A lively debate is going on in our local borough party about how the Lib Dems should deal with the Tories and Nigel Farage, following Reform UK’s big advances in the Elections held on 1 May.
One view, held by some senior figures whom I respect, and who know how to win elections, is that it is important not to amplify your opponent’s message. They consider the first rule of politics to be `Never allow yourself to be lured on to your opponent’s territory.’.
Regarding the Tories, I accept this strategy. At Council level, publicly wrangling with them over, for example, what the level of Council Tax should be, which they published all sorts of, with respect to them, ludicrous pledges about in 2022, in Richmond, and very probably will do again between now and our local Council Elections next May, is counter-productive.
Besides, the Tory Party is dying. Watch Nigel Farage, as Reform UK performs its proclaimed `reverse takeover’ project, playing the role of boa constrictor – coiling itself round its prey and tightening its grip each time its prey exhales – as it disastrously did most recently in those Elections on 1 May. It’s not a pretty sight.
However, I am not convinced that ‘ leave well alone and pursue our own agenda’ is also the right way for us to proceed regarding Reform UK.
Farage gets away with too much because no one holds him to account for saying and doing outrageous things.
Plans to put asylum seekers in tents, for instance, even when it’s bitterly cold in Winter, flagrantly breach British, and Christian, values.
Farage has to speak with a forked tongue on the economy. In What will, and won’t, work for Labour in the face of Reform’s rise? – The Week in Polls, Lord Mark Pack cites with approval (11th May), the psephological expert Steve Akehurst, Director of Persuasion UK : “A tax slashing, small state, public service shrinking vision is espoused by many in Reform but is also one that repels many of its voters.”
Farage is vulnerable on Ukraine. He repeatedly clashed with the Daily Mail during the 2024 General Election campaign when they linked him to pro-Putin sympathies.
He also squirms uncomfortably over Brexit – in denial about our GDP being, as multiple analyses and studies show, 5% or so less than it would be but for him.
He shows no expectation of coming under a steady onslaught of righteous anger about all this from the Lib Dems. He prospers from us not tackling him head-on.
If Ed Davey wants to do more `stunts’ then, with respect, he should take a leaf out of the Scots Lib Dem leader Alex Cole-Hamilton’s recent expedition, driving an ambulance, to Ukraine, though that might be considered too ‘noble cause’ to be called a stunt. It was done from the heart, though he made no secret about his trip. It would command respect and honour – and attract media attention – if Ed did something similar.
Ed’s stunts helped win us 72 MPs for which he deserves all credit but if he continues cringeworthily hopping over one-foot high horse jumps on a toy pony, he will be trivialising politics at a time when the international situation is too grave for this, and the voters will consider both him and us to be ‘unserious’ about running the country. As a Young Liberal recently put it to me, Ed needs, with respect, to start looking more like a Prime Minister, and soon.
Liberal Parties in Canada and Australia have both just triumphed electorally after boldly standing up to their equivalent of Farage, namely Trump. We have to be more militant and more aggressive, building on Ed’s effective championing of Ukraine and of increased defence spending. since the GE last year.
PS. The fact that, since I wrote this piece, Rory Stewart has said `If I could get over Ed Davey’s antics I am becoming more and more Lib Dem’, persuasively makes my point.
* Cllr Tony Paterson was co-founder of Liberal Democrat Friends of Ukraine and is a member of Liberal Democrat Friends of the Armed Forces. However, he has written this article on his own behalf.
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18 Comments
The way to defeat the right whether it be Reform or the Tories is to put forward a bold liberal programme to voters it is as simple as that!
At the moment we are far to timid which means we can be lumped together with the other tired old parties. We have an opportunity to stand out and we are not taking it.
Move the debate from one about emotions and ideology to one on hard nosed policy. Then take down reform policy by policy. Make THEM look irrelevant and incompetent and not serious reformers.
We need to prove that reform need not be reactionary.
Farage is weak on the economy, which, ultimately, is the most important issue for the majority of the electorate. This weakness needs to be exposed so that the country is not left in the hands of somebody who thinks that getting rid of a few civil servants will fix the NHS. If not, then Truss and Kwarteng’s efforts to crash the economy will look like a rounding error.
@David Warren. At the moment we are far too timid which means we can be lumped together with the other tired old parties. We have an opportunity to stand out and we are not taking it.
TRUE. Reform has had success because it is offered as NOT a tired old party. It will soon be seen as a corrupt party with dubious donations funding it. Therefore, we must be 100% open to where we get our money from.
Thank you for your effort and time used in creating your article.
Might actively promoting “policies plus practicalities” which would make our society sustainable, fair for all, transparent and cheerfully purposeful be a more appropriate aim than concentrating on opponent?
For example:
1) Equitable, transparent taxation
2) Genuine democracy with proportional representations and donations/bribes limits
3) Removal of the need for food banks etc
4) Reduction in oblique attacks on minorities
5) Etc.
Farage and Reform are more dangerous than even Lib Dems might think. They have an attraction to the disaffected working classes because they are perceived to be anti-establishment. Consequently they will attract the support of many who would never side with the Tories who are the party of the older establishment.
The Lib Dems and the modern Labour Party have come to be seen as the parties of the newer establishment. These are populated, especially in their Parliamentary ranks, by the university educated technocracy, the so-called liberal elite, who tend to hold opinions with which we are all familiar. They can often come across as very patronising, even snobbish, in their attitudes to ‘regular folk’. We saw this particularly in the Brexit referendum with accusations that the Leave side didn’t properly understand what they were voting for and that they had been conned.
They make the same mistake in trying to explain why they shouldn’t vote Reform. The you-don’t-know-what-you-are-voting-for argument.
The terms left and right aren’t quite so meaningful to many as some of us might think. People are either happy with the status quo or they aren’t. If they are sufficiently unhappy they will vote, if they do vote at all, to shake things up, and this means voting for, and giving support to, those who are outside the normal range of acceptable opinion. The so-called Overton Window.
This isn’t to offer an immediate solution, of course, but it’s an attempt to understand the nature of the problem.
Surely the answer to this question is to do BOTH?
If we stay true to Liberal values and our reputation as strong Community Politicians, then by definition we will be confronting Reform. If we argue for investment in good public services locally an nationally then we will obviously be in opposition to them.
At the moment Reform have an easy ride. They can argue in favour of freezing or slashing Council Tax, but once the public realise it is their Public Library, their local swimming pool, and the day care centre or community bus service their parents and grandparents use that are going to be closed then we will win the argument with the voters.
Excellent article and comments section. We need to make our case as a credible alternative for government, not behave like petulant labour backbenchers. Making headlines for stunts and silly policies like headphones on trains, making football free to view etc doesn’t help with this. There is space for a pro-business, internationalist, environmentalist, liberal party. A party of aspiration that can appeal to the young, and attract one-nation tories as they realise Brexit has irreversibly changed their party. I propose we sit in this space and wait for the electorate to come to us rather than chasing public opinion like the other parties do.
To say we should “be more militant and more aggressive” is not quite the best way especially if our target is people. We should be more passionate while conveying in as simple a way as possible our positive vision and policy profile. We also need to criticise Reform’s views and policies and where relevant their distortions of the truth, but be focussed on how bad these are, not on the people who support them. If we are to persuade people to vote for us, is it good to attack them as people?
As to getting attention, actions help though simple stunts only work for a short period of time and that time may already have been reached. Repetition of good short phrases or messages is another key.
With regard Reform we need to talk about the problems of multiculturalism and come up with policies for better integration. This is a political hot potato but within it lies the answers that reform voters are looking for. Reducing immigration numbers alone will only hurt our economy.
People vote emotionally, not logically. I agree our leader needs to stop the horseplay and begin to look a bit more “prime”. He has shown he can appeal to the electorate on an emotional level and he should do more of it. Farage gets people energised but appealing to their fears over migrant “invasions”. Its an emotive subject. We should be pushing an alternative but realistic vision and calming peoples fears where we can.
“Liberal Parties in Canada and Australia have both just triumphed electorally after boldly standing up to their equivalent of Farage, namely Trump.” Whilst it is true that the Canadian Liberals have won by standing up to Trump, it is the Australian Labour Party that has won a landslide by adopting the same strategy
https://www.abc.net.au/news/elections/federal/2025/results?sortBy=latest&filter=all&selectedRegion=all&selectedParty=all&partyWonBy=all&partyHeldBy=all.
LET’S NOT `STUNT’ OUR GROWTH
I am most grateful for the numerous comments above.
It is fair to point out to me that our leader Ed Davey MP’s opposition to Nigel Farage should focus on the major policy areas where he’s weak, rather than consist of personal attacks on him. Thank you.
I listed some of those areas in my article. The Telegraph has prominently attacked Farage today over Reform UK’s economic proposals, saying they could potentially trigger `an immediate and violent’ sterling crisis causing turmoil more severe than Truss’s mini-budget did – which Richard Tice MP promptly rejected as `childish nonsense’. Plenty for Ed there.
I also agree that vocally proclaiming our policies in itself implies criticism of Farage.
As there have been quite a few comments,, I won’t (though I’m appreciative) respond to them individually but I am grateful to those who share my respectful view that startling stunts and prancing pranks have reached their `sell-by’ date for us and will be counter-productive if continued.
This is why I so admire our Scottish Lib Dem leader for his principled example in recently driving an ambulance to Ukraine – the sort of activity that would serve Ed well in exciting media attention in a dignified and heartfelt way, making him a serious figure as a future PM in voters’ eyes, including those of influencer Rory Stewart, openly attracted to our policies but put off by `antics’.
Ed has already done much since the GE to lay the foundations for us over supporting Ukraine and increasing defence spending
Exactly Peter. The lanyard brigade taking time out from their vanity projects to equate Starmers speech to that of Powells. It’s beyond comprehension that they can link the two.
Wise words @Peter Martin on the nature of the problem. @Luke is also correct that the economy is a big weakness for Reform. Overall, I’d say their weak points where we should be attacking Reform are the economy, the environment, and national security (because of Farage’s cosying up to Putin and Trump). Unfortunately we seem obsessed with instead attacking them over immigration (Big mistake: Reform are well aligned with the views of most of the electorate on immigration and we risk just making ourselves look out of touch) and Brexit (unlikely to work because Reform already have a well rehearsed and somewhat plausible narrative that the problem is, Brexit was handled incompetently by the established parties)
@Simon R: Those who support Reform UK on issues such as Brexit and immigration, and who consider it a political litmus-test issue*, will vote for the real deal, not imitations. There is simply no point in us trying to muscle in on that crowded political space. I don’t know that it constitutes “most of the electorate”; a substantial and very noisy section, for sure, but whatever its size, it is a section that is most unlikely to consider voting for us.
* Just because voters support some right-wing populist policy, doesn’t mean it overrides all other considerations, and nor does it mean it’s a well-considered view. It may simply indicate some other (more general) grievance manipulated by the populist right, and that the voters can be moved away from populism given the right campaign and circumstances.
If this statistic from Greenpeace is correct then I think Reform is very open to attack on environmental issues:
https://www.facebook.com/greenpeaceuk/posts/fun-fact-since-2019-nigel-farages-reform-has-taken-more-than-23-million-from-oil/1101398335362073/
It seems we have forgotten that reform is actually made up of Tories. It may get some working class voters but essentially, they are tory orientated. We are witnessing the broad church of those who supported a Conservate Party disintergrate. It has its core of right wing ideologues forming a much smaller group that has smaller support in old rural Conservative Constituencies and other areas that lost it centrist and one nation supports move to the Lib Dems. We should be pointing out to the electorate that the Reform Party will keep the failed beliefs and Policies that got the Conservatives in the mess they created once the came out of the Cons/Lib Dem Pact which had had a good impact on the Economy , the environment and social justice!