Post Election Blues...

As the election campaign dust begins to settle over the MedwayTowns, and the rest of the country, people who bothered to engage in the election process will begin to wonder whether or not they have done the right thing, both nationally and locally.

This was an election campaign fought on 'fear' by the two main parties, and prejudice on the part of UKIP whether they admit it or not.

The Conservatives fought their campaign on the basis that if you did not vote Tory, you would get a Labour-led coalition government being ruled by their smaller coalition partner, the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP), i.e. the tail wagging the dog and with a distinct possibility of the eventual break-up of the Union between Scotland and the rest of the UK.

On the other hand, Labour tried to convince the electorate that by not voting Labour, you would get an unholy alliance between the Conservatives and UKIP, leading to the very extreme of right-wing politics.

And UKIP managed to appeal to a segment of society whose views on the doorstep totally sickened me. Some people expressed their racist views using such foul and venomous language as to make Goebbels seem like a Sunday school teacher by comparison. I find it difficult to believe that the UKIP hierarchy are unaware of the outrageous nature of some of their supporters who clearly believe UKIP to be their natural political home.

I witnessed their verbal hatred time and again on the doorstep to the extent that I, an ex-serving British soldier, was ashamed to be British at all. To think that just days afterwards was the 70^th anniversary of VE Day, a day that was the culmination of thousands of British servicemen and women having given their lives to fight against such fascism, Nazism and religious and ethnic persecution.

We Liberal Democrats have lost some brilliant LibDem MP's and the country has lost some brilliant LibDem government ministers who served with distinction in the recent coalition government.

Our party has paid the price for putting the essential needs of the country before itself, a bit like those gallant men and women who gave of themselves in the defence of this country when we were under a different threat. In both instances, without those sacrifices, this country would have gone under and fallen into the abyss.

The electorate has by and large failed to recognise or appreciate the very positive impact the LibDems had in the coalition government or to identify the many positive policies that were LibDem policies (not Tory ones, although the Tories tried to lay claim to them), such as the 'Triple Lock' on the State Pension and the raised Income Tax threshold taking millions of lower paid people out of paying income tax altogether and reducing the tax burden on many millions more, not to mention the introduction of Free School Meals. And what about the iniquitous Tory right-wing policies that the LibDems blocked, such as allowing employers to sack employees for no good reason, or introducing a 'Snoopers Charter'?

If the electorate thinks that the austerity over the past five years has been tough, now there is a Tory majority government, I can tell you, 'you've seen nothin' yet'! Believe me, the next five years are going to be even tougher and it will fall on those least able to bear it.

And locally too, we have lost some excellent and long-serving LibDem Councillors in Diana Smith (Watling ward) and Geoff Juby (Gillingham South). Both have fought long and hard and often valiantly in the interests of the residents in their respective wards. Medway and Gillingham in particular, will be that much poorer for their departure.

With the new complexion of Gillingham South ward in particular, I wonder if residents will have to wait and wait for Labour Councillor's promises to be fulfilled just as unsuccessfully as the Medway Towns has been waiting and waiting for the long-promised publication of the results of the WONGA-sponsored report on debt from one of their new Councillors (and we're still waiting)! But maybe he's already planning on which political party or group to join next instead!