LibDemVoice is running a daily feature, ‘Lessons of Coalition’, to assess the major do’s and don’ts learned from our experience of the first 3 years in government. Reader contributions are welcome, either as comments or posts. The word limit is no more than 450 words, and please focus on just one lesson you think the party needs to learn. Simply email your submission to [email protected]. Today Alan Craw shares his thoughts.
Coalition government was never going to be easy, and so it proved, but the one general lesson we as Liberal Democrats need to learn is about loyalty. There is an inherent conflict of interests between loyalty to one’s voters, supporters and party members on the one side and to the national interest and any coalition partner on the other. This is effectively a three way split. Many of our supporters do not think that the dominant partner, the Conservative Party, have the national interest at heart, merely their own interests and those of their friends.
It is time we all re-read Machiavelli’s “The Prince”. In it he states that in order to retain power, it is often necessary ruthlessly to rid oneself of one’s enemies. We are just such an enemy. Our altruism in joining a coalition in the national interest is being exploited by a ruthless partner which does not share the same loyalty to the national interest and whose members believe that they have a divine right to rule in their friends’ and paymasters’ interests. Likewise, the other major party, Labour, think they too have all the answers: they do not. Both Labour and the Conservatives are in thrall to powerful corporate interests.
In Coalition, it appears to our voters and potential voters that we are more loyal to the Coalition than we are to them. They do not see the national interest coinciding with the Conservatives’ interests. They see us as supporting policies and a party that many of them loathe as strongly as they loathe Labour.
In order to work, loyalty must be regarded as a two-way process. Probably the turning point for many was the vote on changes to our voting system, where we lost a debate that we should have won. In hindsight, we should have insisted on more time to put our case. Perhaps the most radical reform seems to have gone unnoticed; the introduction of full-term, five-year parliaments. That is much more far reaching reform than many realise, and removes a very big weapon from sitting prime ministers. While the vast majority of voters neither know nor care, this is a reform we should be proud of because neither of the other parties liked it.
Finally, we must show more loyalty to today’s and tomorrow’s voters and supporters, many of whom are more centre-left than we realise.
Previously Published:
Mark Valladares: Better party communications responding to the realities of governing
Gareth Epps: Government: What’s Occurrin?
Nick Thornsby: Making a success of coalition government as a concept
Caron Lindsay: That old “walk a mile in each others’ shoes” thing works
Louise Shaw: One member, one vote for all party elections
Mark Pack: The invisible ministers should up their game, or be sacked
Robin McGhee: We should organise ministers better
Rob Parsons: Understand the mechanics of government
Richard Morris: Make the red lines deeper and wider
Bill le Breton: The Open Coalition and Its Enemies
Patrick Murray: Make sure our policies are reflected in our manifesto
David Allen: If It Won’t Work, Walk
Joe Otten: Government is hard
Richard Flowers: The Economy (it’s too soon to say)
Linda Jack: It’s time to restate who we are and what we stand for
Paul Walter: One doesn’t have to agree with everything the Government does to support it generally
Alex Wilcock: The two biggest problems: betrayal and betrayal
Daniel Carr: Learning from Australia
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
Street surgeries tonight #dundeewestend
12 opening scenes from Malcolm in the Middle
Reform drop council by-election candidate Irene Davidson
Greg Hyde
Lyell Yardarms
Mick Scholes
Dominic
36 Comments
“n order to retain power, it is often necessary ruthlessly to rid oneself of one’s enemies. We are just such an enemy. Our altruism in joining a coalition in the national interest is being exploited by a ruthless partner which does not share the same loyalty to the national interest and whose members believe that they have a divine right to rule in their friends’ and paymasters’ interests”
I am struck by some of the parallels between the current situation and the situation in the House of York after the death of Edward IV. The Lancaster revival was due not to any real strength of the Lancaster claim or the capability of their claimants but to the innocent York princes placing too much trust in the ‘Big Brother’ (Uncle Richard III) who was notionally meant to be on the same side as them. So, first they were locked in the Tower ‘for their own good and the good of the nation’ and shortly thereafter they met a sticky end! The crucial thing about locking them in the ‘Coalition’ Tower is that this cut them off from their natural supporters, many of whom then felt forced to make the invidious choice between the two ‘ugly sisters’.
I do not see how joining in this coalition government was in the national interest
”Both Labour and the Conservatives are in thrall to powerful corporate interests.”
What about donors to the Lib Dems like Sudhir Choudhrie ? Or the private health care donors Alpha Healthcare C & C Alpha Group, to name three.
Like the idea of staying loyal to the voters though, but how will you actually persuade us to trust you again ?
Broken pledges are what people associate with the words Lib Dem now.
Get out from your bubble, mix with real people not other activists who are in the same state of denial.
Then the party may pick up again. Show you understand why people have turned against you and do soemthing about it.
And lastly, don’t blame the electorate for your loss of votes.
I am glad you understand what the voters want, could you give us some evidence to back up your assertions ?
Why have only 3 out of 20 contributors to this series been women?
“the most radical reform seems to have gone unnoticed; the introduction of full-term, five-year parliaments.”
Was synchronizing the general elections with the local elections a LD policy ? If so it was miss conceived. Under a local election system as in Scotland OK. But under first past the post the Tories and Labour will concentrate on the 50/100 marginals which will decide the election, and if they apply themselves to removing LD Cllrs where the general election result is resolved before any votes are cast. In 2015 the elimination of the nationwide Liberal Democrat local government base will be near completed. After the next general election we will no longer be a national party.
A little loyalty by our MPs to the people who helped get them where they are would not go amiss. Still at least I will be able to enjoy that rosy feeling inside from doing what is right for the country (in the short term). I remember that from the Steel/Callaghan arrangement.
There is no reason why we could not implement policy without shooting ourselves in the foot as a party in the long term.
Duncan Stott 24th Aug ’13 – 9:33pm
“Why have only 3 out of 20 contributors to this series been women?”
I would hazard a guess that it’s because only 3 women have sent in contributions. The LDV team are hardly going to spike contributions from any members….
I’m not implying any blame on the part of LDV.
I believe that Alan Craw is wrong in thinking that our voters were upset about our loss of the AV referendum, party members may well have seen it as a betrayal by the Conservatives but most of our voters were probably not bothered. However they were upset by breaking of our pledge on tuition fees. As he wrote, “They see us as supporting policies and a party that many of them loathe”.
It would be nice for the leadership to show loyalty to the membership rather than ignore its concerns and attacking it. While it might be possible to veto more Conservative policies and actions not covered by the Coalition Agreement I will not be holding my breath.
I think that we pass too quickly over the matter of the fixed term parliament. Of course voters will neither know nor care about this vital reform if we never mention it. We are the party of reform, and we have delivered an important protection for voters; never again can a prime minister cut and run to an early election for purely party interests. But there have been other positive consequences from the reform. Electioneering is only now starting up with less than two years to the election, whereas it would have got into gear long ago under the old system. That’s one benefit. Another is that the business and financial environments have not suffered from continuing media speculation as to when an election might be called, a stability that has helped us in weathering the recession.
I would like to say to Paul Walter that my attempt to contribute to this series was spiked and I’m not a woman.
The main points I was trying to make in my contribution were that Lib Dem Ministers should 1. talk like human beings in interviews, rather than ‘Government speak’ and 2. LibDem Ministers should put as much effort into making their policies work as making policy statements in the first case. e.g. Jo Swinson’s excellent policy on tackling employers who pay below the minimum wage, should include a ‘report back’ clause to show if it is working or not.
David Pollard – yes to report back. That would be part of making government something done for and with the electorate rather than to them. But only part.
This series of ‘Lessons of Coalition’ has been one of the best, and one of the most open discussions that LDVoice has published. Wouldn’t it be a good idea to publish the series in other media for a wider section of the public to read? And then there follows the unifying discussion for the party.
The series has confirmed that I am an LD in principle and await the necessary corrections within the LDs – between individual members, conference attendees, local council members (past and present), and parliamentarians of all levels. If the corrections can be made they should be made public to show what holds us together not divides – shouldn’t they? Those final points or principles should not be negotiated away by anyone – if any negotiator (presumably in some position of authority within the party) cannot get them agreed, the negotiation fails. The party cannot act on imported “foreign” principles from another party and must vote against them at the appropriate forum. Then many of us can return to support the party again. It is seeing our principles being rejected by other LDs that irks us. We vote in support of principles not in compromise – coalition doesn’t have to mean compromise and that has been the problem.
@ Duncan Stott – “Why have only 3 out of 20 contributors to this series been women?”
Good question. We’ve sought contributions via email, Facebook as well as the site itself. I think we’ve published every piece received by a woman.
@ David Pollard – “I would like to say to Paul Walter that my attempt to contribute to this series was spiked and I’m not a woman.”
David, I wrote back to you with suggestions of how your piece could be strengthened, using specific examples of your point. It wasn’t ‘spiked’.
@ David Pollard
On the bright side, your comment wasn’t spiked.
“I wrote back to you with suggestions of how your piece could be strengthened … It wasn’t ‘spiked’.”
I can confirm that LDV do act like this. I have been told a few times that LDV staff know better than I do how I should make the point I want to make. Generally the thing to do is to swallow one’s pride, accept that LDV is being sincere, and do a rewrite. One bonus is that, if they ask you to expand your argument, you can then happily ignore the word count limit.
Sincerity, however, doesn’t necessarily mean sense. On at least one occasion, the advice was essentially that my point could be made clearer and more effective if it were to argue the opposite of what I actually believe. Because LDV are painfully sincere, there is no point in crying blue murder about censorship. You just have to bin your piece, put it down to experience, and if you’re really determined, find a different slant on the issue and write about that!
David Allen: ” Because LDV are painfully sincere, there is no point in crying blue murder about censorship. You just have to bin your piece, put it down to experience, and if you’re really determined, find a different slant on the issue”
You don’t have to bin your piece. Publish it elsewhere – which you are at liberty to do in a thousand and one places on the internet. So, of course, it isn’t censorship, because (as is shown by following through the definition in a dictionary) censorship involves eradicating or deleting something. You simply send your article to LDV to see if they want to publish it. If they don’t publish it, you still have the article to publish elsewhere – making it not censorship. They do not take the article and delete it so that you cannot publish it elsewhere, which would be censorship.
‘Probably the turning point for many was the vote on changes to our voting system, where we lost a debate that we should have won’
This is exactly the supercilious attitude that makes Liberal Democrats so insufferable, and guarantees that they will always turn off a large section of the electorate: the idea that if someone votes against them it can only be because they are evil, stupid, or (at best) misinformed.
The population were asked if they would like to change the voting system; they said, ‘No.’ And if you keep telling the public that they were stupid and hoodwinked and they should have voted differently… well, Gordon Brown can tell you how exactly many votes there are in insulting the electorate.
A
This is exactly the supercilious attitude that makes Liberal Democrats so insufferable, and guarantees that they will always turn off a large section of the electorate: the idea that if someone votes against them it can only be because they are evil, stupid, or (at best) misinformed.
No, there’s a completely different way of interpreting this, which I think is more correct.
It’s not that the electorate are evil or stupid, though I think they were misinformed. And who was misinforming them? Well, the “No” campaign said many dubious things, but its central line was correct – the current electoral system tends to distort results, so that the biggest party gets a greater share of the seats than its share of the vote, and small parties get smaller shares of the seats than their share of the vote, which results usually in a majority government for the largest party even if it fell well short of a full majority of votes.
However, the “Yes” campaign was worse. It failed to explain how the AV system works, so most people felt unsure about it because they didn’t understand it. It failed to explain the main consequences of AV that people would find attractive if they realised it. It failed to point out the illogical nature of the anti-Clegg argument for voting “No”.
So “where we lost a debate that we should have won”, the criticism is aimed not at the electorate but those leading the “Yes” campaign – that is mainly the leadership of the Liberal Democrats – for making a total hash of that campaign. They made a hash of the “Yes” campaign because of the hash they had made of presenting the coalition situation.
People were angry with the Liberal Democrats for seeming to concede so much to the Conservatives in the coalition, but the reason the Liberal Democrats were so weak compared to the Conservatives was the distortion of the electoral system – the very distortion that the “No” campaign said was its best feature. So people who voted “No” because they were angry with the Liberal Democrats were voting in favour of the very thing that had caused them to get angry. However, Clegg could not explain that, because Clegg had taken to promoting the coalition as all wonderful and exaggerating the Liberal Democrats’ power in in, rather than making clear that it was a poor compromise due to the distortion of the electoral system so unbalancing the representation of the two coalition parties.
People who voted “No” were voting for the idea that it is best to have a government composed solely of the largest party, even if it didn’t have full majority support in the country. That is, a “No” vote was a vote for the principle that we should have had a Conservative government. The only logical criticism any “No” voter OUGHT to have had of Clegg is that in not conceding everything to the Conservatives he had blocked the ideal that the “No” campaign said was best – government purely of the largest party.
I think if it had been explained in this way, if it had been made clear that a “No” vote in the referendum was vote for the Conservatives, there would have been a massive “Yes” vote.
Again, you’re basically saying that the electorate didn’t understand what they were voting for.
This is the exact same attitude I am talking about: the attitude that says, ‘If you really understood the issue you would agree with me.’
Saying, ‘It’s my fault for not explaining it well enough’ doesn’t actually make it any less condescending, you know. If anything it makes it sound more condescending: ‘I didn’t explain to you in simple enough terms why you were wrong to vote as you did, so you made the wrong choice. Next time I must try harder to explain it in a way that enables you, poor uninformed voter, to understand that I can see what you really want better than you can.’
Perhaps — in fact — people actually understood that AV was more likely to lead to coalitions, and voted against it on that basis, because they actually do think that ‘it is best to have a government composed solely of the largest party, even if it didn’t have full majority support in the country’ even if that government is not the one they happen to agree with?
Regardless, as long as you talk in one breath about ‘showing more loyalty to the voters’ while in the next saying that the voters don’t really know what’s good for them and if they had the issues explained to them PROPERLY they would inevitably agree with you, they will see that there is no ‘trust’ at all there. You can’t trust someone while simultaneously thinking you know better than them which way they should vote.
One week after the Coalition was formed I gave up on the LIbDems. I realised that, along with many others, my vote for them was a ‘wasted vote’, and not in the old Liberal Party meaning of that phrase. Since then I know that my judgement was correct. They just got worse with time. And still they just don’t ‘get it’ – bless ’em.
A
Saying, ‘It’s my fault for not explaining it well enough’ doesn’t actually make it any less condescending, you know.
Sorry, why do you say “I”? I was not involved in the “yes” campaign. I believe it was very badly run. It was so badly run that I wanted no involvement in it. I detest Nick Clegg and think he is running the party so badly that I am refusing to take part in any campaigning activity for it while he remains leader.
So why did you attack me as if I am some sort of Clegg-loving party loyalist?
It is not arrogant or condescending to hold that my beliefs are true. If another person has beliefs that are incompatible with my own (that is, they cannot both be true) I must either (A) re-examine my beliefs and conclude that they are actually false or (B) hold that the other’s beliefs are false. Some people in this thread seem to be arguing that A is the only acceptable response. In other words, none of my beliefs should ever survive challenge.
Paul, it’s not about ‘beliefs’. It’s about values. How people vote is as much to do with what values they hold as what beliefs they hold.
A lot of Liberal Democrats seem to have the attitude that their values are self-evidently the correct ones to hold.
For example, the idea that the referendum was lost because the pro-AV side failed to explain itself properly basically says the voters didn’t understand what it was they were voting on, because if they did, they would obviously have voted for.
But perhaps people did understand the implications of AV (among them, for example, greater probability of more hung parliaments) and voted as they did because they didn’t like those implications (because, say, they think hung parliaments, and the coalitions that result, are bad and they would prefer strong single-party governments, and so would prefer a system which is more likely to result in strong single-party governments even when the proportional vote is split evenly).
The attitude that ‘if you disagree with me, it can’t be because although we agree on the facts you legitimately hold different values from me (for example, about what features are desirable in a voting system) but it must be because you don’t understand the issue properly’ comes across as smug, condescending, and is a complete turn-off for the average voter. And a lot of Lib Dems come across as having that attitude.
A
Perhaps — in fact — people actually understood that AV was more likely to lead to coalitions, and voted against it on that basis, because they actually do think that ‘it is best to have a government composed solely of the largest party, even if it didn’t have full majority support in the country’ even if that government is not the one they happen to agree with?
Fine, perhaps they do. If people wanted that, then what they would want now would be a government which is just a Conservative Party government. In fact, I agree – that is why I accept the 2011 referendum on AV was a massive vote in favour of THIS government we have now. I think this coalition is terrible, the worst government of my lifetime. However,I accept that by voting “No” to electoral reform in 2011, the people of this country said they supported the system which distorted their vote to give us THIS government. If it were not for that, I would be arguing that this government is illegitimate, because the share of seats in it and hence the share of power in it does not reflect the way the people voted. But by voting “No” in 2011, the people of this country smashed that argument to pieces, I can no longer makes it, because the people of this country said, by two-to-one, that they disagree with me on that, that they support the distortion that I argue makes this coalition illegitimate.
OK, now I am aware that few people ACTUALLY seem to take the view above. Because it’s not an argument I often hear. Well, maybe it’s made a lot in Conservative circles, but I don’t hear it here. That is, I don’t see in Liberal Democrat Voice loads of people writing in attacking the Liberal Democrats for stopping the Conservatives having it all their own way. Instead, what I see is lots of people attacking the Liberal Democrats for “propping up the Conservatives”.
Now this is where I go back to thinking people really didn’t understand what they were voting for. I heard a lot of people saying “I don’t like the way the Liberal Democrats propped up the Conservatives by forming the coalition, so I’m voting ‘No’ in the referendum”. Mr A, since you claim to be the expert in all this and to understand what people really felt, and you claim I am just a foolish Nick Clegg fan who cannot see anything wrong in his party and his leader, and that’s where I am going wrong, perhaps you can help me out.
To me saying “I don’t like the Liberal Democrats for the way they propped up the Conservatives” and then propping up the Conservatives by voting to keep an electoral system which gives them many more seats than their share of the vote makes no sense. To say “I don’t like the way this coalition government is so right-wing and the LibDems just seem to have abandoned their own policies and adopted Conservative ones” and then to say “I don;t like coalitions, I think we should have a government composed only of the largest party” makes no sense, given that the largest party is the Conservative Party. To me, anyone who takes the position you say people voted for in the referendum, must logically take the position that the more Nick Clegg gives into the Conservatives, the better, because the more that will take us to what they say is their ideal, which is a Conservative only government. So to me, those who voted “No” because they don;t like coalitions can have only one complaint against Nick Clegg, that is, that he is not doing ENOUGH to prop up the Conservatives.
However, as I say, I must be blinded by party loyalty to be thinking that way, so perhaps you can explain to me why it is logical to say both that you want a government controlled only by the largest party and that you dislike Nick Clegg for allowing this government to become almost the same as that.
If you’re convinced that people didn’t understand what they were voting for, by all means, keep telling them how stupid they are. But don’t then be surprised if people are less likely to vote for you after you’ve insulted their intelligence.
I presume you do want people to vote for you?
A
I presume you do want people to vote for you?
I’m not proposing to stand for any election in the near future, so, no I don’t want anyone to vote for me.
I am sorry that you persist in your Leninist view of politics, in which you assume that if someone if a member of a political party, and yes, I am still a member of the Liberal Democrats, they must lose any form of personal identity and just adopt a collective voice in which all they can do is utter the official party line as handed down by The Leader. So, you with your blinkered Leninist view of politics just assume that when I am writing I must be stating some sort of official Party Line, because you lack the intellectual capacity even to be able to understand that politics doesn’t have to work like that.
I think I made my point clear. I am saying that if people voted “No” to AV for the reasons you suggested, then it follows from their belief that we would be better off governed by a government of one party and that electoral distortion to obtain that is a good thing, that their main criticism of Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats is that their action in the coalition is bad because it is BLOCKING their ideal of a single party government of the largest party, that is, the Conservative Party.
If you agree with what I have put above, then please write to confirm that. However, my assumption (if I am wrong in this assumption, let me know, and I will apologise) is that your criticism of Nick Clegg would be that he has given in too much to the Conservatives rather than not given in enough. That is why I posed the question addressed to you in the last paragraph of my last comment. Now would you care to answer that question?
A
If you’re convinced that people didn’t understand what they were voting for, by all means, keep telling them how stupid they are
No, it was your assumption that when I suggested people did not understand the “Yes” case I meant that I thought them to be stupid. I did not think that at all. In my long experience of political activity, I’ve generally found that most people aren’t particularly interested in constitutional issues, because they often seem very abstract and far removed from ordinary life. That is why they tend not to be interested in listening to arguments about them, and very soon switch off if you try to start one. It doesn’t mean they are stupid. I switch off from talk on sports and celebrities and the like because I find all that stuff very boring and irrelevant to my life. Does that mean that if someone were to point out that I don’t know which team stands where in the football league, or the latest detail of the latest celebrity row, that that person would be accusing me of being stupid? I don’t think so.
It was the job of the “Yes” campaign to explain why this was important and the consequences the change they required would give. I believe the “Yes” campaign failed because it was very badly run, it did not manage to get this message across, it did not use examples it could have used to explain the case.
Let me give you another analogy. I work as a university lecturer. If I complain about my students doing badly and so failing their exams, what would you say? You seem to think the only explanation must be that the students are stupid. You don’t seem to be able to accept that an alternative explanation could be that I am a poor teacher. Incredibly, when I am trying to say the explanation here is that the teaching was poor, you, assuming I am speaking as the teacher, accuse me of being arrogant for saying that. But wouldn’t true arrogance be to reject the possibility that the results come from me being a poor teacher?
You’re totally wrong in your assumption that I would criticism Nick Clegg for anything. I’m not a Liberal Democrat; I, like the vast majority of the country, and (statistically) the vast majority of those who voted in the referendum, am not party political at all.
I am ‘the electorate’ that the article suggests should have loyalty shown to them.
And the impression I get from Liberal Democrats is that they think that I am stupid, because if I really understood the issues, I would of course vote the way they do. And not just on AV: that was simply a convenient example, but it applies in just about every area from drugs policy to defence to constitutional reform to civil liberties. Liberal Democrats tend to assume that if you disagree with them, it is either because you are too dumb to understand, or because they haven’t explained slowly and clearly enough. Both are condescending and a complete turn-off.
To win an election, you have to appeal to people who didn’t vote for you last time. You’re not going to do that if you trat them, as Lib Dems often seem to, as misguided children who don’t understand the issues because they have been lied to, and who just need to be shown the real facts whereupon they will see that they really should have been Liberal Democrats all along.
The ‘teacher’ analogy shows exactly the arrogance I was writing of: the idea that a referendum can be compared with an exam that one can pass or fail, with a ‘right’ answer (that coincidentally is the same as the answer you would give) and a ‘wrong’ answer, and that anyone who has been properly taught will give the ‘right’ answer, reveals a fundamentally condescending view of the electorate. It implies you know the right answers, and you see your job as to bring the electorate to understand those answers, rather than seeing the electorate as the people who you are pitching your idea of Britain to, for them to accept or reject according to how good a case you make.
The point of a referendum is to ask the electorate which of two alternatives they would prefer. There is no right or wrong answer; the electorate are not children being tested to see if they understand the issues well enough to tick the correct box. The campaigns are not lecturers attempting to educate them into giving that correct answer. When the Scots vote next year, they will deliver a verdict on which is their preferred view of Scotland; they will not sit a test where one choice is correct and the other incorrect.
As long as the electorate realise you see them as children who need to be educated, rather than as customers that you need to sell your vision of Britain to, you (plural, the Liberal Democrats) will continue to alienate them.
Just a bit of advice.
A
There are some cases where I think the general public on the whole understands but disagrees with Liberal Democrat policy, yes. But I don’t think electoral reform is one of them.
I’ve been a strong supporter of electoral reform all my life, since before I joined the Liberal Party. The Liberal Party’s support for electoral reform was quite a big part of why I joined it. However, I’ve found that most people find the issue rather abstract and don’t really understand it or want to understand it. I think the “Yes” campaign in the AV referendum was run very poorly because it did not do a good job of explaining it and explaining the good aspects that this change would bring in. I don’t think people are stupid for not supporting this electoral reform, but I do know most people couldn’t see the point so turned off even thinking about it. Many constitutional issues are like that. When I was leader of the Liberal Democrats in the London Borough of Lewisham, the Labour Party wanted to introduce an executive mayor and got a referendum in place to have one. I was opposed to the idea, and am strongly opposed to the idea in general. But at the time most people couldn’t see why I was getting worked up about it. Later, after the Mayor was in place, and the decision-making power of councillors was taken away and power in the borough was centralised into the hands of one person, many people said to me “Now I see what you were on about – I wish I had voted No”.
I meant what I wrote as a big criticism of Nick Clegg, and I am sorry you can’t see my point, and instead turn it round and suggest I am some party loyalist who is unable to take a critical attitude to his own party.
Right, now can you please answer my question?
A
The point of a referendum is to ask the electorate which of two alternatives they would prefer. There is no right or wrong answer; the electorate are not children being tested to see if they understand the issues well enough to tick the correct box.
Yes, and I have pointed out that I accept the electorate’s position on this, but I find an incongruence between what you say it is, and what people are saying about the Liberal Democrats in the coalition. I summed up that incongruence in the question I put in my message dated 27th Aug ’13 timed 11:12pm. So can you please show me some courtesy and just answer that question?
I looked at the message timed 11:12pm and the only question mark it contains is in the quoted bit at the top. So I’m at a loss as to what question you think I haven’t answered, because you don’t seem to have asked one in any way clear enough to respond to. So what was the question?
I have no interest in whether you want to criticise Nick Clegg or not. I have no strong feelings toward Mr Clegg one way or the other. Criticise him, and your party, all you like; neither are relevant to the point I was making about Liberal Democrats coming across as arrogant to the electorate because they seem to think they know better than the voters how they should vote. you can criticise your own party and still come across as arrogant to the person in the street who isn’t particularly interested in party politics, you know.
A
I will quote again your words:
Perhaps — in fact — people actually understood that AV was more likely to lead to coalitions, and voted against it on that basis, because they actually do think that ‘it is best to have a government composed solely of the largest party, even if it didn’t have full majority support in the country’ even if that government is not the one they happen to agree with?
As you seem to have difficulty following the argument I took from that, I will break it into parts.
Question 1:
If people think it is better to have a government composed solely of the largest party, even if that party does not have majority support – and you say the referendum showed that – doesn’t that mean they must think it would be better to have a purely Conservative government right now, since the Conservative Party IS the largest party in Parliament?
If your answer to this is “No”, then you have directly denied what you originally wrote. If your answer is not a straight “yes” then could you explain why my reasoning here is faulty?
Question 2
If people think it would be best to have a purely Conservative government now, doesn’t that mean that the more Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrat MPs drop Liberal Democrat policy and support without question Conservative policy, the better people will find it, because it moves the government closer to what you say they think is best i.e. one which is purely Conservative?
It seems to me that this is a direct implication from what you wrote, and therefore your answer to it should be “yes”. If your answer to it is not “yes”, could you explain where you find my reasoning to be faulty?
Question 3
The Liberal Democrats have lost support since the formation of the coalition, and there is plenty of evidence that people are angry with them. It follows from the question 1 and question 2 argument that the main reason people would be angry with the Liberal Democrats is that they are NOT giving sufficient support to Conservative policies in the government? Do you believe this to be the case? If you do not believe this to be the case then how do you reconcile it with the “yes” answer to questions 1 and 2 which would follow logically from what you wrote?
Question 4
A lot of people said they would vote “No” to AV because they were angry with Nick Clegg for”propping up the Conservatives”. Do you believe this to be true? If it is true, then how does it fit in with the argument I made up to question 3, which suggests the opposite should be the case?
Question 5
Does voting to retain an electoral system whose usual effect is to give the Conservatives a much bigger share of the number of MPs than their share of the vote count as “propping up the Conservatives?
The point here is that you are saying people voted to retain the current electoral system conscious of the way it favours the largest party i.e. the Conservatives, putting them in full control of government even if they got well under half the vote. It seems to me that the term “propping up the Conservatives” applies very much to what they did here if they understood the argument in the way you say they did.
Question 6
So what would you call someone who votes for X on the grounds they think X is bad? Replace X here by “propping up the Conservatives”.
A
the point I was making about Liberal Democrats coming across as arrogant to the electorate because they seem to think they know better than the voters how they should vote
OK, so you hold to the position that members of a political party are “arrogant” if they believe that the policies of that party are good policies. So what would you prefer? “These are my principles, and if you don’t like them, I’ll change them”?
Liberal Democrat Voice is a forum set up for members and supporters of the Liberal Democrats to discuss relevant issues. So the assumption is that contributors will in general be supportive of the policies and principles of the Liberal Democrats. If I am talking about electoral reform here, it is a long-standing Liberal Democrat policy, supported by almost all active Liberal Democrats, so anything I would say here would be on the basis I am talking to people who support electoral reform. You come here, see that discussion, and accuse me of being “arrogant” for assuming that when I am talking with fellow members of the Liberal Democrats that they will share my support for this policy.
This is not a forum for people who dislike the Liberal Democrats to come along and abuse members of the party. You appeared to be using it as such, and that is why I replied in kind. If your intention was not that, but was instead to act as a sort of “critical friend”, pointing out things about how the Liberal Democrats come across to outsiders that may be damaging their case because you would like to see the Liberal Democrats do better, then I thank you for your concern, but now you have made the destructive criticism, perhaps it would be a good idea if you were to add something constructive – tell us what the Liberal Democrats could be doing that would address the concern you have raised.
Please note, however, that if I were putting the case for electoral reform to the general public, I would be addressing my audience in a rather different way than I would address Liberal Democrat supporters, because obviously I would not be assuming they share my support for the party’s policies. In fact one of the criticisms I have of the “Yes to AV” campaign was that it did take this tone of just assuming its policy was a good one, and so did not need properly explaining to the public. This became clear to me when I attended the London region Liberal Democrat conference in the month before the referendum, where a major part of the conference time was given over to presenting the material that the “Yes to AV” campaign had prepared for us to use. I looked at the campaign material and did not think it was very good, in fact it seemed to me to be completely lacking in a proper explanation of how AV works, and it did not put the case for AV in a way that linked it to the technical details of how the system works. I felt this was wrong so I asked the question “Why is there no material here explaining what AV actually is, how it actually works?”. The campaign organisers replied (I paraphrase) “Oh, ordinary people find that sort of thing boring, so instead of properly arguing the case for it, we’ve produced material that is full of ad-man’s waffle”. The idea did indeed seem to be that the campaign would be about getting celebrity endorsement for AV which would make it look modern and attractive and condemn opponents as old fuddy-duddies. Perhaps this is what you meant by it coming across as arrogant, if so, I agree with you. My reply to what the organisers said was (this is, so far as I recall, my exact words) “I believe this is the wrong approach, and it will lead to us losing this referendum – when this happens, please remember my name and please remember I told you so”. This was to a crowded hall full of the leading London Liberal Democrats, so many reading this must have been here – they can give testament to what I have written here. At that time, the opinion polls were still showing majority public support for “Yes”, and the whole tone of the event was about ad-man type cheerleaders generating enthusiasm for the campaign using the usual shallow techniques the people use, so it was rather shocking for someone there not to go along with it and instead express scepticism about what they wanted us to do, as a consequence there was something of a stunned silence after I said what I said.
To me, this sort of model of a political party as all about top-down organised cheerleading, with what should be its policy formation forums turned into rallies in which people are made to feel they must give uncritical support to what the leadership has organised or risk appearing as party-poopers, is all wrong. It is totally against what makes me a Liberal. For the same reason, I cannot bear to be present at the Leader’s speech at party conference, and similar such rally-type events.
A
Could you PLEASE answer my questions? Or if you cannot, then have the decency to apologise for your accusations, because your failure to answer shows you have no answer because I have proved you wrong.