Author Archives: Charlie Du Cane

Take heart: this time it will be different

By Charlie Du Cane | Fri 4th September 2020 - 5:06 pm

In the year and a bit I have been involved in the Lib Dems, I have noticed one particular train of thought that percolates in the minds of many members. In their eyes Paddy Ashdown is a now legendary leader of almost Arthurian stature, who led us in a golden era as we swept back to relevance in local and national politics. Whilst there is much truth in this, this train of thought often doesn’t stop there, but evolves in a secondary, more negative direction.

“If Paddy couldn’t do it nobody can,” goes the refrain. In other words, under Paddy we had strong leadership, a world class organisation and growing numbers in the polls, but we still failed to get the key political reforms that would have allowed us our fair place at the table of national life. In 1997 we broke through in terms of seat numbers, but the dreaded First Past The Post system delivered an oversized majority to the party we thought we could be going into coalition with, and they ignored a report they had commissioned recommending electoral reform. Then, when a chance for Government did come round, it was with our traditional enemies, and nearly destroyed us, a calamity from which we have yet to recover.

In other words the system proved too strong for us to take on, and our attack on it left us in pieces on the floor. So why do we continue to bother trying?

To me, this line of thinking is a very valid analysis of what happened to us from 1988 to 2015. We did indeed try and fail to take on a system that proved too robust to conquer. However it leaves out one crucial thing- and on this point we should take comfort and get ready to fight again, and this time win.

Posted in Op-eds | 8 Comments

Why the Liberal Democrats must learn from Nigel Farage

By Charlie Du Cane | Thu 21st May 2020 - 10:25 am

Nigel Farage is the embodiment of everything I disagree with in politics. But rather than stopping at the mild nausea he evokes in most of us, we would be more sensible to leave emotions aside and discover why this man has given us such a clobbering in recent years, and what we can learn from it.

And he has given us one hell of a clobbering.

Brexit aside – he is one of the main external factors in why we did so badly in December. Unscientific, but if you take the Brexit party’s result in Brecon, and apply it to every …