I think we are agreed now that the EU referendum result was not a vote to leave the EU at all, but a howl of protest from the people of Britain that feel left out of the prosperity that predominately benefits the south east, and fearful of the changes affecting their communities.
It feels that we are not a liberal country after all. It makes me extremely sad to realise this, and will lead others to question the relevance of our Party.
But if we dig deep into the basic principles and aims of our Party we will see that we are more relevant than we have ever been. It is poverty and lack of opportunity that harnesses swathes of our society to a yoke of resentment and fear ploughing a furrow for lies and misinformation that grow into a forest cutting them off from truth and the liberal world. It is this very poverty and ignorance that our Party seeks to address: no one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity. We are a divided, unequal Britain and the Party aims to deliver equality for all. It is therefore incumbent upon us not just to represent the liberal-thinking 48%, but to take up the fight on behalf of the disenfranchised before UKIP step in to represent them.
The difficult question is how do we do that? I do not claim to have the answers, but some thoughts based on local experience (in a strong liberal borough that voted to leave!?) have started to form as I work through the shock of the referendum result.
Be of the people
It is back to community politics. We need local people working with and on behalf of their communities. As councillors and activists we have that, sadly when we went into coalition it was with a front bench that was indistinguishable from the other Parties. Don’t get me wrong, Nick Clegg is my hero for standing on principle above all else, but it reinforced the ‘us and them’ feeling amongst those who don’t feel they have a voice. Our MPs, councillors and PPCs need to have their constituents feel that they are ‘one of them’.
Give people power
Help people to see they have the power to change things. It only needs to be small things, like getting some new play equipment for the local park, campaigning for a zebra crossing, putting on a local event. It shows that by working together people do have the power to make things happen.
Be radicals
At Party level we need to up our game at challenging those policies that exacerbate and embed poverty. We could have done so much better highlighting the injustices of the Housing and Planning bill. Recent policies are all about the Tories making the poor pay the price for the banks’ gambling. Our messages need to be harder hitting and emotive. Be clear who the bad guys are in this and be leading the protest against them. Let us be seen as the dissenters and radicals, because we are. Let us allow ourselves to be angry again.
Spread the wealth
This is harder with a small representation in Parliament, but we need to address those conditions that result in a large percentage of our population not benefitting from Britain’s prosperity. We need to support policies that spread the wealth more evenly around the country and discourage its concentration in London. Devolution may well be the delivery vehicle for this, so we need to be right at the front championing it. We can also get involved in devolution at a local level, ensuring that the deals that are done result in jobs and opportunities for local people.
Promote community cohesion
We can help bring people together in our community and give them the opportunity to learn that there is more that unites us than divides us. We must do everything we can to get communities to mix, to share, to have fun together. It doesn’t matter how small a group we start with, we must bring people together and avoid the isolationism and segregation that breeds fear and loathing.
Whatever we try to do, it may not work, or make a big enough difference, but surely we must try.
* Councillor Jayne McCoy is chair of the Housing, Economy and Business Committee of the London Borough of Sutton.
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38 Comments
“I think we are agreed now that the EU referendum result was not a vote to leave the EU at all,”
Erm evidence? what about the 30 % of Libdems that supported leaving the EU, have you asked them their opinion?
” no one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity.” This made me laugh. The majority of the voters rejected being a part of the EU, but because Liberal Democrats don’t like that, you are looking at ways you can manipulate the vote to guess what, make us conform to the undemocratic will of the EU
“Help people to see they have the power to change things. ”
Again made me laugh, we just witnessed the biggest electoral turn out in decades, millions of people registered to vote, millions of people who were previously so disengaged from politics, reengaged and voted in their millions. They had enough of the establishment and being dictated to. They had the power to change things, they voted for it, now you wish to ignore them.
” Recent policies are all about the Tories making the poor pay the price for the banks’ gambling. Our messages need to be harder hitting and emotive. Be clear who the bad guys are in this and be leading the protest against them. ”
Erm are you trying to rewrite history here? have you forgot about your recent 5 years in Government where the party supported, bedroom tax, welfare cap, cuts to benefits, cuts to services that disabled people relied on? What we are seeing with the current government is a continuation of the type of government your party consistently voted for.
What on earth is happening to this party?
Once upon a time we had strong trade unions, free or subsidised middling education, pension schemes for employees, proper apprenticeships and even little things like free prescriptions and free eyetests. These were factors that built a cohesive society, made people feel the state cared, allowed the ambitious poor person a chance of building a better life and let many workers lead a stable existence with hope that their children would lead a better life. The destruction or erosion of these factors by Consrrvative, New Labour or the Condem Calition government are part of the reason why society now contains millions on people leading insecure lives who get understandable pleasure from giving two fingers to the privilieged political class who no longer care about them and who have conspired to destroy the pride that once kept the working class creatively engaged in society. Not that many of the leaders of the Brexit camp care much for the poor but they do at least offer a cause to rally round at elecyttiontimetion time. Perhaps we need a political revolution such as the one in the GE of 1945 to begin again. Sadly we no longer have the visionary and experienced leadership that we had in 1945.
middling educatiin the passage above should read lifelong education and I am sure that it is obvious who the Condem Coalition were…
Ed,
New Labour or Old Tories haven’t taken these things away.
In Attlee’s time we made machine tools, motorcycles, cars, steel, ships, cranes, steam turbines, electrical machinery, nuclear power stations, diesel engines, aeroplanes and millions of other things from tea pots to hot water bottles. They made the money that paid for those benefits. Now we have a huge debt and massive borrowing and no political party (including ours) has any plausible idea for making us wealthy again (apart from the endless, and useless, cry “invest in infrastructure and skills”).
We still make most of the items you listed. More cars are now made in Britain than ever before, for instance, and Lib Dem politicians proudly boast that employment in Britain is at its highest level ever. Scotland still provides many of the benefits I listed which indicates that if working class pride is valued and there is political will then these benefits will be provided. Those benefits were taken away by political choice not due to any lack of money. It is no coincidence that Scotland also seems to be a more cohesive and happier society than England.
For a start, we could stop opposing housing developments.
1. Not by attacking immigration.
2. By promising what people need (housing and jobs) and by explaining how we would pay for it.
@Barry Snelson
“no political party (including ours) has any plausible idea for making us wealthy again (apart from the endless, and useless, cry “invest in infrastructure and skills”).”
So what’s your solution then?
In what sense are Leave voters “disenfranchised,” either factually or metaphorically?
By definition, a Leave voter is someone who votes, and therefore is not only not literally disenfranchised, but has recently actively used his or her franchise. Also by definition, a Leave voter was on the winning side, and so is not even metaphorically disenfranchised by having his or her wishes disregarded. A Leave voter is someone on the winning side, with Farage and Gove and Boris and all the other irresponsible, shamelessly mendacious, two-faced performers of public tragicomedy. They are welcome to rejoice in the successful exercises of their franchise, while the rest of us try to figure out what to do with the mess they have left us.
‘Help people to see they have the power to change things. ‘
That’s what happened last week.
The leave voters are about as enfranchised as one can get. They have had a vote and far from it having no effect, the consequences are seismic.
I wonder if it has occurred to anyone that the majority of people in the UK who voted in the referendum actually wanted the UK to leave the EU? Given that that was was printed on the voting paper, that might (just possibly) what they voted for. Just a thought…
@Derek Campbell Lol.
Hello Noncornformistradical,
If you can’t share your name, I can’t share my ideas.
I use the name on my birth certificate.
Jayne, super article, and you are strong on community politics and local action. But your piece along with mine and the small but radical comments on mine make me think more widely. This is really a revolutionary time, with the leadership of both the main parties collapsing, and the Brexit vote showing the revolt of ordinary people against the uncaring elites who have governed them. It is also a revolt of the peoples of Europe, and we should not seek to return to membership of the EU until we have committed to reform of its undemocratic structures and neoliberal economics which grind down the poor. Here in Britain we have allowed the poor and underprivileged to sink while the rich help themselves to growing wealth. What we need now is for Liberal Democrats to commit to a better deal for ordinary people in Britain and work out the policies to serve them. We should join with radicals in other parties, especially from Labour, and lead them to fight for a better, more equal Britain, and reformed EU which we can eventually rejoin. We should step up and lead this revolution – Tim, please heed.
I agree Katharine. We have just experienced a democratic revolution which has shown us how divided our nation actually is. Some people registered to vote and actually voted when they haven’t bothered to do so before. It’s a tragedy that they voted for change to make their lives better when the change they voted for is likely to make their lives worse.
A lot of people seem to think they have voted to regain a sunny, free Britain in which life was fair and we led the world but that time has gone and I’m not sure it ever existed, but they voted to change their lives for the better.
I truly fear what will happen when they realise that leaving the EU won’t achieve this. Nigel Farage has mentioned violence at least a couple of times. We must beware because we are living in interesting times. I think we can still advocate our long held belief in the EU but we must only do this if we offer a change to benefit those who voted to leave.
This means campaigning for EU reform and a change from its over arching economic policy of austerity. President Obama found a more reasonable alternative in sorting out America’s recession, so maybe we could follow his lead if we are unable to come up with a modern day Keynes. Let’s also look carefully at the free movement of people to see the effect on our poorer communities and try to ameliorate it. Then we can be ready when it becomes blindingly obvious that the alternative to EU membership is much much worse than Leave have said.
I find it insane that people who call themselves democrats can insist that a referendum is binding when one side of that choice immediately withdrew most of their promises and their rationale for people voting their side. In any other walk of life that would be grounds for reconsideration, if not fury. Once offered the prize, leave announced they had no idea how to accomplish what they had promised.
The idea of democracy is that you set the facts before the people. The letter of the concept might have been carried through in that both sides were allowed to speak, but the spirit was completely trashed when one of them lied. And now freely admits this is so. It is no good claiming that the process was carried through so the result must be accepted. Voters were misled. It was a central rationale from UKIP for pushing for this referendum, that previously people had been misled. Well, the leave campaign have now been doing the misleading and should be required to accept their own advice.
Of the four leave voters I’ve talked to they all had different reasons.
1. Voted to bring sovereignty back to Westminster
2. Voted to stick it to the man.
3. Voted because his girlfriend told him to and she’s a Tory
4. Voted to get rid of the immigrants (he didn’t quite phrase it that way but that was what he meant and no he didn’t phrase it in a PC way)
So there you have it, people with a principled position, people crying please pay attention, people who do as they are told and in the fourth case an out and out racist. They all however had one thing in common none of them believed politicians paid them any attention or cared too.
Frankie.
People voted remain for multiple different reasons too. Politics is rarely as coherent as it’s made out to be.
Glen agreed, but how many voted remain because they “believed politicians paid them any attention or cared too” dammed few.
Quite, Glenn. And one-third of our 2015 votes voted Leave. What do the Cornwall Party make of Tim’s ‘straight back in’ stance, I wonder?
Jayne and Katharine
How refreshing to hear real radical Liberal voices after all the recent years of hearing obfuscation and confusing mixed messages from the former leadership of our party.
Frankly the only way this party is going to survive the steamroller of reaction and the vested interests of the media and the powerfulone per cent is to give voice to authentic radical liberalism. As you say, Katherine, let us hope Tim is listening and has the courage to do that.
On a personally level I have found the events of the last week extremely depressing and profoundly sad….. but ….. if ever there was a time for radical liberalism to raise its head in defiance that time is now.
Tim – this is your moment… please rise to it.
Liberalism is not dead, let’s not pretend that the EU was a bastion of Liberalism when ALDE have been a small minority since the wee beginning.
Liberalism is not Social Democracy, nor is it Socialism or Conservatism. Who are the main groupings running the Parliament.
If we get a stronger leader, I think we might have a glorious future when the Tories collapse for their incompetence of leading us out of the EU, and possibly breaking up our United Kingdom.
To respond to a few of the comments: David-1, Alistair and John Yes indeed people finally were given an opportunity where every vote counted, and they made the most of that opportunity. But the result is unlikely to deliver what many thought they were voting for and I agree with Sue that it will probably make things worse for many. This recent ‘enfranchisement’ makes it more important that we sit up and take notice of what the public are telling us. Frankie sums it up as a lack of faith in politicians, and that is why I don’t think we should ask Parliament to go against the leave decision, however flawed. Like Sue I think that people will be angry when they realise they were lied to, but they won’t be regretful about their decision, instead they will take their anger out on the political system even more. Ignoring the majority result will be the final straw. It will also be a long uphill battle to convince Leavers of the benefits of even a significantly reformed EU.
Derek and Frank, being part of the EU is our Party policy, but we are a broad church, and I do not seek to address those Leave voters who made an informed decision purely on the principles of our relationship with the EU. Like Katherine my concern is the North/South divide illustrated by the referendum result and what it means for Liberal Democrats and for our nation. And rather than bleating about past mistakes or blaming the appalling campaign we need to ask ourselves what we represent. Do we just represent a ‘Liberal Elite’ seeking to protect our own values, or are we reformists reaching out to address inequality and hopefully by doing so encourage people to share our principles? If the latter, then we need to seize the day whilst the other parties eat their tails and get to work.
Alan and Alun highlight housing as a key issue, Sue and Alun say we need to understand the impacts of immigration on communities. Keep the thoughts coming on what issues are of most relevance to those who think politicians don’t speak for them, and let’s be their voice.
@Jayne McCoy “Do we just represent a ‘Liberal Elite’ seeking to protect our own values, or are we reformists reaching out to address inequality and hopefully by doing so encourage people to share our principles?”
Sadly, my impression from the last few years, the last few months, and particularly the last few days, is that the former is the case.
In many ways the topic addressed by this article is one of the most important arising from the outcome of the referendum. Despite the fear of change being stoked by the Remain campaign, a large part of the electorate believed that things could not be any worse for them. The Remain campaign should have offered them a positive vision for the UK in the EU but instead gave the impression that it did not care about the genuine concerns that many felt.
At a time when Labour MPs appear hellbent on dragging their party away from the “disenfranchised Leave voters” you describe and many Lib Dems seem determined to paint them as dupes, it is very refreshing to read suggestions for a positive way forward which honours the party’s preamble.
You make some excellent points, but I would challenge at least two assumptions in the article: the Referendum result was a vote to leave the EU (albeit motivated by a host of reasons), and to state that Remain was the “the liberal-thinking 48%” is something of a slur against people that Lib Dems need to reach.
@David ,
I thought that the Cornish Nationalist Party was for ‘Remain’.
However, the Cornish people voted overwhelmingly to leave despite being the area that has been one to most benefit from EU money and investment. Money that they still want to receive now that we have left the EU.
Will government provide it , given all the savings that the Leave campaign say will be saved after Brexit?
Build concrete policies on housing, immigration, jobs and public services. Social security reform, as a whole, should be a priority. Get out there and sell our new policies to the voters. The vote was about all the above, yes, but it was also a vote against the EU as an institution that has made these matters worse. If we’re about to repatriate powers over the economy and migration, the Lib Dems and others need to rise to the challenge and forge policies to deal with them and improve things for those who voted in and those who voted out.
For example –
1. National housing bank
2. Fair, liberal points system
3. Green new deal on jobs
4. Healthcare cooperatives.
We should also have the goal of ending homelessness!
Peter Watson, points taken. In the interest of brevity(!?!) I made a sweeping statement. Yes the Leavers’ intent was absolutely to leave the EU, my point is that in many cases it appears to have been on the assumption that this would deliver solutions, that we know are not real, to the problems they face. You are right about the insult re the 48% – that was a sloppy reference to Tim’s campaign and I take it back.
We need to stop talking in terms of us and them, we are the people!
Jayne McCoy asks a good question but fails to give a good answer.
Firstly we need to identify what they see as their problems with existing society and then provide solutions.
Catherine Pindar is correct in identifying neoliberal economic policies as a problem and for us to provide a better deal for ordinary people in Britain.
People want to be able to send their children to a school of their choice without any overcrowded classrooms; to see their GP within 48 hours and to be able to make appointments a week in advance or a month in advance; to have a job; to feel that things are better for them than their parents and will be better still for their children; to know that their children will be able to afford their own home and that there will be homes available for them. All of these are what a liberal society should provide.
And we could have policies to achieve all of these outside of the EU and EEA. We could tell the Bank of England to run the economy to achieve full employment not low inflation, we could invest enough money in the NHS and schools to give the people of Britain what they want, we could forget about deficit reduction until we have full employment and we could build 400,000 or more houses a year.
@ Conor McGovern
Outside of the EU and EEA we could have a Citizens Income (lots of people have pointed out in the recent discussions that it would be difficult to have one for the UK in the EU).
Jayne Mansfield,
Actually Cornwall voted 56.5 to 43.5 to Leave, which was not “overwhelming” compared to many places…
Cornwall voters have always been a bit Eurosceptic and we have always been pro-Europe. We just need to regain our credibility and we will do better in many such areas again.. But we need to stick to our principles and not try to out-populist UKIP to do that..
Michael BG – Yes we need to form policies that are relevant to people, and that is one of the calls I put out. You make good suggestions. However we can have all the solutions we like, but until we are able to demonstrate delivery, no one trusts a word politicians say.
In Sutton we have maintained the control of the council for thirty years because we have built up the trust of our residents that we deliver on the things that matter to them. Our MP Tom Brake was the only Lib Dem MP re-elected in London. That was because he is seen living and working amongst his residents, accessible and fighting for the things they care about.
I am talking about practical ideas for those areas where Lib Dems are not in power, so the groundwork has still to be done building up trust. Parts of Lincolnshire, my home county, has been Lib Dem before, and given its issues, this would be a good place to start making ourselves relevant again.
My experience has been that lofty ideals are all well and good, but the reality of politics is that it is sheer hard, on the ground, graft.
“I think we are agreed now that the EU referendum result was not a vote to leave the EU at all”
I think you’ll find that the virtually all the 17 million people who voted to leave the EU actually voted to leave the EU. And no matter how self-important people from the South East want to think they are, sometimes it just isn’t all about them. This is largely about a country with its infrastructure under huge pressure and a constant stream of migrants that no-one can control. They think that leaving the source of the migration will reduce the pressure. One thing is for sure, no-one can ignore them now unless you want a UKIP majority government.
I think you’ll find that the virtually all the 17 million people who voted to leave the EU actually voted to leave the EU.
Don’t disagree, however, 29 million people didn’t vote to leave the EU.
One thing is for sure, no-one can ignore them now unless you want a UKIP majority government.
Whilst I agree we should not ignore them, you and others in the leave camp are in danger of ignoring the 29 million who didn’t vote leave…
Jayne, like like the drift of your article, but I do not think a single person voted Leave because of the recent Housing or Planning Bills.
I do agree with those contributors who say that those voting Leave wanted to Leave, for a whole variety of different reasons as point out by Frankie. Michael BG comes closest to my own views.
I recall a conversation with a voter after a GE2010 election hustings. A lady of around 50 came up and told our candidate that she like what he had said and would vote for him. Then she said, “But what worries me most is my son. I want for him what my husband and I had.” He wants to settle down with his girlfriend and start a family but he can’t. I was slightly surprised. She went on he can always get work – but only through Agencies and with no security so he can’t get a mortgage (house prices locally were and still are very low by national standards). He has to rent privately and can’t settle down because he has had to move. It did not fully register at the time. Things have only got worse in the last 5 years. Even more work is through agencies. In the LD ward where I live, European migrants have replaced Kashmiris as the very visible largest ethnic minority group.
We had nothing to say to this lady in 2010 and had nothing new in 2015. Is it unreasonable to want for your children what you had? i.e. The post war settlement. In my view the position of her son is now little different from the circumstance of someone of his age in the 1930 – insecure employment and insecure housing. There are millions of people in this position.
Why do we tolerate employers and employment agencies operating as they do? New Agencies run by EU migrants to supply only EU migrant labour reinforce what is happening.
Why do we tolerate private landlords getting public cash hand outs (tax relief) on mortgage interest and repairs while a home owner does not?
Why do we tolerate this person on NMW paying income tax at 20% while classified as poor while his employer uses tax havens to pay zero tax on his profit? (And had his premise grant funded.)
Addressing these issues would give us something to say to one group who voted Leave.
“the liberal-thinking 48%”
I find it hard to fathom how voting for the status quo; for remaining in a distinctly illiberal political union is now seen as being ‘liberal minded’.
I voted Leave entirely BECAUSE of the liberal values that I hold: power to local communities, accountable representation, free trade, self-determination etc.
It is my view that the party must stop calling those who voted Remain ‘liberal’. They may well be, but the implication of course is that those who voted Leave are not liberals. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Stevan Rose & Liam Birch I have already conceded these points further up the thread. My article sees the result absolutely as a wake up call and makes the case for spreading the wealth beyond the south east. Rather than being ‘self-important’ my comment was simply trying to evidence my argument, I’m sorry you read it differently.