Talk:Liberal Democrat–Green Party alliance

Disputed

There are a lot of issues with this page, and would suggest either re-naming it to be an article about tactical voting, or deleting it entirely.

1. Most egregiously, the use of the word alliance is deeply misleading to the casual reader. An alliance is defined as "the state of being joined or associated", and has even more overt meaning in any political context. There is no alliance between the Green Party and the Liberal Democrats in the UK, so this page needs major revisions as it implies they are affiliated. Indeed the article itself is actually about highly localized tactical voting in a few places in historic UK elections. On councils all over the country different combinations of councillors and parties form arrangements all the time, there is nothing noteworthy about the two mentioned in this article, nor any reason to select these 2 examples versus the hundreds of others in the UK involving different parties.

2. This article is really about tactical voting / local council composition in one or two areas nationally 2017 to 2019 (Brighton and Oxford). But if you were to look at the page, it gives a misleading graphic of the two national parties side by side, with the leaders of those parties, their national statistics etc. Again, this strongly misleads the casual reader into thinking that this is a formal national alliance between the two parties, which is not the case. the examples quoted are selective and local. It incorrectly says that the arrangement in Oxford is known as the "Liberal Democrat Green Alliance" but the sourcing for that claim just takes you to the council website where it lists councillors, and makes no reference to this name.

3. Having quoted two local examples in Oxford in Brighton from 2017 to 2019, the article refers to "extending this" at the next election. In the references for that section it points to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unite_to_Remain, but on that page it clearly states "there was no formal pact" between parties.

4. The latest edit is a Lib Dem statement that "they are officially opposed to alliances, with senior party figures preferring a non-aggression pact with Labour over unilaterally standing down". So even the evidence in the article itself is pointing out that there are no alliances, and even that one member of this "Green Lib-Dem alliance" is opposed to alliances altogether.

My theory is that this page was written to try to encourage tactical voting as part of the Unite to Remain campaign, and it was given a misleading title to do that. The graphics on the page are giving the false impression of an alliance at a national level, and there is no sourcing to back up that claim. 95% of the references are referring to the Oxford and Brighton examples (now 5 years old!), and trying to universalize from that.

My suggestion would be to remove this page altogether, or submerge the examples here into the Unite to Remain page I mentioned above, or the local council pages involved. At the very minimum the title needs to reflect the time bound and limited nature of the examples it provides, and avoid misleading the reader into thinking a national alliance is in effect where it is not, which arguably is misinformation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ar918273 (talk • contribs) 11:53, 14 July 2024 (UTC)