It is through identifying what campaigns we want to run on the ground that we can really get a liberal and popular policy set.

http://www.libdemvoice.org/opinion-what-the-heck-do-the-party-president-and-federal-executive-do-15263.html

The proposition that a Party that cannot effectively manage itself should nevertheless run the country is one I have some difficulty with. So do most other voters.

The Lib Dem’s modern history (the last 30 years or so) has been dominated by a fight back from the edge of extinction led by local activists via community politics. This has been a huge success but it has reached a plateau – witness the stalling of support in Westminster opinion polling at circa 20% and the lack of impact in the policy areas you cite.

Therefore over this 30 years or so the national stage was never where it was at in Lib Dem land. Obviously one had to go through the motions but the consequence was policies largely contained to well-worn ruts (which is not to say that many weren’t basically right). The result is a party machine good at trundling on in a set direction but one that has little feel for policy, where some policies are a decade or two past their sell-by date, where ‘intellectual entryism’ by socialist or other thinking is all too common and where there is an ongoing inability to develop and articulate a credible narrative. The result is a policy ‘lucky dip’ which has little coherence – a point siezed on by Labour and Conservatives.

If this is to change, the leadership (and I mean the institutional parts such as the Federal Exec and FPC as well as Nick Clegg) has to identify the policy weakness as a key strategic weakness. They need to ask themselves if the Party’s underperformance in these areas is because they have systematically employed the wrong people in policy roles or if it’s because (far, far more likely in my view) they have presided over an organisational culture in which challenging thinking – thinking outside the box – is subtly unwelcome. Occasional comments from those close to the leadership (eg one fomer member commenting that, “I was on the FE for two years and still have no idea what it’s for”) suggest a crucial lack of direction at the top.

This leads naturally to the second question. To define your politics in relation to others (whether equidistant or some other formulation) is a receipe for failure; in particular it invites the media to endlessly obsess about who Lib Dems would partner with in the event of a hung Parliament. The Lib Dems exist to represent a liberal tradition that remains relevant. Indeed, the lack of liberalism for nearly 100 years has a lot to do with our national predicament; for several decades the UK has followed a socialist mirage then changed tack to follow a neoliberal (ie not-at-all-liberal) Thatcherite fantasy which has been continued by NuLabour. It is hardly surprising if some in Scotland and Wales think they could do better while in England support for minor parties is growing.

I suspect that a genuinely liberal policy mix would look very strange to those schooled in the stale binary norms of recent decades. Some bits will seem excessively conservative, others will seem impossibly radical. But then I’ve always rejected as overly simplistic the traditional left-right characterisation of politics. We need a Party that’s brave enough to break the mold instead dancing to the tune of opinion polsters and marketing gurus.

And so to the first question I would say that Nick Clegg needs to articulate a coherent world view about he in particular and the Lib Dems in general would run the country. He needs to work out where the pressure points are that make a difference and how to apply leverage to each without spending lots of taxpayers money and he needs to set out a clear vision for the role of government.

Has he done this yet? Not really. He’s getting there but too slowly. In particular I see little evidence that he has found a way to galvanise the policy process. (Hint: stop trying to do it top-down and find a way effectively to hoover up the expertise that undoubtedly exists among the membership (and fellow travellers who might become members). The not-very-exact parallel here is how Obama managed to raise so much money in small donations).