Lib Dems and tuition fees

I've heard a lot of people claim that it's OK for the Lib Dems to support an increase in tuition fees because they didn't "win" the election. The rationale being that it is therefore OK for them to abandon their manifesto commitment as a necessary compromise in a coalition government. The most glaring problem with this rationale is that the promise the Lib Dems made was not merely a manifesto commitment, which I can see might be viewed as something more akin to a negotiating position when it comes to coalition talks. It was, in fact a promise signed by each and every candidate the party fielded as a pledge to the people who voted for them. Viewed in this way, it must therefore be true that each and every Lib Dem who either voted for, or abstained from, the tuition increase has, in fact, broken a promise they made as individual parliamentary candidates to their potential supporters. But I think there's another and different problem with the "we didn't win the election" argument, and it has to do with the UK's electoral system.

When the Lib Dems claim they "didn't win the election", one needs to ask oneself what do they actually mean? The Lib Dems should know more than any other party how biased the plurality system (FPTP) is. As a thought experiment, let's take a look at the Lib Dem's best polling figures from YouGov in the run up to the election, on 20th April 2010 the parties looked like this: Conservative 31%, Labour 26%, Lib Dem 34%. Had this been the way people voted in the election, it would have translated into 9.2 million votes for the Conservatives, 7.7 million votes for Labour, and 10.1 million votes for the Lib Dems. But would have resulted in a parliament with 240 Conservative MPs, 238 Labour MPs, and 141 Lib Dem MPs. The question arises, would the Lib Dems have considered this "winning the election"? Would they have demanded that Clegg had the right to be PM, even though his party had the smallest number of MPs of the three large parties, because the party had polled the greatest number of votes? The question further arises, if the Lib Dems demand that they must "win" an election before actually attempting to implement their policies, then they are essentially accepting that a system that discriminates against them is legitimate, and if they accept this, why do they want to change it?

Under the current system it is virtually impossible for the Lib Dems to "win" an election, if winning is defined as having the greatest number of MPs, simply because the system so badly discriminates against them.

It therefore follows that it is disingenuous for the Lib Dems to claim that they cannot keep a promise because they didn't "win", because they know they can never "win", even if they actually poll the largest share of the vote.

The argument is sophistry of the highest order.