Author Archives: Iain Roberts

Vince’s conference speech had a lot of good policies and ideas, but the party is still failing to  communicate a compelling vision. We are not giving enough people a good reason to vote  Lib Dem at the national level, despite the gaping hole in the middle of British politics. Here is a speech Vince could give to start communicating that vision.

Building a Future for Britain*

Britain is getting poorer and weaker. This is not what we were promised. Low wage growth has seen real incomes fall and, thanks to Brexit, our economy has gone from the strongest in the G7 to the weakest in just a year. An astonishing and disturbing collapse in our fortunes.

Our country is being failed by both the Conservatives and Labour. Theresa May offers no answers. Everything she does is aimed at saving just one job – her own. Jeremy Corbyn offers no end of answers – if only we had the money to pay for them all. We don’t.

Only the Liberal Democrats are committed to Building a Future for Britain.

A Britain confident enough to play its part in the world, working in partnership with others. A Britain that’s open for business, not putting up walls to keep everyone else out. A Britain where those who put in the work reap the rewards, and those who need help receive it.

If you want a job, or a better job than you have now, the Liberal Democrats will ensure you have the access to gain the skills you need – regardless of your age or situation. We will help you to improve your life to Build a Future for Britain.

If you have a job, the Liberal Democrats will ensure it is well paid. We will tackle the scourge of the gig economy to Build a Future for Britain.

If you are in business, the Liberal Democrats will support you, help you and ensure that you can trade across the EU and more widely throughout the world to Build a Future for Britain.

The Liberal Democrat vote fell in June because too few voters believed we were the party on their side and fighting for them on the issues they cared about.

That wasn’t the only reason of course, but it was the main one.

So what next?

Forget talk of a progressive alliance. Labour will use it to beat us up. Caroline Lucas championed a progressive alliance and for her troubles the Green vote more than halved. Labour are always happy to take Lib Dem votes lent to them in the cause of beating the Tories, but in Lib Dem/Conservative marginals Labour actively campaigned against the Lib Dems. Had they not done so, May probably wouldn’t be Prime Minister. But Labour prefers to stop the Lib Dems and Greens even if it means a Tory government and that’s not going to change.

No. The Lib Dems will only survive and prosper by carving out a space for ourselves. Not some theoretical slot on the left-right spectrum. Not simply “we’re not the Tories/Labour and we can win here”. But a space where a substantial proportion of the British public see the party as fighting for them and on their side.

There are no shortage of lessons for the Lib Dems to learn from our time in Coalition, but one of the most important is to understand the ability of the two main parties to work together to stitch us up like a kipper.

The rule is simple. If the Lib Dems want to get across a particular interpretation of an event, and both Labour and Tories agree on a different interpretation, we’re not going to do it.

I’ll give an example: tax cuts for the rich.

For nearly four decades progressive politicians have been losing the war of words – and of votes – over the economy. Those on the right have successfully persuaded voters time and again that a less equal, less fair society is better for nearly everyone, and those who lose out probably deserve to.

The evidence suggests that the right wing politicians are wrong – that the economics followed by governments of all colours since the 1980s locks a large proportion of society into poverty. Most of those poorer people are, in the jargon beloved of party leaders everywhere, “hard working”.

Last month …

The Liberal Democrats have achieved many good things in Government and stopped the Tories doing many bad things. As with every government, there have been mistakes and much that could have been done better, but with fewer than one in ten MPs the party has punched well above its weight and, as a result, many good Liberal Democrat policies are now being put into practise.

And yet the party is being hammered in the polls and we’ve just seen a disastrous set of local and European elections with the Liberal Democrats down to just a single MEP.

What’s gone wrong, above all …