The students vs the Lib Dems

One of the things I heard yesterday when I strolled around the edges of the protests, particularly from older people, was how the coalition’s policies had politicised Britain’s young. “It has really made my children wake up”, said an elderly bystander with a wistful look in his eyes.  Student leaders say they now hope to punish Lib Dems who voted for the tuition fees, targeting MPs in seats such as Bath, Burnley, Bradford East, Bristol West and Brent Central.
 
The sense of rage directed against the Liberal Democrats comes, I suspect, from a deeper sense of betrayal – and not simply student dissatisfaction over today’s issue. In politics time flies, but less than a year ago the Lib Dems experienced a convention-defying pre-election surge because, as one student wrote in The Guardian, their policies – to scrap tuition fees, opposition to the Iraq war and plans to scrap Cold War weapons systems – “resonate[d] with the pragmatic idealism of youth.”