Author Archives: Guy Russo

Five years ago, in response to very different political currents, I wrote an article for this site called “What a Liberal Democrat PM’s Christmas message might say”. It was grounded in the idea that our ambition as a party shouldn’t just be to offer better policies, but to offer a grander and more purposeful political language to the electorate, conveying a vision for the country.

With the ongoing confluence of crises, and the Government’s inability not just to respond to them but to mobilise language to inspire us all to pull through, it seems to me worth a go hazarding a guess at what a Liberal Democrat PM’s New Year’s message in this year of years might say. Think of it not as a counterfactual but as food for thought, as for it to be relevant it assumes that almost all these crises are still facing our imagined PM.

So here it is:

In the years that have led us to this moment in history, it has been easy to forget those rare and sombre occasions in which our country has faced awful hardships like the ones we now face. In fact, it has been tempting to treat them as extremes of the past, troubles of a magnitude that modern life had confined to history.

As your Prime Minister I have learnt the same lesson as you in this terrible year; that challenges to our resolve as individuals, to the spirit of our communities, and to the courage of our nation, never lurk far beyond the horizon. The very sense of freedom and opportunity that this government has fixed as its north-star has been rocked by all our experiences of being isolated from the people and places that give meaning to our lives.

For many families, this government’s best early efforts have yet to reverse decades of neglect. Parents are still tonight sleeping with tears of anxiety, having done all they can to give their children the best possible festive period in spite of financial insecurity and uncertainty. Beyond our economic crises those who have found no solace in the home this year, who found not care but rather cruelty simply for asserting who they are, or for no reason at all, will be lying awake dreading, not dreaming of, the future.

But the festive period, of this strange sort or the normal, is about hope. The spirit of the season is rejoicing at the coming of a new year, a new life, imbued with the dream of a chance to overcome our hardship and embrace a fresh start.

When pondering the impact of the Second World War on his movement’s efforts to establish an independent India, Jawaharlal Nehru wrote “crises and deadlocks when they occur have at least this advantage, that they force us to think”.

After three years of fighting in what amounted to a culture war, this party already found itself forced into reflection before this crisis. Now we find our own introspection will have to take place in the context of a national and international re-evaluation of some of the shibboleths of the last few decades.

How then, to respond? Much of the government’s economic response has been welcome. But it amounts to papering over the cracks of a society weighed down by rampant inequality and – crucially – indignity. Whether it be low-wage workers in precarious employment in the gig economy, or a generation of renters unable to settle and start a truly independent life, or countless median-wage households with unprecedented levels of personal debt looming over them, we can see now more than ever the serious threat to millions of individuals’ personal dignity, security, and space to flourish.

Faced with this, we should realise that laid out before us is the hard but necessary work of drawing on our values to refocus our efforts and meet the moment.

There is a problem with the common account of Brexit as a phenomenon driven by the rising up of “neglected communities” against the London-centric establishment that put them in that state. It’s that it ignores the extent to which communities in this country have actually broken down. I’m sure that plenty of Liberal Democrats might think that local organisations, pressure groups, housing associations are still central parts of life in this country, but we have to remember that we are a poor representative sample of the country at large (through volunteering and activism, and even simply through our interest in politics at all, we are far more likely to be engaged with what is going on in our local area, and the local associations involved in decision making there).