We’ve seen some small but important signs of recovery this weekend. Sadly, some members of our Liberal Democrat family, particularly in Wales and London, are enduring the same heartbreak we faced together a year ago.
I don’t want to get into lengthy descriptions of how bloody awful this day was a year ago. If you really want to put yourself through it, you can read the whole tale of woe of the election results as they happened here.
It was later in the morning, though, that Nick Clegg made his amazingly powerful resignation statement. “We cannot and will not allow decent liberal values to be extinguished overnight. Our party will come back.”
The text is below:
I always expected this election to be exceptionally difficult for the Liberal Democrats given the heavy responsibilities we’ve had to bear in government in the most challenging of circumstances. Clearly the results have been immeasurably more crushing and unkind than I could ever have feared.
For that, of course, I must take responsibility, and therefore I announce that I will be resigning as leader of the Liberal Democrats. A leadership election will now take place according to the party’s rules.
For the last seven years it’s been a privilege, a huge privilege, an unlimited honour, to lead a party of the most resilient, courageous, and remarkable people. The Liberal Democrats are a family and I will always be extremely proud of the warmth, good grace, and good humour which our political family has shown through the ups and downs of recent years. I want to thank every member, ever campaigner, every councillor, and every parliamentarian for the commitment you have shown to our country and to our party.
It is simply heartbreaking to see so many friends and colleagues who have served their constituents so diligently over so many years abruptly lose their seats because of forces entirely beyond their control.
In 2007 after a night of disappointing election results for our party in Edinburgh, Alex Cole Hamilton said this: if his defeat was part-payment for the ending of child detention, then he accepted it with all his heart.
Those words revealed a selfless dignity which is very rare in politics but common amongst Liberal Democrats. If our losses today are part payment for every family that is more secure because of a job we helped to create, every person with depression who is treated with a compassion they deserve, every child who does a little better in school, every apprentice with a long and rewarding career to look forward to, every gay couple who know that their love is worth no less than anyone else’s and every pensioner with a little more freedom and dignity in retirement then I hope at least our losses can be endured with a little selfless dignity too.
We will never know how many lives we changed for the better because we had the courage to step up at a time of crisis. But we have done something that cannot be undone because there can be no doubt that we government with Britain a far stronger, fairer, greener, and more liberal country than it was five years ago.
However unforgiving the judgement has been at the ballot box, I believe the history books will judge our party kindly for the service we sought to provide to the nation at a time of great economic difficulty and for the policies and values which we brought to bear in government.
Opportunity, fairness, and liberty, which I believe will stand the test of time. To have served my country at a time of crisis is an honour that will stay with me forever. I hope those who are granted the opportunity to serve our country in government now and in the future will recognise the privilege and responsibility that they’ve been given. It’s the greatest thing they’ll ever do.
It is of course too early to give a considered account of why we have suffered catastrophic losses we have, and the party will have to reflect on these in the time ahead. One thing seems to me is clear: liberalism, here, as well as across Europe, is not faring well against the politics of fear.
Years of remorseless economic and social hardship following the crash in 2008 and the grinding insecurities of globalisation have led for people to reach to new certainties: the politics of identity, of nationalism, of us versus them is now on the rise.
It is clear that in constituency after constituency north of the border the beguiling appeal of Scottish Nationalism has swept all before it and south of the border a fear about what that means for the United Kingdom has strengthened English conservatism too. This now brings our country to a very perilous point in our history where grievance and fear combine to drive our different communities apart.
I hope that our leaders across the United Kingdom realise the disastrous consequences for our way of life and the integrity of our United Kingdom if they continue to appeal to grievance rather than generosity and fear rather than hope. It’s not exaggeration to say that in the absence of strong and statesmanlike leadership Britain’s place in Europe and the world and the continued existence of our United Kingdom itself is now in grave jeopardy. The cruellest irony of all is that it is exactly at this time that British liberalism, that fine, noble tradition that believes we are stronger together and weaker apart is needed more than ever before.
Fear and grievance have won, liberalism has lost. But it is more precious than ever and we must keep fighting for it. That is both the great challenge and the great cause that my successor will have to face. I will always give my unstinting support for all those who continue to keep the flame of British liberalism alive.
On the morning of the most crushing blow to the Liberal Democrats since our party was founded it is easy to imagine that there is no road back, but there is – because there is no path to a fairer, greener, freer Britain without British liberalism showing the way. This is a very dark hour for our party but we cannot and will not allow decent liberal values to be extinguished overnight.
Our party will come back, our party will win again, it will take patience, resilience and grit. That is what has built our party before and will rebuild it again. Thank you.
His words sparked a rush to join the party. 20,000 people joined and some of them, including Georgia Harvey who won a council seat from the Conservatives in Folkestone by 43 votes. Rebecca Plenderleith and Charity Pierce were Scottish candidates and Joanne Ferguson is now the President of Liberal Youth Scotland. Andy Nash won a Council seat in Sheffield.
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social
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34 Comments
The fact is that the disaster of last year need not have happened. It was because of the Clegg claque’s inept handling of the coalition, and he should take full responsibility for this. So far he has not done so. Alex Cole-Hamilton’s defeat in 2011 was NOT part-payment for ending of child detention, it was part-payment for our clueless Westminster-is-everything campaigning non-strategy. Sadiq Khan and the Scottish Tories did well in the recent elections by distancing themselves from their respective Westminster parties. Our failure to do so in the Coalition era is the reason we are where we are now.
Or, for an alternative perspective:
http://markreckons.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/the-unaccountability-of-nick-clegg.html
I pretty much agree with everything that bloke Mark Thompson writes there.
Clegg’s speech was fine rhetoric, and may have persuaded some to join the party for which we should be grateful.
But it was detached from reality. We did not “[leave] government with Britain a far stronger, fairer, greener, and more liberal country than it was five years ago”. While scoring many small successes, the Clegg-Laws-Alexander cabal completely failed to see the bigger picture. They connived in the privatisation of education and the NHS, and in the myth that austerity was necessary to “save the economy” when it actually set back a recovery that had begun under Labour. And their attitude as enthusiastic coalition partners left us viewed as Tory-lite, painting us into a corner from which it will take us long to escape.
His last disservice was the concentration of Lib Dem resources in saving Sheffield Hallam that might have saved several other constituencies instead. Far better for the captain to have gone down with his ship.
Caron, it is really sad to see you posting stuff like this, it’s like watching someone from a cult who expected UFO’s to descend in 2000 who is making excuses for their non-appearance.
There were no signs of recovery what so ever. The were barely signs of any improvement and what there was was few and far between and insubstantial. It will remain that way until we move on from Clegg and trying to claim any success for the coalition.
Agree with everything Denis says.
The phrase it’s time it was consigned to the d…..n of history comes to mind. But…… also time to move on now….. Lot’s wife and pillars of salt also comes to mind.
Time to reshape some genuinely radical Liberal policies for the future. If we don’t then it’s curtains….
PS… also agree with everything Caractacus says. Oh what joy, oh what harmony.
“It was because of the Clegg claque’s inept handling of the coalition, and he should take full responsibility for this.”
Yes, but …
I agree with you, but it is all too easy to make Clegg a scapegoat for all that went wrong when he is just one person. He had a few dozen parliamentary colleagues and a few tens of thousands of members, none of whom did much to stop him or change the direction of the party during the 5 years of Coalition.
I agree with both Alex Macfie and the most of the blog of Mark Thompson (thanks George Potter), but there are at least two other things we can take credit for under the coalition if anyone says what did the Libs Dems do in coalition and they are the increases in the personal tax allowance and the triple lock on old age pension increases. They were both agreed by conference and in the manifesto.
Yes, we have been Clegged, not just by Clegg but most of his lemming MPs. Ordinary Members did try to stop it, had our MPs taken any notice of the Sheffield Spring Conference the NHS train crash would not have happened. We now have to rebuild. We need to rethink our campaign tactics. Vote Lib Dem to stop Tory/Lab is past its sell by. We need some unique selling points to give voters a positive reason to vote Lib Dem. They are there, but not visible.
@Michael
And yet, arguably, both of those were a mistake.
The income tax cut did nothing to benefit the lowest earners but disproportionately benefited the middle class.
And the triple local basically guarantees pensioners an increase every year regardless of whether inflation is at zero at a time when the rest of the social security budget is being remorselessly squeezed.
All those commenters wanting to sack Clegg are a bit late, hes gone & you cant kick him anymore. Could we talk about now, please ?
Pack him off to Brussels.
the concerns of the party at large were brushed off by the elected representatives, or have we forgotten twaddle such as the email to members supposedly from vince telling us what a good outcome had been attained on tuition fees, and ed davey landing the south west with another nuclear power station, this time a sino-french mash-up investment, partly paid for by our pwn money ….
truth is, the pain of the coalition stems from the parliamentary party’s errors and their unwillingness to engage with (so called) ‘ordinary’ members. time isn’t healing much but may be time to draw a line and attempt a fresh start?
Wow, there are some people on here for who the LibDemFightback sounds bittersweet.
Anyway, good post Caron.
@ George Potter
“And yet, arguably, both of those were a mistake.”
You are correct about the effects of the triple lock, but to ensure that pensioners benefit from the growth of the economy is the right policy.
I still believe that an increase to the basic personal tax allowance is better than a cut in the rate of income tax. The benefit should be the same for everyone who earns above the new personal allowance and therefore worth less to those on higher incomes. The problem was that it didn’t also apply to National Insurance.
The way to help the poor would have been to increase the amount people can keep before they start to lose their benefits and to have a low taper.
Paul Barker , a voice of reason and sense , above .
Caron gets my respect and appreciation for this posting .She reminds me of me going into primary school, the year Bing Crosby died ,with a badge on , I made at home , on it written “God bless Bing “! Well it was a Catholic school and I really liked him and I mean a lot ! I mean , I have a big Celine Dione and Katie Melua collection now !
Standing up for what and who you like and believe in , in any way and to any extent , takes guts and persistence .Even when they mock you !Actually , many on this site are not just doing that .They are being fair and considered .They are Liberal qualities Unfortunately not found frequently on the farther fringes of the left or right.
Those pursuing Clegg like fox hunters after their prey , should ask if they in their stance are as illiberal from the left of Clegg , as they consider Clegg to be from the right of Liberalism.More so .
Or is he just to the right of them ?And they being , where , politically , ?
Paul Barker is right above , let us think of the here and now and the future .Tim Farron has had a different stance , to our former leader , several times , as have many of us .He does not harbour bitterness or portion blame .He is a true Liberal .He is a genuine humanitarian.And a Christian who practices what others preach.Forgive and forget ?!
I cant even be bothered to argue….AWFUL.
Now should be the listening and analysing period considering we have a bulk load of new data and experiences from 5 May’s elections.
No point digging in the trenches and lobbing the same old missiles at each other.
But having said that: saying it’s all Clegg’s fault is not good enough. It was and still is mainstream political thought that political parties in the UK have to appeal to the business community.
“his words sparked a rush to join the party”. I can tell you for a fact this new member did not join because of one word he said but for the fact of his resignation and hope it marked a return to traditional liberal values. Ones which had kept the liberals going and indeed slowly growing. Ones which Clegg and co made every attempt to eradicated from the party. Clegg is only a figurehead, so in that regard it is unfair to single him out. However he chose to take that position. Yet feedback I get from some surviving councillors suggets the party remains unrepentant that it created its own disaster. It was a fools bargain to abandon traditional supporters in the hope of winning floating voters.
There may have been a lock on raising pensions, but behind it lay the remorseless logic that pensioners have been getting increasing sums in means tested top up benefits, which go a good way to payng for this. But most obviously the response has been to pay for higher pensions by raising the retirement age. More money but for less years. is that really better?
The only good thing to be said now is that labour are in a similar position. Corbyn exemplifies the tradional labour supporter, and is villified by his professional party, while getting massive support from actual members. Even conservatives have a similar problem.
The result of this over decades has been an increasing divorce by all our main parties from their traditional supporters. And yet more reliance on those floating voters.
As a Liberal who wore shoe leather out for the party for well over 50 years, I have to say the honest truth is that all three ‘main’ parties are split. How it will all unravel is beyond me and there are very few towering major figures around on the current scene to inspire.
What I do know is that for many people there is a wish for a radical alternative to this inept right wing Tory Government….. unfortunately for the foreseeable future we are going to be tarred with the brush of putting them in. The sad thing is there are no obviously convincing viable alternatives at the moment…. when in fact there are so many radical issues waiting to be tackled. That’s whu (by default) the SNP has done so well in the last few years (nature abhors a vacuum).
In the meantime there is always the cricket season……
Fighting back – by which I hope we all mean ‘campaigning back’ – yes, yes yes. Because actually we did very little campaigning between 2010 and 2015 and really lost a lot of our expertise in this.
But what to campaign for and how to campaign and where to campaign is very important – blind campaigning without considered campaigning will delay recovery.
And sometimes cheer-leading is counter productive.
Against the reasonable criteria of Dr Robert Ford of Manchester University our success last Thursday was ‘average’ in Scotland, Wales and in the locals, and bad in London.
So that should be the starting point. We need to campaign more intelligently.
We need to teach more people how to campaign well. Our successes have come from areas and people who have long been very good at campaigning and ‘self-sufficient’. Able to select issues, design collateral and organise the delivery of effective campaigns in their communities. Widening expertise is therefore essential.
Selecting issues and targeting the right citizens. We are not very good at this. That is actually why people above feel they have to counter the fan worship of Nick Clegg who along with his team were poor at understanding issue based campaigning. And this infatuation is also a means to prevent the essential drawing of a line under the disasters of his spell as leader.
It is also cramping the effectiveness of our new leader. He and we have yet again spent a year ‘in harbour’ missing the tide. The tide in UK politics is flowing strongly against the elite that dominates British politics and feeds incestuously off itself in the Westminster Village. We have no resources there and we shouldn’t be wasting our energy propping up that Establishment.
It takes time to change our image amongst voters. It requires more than good results among the few. It takes a strikingly different leader … and we have one.
The evidence from the last four or five days that we are carrying too much dead weight to catch the tide. If you are not part of the solution, not part of the drive for change, you are part of the problem – you are the anchor, keeping us moored in harbour.
In Tunbridge Wells one borough councillor was re-elected with 71% of the vote, there was one gain and one loss.
@David Raw “all 3 main parties are split ”
The SNP seems fairly united to me. Or are you referring to something else?
Bill Le Breton “you are the anchor, keeping us moored in harbour.” Or stuck on the rocks awaiting good pilots to pull us free to plot a new course. These were the first set of elections back in opposition and we lost votes compared to 2012 when we were in Government. The damage those at the helm were responsible for is greater than even I imagined and while we can and should spin an increase in seats and council control publicly, internally we need to confront the reality Bill so eloquently posts.
@Danny, I also joined the party because Clegg resigned. The Tories had destroyed his project of right wing liberals being in constant coalition with them. The Liberal Democrats need to win seats from the Tories otherwise we would now appear to have a one party state as the Tories will not concede seats to us. I like the Liberal Democrats because of their commitment to Europe, their green and welfare policies but find the conflict between my own social democratic outlook on life and those of the classic liberals pretty irreconcilable.
“Fear and grievance have won, liberalism has lost. But it is more precious than ever and we must keep fighting for it.”
This is an excellent rallying cry for liberals but we haven’t heard it repeated anywhere near often enough. With the likes of Farage, Le Pen and Trump on the rise, with grievances around immigration at all-time highs, with the Monster Raving Loony wing of the Labour party now running the official opposition… we are drifting into deeply illiberal times.
Dennis Mollison and Caracatus are spot on.
Where was the recovery? Not up here in Scotland, where we lost about 45 deposits and remained on 5 MSPs. Wales and London do not look too good to me either.
The personal allowance issue some have mentioned as our legacy has been overtaken by time, as the Tories continue to increase it above £11,000 and any increase we pushed for below that level will soon be forgotten.
The triple lock on pensions is the other legacy mentioned, but this has also resulted in many wealthy pensioners in Scotland receiving a good increase to their pensions, as well as enjoying free travel, free prescriptions, free tv licenses, while enjoying no mortgage payments, winter fuel allowances and much more, while the young often struggle with increased debts as they leave education. Is this really what we want to be remembered for?
It’s no surprise that older people vote in such high numbers – many are being feather bedded at the expense of the young.
I agree that it’s time to move on. The first thing we should move on from are tributes on this site to the man and his colleagues who, while in Government, did more to destroy our party than anything all the opposition parties put together ever managed to do.
No Caron – a year ago it was the end of the calamity of the Clegg incompetents. We’re only just starting the fightback. There are still significant impediments to it succeeding – mainly in those at HQ who still haven’t taken responsibility for their part in the disaster and the cabal of unofficial advisers who hang around the leadership who still think the Westminster game is the only show in town…
@ Jenny Barnes I’m referring to the UK.
It’s not surprising the SNP doesn’y appear to be split. It has a disciplinary code that formalises the control of the leadership. It states that MPs or MSPs “accept that no Member shall, within or outwith Parliament, publicly criticise a Group decision, policy or another member of the Group.”
“All those commenters wanting to sack Clegg are a bit late, hes gone & you cant kick him anymore. Could we talk about now, please ?”
Paul – if only the damage inflicted during his tenure went when he finally resigned, then we could indeed talk about something else. As any Doctor will tell you, diagnose the illness wrongly and apply the wrong remedy, you are unlikely to get better.
All we hear from you is that the electorate are stupid and wrong and if we just keep telling them often enough that their opinion of Clegg and the coalition was wrong, they will flock back to us.
The Clegg speech isn’t really inspiring, a year on it looks even worse than at the time. The disaster for liberalism wasn’t a triumph for the politics of fear and grievance, it was a failure of the Liberal Democrat MPs. And if Clegg thinks anyone upset about tuition fees shouldn’t have a grievance, what plant is he on? Clegg started by wasting two years ‘proving’ coalition could be as awful, sorry stable as one party Government and spent the 2015 election trying to create fear that coalition if it involved the SNP/UKIP/Greens/ DUP/Anyone apart from him would be a disaster.
paul barker:
“All those commenters wanting to sack Clegg are a bit late, hes gone & you cant kick him anymore.”
I agree with Paul. But just as it is a waste of time kicking him, it is also even more (and somewhat surreal) a total waste of time making statements on here lauding him.
We have had six years without any effective leadership of this political Party whatsoever, while we had a number of representatives in government, some more effective than others. Yes, it was the fault of others than Nick Clegg as well as the man himself that the average voter in 2015 had not aclue why theyshould vote Lib Dem as opposed to one or other alternative Party candidate. Do you know why? Basically, the people who had the regular opportunity to tell Nick that he was going wrong (the Parliamentary Party and the National Executive) were basically too ‘nice’. Again and again when confronted with serious evidence, they winced and preferred wishful thinking to rational analysis. Even when it became abundantly obvious that there was no ‘exit strategy’ from the Coalition whatsoever, they still chose to stand altering the floral arrangements on the tables of the Titanic long after the deck chairs had slipped over the side.
Liberal Democrats, the future of your Party now lies largely in your hands, not those of the present Leader. If we fail to respond to this challenge, you have only yourselves to blame.
For those who did not follow the link provided by George Potter at the start of the comments. It is worth reading the comment on Mark Thompson’s blog which said of Nick and the coalition –
“This thing about stable government….just why did we need it? The traditional response to national crisis has been coalition. The obvious coalition was labour-conservative if there truly was a crisis, but there was not one. Liberals would have been better advised to vote on an issue by issue basis as matters arose and distance themselves from the government. Both in terms of the national outcome, and also in terms of their own credibility.
Truth is, a likely outcome of such an approach would have been a new election. And every party was afraid of coming off worse. Nothing which happened was about national interest.”
Wise words indeed.
Of course in 2010 Cameron ‘immediately’ made the ‘big open offer’ to Clegg. I am sure this was choreographed – as of course was Blair and Paddy’s initial agreement for the 1997 election.
So, there was always going to be a Con/Lib Coalition.
Why would Cameron prefer this to a minority government? Wilson did the exact opposite in Feb 1974, refusing to talk to anyone and ‘assuming’ office.
This was probably Cameron’s second preference – the price we would/could have charged for this (we would have only had to abstain on the QS) should have been a signed agreement to a fixed term Parly act perhaps with some agreement on one budget’s worth of confidence and supply.
We know from what transpired that the T’s wd have adopted many of our front page manifesto ‘red lines’ and put them in their June 2010 budget. We also know that the our negotiators were already by the end of the campaign supporters of accelerate deficit reduction and so the Tory fiscal measures in that budget would have matched those of our leadership (erroneous although that was). Which would have left us to keep our powder dry on tuition fees until Browne reported. At which time we could have tried to find friends for our manifesto policy or failing that to have voted against the Tories.
What followed would have been a ‘transactional’ arrangement much in use by LDs in LAs when getting chunks of Lib Dem policy through in councils with Labour or Tory minority administrations.
No, Marshall Laws and Clegg wanted a Coalition at any price – believing that in 5 years a new core vote would coagulate. They bet the farm and lost. Having bought off most of the Parly Party with government places and a baubbles.