Two parts of Nick Clegg’s Manchester speech particularly caught my eye. The first — how not to repeat our mistake on tuition fees — I’ve blogged about here. Here’s the second:
Governing has carried a cost. We have taken a hit; Our opponents try to use the fact we are in government nationally against us locally. And I cannot stress enough how proud and grateful I am for the grace and determination with which you have absorbed all of that.
But I also know that if we try and turn back the clock… Hankering for the comfort blanket of national opposition… Seeking to airbrush out the difficult decisions we have had to take… We condemn our party to the worst possible fate: Irrelevance; impotence; slow decline.
Imagine yourself on the doorstep – two different conversations.
The first:
Hello, I’m from the Liberal Democrats, for which I am truly sorry…
No, I’d rather not talk about the things we’ve done in national government if you don’t mind…
Around here we’ve been terribly nice, would it be possible to just stick to that?The second:
I’m from the Liberal Democrat Party.
When the country needed it, we stepped up to our responsibilities…
Entering into Coalition with our opponents for the sake of the national interest.
We have taken some difficult decisions, but by doing so the country’s battered economy is on the mend.
Well over a million jobs have been created…
As well as record numbers of apprenticeships…
And we have managed to cut taxes for the vast majority of British taxpayers.
Here in this neighbourhood we have also protected vital services that matter to you.
Vote for us again and you will get more of the same.That’s the conversation that will inspire people to support us. We will not be rewarded for hiding our achievements and beliefs. And our biggest error would be to come this far only to head into retreat.
Three years ago, at our Special Conference, we came together and agreed to take this leap. Everything since – every knock, every bruise – has been a down-payment. And losing our nerve now would undermine our credibility; It would confuse the people we are asking to vote for us; It would be a gift to our opponents; And it is the surest way to lose support. And, more than that, it would be to squander a huge opportunity too.
Talking to one of our MPs recently, he told me of the encouraging local election results in his patch: the party had more than held its own. He then contrasted it with a near-by MP in whose patch the local election results had been disappointing.
The difference, he said, was simple: he’d not spent the last three years attacking his own party. Yes, he’d rebelled. But he’d also praised the good the party was doing, too.
His colleague, meanwhile, had ensured he was known in his patch as a serial rebel, an independent voice quite distinct from the Lib Dems. In effect he’d adopted a doorstep patter based on the first conversation Nick quoted. As a strategy to retain his seat, this MP told me, it was probably quite effective. But as a way of building the party in his area it had, not surprisingly, back-fired.
I wrote recently of the need for the party to develop its narrative of our time in government. Nick’s second conversation edges towards it, while still being weighed down by the kind of tractor production statistics which doomed Gordon Brown. It’s fine to acknowledge we have made mistakes — that’s how you learn and grow — but the emphasis on our determination to step up and act in the national interest and ensure this government would be fairer than if the Tories had been left to their own devices is moving us closer towards the kind of narrative that might re-connect us with the public.
* Stephen was Editor (and Co-Editor) of Liberal Democrat Voice from 2007 to 2015, and writes at The Collected Stephen Tall.
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12 Comments
I do not believe there is a single Lib Dem held constituency where the MP has “spent the last three years attacking his own party”. Furthermore, while I don’t think we really have any ‘serial rebels’ in the Lib Dem parliamentary party at all, I do not believe that those MPs who have shown independent thought from time to time have, taken as a group, done worse in local elections on average than elsewhere.
On the contrary, some Lib Dem Local Parties which have done best in local elections (including Westmorland, Southport, Portsmouth and some which do not presently have MPs) fight their local elections on clear confident local agendas. Able to take on both the rough and the smooth of national coalition politics and win through despite that extra burden.
So my construction on Stephen’s ‘informant’ is that (s)he is either ignorant (picking one unrepresentative seat pair for the sake of justifying a false argument) or dissembling for dissembling’s sake. Clutching at a comfort blanket, in fact, while attacking a sizable chunk of his/her own party!
There is only one ‘comfort blanket’ in this Party. It is nothing to do with ‘opposition’. It is the comfort blanket of blaming the very act of being in coalition for all our Party’s electoral ills. This irresponsible comfort blanket allows those clutching it to divert their minds from any objective analysis of how the conduct of Lib Dem participation in the Coalition might have been done better, who knows perhaps much better.
I am intrigued at this need to re-invent the wheel. Rather than conjure up hypothetical new narratives for reconnecting with the public, what’s wrong with a ‘what works’ approach looking at those Lib Dem areas who have, despite the handicaps of the present political environment, not lost connection with the public?
One very simple point to make is that we have kept Unemployment down. In late 2010 lots of people were talking about Unemployment of 4 or 5 Million & its partly down to us that didnt happen.
“Talking to one of our MPs recently, he told me of the encouraging local election results in his patch: the party had more than held its own. He then contrasted it with a near-by MP in whose patch the local election results had been disappointing.”
It should be possible to work out who this is. They must be English, in Shire districts or Bristol for a start. And can ignore the Somerset/former Avon lot as non of them can seriously be called serial rebels. Ditto the 4 London MPs
There are also major rebels like Greg Mulholland and David Ward – but I’m not sure who else is “nearby” to compare.
My guess would be Andrew George or Adrian Sanders.
But then the highest rebelling MP is Mike Hancock (according to Public Whip) – and his Council is the one that keeps getting help up as an exemplar of how we can keep on winning and gaining even in coalition. And there are only 6 MPs with a higher rebel rate than Martin Horwood in Cheltenham, chair of the 2013 local election campaign and again an area held up as an illustration of good results.
So my question for Stephen would be did you challenge the fact on which you base a lot of this article or just accept what you were told?
Hywel, we should never let inconvenient ‘facts’ get in the way of a well-spun yarn! 😉
Doorstep conversation two is the right one but fails in one crucial respect – the punchline! Vote for us and “you will get more of the same”. Most voters don’t want more of the same – not least they want an end to austerity. We have to be the party of change, not defending the status quo. Yes, don’t deny what we are doing and yes, be proud of the successes against the odds; but stress how we want to change things for the better. That’s what wins elections.
(I know Nick meant more of the LibDems trying to do the right thing , not more austerity. But it’s still about us, not about the voters; it’s still about the past and defending the status quo and not about future.)
“And we have managed to cut taxes for the vast majority of British taxpayers.”
A lie, of course.
Paul Barker
You haven’t kept unemployment down at all – you have prevented it from rising further but it is STILL at 2.5 million souls out of work. Further, unemployment was falling when you took over power – soon after it was on the rise again.
Stuart, explain how you think the tax reduction statement is a lie. I think you are confusing ‘the population’ with ‘taxpayers’. I think that you will find most (income) taxpayers have had their personal taxes cut and even their net gross tax bill cut.
Sorry, it doesn’t need to be either of the two conversations.
I accept that putting it the first way would be ridiculous. But there is plenty with the second that is wrong.
1) The tone of the second conversation suggests we entered the coalition with the Conservatives because we believed
they had the right economic solutions to the country’s problems and Labour did not. I do not think we should show this bias. The emphasis should be on forming the coalition that was formed because the people of this country showed a preference for the Conservatives, and a coalition with them had a clear majority whereas a coalition with Labour would not.
2) There is nothing in the second conversation which notes that the policies of the coalition government are inevitably more to the Conservatives’ ideal than the Liberal Democrats, due to there being many more Conservative MPs than Liberal Democrat MPs. So, there is nothing in the conversation which suggests why people should vote Liberal Democrat rather than Conservative.
The second conversation puts us in the position of the National Liberals, as they were from the 1930s retaining a shadowy existence right up till the 1960s. That is, essentially a branch of the Conservative Party, with a little bit of Liberal trimming for use in areas where that still seems to win a few votes, and perhaps a little concern on liberal issues where they do not conflict with the interests of the Conservative Party, but in reality in permanent union with the Conservative Party.
I didn’t join the Liberal Democrats to be that sort of party. If I’d wanted to be the liberal wing of the Conservative Party, I’d have joined the Conservative Party.
Tony Dawson
I think that you will find most (income) taxpayers have had their personal taxes cut and even their net gross tax bill cut.
Which in a time of economic crisis when we are desperate to cut the budget deficit is wrong. People who are lucky enough still to have jobs should accept they need to contribute a little more to pull the country back together. When some very damaging expenditure cuts are having to be made, reducing overall net gross tax bills should not be a priority.
Further to Hywel’s comment above, I would judge that the “serial rebel” referred to by the Lib Dem MP who Stephen quotes may well have been Andrew George, for although our party gained seats in Cornwall at the County Council elections, I do not think that the seats gained were in Andrew George’s part of the county (and the party may even have lost ground there). If so, the comments that the Lib Dem MP made to Stephen may well have had a proper factual basis, and Stephen should not therefore be blamed for not challenging what he was told.
Apart from Nick appearing to think he leads something called “the Liberal Democrat Party” instead of the previously agreed Liberal Democrats, I have two problems with his imagined doorstep conversations (or monologues, in fact). First, although I agree he made some good points and largely talked sense at this conference, the suggestion that relying on local popularity not necessarily linked to the national image is a matter of being “terribly nice” rather than of making hard decisions and getting things done raises again the suspicion that he doesn’t much value local politics or activism. Secondly, OK, talking positively about some things we’ve achieved in government makes electoral sense, but what if both the activist and the voter are acutely aware of some of the appalling things we’ve nodded through in coalition?