http://www.cix.co.uk/~rosenstiel/aldc/commpol.htm

I’m afraid I’ve always been an instinctive Liberal and have always been suspicious of ‘policy-wonks’.

However, I am an organiser and I want to hear what they intend to do about the state of the party.

What strategy and tactics they might adopt? What are they going to do to strengthen local parties and increase not just the number of MPs (and I’m afraid any number between 1 and 325 doesn’t really interest me!) but also the number of councils we control and the number of councillors we will get elected next May.
I want to hear about real work to structure the party organisation to help local parties and not just to help themselves. I want to see a candidate determined to practice community politics not just to talk about it. I want to see a new localism; I’m tired of seeing vast areas of the country turned into an LD desert. A new realism about what we can and can’t achieve – including the BELIEF that our hard-working local councillors and campaigners are making a real difference to people today, something, as yet, which our MPs have no power to do.
If they are just going to spout the same nonsense we have heard from the parliamentary party in the past and advocate the same ‘Rennardista’ strategy which has now run out of steam, then please don’t trouble me; I’m busy fighting for success next May!

I know for me that my socialism (oh, shock scare word) is much less improtant than my Liberalism at the moment, and those in the “libertarian” wing are a lot less of a threat than the intinctive “ally with LAbour” groups that automatically assume all Tories=evil. I’ll give you many of them might be, but I know a fair few that aren’t.

I’m mostly with you on the Mail, but the Torygraph isn’t the mouthpeice of the enemy any more–look tot he papers supporting ID cards and the NIR for that one.

Certainly it’s not as puerile as the Express, and is indeed not Murdoch owned, but we are still talking about a paper that liked Moseley! It’s a reactionary rag, and I prefer people not to bring it into my house.

When Geoff told me there are too many Daily Mail-reading “economic libertarians” in the party these days I laughed – I didn’t really believe there were any. Obviously the Tory infiltration is further advanced that I thought.

As far as I am concerned, it’s the Guardian, Mirror and Independent for me and the Torygraph to see what the enemy is thinking.

I must admit some of my prejudices were confirmed when Clegg and Huhne were asked to name their political heroes. Huhne gave an earnest little appraisal of Lloyd George, and also mentioned Keynes and Beveridge. Clegg produced something more in the way of an effective sound-bite about Clarence Henry Willcock, the “small man” who hastened the abolition of ID cards in the 1950s – but got his name wrong!

I want a leader that’ll take our existing (good, for the most part) policies and sell them to the electorate at large, but I worry he wants us to ‘move to the center’, whcih I’m not sure we need to do, let alone want to.

Still closer to Huhne than Clegg though.

You this sort of ill-defined, lets generate a conflict to look hard, sort of stuff is what disturbs me.

If for example stepping outside the comfort zone meant backing changes to the Human Rights Act to support deportations of people to countries where they would face a real risk of torture then I’d have some difficulty with that.

Nick’s got the rest of the campaign to set out what he means by this and depending on how he does that will affect whether I’d vote for him. If he doesn’t and just leaves it hanging as an “aren’t I daring” soundbite then I definitely won’t vote for him.

I am baffled by your reticence. When you brought up this “definitively liberal” thing, you said it was a position that had faced opposition within the party. Presumably you understood something by it!

One other thing I didn’t pick up before. When I referred to the bulk of ordinary members not being clued into these coded messages, you responded with a reference to “armchair members”. Actually, that isn’t what I meant at all.

Obviously there are a lot of members who contribute money but don’t have the time to do more. But there are many more who deliver leaflets, organise fund-raising events, stuff envelopes, help on election day and all the rest of it – but aren’t highly “political” and certainly don’t follow the minutiae of policy debates within the party.

They (and the real “armchair members”!) are the ones who will decide the result of the leadership election, and if the candidates are talking in code that’s not comprehensible to them, then they aren’t even “reaching out” to their own members, let alone the public at large.

Let’s wait and see shall we. I have no special insight into what either leadership campaign has planned over the coming weeks.

The Tories are mentioned on this site with much greater frequency than the Govt. Is that because they are the main threat? Certainly the Labour Party seems threatened by them. And so they should. The Tories “resurgence” is still fragile, but the Govt’s gradual decline is not temporary. They may still have the odd boost but something has fundamentally changed.

They have lost the support of the Press. The later now want the Tories to do well. The Telegraph and Mail have had their tantrum and have now gone home. The Guardian has is not entirely unsympathetic to Cameron and the Inde. regularly has a flattering piece.

Moreover, I guess you all caught the interview with Murdoch’s “representative in earth” in the Guardian. He contrasted Cameron’s [and I quote] “brilliant speech both on terms of content and presidential style” with the naffness [my shorthand] of Brown’s who, he says, obviously ignored the national interest. He had just come back from visiting Chequers! Ouch!

As a further sign of the fat lady singing, he went on to say that his Boss would have to be a fool not to recoginse a profound change in British politics. My guess is, he is saying he is not. What they chose to write can so often come true.

The short nature of the leadership contest will leave critical questions unanswered . Is the Party bleeding straight into the Tories or is the picture a lot more complicated? Are Labour losing some of the Blair fans to the Tories and we are bleeding into them [or into both of them].
Where does our survival lie? In attacking the Tories and all their new found friends or, as the Govt. run to block off their right flank, attack from the rear.
Oh, you cry, it is not that simple, we can do both. It is not fair to pidgeon whole us like that! No, but since when has it been fair. Air time and a willing audience? Dream on. A magic prince exists to provide both. The Tories thought it was that simple. It was not.

Nick Clegg says step outside the comfort zone. He is right and that means stop dreaming that he is not being painted as anything other than a reaction to Cameron. Let us not pay the Tory leader the ultimate compliment and let him be seen as defining us. Let us be bold and define ourselves.
We have an opportunity to choose someone who is very representative of the whole party and who is best paced to kick into the biggest open goal in British politics. What is more, those on the left and the right will thank us for it. He is also extremely tough. He will need to be.

But please, can you give me a clue as to what you think he meant when he said the party should be “definitively liberal”?

If it implies policy change, what do you think the direction of that change would be, broadly speaking?

Like a general election most of the armchair members in the party are going to engage with this election, most often, through the media rather than leaflets, websites and hustings.

Nick I think has a head start there, his media relations are better, but Chris has a good team with a lot of experience in this area and will no doubt have a plan to catch up.

Obviously Clegg has to put some bones on this – but I hope Huhne takes a similar approach. The campaign last time around was too inward-looking in my view.

I’m mystified. Aren’t we “definitively liberal” at the moment? Do we not already “reach out to people”?

If these aren’t just meaningless platitudes, they are in some kind of code – and if so I’m pretty sure it’s a code that will go over the heads of the bulk of ordinary party members.

I did use the word “straightforward” in my post!

Not much and I think he’s started doing that. In the speech he’s said he wants the party to be definitively liberal and reach out to people as well as communities. Both of those general positions and that language have on occasion faced opposition within the party.