Recently, the Canadian Liberal Party’s sensational victory, to win its first General Election after three successive defeats and coming from third place when many thought it had no future as a party captured the interest of many Liberal Democrats and liberals throughout the world. Justin Trudeau’s refreshing leadership, modern, likeable, down-to-earth without dumbing-down, inspires us.
I remember in 1993, the Liberals landslide win when the Conservatives reduced to just three seats. This followed Bill Clinton’s victory in 1992, which his opponents did not see coming (see Hunter S Thompson, “Better Than Sex”) and foreshadowed the UK Conservatives’ crushing, justified defeat in 1997. The 90s was a good decade for the centre-left.
I was travelling in Canada in 2002 when Jean-Chretien, the Liberal Prime Minister, announced his retirement. Having just fought my first election, as the youngest Liberal Democrat PPC, it was fascinating to read in the Canadian press how a party so similar to ours ideologically grappled with the exigencies of government.
Liberals were the dominant party of Canada in the twentieth century. R. Kenneth Carty’s book (written before the recent election) is a short (130 pages) readable but evidence based (no shortage of statistics and graphs) analysis of why the Liberals have been so strong, whereas, as the author recognises comparable, explicitly centrist liberal parties have fared far less well in most other democracies, including the Westminster-based “Anglo-Celtic” countries. The party lost power to Conservative landslides four times over the century. After each the party adapted, changed and rebuilt to renew its connection with voters and return to power.
The interesting question for Liberal Democrats is whether, despite our radically different electoral position today from our Canadian brothers and sisters, is whether there is anything we can learn for their history to help our future.
NATIONAL IDENTITY
The first element he identifies is that throughout the twentieth-century, the Liberal Party was instrumental in projecting a sense of what it meant to be Canadian. The Liberals, more than any other party, consistently had an communicated an idea (which changed over time) of who Canadians are and what they stand for. The voters found this idea of who they were appealing.
A WINNERS’ MENTALITY
A second element that is very apparent is that the Canadian Liberal Party has consistently had “winners” within its rank. It has attracted people who want to win elections and exercise power and do not see a good second or third place as a moral victory or any kind of victory at all. The party leadership and grassroots has responded to defeat with “what do we need to do to win?” and then done it.
A BROKERAGE PARTY
The third element of success, emphasised most of all in this book is that the Liberals are a “brokerage party”. They are “the big tent” referred to in the title. They bring people together and find a balance between competing interests and demands. Over the decades as waves of immigrants from different parts of the world arrived, the Liberals brought them into the party.
In particular, the Liberal stood for unity between French and English speakers. For a time the party had a convention that the leadership would alternate between someone from each community. Quebec proved a Liberal heartland. The brokerage party also rested on brokering interests between the national government and the different provinces, to which more power was devolved over the twentieth century. He analyses the party structure (and how it changed) and concludes this was vital for the brokerage party to work. He writes:
…in the name of accommodating difference and promoting national community the Liberals adopted an organizational form… to embrace all elements of society.
In this sprit, the party has operated in the principle that rather than representing one perspective, one group, or one interest, it could provide all kinds of Canadians with a political home.”
The party was electorally successful when it successfully persuaded voters that it alone was equipped to bring all of the nation together.
PARTY DEMOCRACY
Carty believes that a key element to success was the preservation of party democracy. As in the Liberal Democrats, local party members picked candidates, elected leaders and set policy through the party convention. Over decades there was tension between leaders and grassroots and the party bureaucracy was created and grown to interface the two. But, more than most other parties, the Canadian Liberals maintained a strong member based party democracy.
BUILDING THE BIG TENT
Electorally, the party was pragmatic rather than ideological. It is sometimes seen as governing from the right and campaigning from the left (Jeremy Thorpe once said dress to the right, speak to the left – he never had a chance to govern in either direction). A recurring theme was to talk about the collective “national interest” and frame opponents as putting something else first.
The Liberals were generally ready to accept new people into their party but always resisted coalitions or pacts with other parties. The message was that the Liberals were the national coalition and to protect this identity would prefer minority government or opposition to joining up with any other party.
After defeat, Liberals rebuilt and returned to power by especially appealing to those the Conservative government alientated – at different time Catholics or French speakers.
Carty’s book is long on international comparisons and his view is that the UK, Australia, New Zealand have sometimes produced a dominant party but never on the brokerage model. For other examples, we need to look to Ireland, India, Japan or Italy. In ever case, a sense of national identity based in democracy and human rights was essential.
LOCAL CAMPAIGNING AND THE GRASSROOTS
Like the Liberal Democrats, the Liberals’ success in Canada has been linked to local campaigning. But at a national level the party supplemented this strength with links to the advertising industry and donations from medium and large corporations. Local campaigners operate largely independently from the national party with little money from the national party sent to be used at a local level.
The book contains interesting analysis of the make-up of grassroots Liberals. Carty argues there are three distinct groups and one “the tourists” only joins the party at election time or when there is a leadership election. Successful party leaders have, without exception, taken the party grassroots seriously and recognised that motivating it is a key to success. Elections for representatives to the Convention are hotly contested.
PARTY LEADERS
There is an interesting correlation between candidates who decisively win the party leadership going on to do well in General Elections, whereas candidates who narrowly win the party leadership do less well with the public. Tim Farron’s margin of victory bodes well by this standard.
On the leadership, the party has enjoyed success because each Leader cultivated a successor. When there has been a change of Leader without an obvious successor the party has tended to drift into the wilderness. It is surely the mark of every responsible politician to think about who will carry on after them.
One of the problems the brought about the Liberals’ massive collapse to third place in 2011 was that views on policy had become more rigid. There was more “ideological coherence” which sounds attractive but meant a smaller political tent into which fewer people were welcomed.
There is much in this book for UK Liberal Democrats to think about. Do we want to gain and hold power or do we exist for something else? If we do exist to gain and hold power are we able and willing to become, a Big Tent?
* Antony Hook was #2 on the South East European list in 2014, is the English Party's representative on the Federal Executive and produces this sites EU Referendum Roundup.
16 Comments
Most important LDV article since the election.
How do we become a big tent bringing together people who want small businesses to thrive and back education and aspiration, along with people who want social justice and equality for everyone regardless of colour, sex, creed or circumstance?
much to think about here – thanks.
Interesting stuff. I agree with the existence for winning and holding power, but this can sometimes lead you to holding divisive policy positions that might be good electorally but sometimes not so good for your personal life if you have friends who are on the receiving end of otherwise nationally popular policies.
So in the end even someone who sounds as confident as me on policies and positioning can have doubts. There is only so much left stuff I can take though before I begin to put myself first.
In particular, the Liberal stood for unity between French and English speakers.
Is there a parallel in UK politics in the strong links between Scotland and England (in both Liberal Democrat and Labour parties) seemingly broken when the leadership appeared to side with the Establishment over home rule?
Some really intersting points here but isnt it putting the cart before the horse ? Surely the big difference between Canada & Britain was that here The Liberal Party split & Labour had a chance to take their place. Once that had happened we could have had as big a tent as we liked without getting anywhere. Without Labour having a comparable split we will never get the chance to put up our tent or develop a winning attitude.
That Labour split now seems probable, even inevitable, at some point so this is the time to ask ourselves just how inclusive we can be.
The lesson to me seems to be that the party that builds the system, get to run the system.
Since WW1, the British constitution is more or less a Tory creation – or at least they are responsible for deliberately and carefully stewarding its lack of development since that time (grrr).
They are the ‘safe pair of hands’ party here – the normative default, if you like – that the Liberals are in Canada.
Tony Blair had started to move Labour into that gap in the late 90s / early 2000s, but was fatally halted by the Iraq war and the financial crisis.
Unless you want to build a time machine and change Lloyd George’s mind at a crucial juncture of WW1, I’m not immediately sure what liberals and Lib Dems can learn from that.
Excellent article. But as with all comparisons drawn from other political systems the different national context needs to be heavily emphasized at every point before ‘lessons for the UK’ are drawn.
The Canadian Liberals crashed to a poor third place in 2011 but bounced back to first at the next election. ‘Ah Ha’ some people say -so can we in the UK. But the Canadian Liberals have dominated Canadian politics for much of the last century whereas we have not done the same in the UK and so do not have the automatic credibility in the electorate’s consciousness. A better comparison in the UK context would be Labour who like the Canadian Liberals have, for a century, been one of the two dominant parties in national politics and so found it easier to come back from their near third place (in votes but not seats where they were massively over represented) in 1983 in order to win their biggest victory ever in 1997.
What I have never seen explained is why the Canadian electoral system, which is basically our FPTP ‘Westminster’ Constituency process, can produce such huge swings in seats won by the Big Two’ Parties (the Conservative Party collapse in 1997 and the Liberal collapse in 2011) with subsequent huge swings back? This has not happened in UK politics (since the Liberal collapse and Labour rise in the 1920’s) although 2015 in Scotland saw it happen there in face of the SNP surge.
Paul Holmes, I have no evidence for this, but I always thought it had something to do with the strong underlying federal structures of Canadian politics, with each province having its own unique ecosystem, providing a sort of contrary-rhythm to what was going on in terms of representation at Ottawa.
And don’t forget, the NDP/social Credit movement and the Quebecois parties make their politics since the war always more diverse than ours has been over the same timespan, which is possibly natural in a much, much geographically larger country.
Basically, Canadians in most provinces have always had more options than UK voters.
Much food for thought. Thank you for sharing. Maintaining party democracy, trying to forge a national identity (with a federalised political structure), and being cautious in working with other parties (and so maintaining distinctiveness) strike me as particularity relevant to us going forward.
The point about Liberals projecting a strong image of national identity (what it means to be Canadian/Canadien) has limited application here. Canada is a created nation and its creation is relatively recent. Moreover, like the USA and Australia, many of its inhabitants don’t have roots in the country many generations back. It’s no surprise that the nature of national identity is a live issue. Maybe it should be for us, but the English at least think they know who they are and don’t much like being asked to think about it. The idea is more relevant, I think, in Wales and Scotland where a national identity is being reasserted and there is room for a Liberal version of the identity which is distinct from that promoted by the nationalists.
The UK is also a created nation, some of its citizens have lost confidence in it (some didn’t have it in the first place), while many (and a growing number) of its citizens have mixed identities. The Liberals have helped forge a post colonial identity, and helped keep Canada together. Seems rather transferable to me!
A good article with good points in the comments too. A couple of points stuck me particularly strongly.
“The party lost power to Conservative landslides four times over the century. After each the party adapted, changed and rebuilt to renew its connection with voters and return to power.
Of course. Change is the only constant! In contrast, the Lib Dems seem unwilling to change; the reaction to defeat is to hunker down and do the same as before, but harder. I’m not even convinced there is a deep (as opposed to lip-service) commitment to connecting with the voters who are seen more as only a necessary source of votes. The natural result of the inevitable defeats is that the party turns inwards, walling off the opinions of those who don’t ‘get it’ and becoming distinctly like some fundamentalist cult. Hence the frequent appeals on LDV to (undefined) “liberal values”.
Then there is the stress on “party democracy”. We Lib Dems take great pride in being so democratic, but are we really? Yes, there are the forms of democracy in abundance but the substance is often missing in action. For me democracy is about (a) being able to choose between alternative platforms and (b) being able to replace leaders swiftly and efficiently when they lose the plot in some way.
Neither of these is properly available in the Lib Dems. The first because the policy process ensures that there is a single ‘correct’ policy, while the second is borderline impossible. Each leader in turn is regarded by many as someone who, like Moses, will lead us to the Promised Land and is therefore above challenge.
A number of useful points here.
First – If you want to be successful, broad, a “big tent”, don’t describe yourself as if you aren’t. Clegg’s “centrist” position sounds like a thin slice of opinion sandwiched awkwardly between two larger masses. And let’s face it, I’m one of those people who always preferred the term “centre-left”, which when it comes to the amount of territory you seek to stake out, sounds even worse!
Second – I like this phrase “the national interest”. Repeat several times a week “The Tories support the well-off: Labour support workers in trade unions: Liberal Democrats support the national interest.” Sounds a lot stronger than Grimond’s “classless party”, Steel’s “moderates”, or the promotion of liberalism as an ideology!
Thirdly – Internal democracy really helps widen the tent. In fact that’s easiest to see with another “big tent”, the US Democrats. Thanks to the primary system, Clinton and Sanders (or previously, Clinton and Obama) can battle each other and then come together to elect a President. Ideally, we’d have a primary system to choose between Farron, Burnham and Corbyn. As next best, let’s see more open democracy within the party.
Why not an obligatory annual leadership election, with RON (re-open nominations) an obligatory candidate if no other challenger emerges? It would do Farron absolutely no harm to have to re-validate his leadership every year, respond to criticism, and show people what we’re all about. And – Just think what might have been if we’d had this in place back in 2013-14, and RON had picked up (say) 30% of the vote?
Regarding Paul Barker’s comment above, although Labour have been the dominant party of the centre-left since the 1920s, there are huge areas of the UK where they are unable to win. This is why the big tent approach is still relevant to Lib Dem fortunes, as winning seats under FPTP requires broad support and this turns into votes in areas where the Labour is unable to win. There are also areas where Conservatives are non-existent and therefore the electorate gets a choice between two centre-left parties, if the Lib Dems are sufficiently organised.
i agree, important and useful article. The article describes how the Canadian liberals were a long-time success under FPTP and still are. In fact, the following almost defines what a successful FPTP party has to be:
‘The Liberals were generally ready to accept new people into their party but always resisted coalitions or pacts with other parties. The message was that the Liberals were the national coalition and to protect this identity would prefer minority government or opposition to joining up with any other party.’
Of course, to win under FPTP, you have to be a sizable coalition – a big tent, or at least the biggest tent in that election, given the almost certainty that your tent will be less than 50% of voters.
For us as Lib Dems, we need to act so as to win under FPTP – to aim for a policy tent big enough to be the biggest tent in any given election. We may at times need to actively choose this over ‘ideological purity’. But part of what we would do with power were we to get it would (I imagine) be to use it so as to make big tent coalitions at the party political level a thing of the past by doing away with FPTP (of course, under a more proportional system, the big tent is formed after the election from parties that are smaller coalitions in the legislature). Part of success as a FPTP party may well involve wariness about coalitions with other big tents until electoral reform is achieved.
It will be interesting to see whether the canadian liberals, as a traditional FPTP post party, do in fact end FPTP in Canada…. It will also be interesting to see whether FPTP politics in the UK breaks down under its own weight even without us pushing the button… (it seems to me that the UK as a political entity and FPTP are coming increasingly mutually exclusive, and that if one doesn’t disappear first, the other will)
As regards the rallying call for our party as a FPTP broad coalition, ‘unifiers acting for the national interest (not sectional interest)’ as suggested above perhaps could work – application to economic interests in society as well as to be the bond for a united, inclusive, federalised, UK identity….
Can I bump-up this post from last month and point out that in the light of the recent electoral results: the Tory U-turn in Scotland (at a devolved level, at least) starts to look more like the sudden reversals highlighted above in this thread as a feature of Canadian politics. But again, it happened in the context of a political conversation that goes on at two levels – ‘national’ and ‘federal’, as happens in Canada.
I again posit that the underlying diversity of Canadian politics – despite its FPTP model has much, much, much to do with its federalism.