By Nicholas Pentney | Wed 15th October 2014 – 8:55 am Published on Liberal Democrat Voice

Labour has put out a video in which it gives the Conservatives some handy tips as to how to not be the ‘nasty party’. The tongue-in-cheek clip doesn’t completely fail to amuse and is pretty accurate in what it says. Few here would doubt the Tories are still the nasty party. The Liberal Democrat leadership  is quite right when it says ‘compassionate Conservatism’ has been  exposed for the fraud it is. However, there is something unsettling when Labour is the one using the ‘nasty party’ stick to beat their Tory opponents with when Labour itself has clearly shown itself to have a propensity towards nastiness. To illustrate the very brazen hypocrisy, I’ve prepared a handy four-step guide that Labour may want to take heed off.

Step one. Don’t go round invading countries without a proper reason. It tends to kills lots and lots of innocent people, destabilises entire regions and heightens the threat of terror at home. Your leader publicly acknowledged that the Iraq war was wrong but he hasn’t apologised – that in itself is quite telling.

Step two. Don’t lock up innocent kids. Arbitrarily locking up anyone is bad enough but children?! Your practice of keeping the children of asylum seekers incarcerated in detention centres was truly abhorrent.

Step three. Don’t let the bankers run riot with the economy. You may have got rid of Clause IV and  joined the Thatcherite economic consensus but you shouldn’t go from 0-60 just like that – restrain yourselves!

Step four. Don’t help to ensure the long term survival of the other nasty party. 1997 was a real opportunity for you. A progressive alliance with the Liberal Democrats alongside a programme of constitutional reform that you were actually bothered about implementing could have delivered a knock out blow to the Conservatives. You knew this at the time. Instead you went for short-term gain.

And not to mention mention all other nasty things Labour has done in recent history: Iraq sanctions, complicity in rendition, tuition fees (at least we apologised!), huge growth in inequality, etc.

Many of our detractors say that we, the Liberal Democrats, should feel bad about ourselves because we are in a coalition government with the ‘nasty party’. Admittedly, it’s not nice having to work with someone you don’t like. That’s true for virtually every single field of work you care to imagine. However, with Labour’s proven capacity for nastiness, we should feel equally uneasy about working with them if it comes to that. That’s not to say that in the event we shouldn’t work with them, but merely to make the point that we shouldn’t feel better/worse  if we end up working with Nasty Party B rather than Nasty Party A or vice versa.

* Nicholas Pentney is a member of the Liberal Democrats in Torbay.