Liberal Democrats at grassroots level across the country had been suffering since our landslide defeat in local elections and the defeat of the Alternative Vote referendum in May 2011. This has led, I believe, to a reduction in political engagement across the party at a local and national level.
That is why the autumn conference was both an opportunity to look to the future, and to celebrate Liberal Democratic core values and successes within the Coalition. Phoenixes of a feather flocked together in Birmingham last week, and immediately campaigners felt more at ease and more positive.
Despite valid concerns about levels of accreditation, increasing levels of security and the vast difference in numbers of lobbyists, politicians and press coverage than seen before, Liberal Democrats from all over the country embraced radical policy motions, gave standing ovations to ministers, and sought to redefine themselves in the new era of politics.
A position in government
As Nick Clegg said in his speech:
That is the liberal spirit and that is something we will never lose. The spirit that gave birth to our party a century and half ago, that kept us alive when the other two parties tried to kill us off. The spirit that means however great our past, our fight will always be for a better future.
As we watch the socially traumatic cuts being made in Greece and protesters take to the streets to defend their civil liberties, Liberal Democrats can take comfort that under the Coalition government deficit reduction strategy we will not be faced with a similar outcome in the UK. The strategy may be tough, and spark knee-jerk political reactions from the opposition, but it is necessary to stay strong and accept the necessity of our actions.
Radical Pluralism
Some consider it to be a radical position for the minority party in the Coalition Government to be proposing radical policy, voted on by his own party members, tackling significant social ills. In particular, the Liberal Democrat Conference took the risk of addressing legislation surrounding illegal substances, the emotive subject of violence against women, and repealing laws introduced by the Labour government that erode our civil liberties on the Internet.
Though there were hundreds of lobbyists present in the conference hotels every evening trying to influence government policy, it was the members of the Liberal Democrats ourselves who were actually doing so. I find it unfathomable that anyone would want to be a member of a political party where they are not able to leverage and influence their own party policy democratically.
Community Politics
My own local party is ready to pound the streets again and I hope that other local parties have been empowered by the recent Liberal Democrat conference. A hundred training sessions, the delivery of new campaign ideas, and a passionately determined ministerial presence has reinvigorated hope within the party.
Media Coverage
Instead of talking about how unfair it is that the media do not cover our conference more, there has been significant delight in the generation of publicity. The right-wing press may seek to present the party in a detrimental light, but in order to do so, they now give over double page spreads and entire pages of comment on why they consider us to be wrong! This can only be considered a success for a party whose autumn conference was usually largely ignored.
* Kelly-Marie Blundell is a Lib Dem member in Ashford.
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10 Comments
I agree, it was a very encouraging conference.
They say the public don’t vote for divided parties, and we’ve certainly appeared divided over the last year. But division was almost completely absent at conference last week. Whereas previously, there have been angst-ridden arguments about the direction of the party, there was strong unity in Birmingham. Those who wish different decisions had been made a year ago accept that we are where we are, and we now have to move forward.
The public tend to be slow to notice change. So I don’t expect the new spirit of unity to translate into a sudden poll recovery. But that unity is important, because it will be the foundation of the fightback.
There was particular unity among those whose focus is campaigning. We’ve had some bad results. But we know what we have to do to turn this around. And, despite some differences of opinion, we are committed to advancing the values of the party, and getting Lib Dems elected.
Invigorated +1 Kelly you’ve hit the nail on the head. Community Politics is the answer for the Liberal Democrats and our residents. As to the media behaviour, it remains the same, fickle and might in general warrant a diagnosis of attention deficit disorder.
Hi,
“Though there were hundreds of lobbyists present in the conference hotels every evening trying to influence government policy, it was the members of the Liberal Democrats ourselves who were actually doing so. I find it unfathomable that anyone would want to be a member of a political party where they are not able to leverage and influence their own party policy democratically”
Completely agree! – and my sense is this is one of the reasons we are so upbeat: in a party where the power is distributed between leadership & membership, so too is the sense of responsibility. These are our shared policies, our shared values, and therefore it is our shared responsibility to do what we can to implement them.
How we have, and are, handling the NHS Reform Bill for example, has been a fascinating lesson on all sorts of levels and it has been an honour to see Shirley Williams in action. I’m very glad to belong to a party which, when faced with a major dilemma, didn’t resort to the blame game & a lot of finger pointing and yelling at the leadership but got stuck in to working it out. (Obviously Lansley has to go but that’s the subject for a whole separate piece!)
Great to see you again,
Karen
PS I love “phoenixes of a feather”!
George, there is always “particular unity among those whose focus is campaigning”, because often they are much less concerned over the politics of particular issues, and certainly the politics of ideology, principle etc. What, however, shows from polling, and anecdotally from speaking to non-politically partisan people, watching comments in the media etc, is that we still suffer from a lack of trust caused by our about turns, as perceived by most people, following May 2010.
Of course, disunited parties repel voters, but what are we achieving by driving away the radical elements of our party, whether they be SDP or Liberal in tradition? It is and was the energy of these people who built the platform that Clegg used in his “New Politics” appeal to the electorate resulting in Cleggmania. Unfortuanately, when put through the media and traditional attack fire of the second and third TV debates, he was unable to respond with credibility. Then, when it came to the negotiation of the agreement, he and his acolytes appeared to set the bar far too low, and in many cases allowed us to be moved in precisely the wrong direction. A harder approach to ensure that our values were respected (NOT a mechanistic count of “how much of our manifesto” was included – a manifesto, by the way, which had already moved to the right since 2005).
It is all very well clubbing together in a cosy little group, saying how united we are, when little in Government is moving in the direction of “New politics”. Too few people are now prepared to support us – the share of Govt taken in 2010 will look like a blip in future, and it will no doubt take another 50 years for dedicated, idealistic activists to build to the same point, as we did from 1960 to 2010. Most of us will definitely have “moved on” by then.
“we have, and are, handling the NHS Reform Bill” – We have not gone far enough and this NHS Bill should be stopped in its tracks NOW until we have got it right! Once it goes through Parlaiment it cannot be changed.
*Parliament*
@Tim13 ‘George, there is always “particular unity among those whose focus is campaigning”, because often they are much less concerned over the politics of particular issues, and certainly the politics of ideology, principle etc.”‘
I disagree. Many involved in campaigning are deeply concerned with principle, policies, etc. What does distinguish them is that they spend a lot of time talking to voters on the doorstep.
Of course the uncomfortable compromises we’ve made in coalition have alienated come of our support, that was bound to happen, whoever we formed a government with. But this alienation is much exaggerated. On my way back from the conference, I spoke to two Labour voters. Both, unsolicited, expressed their contempt for the Brown/Balls wing of the Labour party. Neither were hostile. One will remain a Labour voter. The other said they were amazed at how much influence the Lib Dems were having in government … I tried and failed to recruit her, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she voted for us at the next election.
“Unfortunately, when put through the media and traditional attack fire of the second and third TV debates, he (Nick Clegg) was unable to respond with credibility. Then, when it came to the negotiation of the agreement, he and his acolytes appeared to set the bar far too low”
Nick certainly had a tougher time in the second and third debate, which was bound to happen after his runaway success in the first. But, in my opinion, he still did well. But I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree on that.
As to the negotiation setting the bar too low. I think they did well. We only have 57 MPs out of 650. And, if we hadn’t played ball, the Tories would have called a second election. In my opinion, we’d have been slaughtered in a second election.
Also, when facing such a terrible deficit, whoever was in power was bound to come over as rightwing. Tackling the deficit may seem rightwing, but in my opinion it’s leftwing, because that way we aren’t taking prosperity from future generations in order to live better today.
I got the feeling this Conference was a bit like the ducks on the water, placid, almost boring on the surface (despite the worthy and important Motions debated in the main hall), but intense activity below the surface, around the stands and in the fringe meetings.
I attended one on Academies and Free Schools run by the NUT and NAS/UWT jointly (which itself must be a first.) Much was made of the fact that Sarah Teather had not turned up and noone had heard any apologies from her. Instead, the Chair of LibDem Education Association spoke opposing the lack of democratic accountability and lack of access for parents in the governance of these schools. Indeed, many speakers condemned the reality of power being removed from LEAs to Castle Gove in Whitehall. The Chair of the meeting appealed for anyone to speak in favour of the academies and free schools programme. Not one was present, but many spoke of the battles they had had getting places for children with Special Needs in these schools, and how they had been set up solely to focus on the able and the ambitious, and that ‘failing’ schools (as defined by OFSTED – that ultimate centralising quango) would be handed over to commercial managements (mostly US based) for profit.
It was a pleasure to hear from Lady Garden about the fight being put up by LibDem Peers in the Lords over the legislation which Gove needs to push through to emasculate the role of Local Authorities in providing for all children in their areas. We also heard from David Ward MP for Bradford East how he had voted against the Education Bill in the Commons but most LibDem MPs were too ‘shell shocked’ after the formation of the Coalition to react to Gove’s ‘blitzkrieg’ tactics in July 2010.
Indeed, one speaker compared the attitude of Gove towards England’s school system (and Lansley with the NHS) to Pol Pot, seeking to return Cambodia to ‘Year Zero’ in order to remake it according to some notion of primitive Maxism. In Gove’s and Lansley’s case, of course, to a totally laissez-faire free market ideology imported wholesale from the US.
George – I owe you and other campaigners (I also include myself as one who has over the years been a regular canvasser etc) an apology. I went over the top by accusing campaigners of lack of concern with policy and principle. There are however, some recognisable issues here with some who organise campaigning where winning is put on a higher priority than what we are trying to win FOR.
As you say, we will have to agree to disagree on other aspects. I am sure we have had these discussions before. Apart from purely historical debate, the only reasons to worry about past events, such as the coalition negotiations, are either to explain away the reasoning, or to use them to inform future decision making. I am afraid I place the argument that “the Tories would have called a quick further GE and won it with an increased majority” as an excuse. I have seen it argued cogently that they would not have taken that risk, and there is little doubt we could have controlled their right wing instincts better from outside (we would have had much more clout with our own leadership, of course, which would also have reduced right wingism). This argument seems to derive from what happened in 1974, when Labour were in a Minority, and pursued this course of action, winning a majority in the October election. At the time we only had one third of our current MP numbers, and so the risk of a further hung Parliament was considerably lower than now. Had we held to our pre – election arguments, and explained to the electorate why we didn’t conclude an arrangement (had it come to that), voters who were sympathetic to our position anyway would have understood. Of course, Cameron might have been so desparate for power that he agreed the deficit was not as bad as he made out!
The issue of the “terrible deficit” – many economists argue passionately that it is nothing like as terrible as painted. Again, had the negotiations been pursued by our side more slowly, carefully and with proper regard to the pre-election position, more facts would have come out, counter arguments would have been made. There was no suggestion, and neither would there have been, that markets would have reacted negatively to that. I am not arguing that all attention to debts or deficits is necessarily right wing, but I think this is. I also think that the next few weeks and months will show a tipping point in the acceptance of the “post Thatcher settlement” or whatever we want to call it. Making the call our leadership did was very definitely a right of centre call, and many other Lib Dems would have made the opposite call. This call risks whole rafts of our valuable public services on a (semi) permanent basis.
I follow the Grayson analysis of what has happened, however, and I know a lot of Lib Dems instinctively turn away from that (perhaps for tribal anti – Labour reasons?)
@Tim13
Many in the party would agree with you, that we would have been better with a looser arrangement with the Tories, which would have given us more room to resist Tory policies. What was significant about this conference is that, broadly, they have concluded that we are where we are, and that we now need to go forward as a party, put divisions over past decisions aside, and work for the election of Lib Dems. That doesn’t stop debates about other issues, but it does mean putting aside anger at past differences.
Let me put on record my appreciation for these people. I don’t imagine that it was easy, but it was the right thing to do, and I applaud them for it.
In my view, working closer in a coalition was necessary, because of the extraordinarily difficult budget problems the government faces, but, I respect people who have a different opinion. What delighted me at Birmingham is that we weren’t obsessing about those arguments, instead we put aside their differences, and instead were thinking very hard about how to campaign for our shared values to get Lib Dems elected.
As for the deficit. I know some economists passionately argue against the pace of deficit reduction. While I would probably prefer a slightly slower deficit reduction programme, I am very suspicious of economists who talk about the issue with the certainty of a revival preacher. The more I read about economics, the clearer it is to me that no one really knows. The economists I respect are those who are prepared to admit that these decisions are very difficult balances of judgement.
It may be that some Lib Dems in government, would, like me, prefer we were cutting a little more slowly. But I am glad they are not saying so publicly. Grassroots like me can say what we like without consequences. If senior Lib Dems were to voice doubts about the government’s economic policies, that may lead to higher interest charges on the country’s debts. Besides, if, as some expect, Osborne will be unable to deliver all of his planned deficit reduction programme, he may well end up implementing exactly what I would prefer.
The severity of the Osborne deficit programme has been exaggerated, and so too the mildness of any alternative. Whether there was a Labour majority, Lib Dem majority, or Lib Lab government, we would be facing a very painful deficit reduction programme. Nor is Osborne’s programme as sudden as it is portrayed. He does not plan to cut the entire deficit in one parliament, nor even the structural deficit, but the part of the structural deficit that excludes capital spending. And, with the introduction of five year parliaments, cutting it in a parliament is a year longer than parliaments normally are.
You talk about the “opposite call”. In my opinion, any government would be forced to make a similar call, because the opposite call would have resulted in a significant increase in the cost of new borrowing, which would be unsustainable. A slightly slower deficit reduction programme might have eased certain problems, but they would have created other problems. And the differences certainly do not justify the hyperbole that usually surrounds the issue.