The Christmas market is the most visible product of Lincoln’s twinning arrangement with the German wine-producing town of Neustadt an der Weinstrasse. Besides the market, the twin-town relationship has led to all kinds of personal exchanges. The cost to the city council has been minimal but the benefits have been considerable.

But in the Essex town of Bishop’s Stortford, they see things differently. The Guardian (1 December) reported: ‘Bishop’s Stortford dumps its twin towns in France and Germany’. This decision has not gone unnoticed in Germany, where the news weekly Der Spiegel sees it as David Cameron’s ‘veto’ in microcosm.

Why has Bishop’s Stortford’s Tory-run town council made a unilateral decision to end more than 48 years of town twinning? The reason wasn’t cost savings, since twinning costs the council nothing. The council leader could offer no reason other than ‘lack of interest’, although the local Liberal Democrats say it stems from a visceral Tory hatred for the European Union.

The sole Liberal Democrat on the town council, Mike Wood, told the Guardian: “It’s indicative of modern-day Conservatives. They have this hang-up about Europe.” Mike added that Tory councillors had suffered a moment of ideological lunacy. “They are usually normal people. But whenever you mention Europe or the European Union they turn into some kind of monster.”

Mike Wood has hit on a fundamental problem, which goes far deeper than parochial issues of town twinning. The Tories have changed. It is hard to remember now that it was a Conservative prime minister, Edward Heath, who led Britain into Europe. Heath was part of a generation whose politics had been forged in the traumatic experience of the Second World War. Margaret Thatcher replaced Heath’s internationalism with small-minded populism. The typical Tory nowadays is a bitter and resentful figure, with a delusional yearning for a return to a 1950s-that-never-was.

The resulting Europhobic culture is having a profound and damaging effect on Britain’s interests. Two recent government decisions – Cameron’s so-called ‘veto’ and the restrictions on overseas students – may scratch a xenophobic itch but they will prove counter-productive by diminishing Britain’s power and influence. They are symbolic decisions, intended to prevent a Tory split or the loss of Tory votes to UKIP.

Euroscepticism is also indicative of a longer-term political trend. As in the USA, it seems that public opinion is dividing less along traditional economic lines and more between cultural differences. This trend was analysed by pollster Stephan Shakespeare (Observer, 17 April 2005):

Recent YouGov research suggests that we no longer range along a left-right axis, but are divided by ‘drawbridge issues’. We are either ‘drawbridge up’ or ‘drawbridge down’. Are you someone who feels your life is being encroached upon by criminals, gypsies, spongers, asylum seekers, Brussels bureaucrats? Do you think the bad things will all go away if we lock the doors? Or do you think it’s a big beautiful world out there, full of good people, if only we could all open our arms and embrace each other?

I examined the emerging ‘Kulturkampf’ in an article in Liberator (June 2004). And in a previous post on Lib Dem Voice (22 November 2008), I illustrated the cultural divide by showing how the Liberal Democrats’ demographics are the polar opposite of the BNP’s.

There are some on the right-wing of the Liberal Democrats whose wet dream is a longer-term alliance with the Tories, with possibly a pact or ‘coupon election’ in 2015 or even a centre-right re-alignment, enabling the Cameroons and Orange Bookers to unite and rid themselves of their respective pesky memberships.

But this assumes that there is a community of interest between the parties based on economic ideology. That is a questionable assumption. What is undisputable is that the parties are separated by a fundamental difference of cultural values between ‘drawbridge up’ and ‘drawbridge down’. This gulf makes any long-term arrangement with the Tories both impossible and pointless.

So the coalition can never be more than a short-term pragmatic arrangement. Truly, the Tories are Not Like Us.

Simon Titley helps to write and produce Liberator magazine.

Peter Barton at Lincolnshire County Council turns WebThrift’s claim on its head. He estimates the cost impact of turning the web OFF at the council: click here for details.

What is WebThrift’s real agenda? Who could possibly benefit by the isolation of people from local government?

* Simon Titley is a Liberal Democrat activist who helps to write and produce Liberator magazine.

The trouble with this initiative is that it emphasises process rather than politics. The ‘instant policy discussion kit’, in particular, reminds me of the sketch in Monty Python’s Meaning of Life in which a couple of middle-aged American tourists enters a restaurant and is offered conversational topics instead of food. Whenever did we lose our spontaneity?

Jeremy rightly highlights the lack of debate in the party but this problem goes beyond the narrow question of involvement in policy-making. Healthy political debate should be the lifeblood of the party. It supplies vitality and a sense of purpose to inspire and motivate our members and supporters. It supplies rigour and vigour to our ideas and policies.

But debate is also the lifeblood of democracy because politics is ultimately about making moral choices. You can’t revive politics without having real debate about those choices, which means argument about competing ideas, not a heavily managed process.

Advocates of ‘consensus politics’ stigmatise debate as ‘yah-boo politics’ but it is a myth that people dislike political argument. Substantial argument is what differentiates parties and politicians, and provides people with a real choice. It is the absence of argument and thus choice that has driven down participation and voter turnout, because it makes politicians sound the same and politics seem irrelevant. And when the mainstream parties (of which the Liberal Democrats are now one) can’t be differentiated, it is the parties on the fringe that stand out and benefit from our reticence.

The mere fact that ‘Engage’ is deemed necessary tells us that something has gone horribly wrong. Political debate has declined because, since the 1980s, our political life has been hollowed out and drained of ideological content. If ‘Engage’ plans to address this state of affairs, it must first understand how and why de-politicisation happened. There are several reasons, many of which are common to British politics and not specific to the Liberal Democrats:

• The ‘end of ideology’ – Following the end of the cold war, the basic ideological questions were assumed settled. The argument within the political mainstream was confined to a debate about nuances or replaced by personality issues.

• Moral relativism – It became unfashionable to express clear moral or ethical opinions. There were no longer any universal values, no ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. Anyone failing to observe this proscription was accused of being ‘judgemental’.

• Managerialism – Politics implies the existence of alternatives. But since the big questions were assumed settled and morality was derided, politics was replaced by managerialism, with its talk of ‘efficiency’, ‘targets’ and ‘delivery’.

• Followership – With no great causes to fight for or any distinguishing ideas to set them apart, politicians resorted to followership rather than leadership. Instead of engaging in ideological argument with one another, they competed to agree with public opinion.

• Marketing – To achieve followership, politicians imported American election campaign techniques modelled on the psychoanalytical methods employed in advertising and marketing. Focus groups and opinion polls were used to determine policy, which often amounted to little more than superficial ‘initiatives’ contrived to capture the next day’s headlines.

• Spin – Politicians dared not risk communicating uncomfortable information to the public because they feared it would be rejected. So they tried to tell the public what they thought the public wanted to hear. The political culture of spin is simply a logical outcome of the belief that all communication must be attractive.

These trends have emptied politics of meaning. Mainstream politicians no longer stand up for what they believe in (assuming they still believe in anything). Instead of genuine debate, we get a litany of sanitised and banal slogans.

As if this were not bad enough, the Liberal Democrats added some methods of their own for suppressing debate:

• Merger – When the Liberal Party and SDP merged in 1988, the new party’s leading figures were terrified that the merger might unravel. They responded by centralising power and making ideological debate taboo. The party conference was effectively neutered by confining debate to ‘take it or leave it’ motions endorsing green papers.

• Demonisation of the membership – Since the 1970s (if not earlier), what might loosely be termed the party’s ‘right wing’ has never really been an ideological project (its ideological fads have come and gone). Instead, it has been characterised by a belief that a Westminster-based elite always knows best and has an entitlement to power; and that the duty of party members is to accept what they are told uncritically. This attitude was reinforced at the merger by the SDP leadership’s paranoia rooted in its experience of Labour Party in-fighting. Hence the perennial attacks on the conference and grassroots members, the smear stories about ‘beards and sandals’ and the idiotic demands for a ‘Clause 4 Moment’.

• ‘Middle ground’ strategy – Successive leaderships have believed in the folly of converging on the same crowded territory as New Labour and the Tories. As a result, the Liberal Democrats have spent more time trying to avoid causing offence to voters who don’t share their values than they have trying to enthuse and mobilise voters who do. (The honourable exception was Charles Kennedy’s opposition to the Iraq war – consider how the party benefitted by standing out from the crowd, and how much more it might benefit if it did likewise in other areas of policy).

• Parochialism – Community politics, which began with noble aims, rapidly degenerated into an obsession with electoral tactics, based on a conviction that the party could advance solely by exploiting local grievances. This enables the party to duck moral choices. There is no incentive to debate when the party is fixated on parochial issues about which there is no argument. After all, everyone agrees that dog shit and pot holes are a bad thing.

• ‘We can win everywhere’ – If everyone agrees that dog shit and pot holes are a bad thing, it follows that the party can appeal equally to every demographic in every location. But this strategy inhibits the party from saying anything controversial that might capture people’s imagination, because there’ll always be someone in somebody’s ward somewhere that might be offended.

• Anti-intellectualism – The party’s local campaigning style demands a Stakhanovite work ethic, producing a culture of ‘mindless activism’ that prizes brawn over brain. People who debate political ideas are disparaged as dilettantes (“They should be out delivering leaflets!”). This is why too many of the party’s MPs and PPCs are ‘casework kings’ lacking the intellect to grasp the bigger picture.
If Jeremy Hargreaves and his team want ‘Engage’ to achieve its stated aims, they must recognise and tackle these issues. They should ask themselves why previous initiatives, notably ‘Meeting the Challenge’, ran into the sand and had no lasting impact. And they will face some stiff opposition:

• They must confront the arrogant and snobbish elite in and around Westminster that holds the party’s membership and internal democracy in contempt.

• They must confront the marketing men in the leader’s bunker who would back a policy of slaughtering all the first-born if their focus group feedback suggested it might play well.

• They must confront a leader who thinks the best way to introduce a profound change to tax policy is to slip a couple of lines into the pre-manifesto while nobody’s looking.

• They must confront the national media and its tendency to vilify all debate as a ‘row’, a ‘split’ or a ‘challenge to the leadership’.

• They must confront ascetic party activists who believe that the human soul is redeemed by delivering leaflets in a force 10 gale.

It is clear that encouraging real debate will require more than arranging some extra ‘pizza & politics’ evenings. Restoring political content and meaning to the party needs a radical culture change. And when British politics is at an historic turning point, it is an urgent task. At this time of crisis, with the economic and political systems thoroughly discredited, the Liberal Democrats should be brimming with bold ideas about the way forward – but where are their vision, clarity and passion? Where is the evidence of strategic thinking, original insights or ideological coherence? Not in ‘Make it Happen’ or ‘A Fresh Start for Britain’, that’s for sure.

The party should be articulating a compelling political vision of where we want to be heading and how we might try to get there. How could ‘Engage’ stimulate this? Here are a few practical ideas for getting some real debate going:

• Local ideas – The Liberal Democrats control or share control in many local authorities. Here, political debate is not academic but a real exercise in using power. The ‘Engage’ team, together with ALDC, should conduct an audit in places such as Sheffield, Camden, Newcastle and Bristol. How is the party’s membership involved in local policy-making? How are local communities involved? How are Liberal principles applied in practice? Let’s find out and get the best ideas circulated more widely and adopted around the party.

• Book clubs – Book clubs are very popular throughout Britain and the party should exploit this trend. In recent years, three important books have been published about Liberal Democrat ideas – The Orange Book, Reinventing the State and the IPPR’s Beyond Liberty. Yet how many party members have read all three books? Perhaps a hundred at most. Or what about the significant booklets published lately, such as the ALDC’s The Theory and Practice of Community Economics and Community Politics Today, or the booklet edited by Graham Watson and me, Liberalism – something to shout about? Or major Liberal works, from John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty to Vince Cable’s The Storm? ‘Engage’ should organise a network of local book clubs within the party, bulk-buy and circulate these books, and get members reading and arguing.

• Thinkers’ panel – ‘Engage’ has produced “a list of potential guest speakers” but how many of these are simply bog-standard spokespeople who would probably only trot out the party line? Treating party members to a passive experience is unlikely to provoke much debate. Instead, ‘Engage’ should be encouraging local parties to invite the party’s more stimulating and provocative thinkers, to lead discussions not deliver speeches.

• Stop framing debates – The outcome of political debate is determined more by the way a debate is framed than the actual debate itself. The party’s Federal Policy and Conference Committees have had an unfortunate habit of ironing out differences before conference, to present a pre-digested compromise for rubber-stamping. Instead, ‘Engage’ must ensure these differences are aired throughout the party – at meetings and online – then brought to the floor of conference. Let’s see some genuine debate at conference instead of a stage-managed series of stock speeches by MPs and PPCs.

• Stop apologising – ‘Engage’ must draw the poison by removing the contrite and conciliatory tone from the party’s policy statements. No matter how healthy the debate ‘Engage’ fosters, its achievements will be neutralised if the party continues to express its policies in mealy-mouthed terms. There is no point having any policy unless we are prepared to argue for it passionately.

Above all, ‘Engage’ must promote the idea that political debate is more than merely permissible or a luxury you can fit in if you’ve got time. Debate is essential otherwise the party loses its ideological purpose.
We’ll know ‘Engage’ has worked when political debate is normal; when our members think nothing of going down the pub for a good argument without any prompts from Cowley Street; when the resulting grassroots opinion counts for something; and when our party argues its case in the honest language of liberal values instead of the doublespeak of marketing slogans.

The last thing the party needs is another safety valve. If ‘Engage’ is to be of any lasting value, it must take risks and encourage genuine debate because, as D H Lawrence said, “it would be fun to upset the apple-cart and see which way the apples would go a-rolling.”

And if that prospect unsettles you, remember Voltaire’s words: “Doubt is an unpleasant mental state, but certainty is ridiculous.”

* Simon Titley is a Liberal Democrat activist who does what he can to provoke debate by helping to write and produce Liberator magazine.

You don’t have to be a Grumpy Old Man to find jargon, buzzwords and clichés irritating. Back in 1996, I attempted to do something about this problem in the public relations agency in which I then worked. I took the unorthodox view that there was no excuse for professional communicators to use such language. Jargon got in the way of effective communication because it made us sound pompous, silly or unintelligible. Disciplining ourselves to use plain English would make us better communicators.

To illustrate the problem, I translated the beginning of the Book of Genesis into PR jargon:

1. At the outset, God’s agenda was to basically focus on his core deliverables, namely two leading-edge products, (a) heaven and (b) earth.
2. However, the earth lacked an overall concept, and had a low profile in terms of its key audiences. Obviously the Spirit of God had to step back and benchmark the existing waters before his game plan could get the green light.
3. And God’s key message was that light was a strategic objective, and it was covered-off.
4. And God’s perception of the light was that it was fit for purpose. However, his desired goal was that light and darkness should be differentiated in the marketplace.
5. So God branded the light ‘Day’, and the darkness he branded ‘I Can’t Believe It’s Not Light’. And the evening session and morning session made up Day One.
6. Then God set out with the object of factoring-in a firmament to interface with the existing generic waters, to bring to the party two segmented brands.
7. So God tasked himself with the job of rolling-out a firmament, to supply a proactive vehicle for launching his two distinct waters products, and it was up and running.
8. And God branded the firmament ‘heaven’. And at close of play, the prioritised actions for Day Two were ticked off.

(From my essay, ‘Let’s run this up the flagpole and see who salutes’).

The problem is still with us and I have my own pet peeves:

• Business jargon – Currently the most pervasive and pernicious example is ‘going forward’. You can strip this phrase out of any sentence and the meaning remains unchanged. Simple use of the future tense does the job better. The Liberal Democrats are not immune; for example, the terms of reference for last year’s Bones Commission talked of ‘stretch goals’ and ‘step change’.
• American jargon – The use of baseball metaphors is wholly inappropriate in a country that does not play baseball. ‘Touch base’, ‘Stepping up to the plate’ and ‘Coming from left field’ are common examples. British people who use such phrases usually do not understand what they are saying themselves.
• Media jargon – Presenters who say, “At the top of the hour”.
• Young people’s jargon – Like, whatever.
• Trendy jargon – It’s a big ask.
• Blog jargon – Disagreeing with someone in a condescending manner by replying, “Erm, no.”
• Political jargon – In an echo of Richard Nixon’s ‘moral majority’, politicians of all parties try to identify with ‘hard-working families’. Not content with this, Nick Clegg and Danny Alexander persist with dismal variations on the theme: ‘hard-pressed families’, ‘struggling families’, ‘ordinary families’ and now ‘modern families’.
• Liberal Democrat jargon – If I hear another Lib Dem councillor refer to something in his ward as “on my patch”, I shall remove his reproductive organs with a rusty boat-hook. Meanwhile, many Focus editors are using the same hackneyed phrases they were publishing 25 years ago.

Jargon is not a new problem. George Orwell analysed it in 1946, in his essay ‘Politics and the English Language’. Orwell’s view is that ugly and inaccurate English prose causes foolish thoughts and dishonest politics:

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.”

Orwell offered this advice:

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?”

Jargon is not the preserve of Sir Humphrey Appleby and David Brent. It is not merely an annoyance to Grumpy Old Men. It is a serious political problem, as the Plain English Campaign has demonstrated. It has been campaigning against gobbledygook, jargon and misleading public information since 1979. If the Liberal Democrats use this sort of language, they are not only blunting their political effectiveness but also disenfranchising people who cannot understand what they mean. Getting rid of this tribal language is not about ‘dumbing down’. It is about being clear and concise.

If you are a Liberal Democrat councillor, check whether your council is one of the 300 local authorities that hold the Plain English Campaign’s Crystal Mark. If it is not, campaign to raise standards. And please note that a Crystal Mark is no excuse for complacency. Guess which Lib Dem-led local authority – both a Crystal Mark holder and a corporate member of the Plain English Campaign – recently won an award from the Financial Times for management twaddle.

Together we can fight and defeat jargon, buzzwords and clichés. Please leave a comment with the jargon words and phrases you find irritating, particularly those you wish to see banished from the Liberal Democrat lexicon. (If I were prone to Lib Dem jargon, I would invite you to “get it off your chest”).

With any luck, the result of our cruel mockery will be a party that communicates more effectively.

* Simon Titley is a Liberal Democrat activist who helps write and produce Liberator magazine.

The Guardian (20 November) published an interactive map showing the concentration of BNP membership by parliamentary constituency.

On BBC2′s Newsnight (19 November), its political editor Michael Crick drilled down further. Newsnight commissioned polling company Ipsos-MORI to analyse the BNP membership list. The top five places where BNP members live are Halifax, Blackburn, Blackpool, Leicester and Romford. There are hardly any members in Scotland and few in the rest of London outside Romford. The membership is 80% male.

The places where BNP members live was also analysed according to the ‘mosaic’ system used by marketing companies to break down the country into different social categories. The highest concentration of BNP members is in the ‘Ties of Community’ category, defined as “close-knit communities, small industrial towns, terraced housing, strong Labour voting”.

The second concentration is in the ‘Blue Collar Enterprise’ category, defined as “council estates, not well-educated, self reliant (often bought their council house), ‘Sun’ readers”. The category where BNP membership is weakest is ‘Urban Intelligence’, defined as “young single, well-educated, Liberal views, prosperous”. The biggest concentration of BNP membership in terms of social class is C2 (skilled working class), more concentrated there than among the lower D/E classes of unskilled working class and unemployed.

The demographics of BNP membership come as no surprise – older, uneducated, white males form the bedrock of support for far-right parties throughout Europe. But what this profile also illustrates is that, in demographic as well as ideological terms, BNP membership is the polar opposite of Liberal Democrat support.

The ‘we can win everywhere’ brigade won’t like it, but the Liberal Democrats also have marked demographic characteristics. Our party’s natural support can be found more among those who are younger, better educated and more cosmopolitan than average. The evidence is overwhelming:

• At the 2005 general election, the Liberal Democrats performed best among voters aged 18-35 and worst among those aged over 65. Indeed, the Lib Dems captured a higher percentage of voters aged under 35 than the Tories (see ICM poll, May 2005). This was despite a Lib Dem election manifesto skewed towards the interests of elderly voters. Many of the seats gained in the 2005 election had a younger and better-educated population than average, with a university in or near the constituency (for example Cambridge, Bristol West and Manchester Withington). A recent ICM poll (October 2008) underlined this trend; Lib Dem support is strongest in the 25-34 age group at 31% and weakest among the over-65s at only 4% (figures not adjusted for don’t knows and refusers).

• In the 2004 European election, the trend was even more striking. Michael Steed analysed the results in an article in Liberator 201 (March 2005). In Greater London, he found that the Liberal Democrats performed best in the central and western boroughs where the population is younger, better educated and more cosmopolitan than average. They did worst in Barking and Dagenham, the borough with the least educated and third oldest population. Steed went so far as to say that the Lib Dem result could have been predicted on the basis of 2001 census data and that local campaigning appeared to have made little difference.

• As Liberal Democrat Voice readers know, recent research shows that Lib Dem voters are more intelligent than average.

• The annual British Social Attitudes Survey regularly shows a direct correlation between higher education and liberal attitudes. As an increasing proportion of the population experiences university, liberal attitudes gain ground. Take the example of the death penalty, a key issue distinguishing small ‘l’ liberals from small ‘c’ conservatives. A tipping point was reached three years ago, when a YouGov poll conducted for the Daily Telegraph (3 January 2006) showed that support for the restoration of the death penalty had fallen below 50% for the first time since its abolition 40 years previously. Young people were much less in favour of restoring capital punishment than their elders. Significantly, support for restoration was lowest among Lib Dem voters, at 35%.

• Liberal culture and policies provide economic benefits to the younger, better educated and more cosmopolitan demographic. Professor Richard Florida (see his book ‘The Rise of the Creative Class’ and website) demonstrated a strong correlation between having a liberal and tolerant culture and enjoying economic success. He studied 100 American cities and found that liberal cities – those that are welcoming places for creative and bohemian people, ethnic minorities and gays – tend to thrive economically, whereas cities with a conservative and intolerant culture tend to fail. This is not a purely American phenomenon. Similar research has been conducted elsewhere in the western world (including Europe) and the findings are similar.

• During the 2005 general election campaign, the polling company YouGov revealed where a new fault line was opening up in public opinion. Its director Stephan Shakespeare suggested in the Observer (17 April 2005) that voters no longer range along a left-right axis, but are divided by ‘drawbridge issues’.

We are either ‘drawbridge up’ or ‘drawbridge down’. Are you someone who feels your life is being encroached upon by criminals, gypsies, spongers, asylum seekers, Brussels bureaucrats? Do you think the bad things will all go away if we lock the doors? Or do you think it’s a big beautiful world out there, full of good people, if only we could all open our arms and embrace each other?”

‘Drawbridge down’ is clearly where the Liberal Democrats belong. No other party represents such people, so why compete with the Conservatives, Labour, UKIP and the BNP for the bigoted ‘drawbridge up’ vote? It is quite mystifying why the Lib Dems seem more concerned to appease the people least likely to vote for them, than to energise the people most likely to.

For example, the party’s recent pre-manifesto ‘Make it Happen’ contained some unpleasant ‘dog whistles’ clearly aimed at ‘drawbridge up’ voters. In the section headed “Why have we lost our sense of community?” – where you would have thought Liberals had something distinctive to say – the key policy highlighted in bold text was a proposal to introduce “proper border checks”. Meanwhile, the only mention of the European Union was a call for a referendum.

This is rank defeatism. It risks alienating our core support while making us sound indistinguishable from the other parties. It is also short-sighted when social attitudes are moving in a liberal direction.

The biggest electoral barrier to Liberal Democrat long-term success is that the party’s support is transient and shallow. Indeed, polls and election studies ever since the merger have shown that about half of Lib Dem voters cannot even recall correctly which way they voted. The Lib Dem vote is like a bath with the taps left on and the plug left out. At each election, the party has to put a disproportionate effort into winning its previous vote afresh, and hence struggles to reach much beyond 20%. No more than 10% of the electorate remains loyal to the party, compared with a core vote of roughly 25% enjoyed by both Labour and the Tories. To remedy this, the party must cement the allegiance a larger base vote – and younger, better educated, more cosmopolitan people are the likeliest source.

Let us be clear what a ‘core’ or ‘base’ vote means. It does not mean all the people who vote for us or the only people who should vote for us. It means the people most likely to remain loyal to the Liberal Democrats and therefore the group whose support the party should consolidate as a base on which it can build.

But the necessary base vote cannot be secured if the party – forever petrified of causing offence – tries to be all things to all men or pitches to the wrong demographic altogether. The Liberal Democrats will never become a party of government if they sound like the boxer who, in the words of the song, was “afraid to throw a punch that might land”. The party must learn that it cannot attract without also repelling.

The real test will come at next June’s European elections. The Liberal Democrat campaign in 2004 was a disgrace. Activists were instructed not to mention Europe but focus on local issues. This strategy failed. Far from mollifying Eurosceptics, the party ended up coming fourth behind UKIP. Say what you like about UKIP, but at least it campaigned for what it believed in. The Lib Dems didn’t and consequently failed to mobilise their natural support.

The biannual Standard Eurobarometer poll regularly shows that roughly one-third of British voters are pro-European (with one-third anti- and the remainder holding no strong views either way). Significantly, pro-European respondents tend to be younger and better educated than average. Now you may say that 33% is a minority, but it is a substantially greater one than the 14.9% who voted Lib Dem in 2004. And if we fail to stand up for this large group of people, they have nowhere else to turn.

The 2009 Euro campaign is an opportunity for the Liberal Democrats to be true to themselves, energise their natural support and consolidate a core vote, instead of indulging in yet another futile attempt to appease their opponents. So let’s stand up for ‘our’ people and stop imagining that everyone everywhere is equally likely to vote Lib Dem.

* Simon Titley is a Liberal Democrat activist who helps write and produce Liberator magazine.

We asked the following six questions:

Q.1 – What relevant experience will you bring to the presidency?

Q.2 – The presidency has three functions that do not necessarily sit well together – representing the party to the leadership, acting as a figurehead at functions, and chairing the Federal Executive. Which of these will you be best at, and which worst?

Q.3 – Will COG (the Chief Officers Group proposed by the Bones Commission) make the party run more smoothly or will it create a democratic deficit?

Q.4 – The party is in a poor financial state and its fund-raising activities have been neither transparent nor scandal-free. What will you do to improve the situation?

Q.5 – The next major election campaign will be the 2009 European election but the party is divided over strategy. Some argue that the party should campaign like it did in 2004 (i.e. focus on local target wards and not mention European issues). Others argue that the party should fight on a pro-European platform to avoid coming fourth behind UKIP again. They cannot both be right. Which strategy do you prefer?

Q.6 – “We can win everywhere.” Really?

You can read the candidates’ answers here.

* Simon Titley is a Liberal Democrat activist who helps write and produce Liberator magazine.

In common with many MPs of that era, de Freitas did not maintain a home in his constituency (a practice that at least had the merit of incurring no controversial expense claims). Indeed, he spent little time in his constituency at all. On the rare occasions he paid a visit, he and his wife would get in the Rolls Royce and drive north to Lincoln, his chauffeur following in a Morris Traveller. When the convoy reached the constituency boundary, it came to a halt. Mr and Mrs de Freitas would get out of the Rolls and into the Morris, and make a suitably modest entry into the city. The chauffeur followed at a discreet distance in the Rolls.

I was reminded of this story by the Liberal Democrats’ constant refrain throughout Make it Happen (.pdf) and the Million Door Challenge about the need for politicians to “listen”. The recent cold-calling debacle and last year’s ‘Community Canvass Week’ were based on a similar premise. But is this really the problem?

Far from politicians not listening, they have never listened more. In the 1950s, most MPs – not just Geoffrey de Freitas – put in only token appearances in their constituencies, while local councillors were never seen from one election to the next. Yet electoral turnouts and party memberships were at an all-time high. Nowadays, most elected politicians conduct regular surgeries and carry unprecedented loads of casework; they are accessible online via e-mails, websites and blogs; they deliver leaflets and appear regularly in various local media; and they conduct frequent surveys and polls. Today, a politician with Geoffrey de Freitas’s hauteur would not even get selected, never mind elected. Yet people still moan that politicians are “out of touch”.

There is clearly a widespread sense of powerlessness and alienation but, given all the listening that is going on, it is doubtful that more of it is the solution. Might the real problem lay elsewhere?

To find out why people feel so alienated, it is worth studying the conclusions of the Power Inquiry (.pdf), published by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust in 2006, which examined why people are disengaging from democratic politics. This report found that the underlying cause of disengagement is social change, a shift to a post-industrial society in which voters are less deferential, better educated and no longer feel bound by traditional class loyalties. Notably, a significant factor behind people’s disillusionment is a feeling that “political parties and elections require citizens to commit to too broad a range of policies.” In other words, in our atomised society, people are less willing to make compromises and unrealistically expect a bespoke offer from their politicians. This chimes with the analysis of the effects of consumerism on politics in my essay in Reinventing the State.

To remedy the situation, the Rowntree report makes several recommendations. These do not include knocking on a million doors, having nothing to say and merely asking people what they want. (For a more detailed criticism of the ‘Liberal Democracy = asking them what they want’ school of thought, see my article in Liberator (April 2008), pages 8-9 – .pdf). In fact, ‘listening’ campaigns such as the ‘Million Door Challenge’, ‘Community Canvass Week’ and cold-calling do more harm than good:

• They fail to empower people but instead encourage the idea that voters are merely supplicants.
• They foster the expectation that politicians can satisfy millions of individualised wants simultaneously, when politicians’ inability to do so is at the root of popular disillusionment with the whole democratic process.
• They assume that public opinion is fixed and deny the party any confidence in its ability to change people’s minds.
• They fail to establish a clear brand image, the lack of which is the Liberal Democrats’ biggest handicap. Instead, by ducking moral choices and avoiding clear statements of values, they make the party’s image even vaguer.
• By failing to establish moral clarity, they contribute to the widespread sense that all the main parties look the same (the Rowntree report identified as a major cause of alienation the fact that “the main political parties are widely perceived to be too similar and lacking in principle”).

And anyway, these superficial consultation exercises ought to be redundant in a party that practices community politics as it was originally intended. Surely all our activists are already genuinely empowering people as part of their year-round campaigning. Aren’t they?

It would be bad enough if the ‘Million Door Challenge’ were just a vacuous marketing exercise. In the current political climate, it is obscene. The financial markets are on a precipice, the war in Afghanistan is being lost, the Arctic ice cap is shrinking, and all the party can say is, “Dunno, mate, you tell me.”

Running on empty is not a serious option. Politicians of all parties must stand for something, not blow with the wind. Their job is to lead, not follow; to persuade, not accept public opinion as a given. This does not mean being arrogant. Politicians should engage in debate and connect with people’s concerns. But they can do this effectively only if they have a clear sense of right and wrong, and they should not be afraid to communicate that moral clarity to the electorate. The people have the right to elect or reject them on that basis. But any politician who has no idea of what he stands for and instead can only ask “you tell me” is unfit for office.

My advice to Liberal Democrat activists is to ignore the empty ‘Million Door Challenge’ and not attempt to communicate with the electorate unless they have something worth saying. They would do better to emulate, for example, the clarity and rigour of Vince Cable’s bold statements on the economic crisis, or the passion of Henry Porter’s speech about freedom at the recent Liberal Democrat conference rally.

My advice to any unfortunate voter on the receiving end of the ‘Million Door Challenge’ would be to ask the canvassers on your doorstep one simple question: “What do the Liberal Democrats stand for?” If they cannot provide a clear answer, a short message about sex and travel is in order.

Simon Titley is a Liberal Democrat activist who helps write and produce Liberator magazine.

The authors argue that the Labour Party must abandon its centralising Fabian tradition and become liberal. No mention of the fact that a perfectly acceptable liberal party already exists.

The article has already earned an angry reposte from John Harris in Monday’s Guardian.

Well, chaps, what do we think?

The previous contributors to this series have bombarded the new leader with laundry lists of demands without setting out clear, objective criteria for their choices.

And that’s the problem. Everyone will want a piece of Nick Clegg. He will face persistent and conflicting demands from the party, from parliament, from constituents, from the media, from lobbyists, from Uncle Tom Cobbley and all. Not to mention the more reasonable expectations of his wife, family and friends.

So I have one simple piece of advice for Nick. Take a copy of the party constitution, turn to the preamble and read these words:

The Liberal Democrats exist to build and safeguard a fair, free and open society, in which we seek to balance the fundamental values of liberty, equality and community, and in which no-one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity. We champion the freedom, dignity and well-being of individuals, we acknowledge and respect their right to freedom of conscience and their right to develop their talents to the full. We aim to disperse power, to foster diversity and to nurture creativity. We believe that the role of the state is to enable all citizens to attain these ideals, to contribute fully to their communities and to take part in the decisions which affect their lives.

This is not just a fine statement of the twin values of liberalism and social justice. It is also a statement of intent.

Now, have this extract from the preamble blown up on a large sheet of paper and stick it to your office wall. And each day, judge every demand on your time with this question:

“Will this use of my scarce time and resources contribute towards the achievement of our party’s basic goals?”

What else has any point?

There are essentially six things that Vince has got right:

1) Moral clarity – Politics is ultimately about making moral choices. Vince’s statements make it clear that he has a sense of right and wrong. You may not agree with him, but his moral standpoint is unambiguous. Such conviction is important because voters relate far more strongly to values than they do policies. The battle for hearts and minds takes place on the battleground of values, not ‘carefully-costed programmes’ or ‘ten-point plans’. We need detailed policies so that we have something we could implement if elected, but there is a crucial difference between programmes and values. We need to give people positive reasons to support us. These come from connecting emotionally rather than hoping the voters will pore over policy details. (Anyone interested in exploring this issue further should read George Lakoff’s recent book, ‘Don’t Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate’).

2) Focus – Vince’s messages are uncluttered. He has focused on just a few issues (such as Northern Rock and the debt crisis) and has hammered them home again and again. He has avoided the temptation to speak out on too many diverse issues, which would have dissipated his impact. Instead, he has enabled the party to stake out distinct territory and set the agenda.

3) Simple propositions – Note “simple” and not simplistic. Vince’s statements did not abandon intellectual rigour. But there is an art to taking a complex idea and boiling it down to a proposition that anyone can grasp. This is not about “dumbing down” but being concise. As a result, everyone is clear what the Liberal Democrats would have done differently with Northern Rock. For all George Osborne’s shrill point-scoring, can one say the same of the Tories?

4) Balls – Vince has taken risks, but some have suggested that only a temporary leader can afford to do this. Why? There is no reason why our next (non-temporary) leader cannot show an equal degree of testicular fortitude. As Charles Kennedy demonstrated with the Iraq War, bravery pays dividends. Liberal Democrats are too inclined to pull their punches for fear of causing offence. We have acquired the unfortunate habit of adopting policies only to hedge them with qualifications or express them in mealy-mouthed terms. This “on the one hand, on the other hand” approach neither enthuses our base nor challenges our opponents. There is no point having any policy unless we are prepared to argue for it passionately. It’s time for Liberals to come out of the closet.

5) Killer instinct – Vince Cable and Gordon Brown are old friends from way back. This did not inhibit Vince from making his killer “Mr Bean” remark. Politics is not a nice business and there are times when we must be aggressive and go for our opponents’ jugular.

6) Wit – Vince’s jokes at PMQs may not have been in the same league as Dorothy Parker, but they were top notch by parliamentary standards. Wit, when used with economy and precision, can have a devastating effect. It also ensures that you are remembered. Vince himself has remarked that he overheard his jokes being repeated in the pub. Is there any higher political accolade?

* Simon Titley, besides helping to write and produce Liberator magazine, is also a public relations consultant.

We asked both candidates the same six questions on the same terms, enabling you to compare and contrast their answers.

Every political leader has one – a group of staff and unpaid advisors acting as an ‘inner circle’. At best, such groups provide leaders with a sounding board and confidential advice from people they can trust. At worst, a bunker mentality develops, with the inner circle isolating the leader and feeding him information selectively.

Ming Campbell was not in the job long enough for this to become a serious problem but all his predecessors, at least as far back as David Steel, eventually retreated into the bunker.

The bunker syndrome has done considerable damage to the party. Isolation – combined with hubris – encourages the leader to inhabit an increasingly delusional universe, which inevitably generates conflict with party members not sharing his alternative reality. Paranoia ensues and the leader reacts by valuing personal loyalty over competence (incidentally, the fundamental failing of the Bush administration).

But the most damaging effect is the risk-averse culture. A good example is the party’s decision to oppose the Iraq War. Few now think this was a bad idea but it was another story in 2002-03. Charles Kennedy was put under huge pressure by many of his closest advisors not to take a high profile on this issue. It is to Kennedy’s credit that he withstood such pressure.

A more tragic example is the environment. The Liberals developed some far-sighted green policies back in the 1970s, providing the Liberal Democrats with a potential thirty-year head start. But successive leaders wasted this advantage, primarily because of excessive caution in the bunker. Now everyone’s jumped on the green bandwagon and it’s difficult to sound distinctive.

The party is at a low ebb and it needs to go for broke, not forever pull its punches and retreat into cautious positions. We can’t afford to be bland. It is therefore imperative that the next leader chooses staff and advisors who will stiffen his resolve rather than cover him with a wet blanket.

One of the main incentives for anyone wishing to join a leader’s kitchen cabinet is the prospect of a peerage, which is highly corrosive because it encourages a risk-averse culture. No-one in the inner circle dares take risks in case they appear disloyal and jeopardise their chances of preferment.

So here’s a proposal – and you can ask it at the hustings. Will both candidates pledge that anyone joining their kitchen cabinet, whether as staff or unpaid advisors, must forfeit any claim to a peerage or any other honour for the duration of their leadership?

This would deter most hangers-on and naysayers from wanting to join the leader’s team in the first place. It’s not a complete solution but it would send out a strong signal about the style of leadership the new leader proposes to adopt. And it would increase the leader’s chances of receiving disinterested advice.

In Ancient Rome, following a notable victory, a crown was usually held above the head of the triumphant general, with the individual holding the crown charged to repeat continually, “Remember, thou art mortal.” It is in such a spirit that our new leader should appoint his kitchen cabinet.

* Simon Titley is a Liberal Democrat activist who helps write and produce Liberator magazine.

This majority will rely on the mainstream media to make its choice rather than the party’s internal media and grapevines (bear in mind that the average age of party members is about 60 – this is not the Facebook generation).

The electorate is the whole paid-up membership of the party, 72,064 at the time of the previous leadership election in 2006, a figure that had fallen below 69,000 by the end of the year. It is safe to assume that the number eligible to vote this time is no higher.

The turnout in the 2006 leadership election was 72.2%. In the previous contest in 1999, it was 62%, and before that in 1988, 71.9%. (The figures are here.)

It is difficult to determine how many party members could be defined as ‘active’ (as opposed to ‘armchair’). A recent study by Brunel University suggested that the Liberal Democrats produced an average of 26 campaign workers per constituency in the 2005 general election. Multiply that figure by 628 constituencies and you get 16,328. Another rule of thumb is to assume a ratio of two non-councillor active members per councillor, which, with about 4,500 councillors, produces a figure of 13,500.

My guess is that the probable number of active members is somewhere in the middle of these two figures, about 15,000, which would represent only 21% of the total membership. On the other hand, active members are more likely to vote than armchair members.

Let us assume 68,000 ballot papers issued, a 70% overall turnout, but a 95% turnout among active members. This generous estimate would mean that activists still comprise only 30% of the turnout.

You may quibble about these figures, but there can be no doubt that the key battleground in this election is not at the hustings, not at the ‘pizza and politics’ evenings, not even in the Lib Dem blogosphere, but in the armchairs in front of the telly.

* Simon Titley is a Liberal Democrat activist who helps write and produce Liberator magazine.