As the dust settles from the elections and we lament the loss of so many talented and dedicated Liberal Democrat MPs and councillors, there will inevitably be discussions over what went wrong and how it could have been avoided. As a party we have a lot of hard thinking to do about how best we rebuild. But there is no time for a protracted period of introspection. The country stands at a crossroads: one way leading to a strong and united Britain at the heart of the EU, the other to a little England isolated from its neighbours at home and abroad. The voice of the Liberal Democrats and liberalism is needed now more than ever.
By voting Tory, much of the electorate thought they were voting for a continuation of the status quo. Scared by the prospect of instability under a Labour government propped up the SNP, the overwhelming verdict of the British people was that they’d rather stick with the devil they know. But already, voters are waking up to the reality of a Tory majority government unconstrained by the moderating force of the Liberal Democrats. Our human rights, our civil liberties and our place in Europe are all increasingly under threat. The huge surge in new Liberal Democrat members and volunteers up and down the country is testament to the fact that many people agree with us that these are values worth fighting for.
We now need to build on this momentum. With an EU referendum looming as early as 2016, during which UKIP and large swathes of the Tory party will campaign to leave no matter what concessions the Prime Minister manages to squeeze from our partners, there is no time to waste. We need to start preparing now to save our place in the EU as well as our continued existence as a United Kingdom. For the election I created a ‘Guide to the EU’ phone app, available for Android here and ITunes here, with key facts and figures to help activists (my Labour colleague Richard Corbett has made a similar app here). But this is just a small beginning. We need to start making the case why Britain’s EU membership matters – in our local newspapers, pubs and town halls and amongst family and friends. That means we need to be well versed in how the EU works and the arguments for and against our membership. We also need to start recruiting more young members, starting by making sure we are at every university Freshers’ Fair this autumn. These students will be crucial to helping us win the EU referendum campaign. At the general election, fear and grievance won the battle. We must make sure that hope and unity win the war.
* Catherine Bearder was Lib Dem MEP for the South East region from 2009-2020.
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4 Comments
Thanks for writing to us. However I think the article is a bit too “pro EU”. This might sound strange considering a referendum is likely to happen soon, but if you say that an “In” vote will lead to the UK “being in the heart of the EU” then you are likely to get the opposite result.
We need credibility here. I would love to work in another European country one day, but I don’t expect to be able to do so with no skills or not being able to speak the local language. Some reforms are reasonable to ask for.
Best regards
Eddie, many Brits will work around Europe without speaking the local language. This is the advantage the British and Irish have, in the EU with mastery of English, the international language of business, making UK especially attractive for investment. Personally I’ve worked in more than 10 EU countries, and UK’s additional Commonwealth connections make it a world leader in various industries but…. this is all at risk due to the rise of the Tory little Englander syndrome. Noone is going to make long term investments in the UK if there is a significant chance of Brexit. I tend to agree that we will never be at the heart of Europe, we’ll always be an interloper relative to France and Germany. But, what the Tories are doing to the economy, especially industry, by flirting with isolationism, is economic vandalism. The resurgence of the UK car manufacturing industry is a good example.
Catherine Bearder
the other to a little England isolated from its neighbours at home and abroad
I agree with Eddie Sammon, “a little England” is what a lot of people want, this idea of a return to a safer and more secure past is what a lot of people want and vote UKIP because they think it offers it. Can you blame them when globalisation and increase in scale of everything have created so much uncertainty and stress? People like the idea of “little”. We really need to avoid what Nick Clegg did when he debated with Nigel Farage and ended up boosting Farage by accusing Farage of being just the sort of thing Farage wants to be seen as to attract votes.
The reality is that the big money backing UKIP wants the opposite. What is doesn’t like about the EU is the way its international co-operation acts as a brake on the power of the global finance super-elite to dominate us, play one country against another, and squeeze us all dry. UKIP doesn’t have any real policies that would turn us back into “Little England”, its policies involve selling us out, making us a sort of tax haven dominated by people who care nothing for us or our country, only seeing us a place where they and their fellow global elite types can have a safe home and pay no tax, serviced by coolie labour with the natives treated with contempt. But a tax haven works on the principle that the population is small compared to the number of brass plates. The tax haven model which is what UKIP and its hedge funders backers really want just CAN’T work with a population of 60 million.
The future of this country is not looking good. Just a week after an election in which we were told we were doing so much better than our neighbours economically, we find figures coming out showing the reverse is true. Our European neighbours are moving ahead economically and we are not. We have this serious productivity issue, it is just like critics of the outgoing government said: too many of those jobs supposedly created were low-paid no-future jobs, too many people have been forced by fear which the extreme free market policies and obsession with targets produces to work long hours unproductively. Our economy has just not had the security to allow long-term development of skills among ordinary workers. What a pity Nick Clegg and the Cleggies made supporting the Conservative nonsense propaganda about their supposed economic success a key aspect of our election campaign …
Catherine, the fight for Britain’s future has been going on for a number of years. It is very sad that a large number of ‘senior’ Liberal Democrats have played no part in it and some have contributed more to the problem than the solution.