Northern voters feel betrayed, would-be MP says

NORTHERN voters feel “betrayed” by the Liberal Democrats for going into coalition with the Tories, a would-be Lib Dem MP from Yorkshire admitted.

Helen Flynn, the Lib Dem candidate who will fight the marginal Harrogate and Knaresborough seat in 2015, said her party was too “cosy” with the Conservatives in the early stages of coalition and must be “stronger and bolder” in standing up for its own beliefs.

Mrs Flynn, a Harrogate councillor, said the party’s complicity in George Osborne’s austerity drive “is going against us” in her constituency, with the public sector “being dismantled” by the coalition Government.

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Her concerns form part of a wider picture of grievance from Northern Liberal Democrats, following the publication by North West MP John Pugh of a report titled “Grim Up North?” which critiques the coalition’s regional approach.

Speaking at a fringe event on Northern Liberalism at the party conference in York, Mr Pugh admitted that despite Government claims to the contrary, Northern councils have been hit hardest by the Government cuts.

“The local government settlement has not favoured the Northern cities at all,” the MP said. “In all honesty, we have got to acknowledge that in terms of local authority cuts we have suffered the most.”

Speaking at the same event, Mrs Flynn – who will fight Tory MP Andrew Jones for the Harrogate seat next year – said her party will struggle to pick up Labour voters owing to its coalition with the Conservatives.

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“In terms of the coalition, obviously lots of the seats in the North are Labour – and there’s a strong sense of betrayal,” she said. “One of the things that hasn’t helped us is differentiating ourselves early enough in the coalition. There’s lots going on now, but probably some of the stuff going on early doors was quite cosy. I think Labour voters won’t have liked that.”

She said the North remained “heavily reliant” on the public sector, and added: “Now, of course, that’s being dismantled by the policies of austerity that we seem to be taking part in. That is going against us.”