Con-Dem Nation is an independent and collaborative blog, written by bloggers, activists and anyone else who wishes to contribute, regardless of party affiliation.
The broad outlook of this blog is that the coalition government between Conservatives and Liberal Democrats is a promising and encouraging development in British politics, with the potential to make much needed reforms to this country – politically, economically and socially. We hope to see the new government fulfill this promise and meet this potential.
Whilst blogs exist which provide a voice for the Conservative and Liberal Democrat grass roots, the coalition, due to its cross-party nature, is in an unusual position of having no ‘grass roots’ of its own – a balance we would like to go some way address. We want to accentuate the positive areas where members of the parties agree, and provide a forum to discuss and debate the areas where they do not. The blogosphere has never divided perfectly along party lines, and now neither does the political system itself. It’s time there was a blog which reflected this.
We welcome dissenting opinion, and this blog is intended to be a forum for disagreement and civilised debate. We have no interest in supporting the coalition government blindly or slavishly, either, and we will seek to hold our new government to their promised mandate, as described in the parties’ manifestos and the Liberal Democrat-Conservative Agreement: an agreement to tackle the budget deficit, bring fairness to our tax system, reverse the erosion of our civil liberties under the Labour government and make wide-ranging and much-needed reforms to our political system.
More than this, we would like to see fulfilment of the promise of a new kind of politics. A new politics which is honest and open about making difficult and unpopular decisions, which values evidence and outcomes over populism and headlines, and in which the individual is held to be more important than the state, not the other way round.
Above all, this blog aims to be interesting, informative, positive, and fun.
