Back in Time...

This is no fun Huey Lewis and the News song, this is what likely faces us in the immediate future. It's frighteningly appropriate that last night's Heston Blumenthal feast was 80s themed, because that's pretty much where we headed again. To borrow a theme from Supernatural, yesterday Clegg said 'yes' to Lucifer and we are now ConDem-ned as a country.

"What's the problem?" You may say. "You voted for this." But that's just it. We didn't. 64% of the electorate didn't vote for Cameron and certainly none of the Liberal voters that I know put down their x with the expectation that we would be handing the keys to ShamCam. We didn't vote for Cable's fiscal policy so that Osborne can be let loose in the treasury like a hyperactive child in a sweet shop. It seems as though the wool has been well and truly pulled over our eyes as a nation. We voted Clegg and got Cameron. The Lib Dems protest that the decision was preferable to the stigma attached to 'propping up' the ailing Labour government, but this isn't about 'stigma' or personal damned popularity. We had one simple aim, to keep a dangerous, pudge-faced toff out of Number 10 and we failed.

When details were released of simultaneous talks with Labour, the right wing press practically fell over itself calling the Lib Dems untrustworthy, Adam Boulton stopped seconds short of a cerebral aneurysm, Nick Robinson saw his masterplan momentarily falter. Hours later they were handing them junior cabinet roles. There were claims over the Labour talks that the Lib Dems were turning Judas, but rather it is what has happened that feels like the betrayal. The selling out on policies on electoral reform and ideology for simply immediate power. It's cheap, it won't work and it feels very wrong indeed.

In a speech in the early hours of this morning Clegg promised a diverse government and one need only cast an eye across the cabinet posts to see the diversity of this new government - Liam Fox, George Osborne, William Hague, murmurings of Ian Duncan Smith and Michael Howard. About as fucking diverse as they come: middle aged, white, male right wing politicians. This is indeed a betrayal and a number of Lib Dem voters have defected to Labour in the wake of it. I am not surprised in the least. The worst part is that we voted for the Lib Dems... we voted for what has just happened, but we didn't know it and they have the gall to call it democracy.

All I can hope for is for some of the more left leaning Liberals - the Cables of the party- to see that this isn't that way. No electoral reform means that this weak coalition won't last and the Lib Dems will struggle to get back into a position of stability in the future. If the commitments to the core ideologies and electoral reform hadn't been traded for the magic beans of government positions, it could have been a very different story indeed. Instead we will wake up in Tory Britain to see Pudge-Face and his trophy wife smirking in front of the infamous black door.

It's going to be a long and painful four years, but I'll be here for you. Maybe if we all stick together we can actually try and effect some real change in this world.

Hang tough, followers. We're not beaten down just yet.