Why don't the Labour Party and the Social Democrats merge?

The SD are just people from Labour who are afraid of going into government.

I don't see much upside really. They probably separately attract more votes and seats than they would as one party.

correct, Labour were punished for entering government in 2011. I think history will judge them favourably, they were part of an administration that had limited choices. However the economy we have now reflects this, it would be easy to do the student Union politics and sit it out with no constructive input

Who said anything about not wanting to be in government? I said it would be detrimental to a person on the left of centre to have their only option go into government and drift to the centre.

There is in fact precedent for this, with the democratic left and labour merging and then labour drifting towards the centre with the coalition of fg.

As its set up now, the two parties can in theory go into coalition being a junior party, and even if the party drifts towards the centre or left, the other party can stick to its principles.

I don't see any advantage to merging the parties if its not to try be a senior party in government, and based on the figures you suggested they wouldn't be.

History would beg to differ on this, everytime Labour has got to a certain size and gone into government as a junior party, they have made compromises and drifted to the centre, lost their core support and had to start rebuilding. On top of that, the merger with the democratic left in the 90's meant there was no viable alternative and we stay locked in our own version of a two party system. This cycle has been happening for the greens in part for the past 20 years too.

I really can't see any advantages at all for labour to merge with SD and they end up with 20 seats and go into government and have to compromise on their core principles. This in turn loses their core and they have to rebuild again. And alternatively if either wanted to govern and went in as the junior party, what is the advantage of being 20 as opposed to 12 or 10 seats? In fact let's go the full hog and say ff needed both SD and Labour to create a government, but they are negotiating with two separate parties, as opposed one twenty seat party, the power dynamic is now much more with the left parties than ff, and more compromises would have to be made by ff dealing with the two of them.

The only reason i can see anyone wanting them to merge is so that they are easier to push down again. Get Labour caught back in the two party trap they keep getting caught in, and bring the SD's down with them.

Choice is the strength of our system, and taking choice away from the public for the chance to have slightly higher seats in the next election and potentially being a junior party that has to compromise and lose their base, sounded good in the past, but history has proven otherwise

No you keep creating this strawman argument of B because its the only argument you have. I explained clearly in my past posts the strengths of staying separate and growing, hopefully to a point where one if not both could be a senior party in government. You reverted back to the "get back in line, once you reach a certain size you go in as a junior party, compromise and revert back to where I want you, we have a two party system here don't you know"

I even created a scenario where both parties stayed separate and went into government as both junior parties but with better collective bargaining, surely you can see the advantages to that?

The notion that neither party wants to govern is laughable, to the point of making any argument come across as biased. Soc Dems don't even exist 10 years, and Labour have been in government twice in the past 30 years.

They do want to govern, just not on the terms you want them to