 This month's local elections saw the Liberal Democrats make major gains and while they remained beneath their historically high share of the vote over the late 1990s and early 2000s, there's little doubt that they very much returned to the forefront of British politics, which begs a very important question. What precisely are the Liberal Democrats for? This is the party which championed austerity between 2010 and 2015 and was happy to hit the most vulnerable people in society the hardest just so long as they could put a 5p tax on plastic bags. This is the party which likes to present itself as the party of Remain of stopping Brexit and yet in their 2015 manifesto they committed themselves to an in-out referendum in the event of any further powers being transferred from Westminster to Brussels, which begs a question. If they would stop Brexit and if we remained, if such powers were transferred in the future would they want such an in-out referendum all over again? And then there's the fact that the legislation which made the following years referendum possible in 2015 was voted through by every single Liberal Democrat MP with the exception of Nick Clegg who wasn't there. They were joined by the likes of Chaka Umana and Caroline Lucas. So we're faced with the prospect of parliamentarians who put in their manifestos that they wanted in an out referendum, they legislated for an in-out referendum and then when they didn't get the result that they wanted decide they don't really want a referendum after all. If that looks and sounds and smells like political opportunism, that's because it is. My view is that their strategy for stopping Brexit, which seems to consist of photo shoots in central London knocking on a single door with Giva Hofstadt, the door being a door on a house worth £2.5 million probably won't be enough when you see the Brexit party holding mass meetings across the North and Midlands gathering thousands of people to their cause. Just a thought. Then there's the fact that Nick Clegg was their leader until 2015. Nick Clegg of course being a political leader who sold a generation out on tuition fees and more besides. Well now he earns more than a million pounds a year living in California and working for Facebook. Facebook is a company which made profits of more than £1.5 billion in Britain in 2017 and yet paid £7.4 million in tax. Was Nick Clegg's priority on taking the job to ensure that Facebook paid the right amount of taxation to Britain and elsewhere? Of course it wasn't. Instead he wants to stop the monopoly being broken up because of course we all know that a great Liberal Democrat cause is concentrating power as much as possible and ensuring a little regulation for one of the biggest companies in the world. Things are arguably even worse at the local level. Last week saw Liberal Democrats work alongside independents, Tories and UKIP in ensuring that the leader of Bolton Council was a conservative. Now that's not UKIP of two three years ago, it's not even the UKIP of Paul Nuttall. It's the UKIP of Gerald Batten and Sarkin of Akkad and Tommy Robinson. It's a party of bigots, Islamophobes and candidates who openly talk about the sexual assault of prominent women MPs. This is unforgivable for any progressive party but as we consistently see any political opportunity will always be taken by the Liberal Democrats no matter how reprehensible the consequences and the people they're working alongside. Between Brexit, plastic bags and Facebook, it's impossible to discern what the Liberal Democrats actually believe in and stand for. That is besides stealing mail from people's letter boxes and brazen opportunism. There are European elections later this month and if you want Britain to remain in the EU I can understand to an extent why you would vote for them. They're presenting themselves after all as the party of Remain. The truth is however they're deceiving you as they've always deceived people. And worse than a wasted vote, voting Liberal Democrat is actively harmful. The reason being it's their brand of politics, opportunism and working with the most degenerate, regressive elements of British politics which have brought us to the point where we are. Brexit partly happened because of austerity and it partly happened because of the Conservatives being in power between 2010 and 2015. The Liberal Democrats were their enablers and don't forget it.