LDV has received this open letter from a group of concerned Lib Dems…we thought you might like to read it.
Dear friends,
Lets cut to the chase.
We awoke yesterday to the smell of hatred, xenophobia and isolation pouring from the voices of the Conservative Party and Conservative Government.
It sickened us to hear what was being said about refugees, migrants, international students and people who are foreign. It’s wrong and it’s not the country we love.
So, time to act!
The UK needs liberal voices.
Liz Leffman is a liberal – she is a superb candidate for the Witney by-election.
We signatories are all people who have each been involved in the party for 20, 30, 40 years and more. We are taking action today by clearing our diaries to make telephone calls or go to in person to Witney.
Please make time to pull off a shock win, by helping and making Liz Leffman the next MP for Witney on Thursday 20th October. We need hundreds of you to go this week, this weekend until polling day.
In 1990 David Belotti’s victory in the Eastbourne by-election positively transformed our fortunes then – winning in Witney would do the same now.
Please, fight for an inclusive, tolerant, liberal Britain and help Liz Leffman today.
Thank you,
Ed Fordham, joined 1988, GE candidate in 1997, 2005, 2010
Katie Hall, joined 1985, Euro candidate 2004, ward council colleague with the late David Belotti former MP for Eastbourne
Suzanne Fletcher, joined 1974; a founder member of Liberal Democrats for Seekers of Sanctuary
Cllr Paul Sample, joined 1977, GE candidate in 1992 and the next election
Erlend Watson, joined 1984, GE candidate 1997
Lord Roger Roberts, joined 1950, GE candidate in 1979, 1983, 1987, 1992, 1997
Theo Butt Philip, joined 1994, GE candidate in 2010, 2015
Sadie Smith, Joined while Jo Grimond was leader., Cllr 1981-2013, candidate by-election 2000 and 2005, 2010 GE’s
Christina Baron, joined 1966, GE candidate Feb and Oct 1974, 1979
Caron Lindsay, Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice
Martin Tod, joined 1984, GE candidate in 2001, 2005, 2010
PS. We have co-ordinated this letter because we are angry, because we care and because we know what winning would mean. No one from Witney nor Party HQ was involved in the drafting of it! Now, please go to Witney.
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34 Comments
“We awoke yesterday to the smell of hatred, xenophobia and isolation pouring from the voices of the Conservative Party and Conservative Government.”
Way, way over the top and nowhere near the truth.
Logically this group is arguing that all the countries in the world outside the EU are also xenophobic and isolationist because they control their own borders and are not part of the EU’s free movement of people.
This includes the Channel Islands for example who are not in the EU and require work permits for those from the EU. When the work permit runs out they return home.
“We awoke yesterday to the smell of hatred, xenophobia and isolation pouring from the voices of the Conservative Party and Conservative Government”.
It distresses me to have to agree with Malc. This is more than OTT, and if used in Witney, will be counterproductive and shows a naive lack of a sense of proportion..
It is a reality that the Brexit vote was borne on a tide of xenophobia, misinformation and downright racism. Perhaps if some had realised how their vote had been influenced they would not have voted that way – I do not know, I cannot know, but the images, speeches and slogans are there for all to see.
“Hatred, xenophobia and isolation” is very close to the truth. It seems likely that some of those peddling this stuff did so on the assumption that Brexit would not do so well; such politicians having played with fire, which now they can no longer extinguish, seek to persuade that fire does not burn.
We must not opt to be blinkered to this reality.
malc 6th Oct ’16 – 10:57am………….Way, way over the top and nowhere near the truth…….
I defy any l(L)iberal to listen to Amber Rudd’s speech without a feeling of unease…Have we so quickly forgotten May’s anti-immigrant trucks? A year ago even the ‘Torygraph’ complained about her scapegoating of immigrants…”Theresa May’s immigration speech is dangerous and factually wrong…The Home Secretary is fanning the flames of prejudice in a cynical attempt to become Conservative leader (Daily Telegraph..6th October 2015)..
Love them or not, the Lib Dems are always good for a giggle.
I realise that rhetoric replied to with rhetoric alone, doesn’t work, but this is a request, plea and beg for help for Liz.
To the specifics on whether the language is OTT all I can say is that until it faces you as clear and unambiguous evidence or personal experience it is never really “hatred or xenophobia”. But for the gay vicar of the inclusive church near me that has been vandalised, to the synagogue down the road that has newly enhanced security, to those who read go home Jews in the lift of the local tube station is to the lad who shouted at my two friends ‘queers go back to Europe’ – what is coming from the referendum debate, from Brexit means Brexit and now from the Government is providing cover for such a descent in behaviour and attitudes.
The solution is to act. And that is why this is a letter about taking time out of our diaries to go and help someone who is imbued with liberalism, with community and with passion – Liz Leffman.
Apologies if the tone was too much, but please heed the plea. I’m clearing my diary and will go to Witney for at least a week. Best wishes, Ed X
Whilst some of the letter is OTT the basic truth is that May is targeting the same populist vote that gave us Brexit. The levers took no notice of the warnings of the damage to the economy. Whilst we are right in Witney to point out the despair in Industry, Care, Education and Health caused by the direction the Tories are taking it is likely to be too early for the penny to have dropped. We need to develop our policies as the critical friend of industry (not of tax avoidance) so that when Tory policies start to unravel we will be there to pick up the pieces. A good start would be a 20% vote in Witney, I have just returned from there we have a good candidate and a well managed campaign.
Perhaps those who do not think Rudds speech was xenophobic should consider this insight and reconsider.
http://www.lbc.co.uk/radio/presenters/james-obrien/james-amber-rudds-speech-echoes-mein-kampf/
As Aaron Banks pointed out, May has effectively rebranded The Tories as The New UKIP & we can see from this mornings News where that leads.
A question I was asking myself (having read the Social Market Foundation paper Bill Le Breton recently linked to in a discussion on here) is, “What if England (and we are talking largely, so far, about England) decided it didn’t need a ‘left wing’ party in its two-party system?’
I mean, there are several political systems (eg Ireland) that, even without the distorting effect of a plurality-exaggerating voting system such as our own, don’t have a conventional left-right distinctive differentiating their main parties.
What if the future of the British party system were a contest between a socially conservative, centralising, pro-corporate medium-state party such as Teresa May seems to want the Tories to become, and a George-Osborne-ish, neo-liberal, unrestrained-market reformist grouping?
Both Osborne and May have seen – like Blair before them – that our system currently rewards those who flirt with authoritarian populism.
I have no idea how we would get to the ‘restricted choice between two large basically rightwing parties’ from where we are now, and clearly we still have at this time a large-ish left-ish party in our politics (ie Labour), chaotic as they seem, (and then there’s ourselves and we are not out of the game yet), but the direction of travel right now seems to be :
a) (for many active older voters) a movement away from liberalism towards a communitarianism that is socially inintolerant
or
b) (for many active relatively younger voters) a movement away from responsibility for others towards an individualism that idealises personal choice and freedom, and is in one sense tolerant of difference but not prepared to put hard financial resources into anything other than the most basic ‘welfare state’.
Nick Tyrone just blogged (clearly in a depressive mood) that the future of UK liberalism (small ‘l’) may be dependant on Momentum, one of the few genuinely large left-leaning and socially-tolerant activist groupings around, becoming gradually more liberal, more devolutionist and less statist.
I really hope he’s not right and there are other futures for the British centre-left, but as a Roy Jenkins admirer, I just really don’t know what he’d make of where we are now.
My biggest problem with helping Liz Leffman win, in my own small way, is Tim Farron. He’s a nice guy but his approach to Europe has put me off. I think we need to break some longstanding political rules and be prepared to flipflop and say we’ve decided to listen to the public and campaign for soft-brexit, rather than a referendum on the deal (a de facto second referendum).
I am a bit of a flip-flopper, but I think you can get away with it “when the facts change”.
You mention the 1990 bye-election which Lib Dems fought and won following the murder of an MP by one of the most evil terrorist groups in the world. Today a supporter of that group is prominent in the Labour Party. yet Lib Dems are giving the Labour Party a free run in the Batley bey-election.
John McDonnell and Gerry Adams are laughing at us
@paul barker “As Aaron Banks pointed out, May has effectively rebranded The Tories as The New UKIP …”
Interestingly, a pitch by the Tory right for the supposed working-class left (but in reality small “c” conservative) is being portrayed as seizing the centre-ground. It’s not so much putting tanks on the Lib Dems’ lawn as it is redefining where that lawn is.
Like it or not, the Tories are, as ever, reading the mood of the electorate as it is, not as they would wish it to be. Take a look at the bar chart in this linked piece: a majority of our own Party voters favour companies listing the % of ‘foreign’ workers they have.
https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/10/06/public-backs-plans-make-companies-say-how-many-for/
This is a country of fearful and edgy people who see the ‘pool’ of resources diminishing and want to secure what is left for them and their own. You may not like it, but is is an elemental and natural reaction. And I’d suggest that no-one in this forum is part of their number or can understand either them or their reaction. As a Party, we have a huge disconnect problem at every remove between our activists, our membership, our voters and the wider electorate. I am not sure we have any idea what the way through it is. Or even that we should be seeking one. I have a horrible feeling we are becoming a very small, self-selecting, self-righteous, self-sustaining and self-justifying cult, of the sort that can only exist in the Internet age.
Inevitable that there are some trolls here but I am rather shocked that some good Liberals here dispute that: “We awoke yesterday to the smell of hatred, xenophobia and isolation pouring from the voices of the Conservative Party and Conservative Government”.
This is certainly what I heard. Firms having to make lists of alien employees? Sounds a mild sort of thing but utterly toxic. As for May’s constant stress of nationalist sentiments and soundbites… This is already becoming a nasty country in which “foreigners” are shouted at in the street, and it’s going to get a lot worse.
It is our job to stand up and lead the fight back.
Tony
@David
Whilst the majority, including our supporters, appear to favour listing foreign workers that is not how senior figures in industry see it. “complete anathema”, “misstep”, “unsettling”, “drive people, business and compassion out of british society” “having a global workforce should not be seen as a badge of shame”. True Liberals would agree with all of those comments. What is worrying with this path the government is taking is the respectability it is giving to xenophobia. Leaders encouraging the baser instincts of the human race is exactly how Hitler started off.
Agree totally with Tony – “stand up and lead the fight back”
The Country does not have diminishing resources. wat it does have is a large number of people, including it seems some Liberal democrats (who are not liberals) who want to blame foreigners for all our ills. The truth is that people will feel insecure when they have no security of contract, and no prospect of a proper home. They will often seek scape goats.
We don’t make this right and defeat the forces that have purloined our very rich nation’s resources for the few (and justified it by saying its all the fault of someone else) by pandering to the falsehoods and lies. We can never outflank the Tories and their remaining Blairite fellow travellers on the right and nor should we.
BTW the comments on Batley and Spen seem rather out of place in this discussion.
I agree with David Hopps more-recently posted piece, the content of which relates to this and which can be summarised as ‘don’t (just) get outraged, get ANSWERS’. We still seem to have none.
“having a global workforce should not be seen as a badge of shame”
Rather depends on how you use your global workforce,if it is the brightest and best, producing the best, then no, there is no shame there, but if it is just being used as a reserve army of labour, to drive down pay, conditions and working environment, then a badge of shame it is.
@David “As a Party, we have a huge disconnect problem at every remove between our activists, our membership, our voters and the wider electorate.”
I’ve not had time to read it properly, but a very interesting piece in The Guardian discusses this issue in a wider context: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/oct/05/trump-brexit-education-gap-tearing-politics-apart
Melissa H: I think the decision not to contest Batley & Spen was a bad one, just as I think we were right to contest Eastbourne. The case for an uncontested fight at B&S is perhaps slightly stronger, in that it is possible that the killer wanted to see a change in who represented the seat, and from which party. On the other hand, I don’t think the IRA gave two hoots which of the three main (at the time*) unequivocally pro-Union and anti-IRA parties won the Eastbourne by-election. Their target was Ian Gow specifically.
* I say this because Labour now has a leadership with a past of honouring the IRA when it was active.
We can brand all and sundry xenophobic/racist etc, but it doesn’t actually achieve anything except eventually devaluing the terms until they becomes so meaningless that even Far Right organisations have learned to act offended when accused .
David Evershed
“Logically this group is arguing that all the countries in the world outside the EU are also xenophobic and isolationist because they control their own borders and are not part of the EU’s free movement of people.”
No other parts of the world have formed economic unions, for example as I have said before the Asean Economic Community. Also in other parts of the world there are friendly and pleasant people.
“Do you support or oppose the government’s proposals to make companies report how many foreign workers they employ?”
Lib Dems
Support 48%
Oppose 37%
Total
Support 59%
Oppose 26%
You Gov survey
https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/10/06/public-backs-plans-make-companies-say-how-many-for/
The authors of this letter are right to be very worried by the developments we are seeing under the leadership of Theresa May.
She is calculatingly combining the economics of the centre/left (lets assume she is as good as her word) with a nationalistic populist position of the Right.
Yesterday I quickly sketched a graph with a y axis on immigration (anti-immigration nationalism at the top, Liberal internationalism at the bottom) with the x axis crossing the y axis at the centre with neoliberalism (we do know what that means!) on the right and anti-neoliberalism on the left.
May is marching her troups into the top left quadrant where, of course some, some unsavoury 20th century characters pitched their tents.
The tragedy is that we Liberal Democrats deserted our traditional territory (bottom left) and have spent the last decade walking briskly across to bottom right (which our navigators called ‘the centre’. Not on my graph!
Even now with a new leader we have hardly moved a yard back to towards our old and successful home. When we are seen, if we are seen at all, we are still seen as part of the metropolitan elite.
As David Hopps has written today “as just one example, as a party committed to fairness we have already missed an open goal on the subject of tax evasion and sat and watched as the Tories have warned tax dodgers ‘We are coming to get you?’ That should have been us.”
Anne Applebaum wrote a piece about the Austrian presidential candidate of the Freedom Party back in May in the Washington Post . She re-issued it yesterday in the light of Theresa May’s speech. https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2016/05/23/the-rise-of-national-socialism-why-austrias-revolution-is-not-over/?utm_term=.9d8eb33f7cfc
We can and have to beat the New Conservatives – but we do that from the bottom left quadrant – not from the bottom right. It has to be action stations. There must be changes.
@David / David Evershed
In addition to supporting government proposals to make companies report how many foreign workers they employ, and similarly, with less enthusiasm than voters for other parties, “if all else about two candidates for a job was equal, [Lib Dem voters] think a company should hire a British worker over a foreign worker” (48% vs. 42% compared with 60%:29% overall)
Interesting that the poll referred to above shows the one party whose supporters do not support the UK government’s proposals to make companies report how many foreign workers they employ is the SNP.
I think we can see now which party’s supporters are the real vile nationalists and it isn’t the SNP.
David Evershed
The nursing home where my mother now lives is staffed mostly by foreigners. Would standards of care be higher if they were all English? I don’t think so. English people don’t want to do such jobs.
There is also the other side of the coin. What happens if foreign countries decide to throw out British people. It seems people in Britain expect to treat foreigners badly but expect to be very well treated abroad.
While I don’t think that everyone who voted Leave is racist or a xenophobe, the referendum campaign and the outcome have unleashed some very unpleasant behaviour. That nastiness (or worse) is likely to be reinforced by the government requiring schools to ask parents about which country their children were born in and by Amber Rudd’s announcement that firms will have to provide information about the foreign workers they employ.
Working to get Liz Leffman elected in Witney will send a clear message to the Conservatives that what they are doing is unacceptable in a civilised country.
The worrying thing is the degree to which acceptable rhetoric has changed. Just a few years ago would any major British political party (other than UKIP) have dared to advocate putting pressure on companies to decide against employing people from other countries by compelling them to list them? Doesn’t it have disturbing echoes of that well-known powerful warning – “First they came for the ………….etc etc”
Whatever one thinks of the economic pluses or minuses of this brexit thing it is undoubtedly challenging the liberal consensus which has for me up to now put the real “Great” before the word “Britain”. When the Conservatives talk about the “centre ground” it is a centre moving in a worrying direction.
If you can’t smell hatred, xenophobia and isolation, you may have anosmia …