Evan Harris: “If you want to get rid of fees vote more Lib Dems into power”

Former Liberal Democrat MP Dr Evan Harris has made the extraordinary claim that to get rid of fees "the answer is to vote more liberal democrats into power".

Former Liberal Democrat MP Dr Evan Harris made the extraordinary claim on Radio Five last night that:

“If you want to get rid of tuition fees, the answer is to vote more liberal democrats into power, not less, because the only way… If you want to get rid of tuition fees realistically the only way to do it…

“If students want to get rid of tuition fees it’s more Liberal Democrats they need, not Tory and Labour.”

This, despite the fact that it was only because of Liberal Democrat MPs that last night’s votes on tuition fees – trebling the cap to £9,000 and raising the lower limit to £6,000 – passed, by a majority of 21. Harris was debating Left Foot Forward’s Will Straw and leading Conservative blogger Shane Greer on the Tony Livesey show.

Listen to it:

Here is the roll of shame of the 34 Lib Dem MPs who broke their pledge by failing to vote against the government:

Danny Alexander
Norman Baker
Sir Alan Beith
Gordon Birtwistle
Tom Brake
Jeremy Browne
Malcolm Bruce
Paul Burstow
Lorely Burt*
Vincent Cable
Alistair Carmichael
Nick Clegg
Edward Davey
Lynne Featherstone
Don Foster
Stephen Gilbert
Duncan Hames
Nick Harvey
David Heath
John Hemming
Simon Hughes*
Mark Hunter
Norman Lamb
David Laws
Michael Moore
Tessa Munt*
Sir Robert Smith*
Andrew Stunell
Jo Swinson
Sarah Teather
John Thurso*
David Ward
Steve Webb
Stephen Williams*

* abstained – still a broken pledge. Chris Huhne and Martin Horwood were both absent in Cancun; only 21 of the party’s 57 MPs voted against the fees rise.

73 Responses to “Evan Harris: “If you want to get rid of fees vote more Lib Dems into power””

  1. Dr Evan Harris

    @ralasdair See my comment on http://bit.ly/hAlZmb though

  2. Dr Evan Harris

    @Scarletstand But see my comment on http://bit.ly/hAlZmb though

  3. Dr Evan Harris

    @Walshaw4Hdngly see my comment on there though! http://bit.ly/hAlZmb

  4. Dr Evan Harris

    @AndyWimbush See my comment on there though http://bit.ly/hAlZmb

  5. Steve Rooney

    Evan,

    You’re quite right to draw attention to Labour’s deeply compromised position on this. It’s absurd that Labour and Miliband should be making any capital out of the issue, as there’s absolutely no reason to believe they would reverse the decision. It’s also Labour who began the process of marketisation, in earnest. Indeed, one of the many negative side effects of the Coalition (and your party’s membership of it) is that people seem to have forgotten that, for much of its time in office, Labour was a party of the right – politically and economically.

    However, many of us now think no better of the Lib Dems. Ever since joining the government, the Party’s leading MPs have gone beyond the “realities of coalition” argument and embraced wholesale, it seems, the neo-liberal ideology that underpins the most fiscally regressive programme of the post war era. The garbage from Clegg and Cable about the economy and need for deep, swift cuts has been every bit as zealously expressed as anything Osborne has had to say.

    Good luck with your fight for the egalitarian, social-justice oriented, soul of your party. Until you show any signs of winning that fight, though, the rest of us in the progressive family will look elsewhere.

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