[arista]

Not a Top MP in my view


http://www.theguardian.com/politics/...ther-step-down

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/poli...on-stance.html


Will anyone notice?

[joeysteele]

I will, sort of anyway,she maybe could have been a future leader of the Lib Dems, in the 2010 election campaign as a student with other students we heard her speak once and she was very fair in what she believed and what she said she would and would not support in Parliament after the 2010 election.
She has over this parliament spoke against a good number of the Govts policies and behind all the criticism was likely a feeling that the Lib Dems should not have been supporting some of the policies especially the welfare reforms.

Not sure though if this is courage in standing down in 2015 or more the fact she is likely to be well beaten in her Brent seat as with the MP for Gordon in Scotland too, who also announced he was standing down in 2015.

However,I applaud that she says it is because of the direction in the main that Nick Clegg has taken the party and hasn't come up with nonsense like she wants to spend more time with family etc;
She is likely, in my view anyway, one of only 2 Lib Dem MPs who have held any credibility up to now from the 2010 election, herself and Charles Kennedy.
The rest are for me, irrelevant.

Good luck to her in the future, she could of course have gone over to Labour where far more of their already known policies are more in line with her beliefs and thinking.

[Kizzy]

That's a real shame, making way for more stooges and yes men....

[Livia]

She finally got her name in the newspaper.

[Nedusa]

A real politician a conviction politician one of a dying breed who finds it hard to represent such a shambles of a party .

Hope she stays in politics and finds a party or becomes an independent. Will work her socks off for her constituents , a very keen committed politician.

[Kizzy]

Originally Posted by Nedusa

A real politician a conviction politician one of a dying breed who finds it hard to represent such a shambles of a party .

Hope she stays in politics and finds a party or becomes an independent. Will work her socks off for her constituents , a very keen committed politician.

Yes I got that impression too from what I've read about her, shame that most seem to be nodding dogs these days.

[Livia]

If she's that good and that committed to her ideals, why isn't she standing as an independent next time? Or changing her allegiance to another party? Or is it all just too difficult? It's hard to understand the sudden admiration for a woman no one's ever heard of till she resigned.

[arista]

Originally Posted by Livia

If she's that good and that committed to her ideals, why isn't she standing as an independent next time? Or changing her allegiance to another party? Or is it all just too difficult? It's hard to understand the sudden admiration for a woman no one's ever heard of till she resigned.

Yes
she claims she will go in 2015.


so she is still floating about.

[Kizzy]

She may have plans, who knows?
And I've read several articles about her, the Spectator seems to think she was a worthy MP...
''The Liberal Democrat MP Sarah Teather has decided to stand down at the next election. I realise that this will not be a popular view on here, but I think that’s a great shame. She has been an unflinchingly principled, honest and always thoughtful MP; in essence it is the nature of the coalition which has convinced her that modern politics is a foul and dispiriting business. There’s a case to be made that she’s in the wrong party, mind, but that’s the only real criticism I could level at her.

She’s been attacked for her decision in the Daily Mail by that screeching agglomeration of recycled opinions and epic self-regard, Janet Street Porter. She has, according to this harridan, ‘let the side down’, and should have been ‘tougher’. Street Porter ranks Teather alongside that fly-by-night flibbertigibbet Louise Mensch, thereby missing the point entirely. There is a difference between principle and weakness, Street-Porter. I suspect too that Teather – like similarly talented female politicians before her, of which Estelle Morris is just one – found the boy’s club of the House of Commons bombastic and repulsive and the wheeling and dealing an anathema.''

http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/rod-lid...ons-boys-club/

[Livia]

Originally Posted by arista

Yes
she claims she will go in 2015.


so she is still floating about.

More dead wood. If she wants to go she should just go. It seems that all kinds of articles are being dug up on her... sadly for her the answer to her name around Parliament is mostly... "Who?"

[Kizzy]

Everyone knows who Sarah Teather is, she is the MP who in 2012 stood up for social justice to speak out and say that the benefit cap was wrong....

''There are all sorts of things you have to do when times are tight that have negative consequences but you do them for good purposes. But to do something for negative purposes that also has negative consequences – that is immoral," says Teather. She praised Nick Clegg for showing "immense courage" in limiting some of the effects of welfare cuts and urged her party to fight as hard as it possibly could to prevent more. She said many people in her constituency, which is one of the most ethnically diverse and deprived in the country, did not realise what was about to hit them next April''

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2...-sarah-teather


I feel she should had had support, and yet was expected to fold like a pack of cards in the face of the conservative steamroller.
A principled politician, a dying breed.

[Kizzy]

''Coalition, she says, has made matters worse because, inevitably and necessarily, it requires compromise, but it is not adequate as a reason for the Lib Dems' shifts of policy and the refusal to try to promote vigorously the party's core beliefs. "The official line on immigration has clearly moved a mile from where we were in 2010, miles from where we were when we were arguing for an earned route to citizenship and were clearly and unambiguously a liberal and pro-diversity party. Yes, we wanted a better-managed immigration system with exit checks, but we didn't faff around''

It is entirely understandable that she, as with thousands of voters became disillusioned following breaks from all Liberal Democrat policy, a career politician would toe the party line forevermore.
Sarah didn't, I don't see this as a negative and far from 'floating about' she has obligations.


http://www.theguardian.com/politics/.../sarah-teather