I love being a Liberal. Liberals are smart, we embrace logic and reason and apply it to our everyday lives. Our Liberalism is an international brand, with our liberal friends in many nations, all striving to promote liberty and human rights. We also have a sense of civic duty, which compels us to get involved with politics and seek to try and change the world around us. These are all good things, things that led us to get involved in the first place, however they can also lead us into a self-indulging arrogance that results in an opaque view of the world.
The problem with being a Liberal is that I am too often part of a well-educated, middle class elite, who frequently often mistakes failures or loses with ‘people just not getting it’. We saw it with Brexit. If only the 52% understood they were being lied to – if only they could see past their parochial nationalism – if only they could be more engaged with understanding the arguments and with politics in general. We have now seen it with Trump – how can so many Americans be so stupid?
So let me put across the other side of the coin to my opening statement. As Jeff Daniels’ character Will McAvoy says it in the opening to The Newsroom, “If Liberals are so F*****g smart, why do they lose all the god damn time”. Well, if we are that smart why did we lose the Brexit, Trump and come to think of it GE2015? Our internationalism means that we are ready to help those on the other side of the world, but the lack of opportunities and development of those north of the Watford Gap are too far away to help with. We have a sense of civic duty, but we would be foolish to think that our fellow citizens (yes I know we are technically Subjects!) agree that this should be expressed through sitting through long exec meetings and seeking public office. We are not as clever as we think we are.
It is not “unreason” these people are following, it is their reasoning – based on their own context and circumstances. Not from a comfortable middle class and multi-cultural London perspective I can give you that. More like one where they have grown up in the same town, or nearby to where they live now, and where their close friends and family live too. One where they may have not been to University, where they get their news (and their views) from the Sun or the Daily Mail online – not making them any less intelligent – just changing the nature of how they articulate themselves and access their views about the world.
We are getting the fundamentals wrong. I may be being too simplistic about this, but there are two things we can do immediately to address our decline:
Treat people as fellow human beings. The amount of times that I have asked a candidate to knock on some doors in a Council estate and they have suggested “doing some better ones elsewhere” (NB for the record, I have worked for Tim Farron, John Leech and Nick Clegg – all of whom were willing to knock on any door I sent them to, so I don’t include them in this). Talk to everyone as equals, because they are equals.
Knock, deliver, phone… and do it properly. Everyone likes to get a selfie with the VIP at an event, but the number of stories I hear from exasperated organisers who have put together a 3 hour phoning session only for people to show up and do 20mins phoning and 2.5 hours’ worth of hobnobbing with the VIP and their entourage leads me to despair. Is what you’re doing making the boat go faster? If not, you probably should probably be doing something else.
If you don’t want another disappointing night staying up to watch a vote come in, then remember: meet people where they are, not where they aren’t.
Stephen Maxwell is one of many Liberal Democrat members, who has also had the fortune of being a campaigns organiser for the party. If you have been interested by what you have read and would like to talk more about how we could address this problem, please Tweet me @StephenKMaxwell.
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86 Comments
That does require intervening with liberal orthodoxies, coming to terms with where the electorate are and formulating creative, radical and brave policies that square the circle between right and left. It’s what Trump has done. The Lib Dems need to do it in the service of Liberalism.
Great point about the need for liberals to realise their/our own failings (I’m kind of liberal). Liberals are going to lose the culture war soon, which they’ve been winning handedly, because if this carries on they will be associated with losing.
As Nick Clegg said, the next to fall to the radical right could be France. People are optimistic about Alain Juppé (a moderate), but he’s moved to the right on economics, maybe to win the primary (I don’t know) and we know what voters currently think of the neo-liberal consensus (they don’t like it).
“among the main reforms Juppé is calling for are the end of the 35-hour week, a raise of the retirement age from 62 to 65, shrinking public servants ranks by 250,000, growth-friendly tax cuts and up to €100 billion of spending cuts over five years.”
http://www.politico.eu/article/paris-alain-juppe-pledges-to-move-fast-on-radical-reforms-french-elections-socialist-hollande/
Firstly thank you.
Thank you for saving me from writing a similar piece, suggesting that we need to look at the way we interact, the way we get our message across. You are right that thinking logically and compassionately is not enough…
The one thing I disagree with (sorry) is that it is not because we (as you state you are) all well educated middle class, but that we are not in tune with the societies and people we need to appeal to.
I agree that we should talk to all and that changing the minds of those who have always been blue, or red for generations is a tough task, but one that we should not give up on.
It is almost as if we are now perceived as elitist, out of touch and as having become the defenders of a failed economic and political system. Almost.
There are methodologically smart Lib Dems. There are intellectually smart Lib Dems. There are emotionally smart Lib Dems. And yes, there are still a few politically smart Lib Dems. But how many make 2 or even 3 out of 4?
Unfortunately, the society in which we are living is every single day alienating its constituent members from engaging in virtually anything outside of their chosen ‘islands’ which they pick from a menu quite early on in life. Engaging with people like us is seen by many to be not-that-much different to engaging with Jehova’s Witnesses. Why should they trust us? Why should they engage with us? What will it do for them? What will it do for their neighbourhood or their ‘community; real or virtual? What chance does anyone have against global companies with half the world’s governments in their pockets.
This
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLG9g7BcjKs
is a funnyish take on the present situation although I must warn you that there are far too many expletives in it for my liking and possibly yours. The trouble is, like so many of these polemics by born-again liberal activists, it is only a prescription, not a recipe for a remedy.
If Liberals are so clever, why do they keep losing ?
The short answer is that they dont. Compare where culture & politics are now with where they were 80 years ago or even just 40 years ago. A big part of The Trump/Brexit thing is a reaction to all the things Liberals have acheived, particularly since the 1960s. When white, male voters responded to “Lets make America Great again”, what they meant was : lets get back to when I felt automatically superior to Women & Blacks.
Culture & Politics go in waves, like The Economy, we push forward & they push back. If we hadnt made so many changes then our opponents wouldnt be so pissed off.
OK so what are our failings as Liberals ?
1, we are way too polite & apologetic, voters actually admire Politicians who are blunt & pushy, we need to be less nice. Ironically, voters sometimes interpret our reasonableness as smugness.
2, We need short, punchy Slogans _ “Stop Brexit” would be good.
“More like one where they have grown up in the same town, or nearby to where they live now, and where their close friends and family live too. One where they may have not been to University, where they get their news (and their views) from the Sun or the Daily Mail online – not making them any less intelligent – just changing the nature of how they articulate themselves and access their views about the world.”
lol, let me see:
identity = british
wife = polish
education = post-grad
job = professional (if not terribly well paid)
social class = middle (at least i think so)
lived abroad = yes
disposition = content/optimistic
age = <40
teeth = all of them
reads = why, yes i do. lots!
accent = none discernible
vote = brexit…. "wait, what!?!?"
yes, i did not misspeak.
Every so often I read a chink of common sense from a party insider that gives me a crumb of comfort, of hope. Not sure it is enough for a membership renewal in the summer but possibly enough to lend a vote.
I agree! If us and Labour had been prepared to knock on any doors the referendum result might have been different! Instead we mostly preached to the converted!
One of our strengths in the past was the location of our voters could not be identified like the other parties, so we had to campaign everywhere. It is harder going in council estates these days but we have to keep trying to help people and respect will return irrespective of Brexit..
Absolutely spot on ref both the need for proper ground campaigning and the dangers of seeing the world purely from an educated, liberal, middle class prism.
Yet there are those now advocating that our Party diverts, scarce, resources disproportionately into campaigning for and recruiting from the ‘liberal, educated, middle class’ who are we are told our potential ‘Core Vote.’ Surely the lesson of the working class voters who switched from Clinton to Trump in places like Ohio and Pennsylvania, from Labour to SNP in Scotland and who voted Leave last June is that there is a large swathe of Western society who feel utterly alienated from and left behind by the establishment. From Lloyd George to Beveridge to Charles Kennedy our Party used to seek to campaign on the needs of that group of society. Are people serious in suggesting we should not do so now?
Andrew, I think Council Estates (I grew up on one) are becoming more willing to listen again as Coalition memories fade and new (often old) issues come to the fore. Labour’s internal strife helps too.
Between September and October we have taken 4 Council seats from Labour locally. Three in next door Tupton and one, last Thursday, here in Chesterfield. All four were in Wards which were predominantly Council Estate/ex coal mining community.
As Stephen Maxwell urges we delivered a strong literature campaign, knocked on every door and talked to people about the issues that concerned them.
If only the Democrat campaign had had a bit more of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and a bit less Washington establishment at its core.
Stephen Maxwell: We have not been British subjects for many years. Take a look at your passport which states British Citizen in the nationality space (assuming you are one).
We seem to have stopped winning local by elections. Maybe it is a coincidence but is there a connection with the campaign for another EU referendum? Many good people do not like this as it smacks of trying to overturn the will of the people even if the issue now is the terms of any settlement. How is the campaign going in Richmond Park ?
” Liberals are smart, we embrace logic and reason and apply it to our everyday lives. ”
is this really true? What was the “logic and reason” of supporting a rise in VAT to 20% in the middle of the worst recession of our times?
For anyone who wants “logic and reason” on economic matters, I’d suggested reading Keynes or any of the Post Keynesian economists. They could start with Steve Keen. His prose style is rather more comprehensible.
What really matters in the economy is spending. The UK economy is £2.1 trillion. so it requires £2.1 trillion of spending to keep it going. More like £2.2 trillion to get some growth and to allow for 2% inflation. The government has to fine tune its policies to keep the economy moving at close to full capacity.
It simply is not logical to do be in favour of policies which do the exact opposite of what is needed.
I agree with the second part of your post; but first must come the disagreement!
This argument you make does seem to be a narrative liberals seem to be adopting but I do not think it is true. Trump had less votes than Romney for example and the story the republic seems to be trying to sell of a working class revolt simply is not borne out by the statistics which show it was middle America who won it for him along with a suppressed Democratic vote. Much like with Brexit it was also an older vote who really came out strong too and a suppressed millennial vote. In the case of both Brexit and Trump you can hardly argue they had better arguments.
What I think we need to get is the tactics of our opponents are dishonest and we need to think about dealing with people who are not on the high ground and I think we need to work out how to inspire millennials. The one hope I have is that this is not coming from the generation below me and with time it may swing back again.
I think a mistake we have made as liberals is to be too tolerant of the tactics of the left for too long. I know they mean well but this post truth/narrative based stuff is not an invention of the right. In many respects they are using ground prepared over the last decade by the hard left. You used the term Liberal elite; who are they? Can you name one? It is imo just a catch all term for political enemies. It is the same as Patriarchy or Proletariat. I mean if Gary Lineker, a footballer from leicester can be accused of being Metropolitan liberal elite then it is a non term. What I have taken from both these defeats is that the right is using identity politics which is deeply scary. I am of the opinion that we need to as Liberals make space for ourselves where we do not indulge in identity politics; see people as individuals and reject the tactics of the left and right. We need to be Liberals and not be afraid of attacking both wings; infact it might be a requirement of surviving as an entity.
We need to make it clear that Liberalism is for everyone. We need middle class voices and working class voices and Men and women and Blacks and whites all to stand together as liberals and equals; not because of quotas but because it is our world view and because Liberal meritocracy should work for everyone and needs to be the nations new status quo.
I guess my summery is let us not castigate ourselves; lets have a peaceful liberal counter revolution!
Glad to see this article too, and agree with Paul Holmes’s comments that the Democrat Presidential candidate should have been Bernie Saunders or Elisabeth Warren.
Hilary Clinton had almost nothing to say on where America’s economic future lay and what she was going to do to lead it to that future, changing her support to TTIP to feebly copy Trump’s isolationism and seeming to suggest that economic prosperity for the US could be put on an autopilot ‘management’ setting.
Social reforms are the icing on the cake but shouldn’t generally replace economic concerns in rocky times- or else you’ll be seen to be out of touch, trivial and complacent.
Much in what David Pocock says. Breast-beating is a typical Liberal intellectual response to defeat: what did we do wrong, it must be we aren’t relating to what ordinary working people want and think! I don’t buy this sort of self-castigation. At a time of diminishing job opportunities, static standard of living and limited hopes for the future, it’s natural enough for many people to turn to false gods of the Right or the Left. Yes, we have to listen to and work with the people around us, but it’s usually well-educated middle-class folk who will lead and promote the necessary reforms.
I think the main thing to learn is that Brexit and Trump are not the same thing just because you dislike both of them.
Brexit has been building for decades. In truth Britain’s involvement in the E.U has probably only continued has long has it has because the public were not asked. As early as 1979 there was a known majority for leaving the EEC and a referendum would probably have killed its transformation into the EU stone dead before it happened in 1993. at least for Britain. IMO the knowledge that the cause would be lost was the major reason the public was not consulted earlier. Remember much more pro European populations kept voting against the deeper integration the EU heralded. One oddity is that the Conservative Party which for years claimed to oppose the EU were the force in British politics most responsible for expanding it and even now faced with Brexit chose as PM just about the only pro-EU candidate running. To me the problem with the EU is that it’s sold as if it’s a lovely cooperative institution, protecting the people, when really it is exactly as anti democratic and rapacious as its trad Left Wing critics., such as Tony Benn, said it was. Which is probably why the Tories (with the exception of parliamentary High Tories like Jacob Rees-Mogg) were so keen on it in the first place.
Trump on the other hand is about American things So was Clinton, who by British standards would be considered ultra right wing , pro-capital punishment, pro-military intervention, etc. Theresa May is well to the Left of Hillary Clinton in real terms. Which brings me to my main point which is that just because things look similar on a superficial level it does not mean they are the same thing. American history shapes America and its people. Britain did not have segregation laws, doesn’t share a border with Mexico, doesn’t have the same political system. doesn’t elect presidents, didn’t fight to separate from Britain, isn’t particularly religious. In short is not America. The point being that cultures and histories are not interchangeable. Politics has to be tuned to suite the people doing the electing and elections are national not international exercises.
I agree with a lot that is being said here, but I must admit the second sentence “Liberals are smart, we embrace logic and reason and apply it to our everyday lives,” leaves me very worried. Because sadly a lot of us don’t.
I accept that a lot of liberals are well educated, but that doesn’t make us smart; we say we embrace logic and apply it, but in 2014 when faced with evidence of the loss of all but one of our MEPs, the loss of two thirds of our members and nearly half of our councillors, very few of us and almost none near the top had the courage to say Nick, who had led us to this disaster, had to go so that we could make a new start before the final disaster struck.
Also since that time, when we have lost over half our staff, we have engaged in a bout of soul searching that has led many to the view that our problem won’t be solved by undoing the things that we messed up on in the Clegg years and reverting to the approach that made us a success in the 70s, 80s and 90s, but instead we have created a huge bureaucratic process to ensure that our candidates look like the electorate, rather than ensuring that our candidates actually are effective campaigners over the long run (and by that I mean 10 to 20 years it will take to win a seat.
Just one example, at Richmond Park for the first week-end we were told that the Delivery turfs had not yet been re-cut for the by-election. Hence many of the delivery round sheets did not have postcodes on them. Now we had known from 2015 that Zac had promised to stand down if the third runway was put forward, so we knew it was coming. Just imagine how much better our campaign could have been if all those people who spent all that time developing and allocating constituencies to specific minority groups, had instead focused on trying to win an impending by-election.
That would have been smart.
There is a dilemma as to whether Liberals, or the Lib Dems, should concentrate on identifying, engaging with, and converting, their potential core vote, or to retain their traditional approach of trying to appeal across a broad spectrum. The latter approach can lead to us being seen as too vague and woolly (just what do the Lib Dems actually stand for?), whilst concentrating on the core vote may result in becoming a niche party, incapable of winning Westminster seats in a FPTP system (as UKIP and the Greens have found to their cost).
Bernie Sanders has written to demand a change in the direction of the DNC. He says:
“sounds to me like people want a political revolution at the DNC and that they want the Democratic Party to move in a very different direction. They want a Democratic Party to stand up to the greed of Wall Street, the fossil fuel industry and corporate America, and represent the working people of our country and all those fighting for economic, social, racial and environmental justice. Now more than ever, that is the Democratic Party we need”.
The truce with the old order is well and truly over. There is now going to be a necessary debate on who and what the Democrats represent. The input of Elizabeth Warren (who was fantastic in the Wells Fargo scandal) and Bernie Sanders is essential in ensuring that the Democrats can re-establish their credibility after the catastrophe of November 8th.
Great post! Particularly this: “Our internationalism means that we are ready to help those on the other side of the world, but the lack of opportunities and development of those north of the Watford Gap are too far away to help with. “
We need to focus closer to home and remember that the primary responsibility of British politicians is British people. Forgetting this is what led us to Brexit.
@David Pocock :
I agree with the second part of your post; but first must come the disagreement!
” Trump had less votes than Romney for example and the story the republic seems to be trying to sell of a working class revolt simply is not borne out by the statistics ….”
The revolt was largely shown by people choosing not to vote in the face of two appalling candidates. That disproportionately-favoured the candidate Trump who was (officially at least) openly against the status quo.
“What I think we need to get is the tactics of our opponents are dishonest and we need to think about dealing with people who are not on the high ground ”
In the USA the ‘Democrats’ (sic) adopted filthy tactics even in their own primaries to cheat the people. 🙁 ‘Ends justifies the means’ has clearly become an alienating creed pervading right throughout British, European and US politics including so-called ‘good guys’. At least the Russians and Chinese are blatantly honest about much of their own suppression processes.
@Glenn:
“I think the main thing to learn is that Brexit and Trump are not the same thing just because you dislike both of them. Brexit has been building for decades. . .”
So has ‘Trumpism; which long pre-dates Trump. It’s just that until Hilary Clinton came along, the Democrats managed to cobble together a ‘coalition’ of people prepared to believe their perpetual excuses in order to scrape past them in elections. The result was to make the ‘Trumpists’ dig deeper. The ‘Tea Party’ is heavily-embedded in the US Republican Right as are some evangelical creeds which make ISIS seem almost timid. Then there is the re-emergent Klu Klux Klan and similar organisations. People who are uneducated and frightened have essentially been ignored because they hold a cluster of wrong opinions. These chickens all come home to rooost.
Democracy is essentially the right to be wrong which is meant to entail a collective responsibility for errors exercised through the electoral process. Instead, if you marginalise the ‘idiots’ who are vote fodder for the other side as irrational ‘enemies’ and do not try to engage with them at all (“We’ll get round to that NEXT election maybe?. . . .or the next?. . . .or….?”) you are creating the seeds of your own destruction.
‘Stronger Together’ (US) and ‘Stronger In’ (UK) were nice-sounding slogans behind which there was little useful substance. Both of them a bit like a bucket of concrete which has set solid before it could be usefully poured into anything sensible. 🙁
Glenn,
Brexit and Trump really are the same thing. Moreover, they are happening in other countries too. They are a response to disaffection by groups of voters who have suffered from national policies of recent decades. This was not a vote against the EU per se, but against how we are ruled, and similarly in the US. The way people experience this is through its effects on their lives, local society, how easy it is to get a job which pays enough to be comfortable and to keep up with what they see others get. Sure, it isnt everyone in society who feels this way but elections are won because minority blocks change sides. All this competition for the centre has missed the fact that disaffected working class have just jumped ship.
I would credit the conservatives for recognising that rising debt and permanent budget deficits are an unsustainable problem. Unfortunately they have no solution. The nation with the biggest problem is the US, and their national spending spree has been funding the world economy for decades. It cannot continue, the US is over extended and where it once paid for its military abroad from its trade surpluses, now its military represents just another river of money leaving the US.
International trade has to balance, money has to recycle or their is none to keep trading. It isnt recycling, its just debt piling up. US money flowing abroad will have to stop, just as US troops policing the world will have to stop. Trump was elected to do this, even if he has not a clue how it might be done and contracdicts himself every other policy.
The current world order is not going to last, because it cannot. The model where industry moves to the location with cheapest labour does not work. The model of eternally shrinking corporation taxes to try to attract the shrinking number of companies to your country, does not work. The model of slashing taxes on the rich to try to attract them, does not work. All these things lead to trade deficits and exploding government debt.
Keynes said money has to recycle, and the US laughed at his schemes to balance world trade, secure in their massive trade surpluses. Now who is feeling secure?
@Tomas H-J
“Glad to see this article too, and agree with Paul Holmes’s comments that the Democrat Presidential candidate should have been Bernie Saunders or Elisabeth Warren.”
Except Paul didn’t say that. He actually said that “If only the Democrat campaign had had a bit more of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and a bit less Washington establishment at its core.”
The idea that Bernie Saunders would have done better is a joke. Rather than winning the popular vote but losing the electoral college, as Clinton did, Sauders would have lost massively on both counts. In contrast Elizabeth Warren might very well have done better than Clinton.
@David Pearce
“The model where industry moves to the location with cheapest labour does not work.”
Why do you say that? If you live in less developed parts of the world then it surely works very well. Hundreds of millions, if not billions, have been lifted out of poverty through it.
American politics are not completely the same as British politics so care has to be taken when drawing lessons as to what has happened in America.
Years ago the council house estate in my local area was the first place I would go canvassing for the Liberal Party. I would always find support and sign up someone as a member. We must get back to the days when the Liberals were made up of ordinary folk.
Simon
Speaking as someone who now lives in SE Asia I must say you are right.
Did I miss something. People on council estates are not really interested in Liberal values. We can indulge in self analysis till the cows come home but it is Policies and Offerings that matter to people. ‘What are the Liberals going to do for my life’. This was the tragedy of Nick Clegg’s betrayal on student fees. If the Liberals are not about education. training and self development then they are nothing. Let’s oppose spending £80 billion (That’s what it will end up costing) on HS2 and put that money into developing skills and building homes, giving this county a decent broadband network and other things that matter to people. What is the LibDems housing policy? Half of the problem with immigration was the feeling that British people could not get housing and saw immigrants crowding them out. The real problem was that successive governments have failed to get housing built and it is too expensive. Have we got an answer to this? Yes, debate liberal values by all means but it is a worthless exercise unless those values are translated into policies and offerings you can put to people on the doorstep. I must confess to being a recent Brexit convert to the LibDems so if these policies exist then where are they?
P J
Most university students don’t come from council house estates. At a time of inevitable spending cuts should the funding go to middle class kids or others that need it?
In today’s Britain it is essential young people need to be educated to have the skills needed in an increasingly globalized world. The days of leaving school at the earliest opportunity and doing unskilled jobs are over. In this respect attitudes in Britain towards learning must change.
David Pierce,
No they are not. Brexit would have happened in Britain twenty or more tears ago. It isn’t really a shock and it isn’t anything new. It’s why no one held a referendum in the first place until Cameron. I voted Leave. I assure it most definitely was about the EU.
So let’s get to Trump. What we really learned is that Hillary Clinton was poor choice of candidate, that virtually any Republican would actually have beaten her more comprehensively than Donald Trump and that the pattern (established in 20th Century) of not electing administrations for more than two terms in a row remains unchanged. Americans elected the other party in a two party system. The left goes into hysterical meltdown exactly as they have done every single time a Republican wins. Dog bites man, Shock horror probe.
This is what has really happened, The left leaning media savvy intelligentsia have spent so long talking amongst themselves that they can’t tell fact from their own rhetoric. It shouldn’t really shock anyone to find out that English people don’t like the EU, that Labour party members are socialists, that local populations don’t really want mass immigration, that ” The End of History” was nonsense. that HC was not popular and so on. It also shouldn’t shock people that it shocked people like Polly Toynbee or Charlie Booker. This is not indicative of a changed world order, but of Journalist talking in an echo-chamber. I read the Guardian, I follow the news. I’m mostly a Left Liberal, To be honest it shocked me until I sat back and realized I was really only saying I was shocked because it seemed the decent thing to do.
nvelope2003.
We won a by-election in Eastleigh last week with an increased vote share and added 23.7% in Gloucester. We have increased our vote share more or less everywhere we have stood the last few weeks, but most have not been promising seats and as Paul Holmes points out to win any by-election we need a strong campaign. I don’t think anything relative to our stance on Brexit can be read into these votes.
I was campaigning in a parish election in Kirklees in October, and I met just one man who objected strongly to Tim’s campaign for another referendum. Most were more worried about local issues.. We did a survey which showed Leave won about 58% 42% in that area. Nevertheless we improved our vote share by 26% compared to the box share estimates in May 2016 and won comfortably.
Simon Shaw: Yes you are absolutely right about the benefits, not just to the local population, of industry moving to the places with the lowest wages. After many years of travelling to SE Asia I can see continual improvements in living standards. It is amazing that no one has made this point before. We have to spread wealth but of course those who lose out will not be happy about it, although they do benefit from lower prices and as has been pointed out, many of the job losses are due to technology which is also happening in places like China where for example there are no bus conductors or people issuing Metro tickets as you get them from machines.
@Simon Shaw
“The idea that Bernie Saunders would have done better is a joke. Rather than winning the popular vote but losing the electoral college, as Clinton did, Sauders would have lost massively on both counts.”
You MIGHT be right, Simon, although opinion polls showed a different result.
http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/2016-general-election-trump-vs-sanders
Although it’s been a bad few months for opinion pollsters, they were only about 2 points out on the POTUS national vote result ie within normal polling error margins. Of course, the forces of mammon might well have got their act together and backed Trump against Bernie. Maybe they would have been more successful than they were backing Hilary against Trump?
Andrew McCaig and Paul Holmes: I agree with everything you say but I am concerned that this emphasis on seemingly overturning the referendum result will not help the party and if the vote on Article 50 became a vote of confidence then the Liberal Democrats would be destroyed at the subsequent general election. It is far too early to face an election against a popular Government. Time is needed to rebuild support.
@P. J. :
“People on council estates are not really interested in Liberal values.”
The nature of that comment suggests to me that some people on Council estates might be rather more interested in Liberal values (which include not writing everyone in a ‘class’ off) than you might be.
Do watch the latest Adam Curtis “Hypernormalization” on BBC iplayer.
It nails how a growing part of the electorate are aware that much of the western political establishment rely on “perception management” of being in control whilst pretty much giving up. Growing cynicism on political leaders’ integrity encourages people to be reassured by engaging only in reflections of their own views.
@Simon Shaw: OK, I wrongly paraphrased Paul Holmes. And I skipped pointing out that Hillary Clinton won the most votes.
But she didn’t lose because she was seen to be too left wing, and regardless of how Trump and the media would talk about Bernie Sanders being a commie, Sanders would probably have done better than Clinton against Trump in Ohio, Pennsylvania & Michigan to win those states- perhaps instead losing smaller states Colorado & Virginia and doing worse in NY. It wouldn’t be a joke to propose that a Sanders candidacy might have won more electoral college votes and the Presidency but fewer disenchanted Republican-inclined voters across the US.
Eve of poll surveys on attributes between Trump & Clinton showed Clinton seen more positively, except for the one on bringing needed change – this was Trump’s one massive advantage.
The vote wasn’t about how left or right wing the candidates were. Perhaps the Democrats generally failed to point at how political stagnation had been caused by the Republican HoR & Senate , which are the problem which needed a shake-up.
Once again gender hardly gets a mention in one of these discussions. You don’t need to “feel the pain” of those who are daft enough to vote for a man who talks casually about grabbing women by the genitals. Tell them they are wrong to vote for him!
the Liberal Democrats clause 4 is the preamble to our constitution ,that underpins our beliefs and values and we should not be afraid to shout that from the roof tops our non conformist agenda and our willingness to take on the powers of vested interest .A reformed new Europe self confident and living up to its responsibilities is not the same as slavishly supporting the currently inefficient overly top down EU.Standing up for liberty ,democracy and community is not the same as backing an alleged liberal elite .remember nationalist ,protections and down right facists have always tried to smear us that way to hide their evil goals of creating an authoritarian state in their own image .So lets be what we really are radical,progressive game changers with a clear vision of how we promote an open ,equal and economically diverse culture underpinned by the rule of law.
A sensible article and comments , but not quite correct in every one at all, in my view .
The fact is , we are similar to every major country in some ways , less in others .I do not agree with Glenn about Hillary Clinton being on the right on anything , and Theresa May to the left of her at all. Clinton ran on Bernie’s programme ! May is warmed over social conservatism of a Germanic sort , a somewhat more right wing version of the centre right parties there. Clinton is a centrist liberal progressive , who is a big success on the speaker circuit and has made money ! Other than that , I fail to see anything in her past to the right of half our peers , many of whom are lobbyists !
As for this worship of Bernie Sanders , who I like , he is a democratic socialist . Are we that ? I am aware that in the States , that makes him more of a social democrat here , but the Democratic party is a far broader party , it runs from the left of the Tories , to the centre left of Labour , via all of this party , I feel ! We need to have far greater memory or awareness of the Kennedy , Carter, and Clinton presidencies, to see much good in them , and many similarities to what we would do or support. We can , and should be far more nuanced .
And one important thing , Stephen , nor any above , does not or do not mention. A bit less EUphilia , and concentration on a myriad of other matters might connect us with much of Britain, I am alienated from this obsession and I am a Liberal Democrat !
Simon Shaw and Nvelope2003.
Might I remind you that to someone in Sunderland or the Rust Belt the employment prospects and incomes of workers in China mean very little. And guess what? Elections are fought nationally which means that someone living in Sunderland or the Rust Belt can vote in a British or American election and a Chinese worker can’t. Plus Chinese workers are no more altruistic. This is why Liberal Globalism like International Socialism is not really compatible with nationally based democracies. Both try to wish the Nation State away and end up seeing the electorate/people as the enemy. Nothing has really changed recently, except maybe ideologues have hit the brick wall of reality. The theory of globalism is has been tested and found wanting. Collapsing because its an unrealistic belief system that can’t hold up to a moderate political breeze and the votes of the lumpen proletariat.
Why dangerous dogs don’t speak to pollsters.?
I’m constantly amused by ‘signals’, of human nature, that tell us volumes more about reality, than any pollster can possible inform. A few days before the US election, Michael Heseltine spoke of the family pet dog, which it seems went berserk with members of his family. Initial reports suggested he’d throttled the dog to death with its own collar. Fact is,.. the dog’s demise came a day later, at the end of a vets needle.
No one can figure out why an otherwise placid dog,.. bites.?
But for tyrants everywhere, the fact that an electorate who is becoming ‘a dog that bites’, they have the gulag,.. the retraining camps,.. the shutting down of media communications,.. the denial of democracy,.. the refusal to listen to dissent,.. the subtle propaganda against the voice of dissent.
All of these ‘tools of the tyrant’, are there with the sole purpose of turning dissenters into ‘the enemy’? So,..If the totalitarian establishment approaches you with menace, and questions your loyalty to ‘the state’ with threats, you will tell them openly ” No Sir,..Not me sir,.. am a good and loyal citizen,.. Sir”
But sometimes a tyrant, is actually unaware that it’s a tyrant. Sometimes a tyrannical regime can suppress with political correctness,.. a declaration of ‘hate crimes’,.. and other ‘prisons of silence’,,.. to correct, punish, and re-educate.
In short,.. what if the tyrant is liberal,.. and the corresponding threat much more ‘liberally’ subtle.? What if the liberal establishment generate a storyline that tell us that anyone who contradicts or dissents what the state wants,.. is a nationalist,.. a xenophobe,.. a racist,.. a nasty evil bigot.?
So now,.. a pollster approaches. The pollster asks,..”Are you going to vote with the state view, or are you going to vote in dissent of the state view”.? ” No Sir,.. I’m no racist, nationalist, bigot,.. I’m voting in line with the state view,.. yes Sir,.. I’m going to vote with the liberal elite and the establishment”
Pollsters are the ear of the establishment elite,.. and people who intend to bite the establishment elite, have no reason to admit it.
That’s why dangerous dogs, and people who intend to bite, don’t speak to pollsters.? But that’s not where the story ends.
@Glenn – I am seriously waiting to see articles (probably in The Guardian) questioning the wisdom of the universal franchise.
The fact that globalization has lifted the income of people in the Third World is commendable, but it has come at a cost.
Inflation-adjusted median household income in – let’s randomly pick Akron, OH as it’s one of the rust-belt states, and a state that Clinton lost by 9% points and where the Democrats were swept away on Tuesday – has fallen from $54K in 2005 to $51K in 2015. http://www.deptofnumbers.com/income/ohio/akron/.
People in many of the states she lost now have 10 years or more of stagnant or declining income. Clinton was widely perceived as the candidate of continuity – which for many people meant continued stagnation.
We cannot keep talking up the benefits of globalization for the Third World while ignoring the consequences for the people of our own countries. It is creating a vacuum that is being filled by the populist right.
I do not think we should get hung up about Bernie Sanders being a socialist. He is not going to nationalise the commanding heights of the US economy. What the US has lacked is a government similar to the 1945 Labour government that combined socialism with the social liberalism of William Beveridge and Keynsian economics that ushered in the NHS free at the point of delivery, the welfare state and an unprecedented rise in living standards for the great mass of the British population. Had Sanders been the Democrat nominee I am sure he would have done better in the rustbelt states where the Democrats lost the election. It is true that Clinton took up his policies in her campaign but she had less credibility having opposed them in the past and her selection of a centrist candidate as her running mate.
The priority for the Democrats is to win back those rustbelt states for if they are lost forever then they have a huge mountain to climb.
@NVELOPE20O3. I agree that appearing to be intent on blocking the clear, single issue, Referendum vote would be a mistake. Clinton and Obama were clear and principled when they said the election outcome had to be accepted. We should follow the same path v the Referendum result.
Of course we should hold the Brexiteers to account over every broken promise, every negative outcome and every detail of the terms and negotiations – just as the Democrats will do with Trump. But trying to block a clear single issue democratic vote via Parliamentary procedure is wrong.
PJ Of course Lib Dems want people to benefit from the highest level of education they can, but at a time when the most vulnerable in our society, disabled people, were about to suffer from a decrease in benefits because of our economic situation and more people were losing their jobs and needing financial help, then it was surely better to give the vulnerable more income so that they could survive, rather than giving free education to those who would be able pay back loans.
I agree with you about policies but they have to be based on our Liberal values otherwise they are just reactions to what other parties are doing. I disagree with you about people on council estates and agree with Stephen. We must help people who are trapped by poverty to achieve their potential. It is our duty as Lib Dems to do so and how can we do so if we don’t speak to them and understand what they need. At the moment UKIP is still pretending that it’s standing up for them when, in fact, we know that Brexit is what some of the wealthiest in our country want. We must show the poorest once again that we have their interests at heart and redistribute wealth just as the Liberal budget of 1909 did. Liberals stood against the wealthy to benefit the poor more than 100 years ago. It’s time we did it again.
As liberals we focus too much on social liberalism and hardly at all on economic liberalism.
We ned to focus more on economic liberalism and explain how free markets and free trade means consumer goods are so much better value for money than they would be under a protectionist system. Less well off people benefit from having such good value goods and services but they may not recognise it when we never publicise it.
@ David Evershed “We need to focus more on economic liberalism”.
We tried that between 2010 and 2015. Just remind me again how that turned out ?
David Raw
It turned out well for the party in the coalition which claimed ownership of the policies of economic liberalism – the Conservatives. Free markets and free trade are as much , if not more, the policies of traditional Liberals than traditional Conservatives.
We are living in times when someone offering simple solutions to complex problems attracts votes more easily than those who admit it’s going to be tough. Giving detailed, rational explanations as to why those simple solutions won’t work is met with cries of “scare-mongering”, and if you sound like you know what you are talking about, you are dismissed as part of the establishment and/or the elite.
Nationalism is the ultimate simple solution, and come with the free gift of someone else to blame, and those who disagree can be dismissed as unpatriotic and traitors.
It is interesting to see how many who were strong supporters of Brexit are aghast at the association with Trump voters, and Scottish Nationalists like to think they are a whole different sort of nationalist to the Brexiteers, but at the end of the day, the different movements all share the idea that “we’d be better off without that lot dragging us down”.
You don’t win votes by offending people, or telling them that they are racist, because few people think of themselves that way, or at least have the sense to know it’s not a compliment. However, I think there may be something in letting people see that the tactics they find easy to hate in the Trump campaign isn’t that different to what was offered to them on the side of a bus, or in some blog. People have become used to the idea that “the establishment” is lying to them, but it’s about time they realised that the silver tongued campaigners with easy solutions to complex problems are economic with the truth.
We also have to deal with the nature of modern media, which makes colourful characters popular with tv producers and newspaper editors. So we have Trump’s outrageous comments being reported far and wide, and before we know it, he’s not just a political wannabe, he’s a serious candidate, and now President Elect. We have Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage being posh buffoons, who make people laugh. Sturgeon knows she can get a headline simply by threatening another independence referendum.
This isn’t just about getting headlines, these people use it to control the narrative. They divert from their own short-fallings, and don’t give their opponents the time to refute with actual facts, or get across those more complicated policy ideas.
Any volunteers to be the party’s colourful clown?
Peter Thiel seems to me to have got this spot on – http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/09/peter-thiel-perfectly-summed-up-donald-trump-in-one-paragraph.html
‘”I think one thing that should be distinguished here is that the media is always taking Trump literally. It never takes him seriously, but it always takes him literally. … I think a lot of voters who vote for Trump take Trump seriously but not literally, so when they hear things like the Muslim comment or the wall comment, their question is not, ‘Are you going to build a wall like the Great Wall of China?’ or, you know, ‘How exactly are you going to enforce these tests?’ What they hear is we’re going to have a saner, more sensible immigration policy.”‘
Liberals need to see this because not taking people seriously yet taking them literally is exactly the point of contention. To be honest I went to Europe in summer and I have Le Pen winning in France as a real possibility – no one took her seriously either.
Fiona
It’s not so much that people think their leaders are lying, although they did about expense, WOMDs, tuition fees and so on, it’s actually that they don’t wan what is being offered. Since the late 70s the English have be saying they don’t want further integration with the Europe, for hundreds of years a good proportion of Scots have wanted independence which inevitably increased with advent with devolution, every single survey for well over 20 years as found that over 70% the population want lower immigration, every 4 years there is a 50/50 chance that Americans will elect a Republican president. Theses are not new.The only thing that really links them is that the bulk of progressive liberals don’t like them and wish they weren’t true. The liberal left currently moaning about being called the “metropolitan elite” and accused by some (IMO delusional) people of being the New World Order appear to think this is only wrong because it is in fact run by Rupert Murdoch, Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson (IMO equally delusional). In truth people are not liberal in the way liberals want them to be. They like their nation states and social continuity.
Actually Little Jackie Paper they are right to take Trump seriously not literally. He back tracked on his Muslim stuff, settling on extreme monitory of suspected radicals. He back tracked on his deportation idea, settling on concentrating on deporting criminals, Then backtracked on Obama care and I’m pretty certain his great wall will become sort of a fence. He’s a bit of a flim flam man. His book basically says start negotiations from a position of overstated strength and then soften it. A bit like bartering.
As a non liberal wishing to offer a bit of advice, it really isn’t a good look to have unelected establishment fat cats self framing as agents that would delay and hamper the people’s decision, and yes the people knew they wanted full sovereignty. It’s easy to overlook the fact the entire establishment, backed up with organs of the state and the GOvt of the day still could not persuade the people of thier case. Above all Breixt is a vote for hope and courage, embracing our autonomy, not fearing change. The EU is a lumbering squabble club and will most definitely fail anyway. Let’s be great Europeans without fearing independence.
Fiona, liberals have an in-built sense of superiority which blinds them to real evidence and common sense. Take the classic liberal remedy to mass immigration; to build more homes and hospitals. Now that right there is a simple solution to a complex problem, and anyone with street smarts instinctively knows a shed load of shiny new homes and infrastructure will act as an even greater magnetic pull on migrants and thus unsustainable, and nothing would be solved.
Similarly, increasing the minimum wage ever higher attracts more people happy to work at that wage level, thus wages are in effect held back from the level they would naturally rise to with constrained labour supply. Also such legislation would totally miss the millions of self employed,
Liberals always seem to do stage one thinking based on an emotional impulse, dressed up as an evidence based rationale. They rarely do the latterly thinking required for the places where politics is played out.
Part of me agrees with this. Im supposed to be ashamed of my education. And another part thinks we humoured and tolerated the likes of Farage and Trump for too long.
I don’t think Liberals are too cleaver, too nice perhaps and certainly they need to listen to voices of those that are not part of their echo chamber. Life can be nasty, brutish and short for far to many people, liberals need to work out how to improve their lot and it isn’t by lecturing them, its by providing a better future.
There are hard questions about our politics to answer in the upcoming months and years, and that can start with “why are so many putting trust in the parties and politics that have been in power the majority of the last one fifty years when trying to give the elites a kicking?”. What is it about the ex-bankers and self-labeled billionaires that is attracting the attention of those who describe themselves as forgotten and sick of the powerful leaving them behind?
Sometimes saying the right thing won’t get you into power if the majority have sided with the wrong people and other times you have to change your message to meet the majority in the middle. This year it seems that people want genuine voices so time to stand up for the liberal vision.
The sentiment may be right, Stephen but more knocking, phoning and deliveries in council estates (important as that may be) is not really the key lesson to be learned.
Trump was not only opposed by the entirety of the Democratic party’s political machine but also by the leadership of the Republican party he was standing as a candidate for and (with the exception of Fox News) the entirety of the serious print and broadcast mainstream media.
He ran a campaign short on policy and big on pithy controversial remarks that brought him massive public exposure. It was an exceptional sales job. I’m not sure he expected to be win the election, but President elect he is and he will now have two years to deliver on at least some his promises before the next congressional elections. If there is little improvement in living standards for those that voted for Trump over the next few years, then the pendulum will once again swing back towards progressive politics, as it has in the past.
Apologies: realised this is probably more relevant on this thread:
Question: If remain had been the 52%, would we be now trying to spin the result as advisory? We know the answer!
And here lies the problem: again and again and again.
Fact 1: “Ordinary people do not trust politicians” because when things don’t go their way, they become more self absorbed with their own ideals, than with the practical concerns of people they are supposed to be representing!
All the ideals and rights in the world don’t matter if you don’t have a job, security or hope of a decent future for your family/community.
A huge number of the 52% knew exactly what they were voting for, they are not thick or dumb or don’t know how the world works. They are acutely aware of how THEIR world works.
Fact 2: People’s perception of politicians is directly dependent on ‘are you being straight with me’ ‘do you speak to me in language that I understand’ ‘do you understand my concerns (on multiple issues) and ‘are you able to do something to help make my life better’
That’s why Nigel & Donald communicate the way they do.
They understand that to get the audience to listen to them they have to communicate in a certain way. I don’t agree with their policies any more than anyone else on here, but simple clear charismatic communication is important – very important.
Fact 3: Liberalism starts at home – sometimes it seems we are so concerned with trying to fix the world (we are European, international, equality for everyone etc etc) that we forget the people who live here! Ideals are great, but what if uncontrolled immigration, downward pressure on wages, services creaking under the pressure of rapid influx, causes millions of our own citizens to get poorer?
What is their view of the British Lib Dem party then who may seem more concerned with the rights of a European worker than the plight of their own citizens?
Fact 4: Identity is critical – British, English, Scottish, Welsh etc. I was brought up in Yorkshire and now live in the Midlands. I taught throughout the miners strike in the mid eighty’s. Nigel and Donald understand something I rarely see on these pages – if your identity is Yorkshire or English and you see all these other groups getting special treatment because of their ‘special identity’ then that sucks – and rightly so.
We really really need to understand this – big time!
Internationalism is fine, being a global citizen is fine, but if your own people see you not respecting their identity first (often through fear of political correctness – that’s another story I’ll resist), then they will get angry and rightly so.
Question: Ask “ordinary” people if their perception was this vote was a choice between British or European identity…………………………Oops
Liberalism starts at home – surely we must get it right with our own people first, before trying to fix the world, otherwise we’re simply seen as ‘middle class do gooders’, who have forgotten the people who are actually voting, working and living here!
So I want to ask a serious question:
Even if there was a credible way to block Article 50, and/or get back into Europe now, will someone please tell me what that would achieve/change?
The way I see it (as a Remainer), would that not weaken democracy, risk widespread civil unrest and most importantly, what has changed for the 52% in a few months?
Do we now have a clear set of policies to fix all the reasons they voted leave (including 30% of Lib Dems remember). I’ve not seen much evidence of this.
This week would appear to indicate the US and maybe France next have a similar set of issues.
Surely if we want to be heard, listened too and respected, we must first and foremost recognise all the reasons Britain voted leave, communicate policies simply and clearly to address them and close the inequality gap at home first before going on idealistic crusades.
I’m not at all sure going back into Europe at this moment, even for short term political gain (26% or not – who trust opinion polls anymore anyway) is a good idea for the Lib Dems let alone a large number of the 52% for whom being British and seeing the pressure on their communities and wages eased is paramount right now.
Simon Shaw,
“Why do you say that? If you live in less developed parts of the world then it surely works very well”
China sells massively and has a trade surplus. It lends the money back to the US. All goes swimmingly until the US has a credit crisis and can no longer pay. Then the Chinese debts become worthless, instead of being a sovereign wealth fund. Chinese workers are suddenly unemployed, because they have no customers. Suddenly China is dumping steel on world markets because its internal boom is over. Their prosperity and security relies upon the US continuing to be able to pay. Thats impossible if the US is just racking up huger and huger debts. Its great while it lasts, but it cannot.
Being more nationalist I would say, even while debt fuelled consumption is still operating what is happening is that real wealth is transfering from the UK/US to China. As their wealth increases, ours falls.
Manfaring,
“At a time of inevitable spending cuts should the funding go to middle class kids or others that need it?”
The Uk needs better educated kids and the current arrangement is not providing them. For a long time the education system has failed to channel people into shortage areas, and is failing to achieve quality. We changed from a grammar school system criticised for the number of children who got a second rate education, to one where everyone gets the same mediocre education, and frankly that is worse. More just perhaps, but the nation needs educational high performers. Most university education is wasted time and money not relevant to eventual employment.
Glenn,
“No they are not. Brexit would have happened in Britain twenty or more tears ago. It isn’t really a shock and it isn’t anything new. It’s why no one held a referendum in the first place until Cameron. I voted Leave. I assure it most definitely was about the EU. ”
I disagree. Brexit was a protest vote against social conditions based upon the belief created by UKIP that the EU was to blame for these. It was not, they are squarely down to the Uk government. Consequently Brexit will not solve these problems, and this group of voters will continue to protest.
“What we really learned is that Hillary Clinton was poor choice of candidate, that virtually any Republican would actually have beaten her more comprehensively than Donald Trump”
No. Trump won on the electoral college. Other republicans might have done better in California, but worse in the rust belt. Trump won by attracting democrat voters where it mattered.
Paul Holmes,
” Clinton and Obama were clear and principled when they said the election outcome had to be accepted. We should follow the same path v the Referendum result. ”
Trump himself seems to have already backtracked on his position on Obamacare, and I am sure this will not be the last issue. Both democrats and republicans in congress will oppose him despite him having what you might call a mandate from the people. The US system is built upon the principle of one faction of lawmakers opposing the voter mandate of another set. The very odd thing in the Uk is having one house which agrees not to oppose something which was part of the other house’s election promises. If the US wished to change its constituition It would require a supermajority to pass it into law. It would have required this to join the EU, and now to leave it.
David Evershed,
“It turned out well for the party in the coalition which claimed ownership of the policies of economic liberalism- the conservatives.”
Hey, I’m a liberal voter and you need me back: the coalition was a national disaster created out of an opportunity and an even bigger disaster for the liberals. It laid the foundations for Brexit, because even the liberals fell in with conservative policy and deserted their base. It turned out badly for conservatives too, who only scraped back into power and also landed themselves with a Brexit they did not want.
>Not from a comfortable middle class and multi-cultural London perspective I can give you that.
I survived a rough comprehensive, in the middle of a big council estate in a dull town. We lived in a village. My dad was a painter and decorator, mum had grown up on a farm. I got a degree, and a job that saw me working with people from all walks of life, including having to visit people on sink estates. My first house was in a mixed street of first-time-buys and housing association places, with neighbours ranging from a burglar to a drug dealer to an alcoholic.
At times, struggling with childcare and other bills, I felt it would be easier to give up work and let the state pick up the tab, as so many round me did.
So all this ‘Lib Dems are part of some elite who don’t understand what it’s like’ stuff is at best a sweeping generalisation used to beat us with by the ‘holier than thou’ trolls and plays to agenda of the likes of Nigel and Trump.
Beating ourselves up about it justifies what they are saying.
Alistair
“Im supposed to be ashamed of my education.”
No-one should ever be ashamed of their education. The level of your education is not the determining factor of your being.
True liberalism is a willingness, whether in wealth or adversity,.. to occasionally stop, look over your shoulder, and wait for the stragglers to catch up.?
John Dunne – a good point. The American novelist Richard Ford yesterday in the Guardian (OK – showing my elitism) quoted Judge Learned Hand… the spirit of liberty is that “which is not too sure that it’s right…the spirit which seeks to understand other men and women”. We could do with a lot more of that spirit on both sides at the moment.
The fact that so many people in this debate have patronisingly referred to ‘people on council estates’ or ‘the working class’ as if they are a homogeneous blob is part of our party’s problem. This sort of illiberal prejudice totally misunderstands the debate.
Further to Max Wilkinsons point, I am utterly against the spirit of this article, I identify as middle class & I am a council tenant, living on an a council estate, in Peckham, Southwark, south east London. These things are complex & tangled.
As a matter of fact, income levels werent a significant factor in Trumps victory & Clinton voters had a lower average income than Trump supporters.
If by Class, we mean which class individuals identify with, then I have seen no polling that connects Class with voting in either The US Election or The Referendum.
Trump & Farage have both been pushing a fake Class narrative, backed up by Corbyn, we should not fall for it.
David Pierce,
It really was not about anything except Britain’s relationship to the EU. A lot of Pro EU people just can’t hack the fact that their dream is dead because there were more nationalists than pan nationalists. Basically what happened is that lots of people went into the voting booth and said I’m not European, I’m British.
Indeed Glen – and until enough people accept this fact and start to take people’s identity and values seriously, we will make no meaningful progress
Apologies – lost an n (Glenn) 🙂
Isn’t it true that Trump is in power possibly because many Democrat-leaning voters did not bother to vote? All it takes for evil to triumph is for good folks to do nothing. Expect the same in France and Germany next year.
Glenn, Richard Butler, Mike S., David Pearce ,,, I take your criticisms of the Lib Dem approaches very seriously. Glenn, for instance, ‘ in truth people are not liberal in the way liberals want them to be.’ I guess that’s right: our committed core vote is always small. And as you all seem to say, we Lib Dems do want to solve the problems of the world and pay too little attention to our own folk’s problems, such as, that a mass influx of the less fortunate of Europe will continue to be attracted and eat up the extra homes and hospital beds and school places we call for unless we start moderating immigration. ( Or, perhaps, unless other EU nations improve economically.) Nor is it any use Lib Dems ignoring the faults of the EU any longer; we should surely be studying with fellow Liberals on the Continent how to improve its organisation radically in future. BUT, we should surely remember that 48% of British people wanted to stay in the EU regardless, and that is a huge number of voters inclined to listen to us now and perhaps silently willing us to go on and represent their views. We have because of that never had a better chance of vastly increasing our support in the country, as the Witney result perhaps began to show.
I make no comment on the US election, as I don’t understand their politics. But one last thing I would like to say here is to P.J. Hi – you evidently don’t know that hundreds of Liberal Democrats quietly work away all the time to develop good policies, on, for example, welfare benefits, and housing. At the last regional party conference I went to, this autumn, a further development of housing policy was agreed which certainly educated me, and which was accepted with enthusiasm by a former rent officer, a natural Tory voter, to whom I showed it. We do have solid, well researched and thought-out policies to show the public, and all the distraction of fighting Brexit does not stop us going on developing them.
California has an independence movement. The richest state is just as upset with the national government as are the poorest. Because it is not permitted to have the liberal programme it supports. Trump has won because he captured the desire in the poorest states to restore the situation they once had. If London had a better geographical border it too would soon be forming an independence movement. They could take common cause with the Scots Nats. Brexit will solve nothing, because none of the issue being complained about are consequence of EU action. Discontent will continue against the British government from those areas which voted for Brexit. So thats Scotland, London, the Brexit regions, all discontent with the national government and demanding change.
Brexit is the beginning of a revolution, not the end of it. The root cause is the adoption en masse by western leaders of globalisation and trickle down economics. It does not work. No millionaire and no company operate to redistribute their own wealth to the poor. Implicit within democracy is that people vote for their own interest, and the interest of the masses must win. Subverting this will, for example all three traditional main parties pandering to the centre ground and nowhere else, has an obvious implication that most people will be dissatisfied and this will grow until there is change.
David.
California is not going to break away from the USA. Texas has had independence movements for far longer and that isn’t going to breakaway either. It’s fantasy, bluster. l
If Scotland breaks away from the UK it will in fact be because devolution made the dream of Scottish independence possible and arguably inevitable. . Opponents of devolved parliaments have been pointing this out for years. The other thing about Scotland is that it has much stronger links to Europe because the historic catholic influence is more of a factor there and in the EU than is generally thought. The point to me is that culture and history shape the present.
As a nom lob fem, Stephen Is pretty much spot on. It appears to me that you are at great risk of falling into the same trap as labour I.e. Talking mostly amongst your selves in an attempt to analyse why you lost various votes. Continue to do this and you will arrive st the same place as labour, unelectable.
The point about smugness and looking down on people who have different beliefs is well made, sadly from my point of view whether they mean to or not Clegg and Farron both project a kind of stunned pity when talking about those that voted out, this does not help their argument, neither does some of the language used. Would you look kindly at people who refer to you, at best, as one of the ‘left behind’ and that’s the politest phrase I have heard used.
Ignore this guy at your peril.
Mike S, brilliantly put and in my opinion very accurate. Lets hope this gets to Tim.
Glenn and Mike S. Can’t go along with you any more. ‘ Basically what happened is that lots of people went into the voting booth and said I’m not European I’m British.’ Oh, no they didn’t. They might have said, ‘I’m not European, I’m English.’ Or Scottish. Or Welsh. Those identities trump Britishness for most people, and another sad consequence of Brexit would be the weakening of the union of our nations, which some of us, including David Cameron (and even possibly the Queen) do care very much about. Finally, have you seen that Observer report of yesterday, under the headline Two-thirds of voters oppose a blind-date Brexit’, says poll? Part of the growing evidence that Tim Farron’s line is right. (And I see there is another thread launched here now, by a German national, which appears to say in essence as my own piece did at the end of October – sorry, but it’s still true – Oppose Brexit, it’s bad for the country.)
Hi Katharine
I agree – I could have said Yorkshire, Northern, English etc v European. But as I thought this had all been covered earlier, simply used British as the example this time to echo Glenn – but take your point.
Can I also say I realise that 17.5 million people have more than one reason for voting No, but I’m trying to keep it simple – I’ve already tried to deal with many of the others earlier up the page here which got very long
I think if you pop over to ‘the German guy’s article’ which you mention, you’ll be happier with my last exchange with him – never let it be said that debate can’t focus/change minds/stances. 🙂 I have come around to Tim’s stance with fingers firmly crossed.
However, (can’t remember where this was now), but the line:
“now we must make globalisation work for British citizens every time we step forwards”
really does seem to sum up possibly the biggest learn of the last 4 months?
Katharine,
I’m just so English I often use British to mean the same thing. Personally, if Scotland ever chooses to leave the UK, I’ll be fine with it. I believe in nation states, not locking countries into unions they have grown tired of.
AS for the Observer report. I’m far from convinced by polling these days. It’s not like they have been accurate recently.
Katharine,
Actually, thinking about it. British is a better description because nearly 40% % of Scottish voters opted for Leave, a majority of the electorate in Wales and in Northern Ireland a lot of Unionists voted Leave. Whilst the SNP were in favour of Remain as were Plaid Cymru. So actually the most politically successful voices for breaking up the UK see Europe as way of achieving independence.
Sounds like going back to what the party was when we controlled Tower Hamlets and Liverpool, or later when we controlled Newcastle. Our campaigners in these places clearly knew how to talk – and listen – to working-class people who didn’t read the Guardian.
There are many lessons from Trump’s election, though it’s worth remembering Clinton won the popular vote and Biden, Sanders or Michelle Obama would almost certainly have won (Sanders much more narrowly, I suspect). One is to pick a very few key messages and keep hammering them. Another is to keep working with white working-class people in relatively depressed areas.
I’m not sure I go far with this rational Liberals thing. I’d never have joined the Liberal Party if it hadn’t had passion and also values that could not be derived purely from reason, but came from the heart. We are instrumentally rational: faced with criminal reoffending or a declining car industry, say, we hopefully think logically about what we’re trying to achieve and what reason and evidence say may help achieve it. But we undervalue the beyond rational at our peril.