I am one of the many who quit the party in 2010, and for what I felt were good reasons. I could not conceive that my party – who stood for true liberalism, who I believed fought for the downtrodden and the exploited – would go into a coalition with a partner who was so against my core beliefs.
I regret that now. I regret not staying and fighting what I saw as the inevitable descent. I regret not becoming one of the few party members speaking out against a coalition deal. I regret not attempting to convince our party against moving in a direction that has led to where we find ourselves today.
This can become a time for renewal. Like me, others can be convinced to rejoin a party that has true beliefs. But we are deceiving ourselves if we continue to believe that we were right. Our leaders talk of “fighting back”, of the certainty that the public will come to recognise that we put the country first, that we made sacrifices of our promises in order to save the United Kingdom. Our leaders are wrong. We were savaged at the ballot box. We lost, as a percentage share of our vote, as much as UKIP, the SNP, Labour and the Tories gained together.
So what should this party become? What can emerge from the ashes of this resounding defeat? It is easy to say, but hard to do. We must become again the voice of the silent majority. The majority that believes in liberal values and helping the poor man stand up to the rich. Most importantly, we should break from political tradition and apologise for our mistakes.
My vision of our party is to be the positive voice of Britain, a true conviction that this country can and should be a better place for the next generation. This is not a chance to attack the Tories and Labour at every turn. This is a chance to put forward our own ideas, to champion the businesses of the future and the heroes of today. We let ourselves down on Thursday by deciding to run a campaign based on curtailing the Tories or Labour – we must push our own radical ideas, not just act as a conscience for others.
I am sorry for being a coward. I am sorry I was not with you all when you were knocking on doors and talking to voters. And I am sorry that I cannot believe in a vision of the future where we are lauded as heroes for the decisions that we made in government. But now is a time for renewal, and we will no longer talk of our mascot being the Bird of Liberty, but a phoenix born from these ashes.
* Gareth Giles has just rejoined the Lib Dems, after a gap of 5 years
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
Violent Bonham Carter features on Fake or Fortune?
Have resignations led to a rethink?
High Fell leaflet watch (2)
Two new Makerfield by-election polls gives Burnham 5 and 12 point leads
Peter Martin
Simon
Ben Austin
Matt Wardman
Neil Hickman
28 Comments
I left the party in 2010 and I am most certainly NOT a coward; I have done too much door knocking in the past 30 odd years to be worried about talking to people. I do NOT regret that I took a principled stand against the policies that the party enacted in coalition; I am a conviction politician of the libertarian left. To suggest that to hold such beliefs and act on them is an act of cowardice, would appear to cheapen those long held beliefs.
I have renewed my membership this morning as the battle for the soul of the party is about to begin. I mean to play my part in this and am proud to do so.
Not a single word wrong there, Gareth. I have been feeling similar to you the last week, especially watching so many good people lose their seats. I think you are entirely correct that continuing to support the coalition will be the parties downfall, especially considering our voter base has been traditionally – like you and me – more liberal minded in a way that is based in social value rather than economic. People hate this subject, but it won’t go anyway. Which are we? We can’t be both.
Welcome back Gareth. Please go out and get all your old friends to rejoin as well. #Goldsurge
Gareth, I think we were wrong to break the pledge but they should not have made the pledge in the first place. They were right to go into the coalition and if a similar situation happens in the future then I believe they should do it again.
@Steve: Welcome back Steve, I can see that we are different in the judgement of what we did in 2010, but I agree with you that it’s us who need to reclaim the soul of the party!
@Samuel: Thank you for saying so, and I totally agree with you. I think we are heading backwards while the leadership continue to blame reasons other than the coalition for our defeat. Why are we afraid of living true to our values and saying “we were wrong”? We (eventually) did for tuition fees!
@David: I certainly hope to convince them. Thanks for the welcome.
@Edward: I’m sorry we have a difference of opinion over the coalition – it will be interesting to hear what the voting public believe is the root cause of our defeat. I don’t agree with you on the pledge – it has made us into a party of promise-breakers when we were never that before.
“I regret not becoming one of the few party members speaking out against a coalition deal.”
And what, in 2010, would you have done instead that would have miraculously preserved our principles, enacted all our policies and kept all our MPs and councillors in any following elections?
The LDs want PR which tends to produce coalitions but do not want one with the Tories: this is not logical.
@ Charlie
Hear, hear. Coalitions mean compromises and the purists here forget this at their (and the party’s) peril.
@Charlie @RC agree.
what’s pleasing is that so many of our new members are completely new, not disgruntled old members like the author of this piece, who were shocked into activity by the catastrophe and determined yo help the rebuilding. I’m sure they will look forwArd to what will work in the future and not seek to take us back to some mythical pre 2010 golden age
Charlie: “The LDs want PR which tends to produce coalitions but do not want one with the Tories: this is not logical.”
All political parties are coalitions within themselves. If we had PR for General Elections, we’d quickly see some bizarre splits in the Labour party. The Conservative party might hold itself together for a while, but ultimately it would divide into a “Caring Capitalist” party and an authoritarian “Conservative Tradition” party. It’s likely that the Lib Dems would split too.
These are big IFs. PR is unlikely to occur before 2020, even if a sympathetic MP won a private members bill and convinced Conservative turkeys to vote for Christmas.
@TCO
“Mythical”? Just compare the numbers of members, MPs, MEPs and councillors pre 2010 and post 2010.
Welcome back Gareth Giles and Steve Griffiths and the thousands of others returning to membership of the
Liberal Democrats. We need you.
As for RC’s comment, stopping looking over your shoulder at the past RC. It is the General Lectionaries of 2020 we need to worry about now. Forget about 2010 and the bad case of Coalitionitis that we have suffered for five years they are history. Time to look forward and rebuild.
Welcome back but we dont need to refight old battles. For myself I dont believe that the result would have been much different if our coalition had been with Labour instead, or that we could have done much different once the initial decision was taken. We need unity now, above all all else. We need to forgive ourselves & each other & the voters & look forward. If theres a lesson its probably that we shouldnt enter Westminster Coalitions unless we have at least 200 MPs, its not a lesson with any immeidiate relevance though.
“So what should this party become?”
The answer surely lies in the manifesto (and if it doesn’t, it should). I don’t think voters at the election rejected our beliefs, I think they rejected our behaviour. One of our key problems in the coalition was that, in the public eye, our parliamentary party too easily agreed to things that were neither in our manifesto nor in the coalition agreement. Coalitions mean compromise, yes, but not capitulation. My view is that we did not provide sufficient opposition within government to distinguish ourselves from the Tories, and we have suffered as a result.
In short, we need to learn again what it means to be a minority voice in opposition.
– Speak clearly and speak the truth, and maybe over time people will start to trust us again.
– Build from the grassroots and work up, not vice versa.
– Practise coalition by working with other opposition parties on key areas of policy agreement. The Conservatives have a majority but it is small enough to hope to overturn it in individual votes. Take, for example, the Snooper’s Charter, the Human Rights Act, and maybe even lobbying for electoral reform.
– Talk positively and in concrete terms about the things that we have achieved and the things that we believe in. Act and vote accordingly. Repeat.
Don’t worry I’m an even bigger coward as I left in 2007 as I could see the direction the party was going but have re-joined today.
Like many others I see this as an opportunity to re-define the party. and would like to join in the debate and help shape the future direction we take. No recriminations just a lot of hard work!
@paul barker “we dont need to refight old battles.”
In a sense, I think the party does need to refight old battles. Whether it comes before, after, or during the selection of a new leader, the party does need to decide how it will go forward. I hope this does not mean fighting battles, but perhaps it will. At least it will be without the glare of publicity that the Labour Party will have for its own internal battles, but sadly this is because the public will have little interest in the Lib Dems.
From the outside, I am waiting for the dust to settle before deciding whether or not to rejoin the party. The rump of MPs is split between those closely associated with coalition government and those with cleaner hands. It is too soon to tell whether the glut of new members are returning in the hope of restoring a golden age of pre-2010 Lib Demmery or if they believe the party failed because it was not “Orange Book” enough. Even posts on this site leave me unsure whether those whose gloomy predictions came true are now in the ascendancy or if those who defended the experiment of the last few years will be allowed to give it longer to come good.
Bruce Marsland “I don’t think voters at the election rejected our beliefs, I think they rejected our behaviour.”
Yes this is exactly right! And succinctly put ! 🙂
TCO “not disgruntled old members like the author of this piece”. What a nice welcoming term of endearment. And as always so pertinent and just looking at his photo, so accurate.
I believe that firstly we need to rebuild a local council base….Many MPs were elected because non partisan voters saw what we’d done locally….
What happened was that, when our leadership became toxic, the first to suffer were those who had done so much in local government; sadly their decimation was ignored.
That must not happen again. We were a party of protest, against Labour and Tory dogmatism, and we must become that again if we are to rebuild.
The inevitable, IDS led, attack on the weakest in society must be used to show that Liberals are alive and fighting for them…..It won’t just be Cameron’s ‘skivers’ who suffer; the £12Billion will encompass the ‘hard working poor’. Those who voted Tory will soon find that they will be adversely affected….When they ‘wake up’ they’ll have two choices; let’s make sure they choose us…
welcome back! Gareth – I feel the same, stayed and tried to change minds but alas without much success. I stood as a councilor, kept out UKIP and tried to persuade Clegg to leave a year earlier . Now we can begin the #libdemfightback.
For what we got wrong and can get right in the future #libdemfightbac
Agree with Phyllis on this thread, whoever they are
Yes, it is a shame you did not carry on and fight … BUT you are back now, so let us all redouble our efforts to move forward and promote our liberal values. But, also let’s not forget what we did achieve while in government, the policies we got implemented. Ask some of our former Ministers, ask Lynne Featherstone if she was happy with pushing forward equal marriage, fight against FGM, work in Africa
Sorry to add that our leaders behaved like some sub-section of the Tories – Tory-Lite is a new phrase used everywhere. We said “No” against the leadership but didn’t follow it up when told to shut up and be good tory-lites. That is how Tories behave. At this moment I don’t support our party going into any coalition. We are re-building OUR party and I hope will stay as a principled opposition until elected to govern. A principled party like ours cannot be the second party in any coalition where the main party has no principles to discuss. We learn from an electorate which thinks politics once every 5 years – or is lead, rather, by the nose by a fickle unprincipled media.
{As an aside, the BBC is now boasting how it lead in the election. I say, not by its principles but by ‘playing’ the electorate – and especially by assisting the Tories who controlled the BBC. Should any democracy allow a PM to dictate what he will do, and worse- who may speak in his absence? Thereby denying Clegg any traction in this election?]
How come I am not cheered up at all by the comments deriving from most of the returnees and others on this thread? Is it really argued that we should lapse into the erstwhile comfort of a party which preaches but has no intention ever to take the risks involved in entering government of any kind other than local government ? Indeed are the “never again” advocates arguing that we should not even enter into coalition at local government level?
We really do need a rigorous examination of our principles and purpose as a party but not to my mind losing all ambition to share in government.
Denis Loretto 12th May ’15 – 8:12pm
Denis,
first of all let me say that I am very sorry that your efforts in Bermondsey to save Simon Hughes came to nought. Simon did not deserve to lose and it is a sad end to his time as an MP. Youand I were both there when he first got elected in the byelection thirty something years ago – it should not have ended like this.
However, I think you conclusion if based on a false premise. Ŵe did not hit disaster last Thursday because we “took risks” or even because we went into coalition. As David Steel has pointed out we were steered to disaster by a leadership that would not listen. If on e a year you drive your car through the warning lights every May ignoring all the warnings and previous crashes it is hardly surprising that the fifth time it happens the crash is almost fatal.
Thank you, John, for your sincere comments about Simon – one of the best constituency MPs in the country, felled after 32 years entirely because of our controversial involvement in this coalition.
My comments were not intended to imply that our leadership was totally without fault in all that they did during the coalition period although I will always believe our decision by overwhelming vote of our special conference to enter it was the right one for the UK. My opposition is to the argument that we should decide now forever to go back into our shell. Every day of this majority Tory government will (sadly too late) show people how influential the Lib Dem presence in the coalitiion was – already the chattering classes are pointing this out as if it was a new discovery.
Take control! Get involved!
Follow the link to join
https://libdems.secure.force.com/LiberalDemocrats/NewMemberRegistration