So often the principles of liberalism are – rightly and reasonably – tempered in Liberal Democrat campaigns by the need to couch our message in forms appealing to voters. I believe that the next election is one of those rare moments of confluence where the core messages of liberalism are exactly what voters want and need to hear. The unapologetic promotion of liberal principles will give the country the hope, the promise and the solace which the large majority of voters and citizens now seek.
Whatever the complexion of the new government, it will inherit a wrecked economy and a shattered society. This reality should not deter us from offering a sweeping and hopeful vision of what Britain can be like if the right steps are taken now. The right steps are completely in tune with the vision of liberalism for empowered citizens living in equitable and vibrant communities within a competent state.
The preamble to our constitution reads “no-one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity”. Our leaders are plagued by poverty of vision, by ignorance of the array of solutions available and by conformity to desiccated doctrines like the necessity to “honour” Brexit.
We need immediate steps to end the long term political sickness of this country’s constitution which has given power to the selfish and the corrupt: voting reform is a key step in ordinary people taking power back from the moneyed elites who have held too much power for too long. (If we really fear turning off voters on the doorstep, we don’t need to call it “voting reform”; we can call it “sweeping out corruption”.)
We need taxation reform so that fair tax is paid by those who can afford it: taxing high incomes and wealth that have been too protected for too long, and taxing the corporations that have done so much to hide wealth and increase inequality. (We don’t need to call it tax reform; we can call it “fair shares” or even “proper levelling up”.)
We need – desperately – a positive policy of realigning ourselves with the European Union’s economy as a first step to repairing the damage done to our trade and regaining our position in the global economy, and as a first step to taking back our seat within the Union, combining our power with like minded others. (We don’t need to call it “rejoining”, we can call it “dealing with the cost of living crisis”, because that is exactly what it is.)
All of these are rock solid Liberal Democrat principles which the electorate urgently needs to hear.
* Rob Parsons is a Lib Dem member in Lewes. He blogs at http://acomfortableplace.blogspot.co.uk. He curates Liberal Quotes on Facebook
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26 Comments
Well said Rob. You are saying what a lot of party members and activists are thinking.
Oh dear, here we go again.
PR is “sweeping out corruption”. Rob, look at the many countries with PR and thriving levels of corruption.
There is no correlation between democratic electoral systems and levels of political corruption.
There is a fairly large corpus of research on the factors underlying polictical corruption. It’s honestly worth consulting, if you really are comcerned about political corruption.
At the next election, all of us who campaign for Lib Dem candidates need to have an easy answer to the voters’ question “Why should I vote Liberal Democrat?” We can all work out what we’re most comfortable saying, but Rob’s piece offers some very good ways of connecting with voters in ways that mean something for everyday life. And if we don’t want to push PR because of its potential to clean up corruption, then let’s sell it as a need for cooperation in government, or an answer to the echo chambers nurtured by social media that are killing the noble art of reasoned debate. This is a very valuable piece, however we as individuals choose to word our advocacy of liberalism on the doorstep.
@Chris Moore I take your point, although I find it very hard to think that PR is as corrupting as FPTP. But that wasn’t the point of my piece, which was about how we sell it on the doorstep. If we actually wanted a programme to root out corruption, a fair voting system would be one step among many that are needed.
I agree with Rob Parsons piece, well said, I really hope Liberal Democrats adopt these very sensible proposals in the forthcoming election, someone needs to address the decline we are witnessing in so many areas of our country’s governance.
Well said Rob! You ask for our leadership to lead from the front and get across reasons to vote Lub Dem including a positive message on engaging with the EU to reduce the damage to the UK from Brexit.
If you have been reading Lib.Dem Voice recently you will be aware that our Leadership have stamped heavily on such as idea. When did Sir Ed last say anything about Brexit even though sixty percent of the electorate favour rejoining?
All we can do is to keep our ideas in front of him in the hope that he will finally get it!
Thank you Rob and I fully agree that basic principles of Liberalism are more relevant than ever. That makes it even more frustrating that we hear so little from the centre and leadership, when they should resonate with so many voters just now.
For me I’d add:
Challenging concentrations and abuse of power and wealth, be they in Westminster or business. That means decentralisation, and much tougher regulation of monopolies such as the utilities and in tech.
Rebuilding our public services. Beveridge was a Liberal. Universal Basic Services is a big part of delivering equality of opportunity.
Making the investments needed to tackle climate change, housing, infrastructure and the economy.We should have learnt by now that private finance wont do it. Government needs to take a lead. Keynes was also a Liberal.
Time to dump the soft Toryism of coalition era and get back to being Liberals.
The average voter in the street doesn’t give a fig about PR & never has . Rejoining the EU is a distant dream – that in all honesty is starting fade – the complexities and commitments needed would make it unpalatable to the voting public – who when we were members were not that enthused about it’s existence to begin with ..
The two issues do not have to be intrinsically linked to deliver our message at the next GE ..
A megapoll of 10,000 voters puts the Lib Dems on just 7%! How low has our support got to drop before our complacent leadership recognise the urgent need to effectively get across why the electorate should support our party. They have had plenty of advice from posters on Lib Dem Voice on how to do this but we are rapidly running out of time and credibility.
@Martin Gray
“The average voter in the street doesn’t give a fig about PR & never has .”
But they surely care about being listened to – FPTP allows a major party to win seats without paying attention to the views or needs of a large proportion (maybe a majority) of voters in a particular constituency.
New Year would be a very good time to have a message to members to reinvigorate, encourage and inspire them to campaign.
The current Liberal Democrat leader does not even motivate me to get out of bed in the morning, so no where near motivating me to deliver literature or knock on doors. Davey needs to get real or make way for a leader who will lead and inspire.
Leekliberal – “our complacent leadership…….”
Let’s face it, we (contributors to LDV) are going to be ignored.
I see that my membership has just gone through in the sum of £43.17. Not, I fear, money well spent. I am clinging on in the hope of voting for improved leadership after the GE – by which time the party will have squandered many open goals. I am angry – I suspect many of us are.
Our average Polling is around 11% & we usually go up during The Election Campaign as Voters are reminded that we are an option.
The crucial factor in how many MPs we get is the level of Tactical Voting, something that is very hard to measure. Depending on that we could get anything between 25 & 40 MPs.
The party seldom gets an opportunity to present its agenda to the wider public, not least because of serious media bias. The limited exposure we do get on national platforms is seldom used to communicate anything distinctive or inspiring, so it’s hardly surprising that an increased share of the General Election vote mostly depends on the protest vote.
If the party is serious about building a larger presence in Westminster, there needs to be a concerted focus on snappy communication of what the party would actually do about the current unfolding disaster.
My shortlist would include informing people that the government deliberately limits the training of medical professionals. We would assess what was needed and then ensure that we trained and retained to the highest.Our GP practices are increasingly run privately for profit, so tell everyone and promise to bring them back into the NHS. We need NHS drop-in centres to improve services quickly.
The scale of government corruption is hugely damaging and scarcely mentioned, so how about requiring all contributions to politicians and parties to reveal the source of the donations? At the moment only the name of the last link in the chain is recorded. Our energy and climate policy is decided by oil interests, building shortages and shoddy standards by big developers, reduced pollution control by the polluters etc. Shouting out some concrete examples and what we would do to stop them would certainly catch the attention of a hard-pressed nation.
We need to give real answers to real problems.
Hello, John Reed, it’s party policy to guarantee GP appointments within a week.
This implies, in the short and medium term, bringing in more doctors from abroad. For the long term, it means expanding number of doctors trained.
Hello, RobParsons, regarding PR, I don’t think we should make unsustainable claims about its powers to reduce corruption.
We should stick to the fact it produces fairer outcomes to elections.
Martin Gray is right that PR is of no interest to nearly all voters.
So for heaven’s sakes let’snot focus our campaign on such issues
In spite of all the criticism of the leadership, they have dragged the party out of its comfort zone of PR, SM, UBI and actually campaigned on issues thay are of interest to voters.
I personally am surprisedby the failure of activists to acknowledge how well we have done at local level in target seatsand other areas.
This is partly down to the leadership strategy.
Btw Leekliberal, you have completely misinterpreted the “mega-poll” with the LDs “on 7%”.
You have merely quoted raw figures. But these include 22% for undecided or won’t vote.
On the same poll, headline figure for Tories is 19% for example.
Sadly, once again we get a “The people want Liberalism” from people who are massively interested in Liberalism i.e. Lib Dem activists.
Sadly it is not true for the vast majority of people in the UK. They already regard as the UK as very liberal. They can very largely do exactly what they want, say what they want and live the life they choose. No fear of a knock on the door in the dead of night if they say the Prime Minister is corrupt.
What most people want is what they never have had from the Conservatives – competence, honesty politicians and a fair share of what is going around.
Most realise that despite some obvious errors, that the coalition provided the best government we have had in many years.
They also know we were right on Brexit – which they now realise is the cause of so many of our economic problems and illegal immigration as well – Ed please note and act on before it is too late.
Finally, they know in areas where they have them that Lib Dem councils are generally better run than those of the other parties.
Voters know they are facing an economic crisis, a cost of living crisis, a lack of jobs crisis, an NHS crisis, an immigration crisis etc. – not a PR crisis or a lack of liberalism crisis.
You win elections by offering the experience and determination to solve their problems, not by offering to do something completely different.
Chris Moore ‘Btw Leekliberal, you have completely misinterpreted the “mega-poll” with the LDs “on 7%”.’
I think not! Fact – Of those 10,000 voters only 7% planned to vote Lib Dem at the General Election. Even with our targeted campaigning, which I fully support, this is going to leave us at the bottom end of our earlier expectations of seats that will be won. The concern of so many of us that, in frustration, led to the Guardian letter, is the failure of our leadership to do the ‘vision thing’, to paint a convincing picture of what a Lib Dem UK would be like. To get a hearing we need to be edgy and sometimes controversial. On the great issues like Gaza, we were, as usual, late in the day to say ‘us to’ on the call for a ceasefire. On Europe, couldn’t Ed actually say that we would be proactive in trying to reduce the massive harm caused by Brexit, looking at a customs union as a minimum . Labour are saying nowt because of concerns about the ‘red wall’, but in the ‘blue wall’ there are potential Labour and Green votes to be hoovered up by us if we can make the vigorous and reasoned case for such a call. In the South West there has been the same huge change in sentiment about Brexit and we should have nothing to fear there. Of course it appears that none of this will happen as our leadership ‘knows better’!
Leekliberal, ALL polls eliminate don’t knows, won’t votes, won’t say when they publish their figures. This one did not
Why cherry pick a poll from November and then make out that our position is worse than it really is by not making clear what the 7% meant?
There have been numerous polls since that date and they give an average LD score of 11%.
Don’t exaggerate!!
We already have radical policies: read Katherine Pindar’s article of today.
@Chris Moore. The header to Kate Pindar’s excellent article states ‘Let it be known……’ l read this as an exhortation to the leadership to get across to the electors the vision of civilised government that we offer. Perhaps you are content with our 11% in the polls. I believe we can do significantly better than that if but we need a change of gear in getting our message across to achieve this.
Leekliberal, thanks for liking my OpEd (though only fellow footballers are allowed to call me Kate, or Kath!). Yes, you are right, the headline Make it known… is indeed an exhortation to the leadership to get across to the electorate the ‘vision of civilised government’ that we offer; but also I hope our activists everywhere may perhaps like to use it in their own areas. CAN-DO is, as I expect everyone guesses, an oblique reference to Obama’s ‘Yes We Can’, and Care had to be added as it is so significant to our causes, as our Leader will appreciate. But possibly this may be thought of as one of those sought-for slogans, if CAN-DO is taken as just one of the three words we’re seeking?
Calls for a new/fresh/hopeful etc ‘Vision’ (often linked to the Preamble to the Constitution) are routine in LibDem land and yet there’s no vision to speak of or those calls would be redundant. This has been the case for my ~40 years in the party and predecessors so this is a failure of all leaders which suggests a systemic problem – but what?
Consider Thatcher: she (plus a few advisors) decided (a) what was wrong, (b) what should be (the vision bit). The political task was then simply (!!!) navigating from (a) to (b).
Her analysis included that key issues were bolshy unions plus a bloated and profligate government. Her vision was of small government, deregulation to create free markets and make industry competitive, lower taxes to incentivise ‘winners’ and, of course, breaking union power. That, plus the necessary political manoeuvring, explains everything she did.
This perspective was initially shared by only a few Tories. It later dominated all Tory thinking and much in other parties. Thatcher succeeded politically but her programme has failed.
Contrast the LibDem approach. There is little interest in how industrial economies work so many confine themselves to proposing sticking plasters for the more obvious problems. This is compounded by policymaking that starts with detailed policies, not the big picture, so they don’t cohere.
Don’t blame Ed, blame the party’s approach to its governance and policymaking.
I think the key advantage of PR is that it encourages coalition government, which in turn reduces ministerial churn and policy churn. It allows ministers the time to learn their briefs and allows policies the time to achieve something. Unfortunately, having long-serving ministers increases the opportunity for corruption. Bodies such as the National Audit Office are the way to tackle corruption.
Can’t agree more. I would add that we also need a codified written constitution composed by a Citizens’ Assembly that amongst other things will ensure we don’t have a repeat of this Conservative’s erosion of our governance, values and reputation.