in England and Wales

Other than legalising drugs which shows libertarian principles (although depends how you do it, legalise and regulate is hardly classic libertarianism) lots of these seem to me to be expansive state policies, because they either increase spending or taxation or reinstate/increase a govt role.

From recollection, Brown resigned before the Lib Dems finalised their deal with Conservatives...

It was one of the requests as part of a potential deal..

Ahem,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Orange_Book:_Reclaiming_Liberalism
The LibDem mebership may well have been to the left of New Labour,
but the Orange Book entryists listed above,
were clearly Tories who did not have the connections to ensure fast track advancement within the Tory Party.

Ahem

In the book the group offers liberal solutions—often stressing the role of choice and competition—to several societal issues, such as public healthcare, pensions, environment, globalisation, social and agricultural policy, local government, the European Union and prisons.

Bar infringement of civil liberties and going to war, it pretty much sums up New Labour to me.

No. The ConDem 'government' was significantly more rightwing than a single-party Tory 'government' would have been. Osborne pushed the cuts much further than the Tories thought they could have got away with on their own. Never mind the odd policy that the Lib Dems throttled (not to mention those where they broke election promises)--the cuts agenda was always flexible to enable the Tories to get their way regardless. Clegg and co. were merely the lightning conductor that deflected public anger, which otherwise would have hit the Tories full-on. As it was, protesters exhausted themselves in campaigning against individual aspects of the cuts, always divided and never effective. This was significantly helped by the Lib Dems' presence in government.

They Lib Dems entered the 'coalition' from a position of weakness that the Tories ruthlessly exploited and played them with. Remember Cleggmania? 70 seats? Winning proportional representation? They were so unwilling to admit that they weren't quite as great as the polls predicted and so determined to be kingmakers that they threw caution to the wind, got a deal so rotten (remember the AV 'referendum'?) that Theresa May could give them a masterclass in negotiating, and enabled the worst 'government' in living memory. Clegg was exposed right from the start as the incompetent political minnow he is. Just look at what he told afterwards about his time in government--any sensible person would have quit at the first whiff of this: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/sep/02/nick-clegg-george-osborne-cut-welfare-poorest-boost-tory-popularity

It's not 'what-iffery' to say that without the Lib Dems' nonsensical move, David Cameron wouldn't have been Prime Minister and George Osborne wouldn't have been Chancellor of the Exchequer. They couldn't believe their luck how naïve and hapless the Lib Dems were.

This was undoubtedly partly because coalition governments are rare in a first-past-the-post system. Had the Lib Dems done their research (no doubt they'd say they had), they would have known that the junior partner in a coalition typically gets much more than what is proportional to their share of seats. The junior partner has leverage it can use and there's no need at all to roll over like the Lib Dems did. Cameron and Osborne couldn't even have done a Theresa May-DUP-style deal, as they were too far short of a majority.

One outcome of all this, of course, was that Clegg 'led' the Lib Dems to a near-wipeout at the next election, going from 57 to 8 seats.

Also, I've often wondered if that AV referendum (which, from their perspective, was successful in achieving its aim) didn't provide a kind of blueprint for Cameron and Osborne in trying to kill the 'Brexit' agenda. That worked out well, too.

Other than legalising drugs which shows libertarian principles (although depends how you do it, legalise and regulate is hardly classic libertarianism) lots of these seem to me to be expansive state policies, because they either increase spending or taxation or reinstate/increase a govt role.

Remember that the Lib Dems aren't a purely libertarian party but the result of the merger between the SDP and the Liberals.

The point I was trying to make (badly), was that their policies in practice* end up being quite state heavy, whereas ideologically I think they favour a more relaxed approach, relying on people's innate good.

*not that they've had much practice

It's a shame that there's no negg button on F******* or everybody could click negg to show him what they think.

They're going to change the "Like" button to "I agree with Nick." After which, nobody will ever click on it again.

'Conservative MP David Davis found a number of "areas of overlap" between Conservative policies and the views of the Orange Book authors.'

If David 'thick as mince' Davis could find the overlaps they must be glaringly obvious to everyone.

This creep, you couldn't make it up

https://twitter.com/PA/status/1053284972000362497

Isn't that a little biting the hand that feeds?

They should probably do some sort of fusion to avoid this, mashing 'like' and 'Nick' together to 'nike'--victory. After all, it's pretty much his life's motto. It might also attract some advertising money from Nike into the bargain.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/19/jamal-khashoggi-dead-saudi-arabian-state-television-confirms

How can we admit he's dead without it seeming too bad? Well, he was a bit tasty, things can get out of hand, you can see how it might have ended up with him being beaten to death...

Well, who hasn't felt a bit fight-y when confronted with some unnecessary bureaucracy?

I carry a bone saw just in case I, and 17 random people I only just met, accidentally beat a 60 year old journalist to death and have to rapidly break the body down into smugglable sized parts.

Seems credible to me

Credible to trump who still views the saudi guv as allies.

Piers_Corbyn on Twitter- who knew?