Last week saw much excitement when 90 leading Liberal Democrat councillors wrote to the Times criticising the leadership of Eric Pickles. I was not one of them.
In 2009 I thought long and hard about the circumstances in which such letters are appropriate and as a result offer 6 tests:
- Is the objective clear?
- Is the objective likely to be more achievable as a result of the letter?
- Does it avoid attacking our own side?
- Is the timing appropriate?
- Is the medium appropriate?
- Does it avoid looking elitist and self-regarding?
The letter to the Guardian from members of the Federal Policy Committee during the Autumn Conference in 2009 failed all six: an attack on the Leader for his stance on tuition fees, delivered via a hostile newspaper and timed to arrive on the day of the Leader’s speech was hardly likely to deliver what its signatories wanted in terms of concessions on tuition fees.
Arguably it hardened the attitude of the leadership and we now live with the consequences in the opinion polls.
So what of last week’s ‘Pickles’ letter? It does not fail all the tests although (2) is debatable and (5) highly questionable: the Times is no friend of the Liberal Democrats.
I nearly signed it but in fact hesitated initially because it talked positively about the Big Society, a Tory policy of magnificent vacuity to which we should not give airtime.
So I was surprised at the hostility of some councillors and parliamentarians to the ‘Pickles’ letter: essentially a level of irritation similar to that generated by the FPC letter in 2009 but from different people.
Three particular worries have been voiced to me:
- First, it will not succeed in persuading people on the ground that the Lib Dems have really been attempting to mitigate the mistakes being made in the local government settlement.
- Second, it will make it more difficult for opposition groups to attack ill-thought through cuts made by Tory councils
- Third, it makes the position of the Secretary of State stronger than ever, at a time when he was beginning to look a little wobbly.
We will see.
Whichever way one jumps the letter reflects the authentic anger of those who are having to deliver local government on the ground. And the appalling fury unleashed on local councillors by the Tories via the Express and Mail groups – especially the utterly deplorable personal attacks on Richard Kemp and his wife – show that it has certainly hit home.
This time I entirely see why people signed it.
4 Comments
I’d disagree about 5 – I’d say the Times was exactly the right publication for this letter. If the intended audience was the Lib Dem leadership, then it would have been much simpler to send it to the Guardian, who would have published it knowing that this is the paper which tends to be read by Lib Dems. This letter, however, was a direct shot at Pickles; therefore the Tory inclination of the Times was probably the better publication.
Chris – I agree – I was invited to sign the letter, but declined, as did the two LibDem Group Leaders in London with control of their councils. The letter expressed sentiments that are better made in private; concern about the funding settlement is one thing but a personal attack on the secretary of state wasn’t helpful given our role in the coalition. As you say, the letter actually makes it more difficult for the PM (were he so inclined) to consider reshuffling the pack or, as Nick suggests, move local government into the Cabinet Office.
I declined too.
You mention Tory cuts. What about Labour council cuts? Holds just as true for them.
On “Big Society”, I think you’re missing that it’s often a good tactic to hit people with their own stick. I fully agree that it is “a policy of magnificent vacuity”, but that’s why pretending to take it positively and showing up how what it claims to be about is so contradicted by what the Tories actually do in terms of hard policy works so well.
I think you can throw away your six tests. I’m afraid if our party is to have a long-term future the priority of activists has to be to make it quite clear in whatever ways are necessary that the Liberal Democrats are not just Nick Clegg and those he has chosen to surround himself with. That has to be done because that is how the press tends to report it. I am getting fed up with people saying “the Liberal Democrats this” and “the Liberal Democrats that” where this and that are certainly NOT what I do or think. We are a democratic party. We do not blindly “follow our leader” changing our opinion at his whim, he is not able to dictate to us what we should do or think.
This top-down model of a political party as a tool of its leader, with its members just salesmen for him is disgusting and against all that we ought to be about as liberals. The idea of a liberal political party is bottom-up, about people getting together and achieving things in that way, forming a network across the country to become more effective and using that to challenge the power of wealth and influence – in the past it was the established church and the aristocracy, now it ought to be the financial fat cats. Most people in this country simply do not realise that is how our party is, or at least should be, because that is not how it gets portrayed. The evil influence of the socialist model of political parties remains – many of our political commentators are people who were educated by those inspired by Marxism-Leninism, which had this idea of a top-down party as fundamental to their thinking and they pushed out this model as what political parties are about. Our own party was pushed a bit that way too what in merged with the SDP – resistance to the top-down nature of the SDP, which was ultimately part of its socialist heritage – was what the arguments in the merger were really about.
Underneath, no-one will remember the details of the Pickles letter. All that will be remembered is that there are many Liberal Democrats who are very unhappy with this coalition. That is good, we will need it to survive, because if we go onto the streets touting for votes with smiley faces and saying Clegg and the coalition are doing wonders, we shall be slaughtered. Our message HAS to be that we were forced into the coalition by the way the country voted and the way the electoral system (as so strongly backed by leading Labour figures) hugely distorted representation in favour of the Conservative Party, but that does not mean we agree with all it does, far from it, we were able to make only very minor modifications. Nick Clegg’s refusal to go down this route means we cannot do the “party unity” thing with him. Our survival means we have to split him off from us and make it clear WE are the Liberal Democrats.