UK Prime Minister Theresa May announces intention to hold general election

Is it, really?

People say things like this a lot at the moment, but the objective reality is that for a lot of graduates in the current tuition fees and student loans system, they are leaving university already tens of thousands of pounds in debt.

Earning anything resembling a "normal" graduate salary -- which of course isn't guaranteed these days -- they will then be making repayments that effectively increase their marginal income tax rate by a whopping 9%.

And with the current rate of inflation and the 3% extra interest that gets added on top, most of those repayments will actually just be servicing interest.

Bottom line: a young person graduating this year will have huge debts at the start of their career, they could be facing an extra tax-like burden for most of their working lives, and they're entering a workforce that demands more and offers less than any previous generation in recent history has faced. And that's before you even consider things like the housing market or the likelihood of that generation receiving a useful state pension by the time they retire.

How is anything related to Brexit, even in the most negative possible outcome, going to have anywhere close to that effect on the life of a young person who graduates this year?

I genuinely admire that you are motivated enough to get involved with UK politics - and I wish you all the best. You've no idea the disappointment I had in the LDs though - I cheered them on in a handful of successive elections (they ousted the Tories in my home constituency West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine in '97 much to my family's delight) and in the run-in to 2010 was convinced they could rise up to challenge Labour and the Conservatives.

And then to join the Tories - it just boggles the mind, I cannot fathom how anyone didn't think "won't this completely kill us off?". For one this basically lost them the foothold they had Scotland (my home constituency was lost to the SNP, for example) and whatever was left of the younger supporters who weren't turned off by the association with the Conservatives were then burned by the Tuition Fee saga in England.

We'll never know what would have happened with Brexit if the Lib Dems were still in the coalition. But they completely capitulated on a single extremely simple promise in 2010. Now I (a previous Lib Dem voter) have no reason to believe they wouldn't do the exact same again.

But overall, yeah you are right. I do not understand the Lib Dems. And it fucking saddens me.

I suspect he's considering his own position and the general dissatisfaction he faces among his current crop of MPs, and he's probably figuring this is a chance to clean house a bit. I also suspect the extremely short notice given by May is designed to frustrate that effort.

It's almost as if they'd rather have the Tories in government.

I imagine some current Labour MPs with Blairite leanings really might prefer having the Tories in government if a Corbyn-led administration is the alternative. The Tory position on a lot of issues is probably closer to their own.

Presumably the general public don't like him because the media have been telling them he's unelectable, even though he's been voted leader twice and his policies are popular with the electorate even if he isn't.

But being voted leader by a party who like him is far different from getting votes from anyone else, and almost everyone's policies are popular until you start asking the hard questions like how you're going to pay for it or who else is going to lose out as a result. I don't think either the general public's view of him or any resulting electability problems are entirely down to the media.

Without such a gamble the LibDems will remain in the also-ran group with UKIP and the Greens. You push any issue that gives you a wedge and use it to crack a few ridings and if necessary you write off the 1/3 in the hope of picking up 2/5 of the two larger parties.