Last night, a post from Stephen about our current survey degenerated in the comments to a rather ill-tempered argument about whether Clegg should be proposing now to cut taxes in general when he didn’t mention that he wanted to when standing for the leadership.
All that aside, the key interesting thing the comments generated from my point of view was the following list of times when Lib Dem leaders wanted one thing and Conference sent them packing.
1994 – party debates motion on setting up a Royal Commission to review drugs policy. Motion carried, despite clear steer from leadership. Ashdown storms off stage.
1994 – Party supports minimum wage despite Alex Carlile stating that the entire parliamentary party supported an alternative option
1996 – Student finance policy heavily amended despite opposition of Education Spokesman
1998 – party front bench argues for abandonment of minimum wage policy (also adopted in 1994). Defeated.
1999 – motion on HE policy calling for benefits to be restored to students. Passed. Both members of front bench education team speak against it in the debate.
2006 – party debates policy on taxation. Proposal to abandon line on a 50p rate on incomes above £100,000 passed – endorsed by leadership. Big debate. Broad consensus that the party had had a proper debate and that people had voted on the principle, not out of some craven desire to keep the party happy.
2006 – party throws out local government paper.
2007 – party rejects proposal for Community Land Auctions despite clear steer.
Did we really go five years without disagreeing with the leader?
It is a useful reminder that – results of our other poll notwithstanding – the party conference is one of the best things about being the Lib Dems. It is our real opportunity to hold our leadership and parliamentarians to account.
With thanks to James Graham and Hwyel Morgan for, er, doing most of the work on this posting.
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6 Comments
Interesting. A couple of points on the examples:
Drugs in 1994: actually the motion proposed legalising them, and the ‘Royal Commission’ amendment was a victory for the leadership in toning this down (though they would have preferred to have defeated it altogether).
Alex Carlile and 1994… it is possibly only a slight exaggeration to say that this was defeated not ‘in spite of’ but BECAUSE Alex Carlile said that! Certainly it has been a cardinal principle ever since that the best way to get conference to vote against something is that they want is for someone to say that the Parliamentary Party or FPC wants them to vote for it!
You missed out Neighbourhood Schools Trusts (autumn 1998). People did oppose this, but it also I think had a lot to do with nervousness about Paddy’s attitude to the government more generally, and the major revamp of large swathes of policy which it was part of and which was presented at that conference (called Moving Ahead, I think).
You highlight a good point about Kennedy as leader not taking these kinds of difficult choices to conference.
I don’t quite understand your examples from 2006 and 2007. Although you are basically right about them, I don’t think the local govt paper or CLAs proposal had quite the same prominence – the reference back of the local govt paper in particular was more about details.
On the 50p rate, conference voted through what the leadership wanted.
And surely the most prominent example was the Trident debate in spring 06, where I think most people are clear that the leader’s personal intervention swung it.
Sorry, Trident debate was spring 07.
I did to be fair actually say the dropping of the 50p rate was supported by conference. My reason for including it in that list was because it was a strongly argued debate in which it was clear people were voting on the basis of what they thought was right, not what people thought the leadership expected them to vote (for the record, I voted to drop the policy). In terms of Jeremy’s recollection of the 1994 drugs debate that may be so, but it still wasn’t what Ashdown wanted and he did storm of the stage.
The 2000-2005 gap is partially due to my memory, partially due to the fact that during that people I wasn’t personally involved in organising such campaigns and partially due to the fact that under Kennedy the party stopped asking itself difficult questions. Leader’s should challenge the party every once in a while. I don’t accept the Liberator line that they should adopt a Trappist vow of silence until after conference. A robust and frank relationship between leader and party is crucial. In that respect, Ashdown is sorely missed (at least the pre-1997 Ashdown).
When party leaders do win these debates it isn’t because they hold a gun to the party’s head – that unerringly backfires. It is because they engage with the argument, are clear about their intentions and talk to the principle. Regarding this latest debate over tax cuts, I fear that Clegg has a lot to learn.
James – Here we go again.
For the record, it is not Liberator’s line that party leaders “should adopt a Trappist vow of silence until after conference”. It is Liberator’s line that significant changes in party policy should be debated openly and agreed by the party.
Apart from being more democratic, open and honest debate has two other advantages. It swings the party behind a new policy. And the process of debate achieves clarity, which is essential if a policy is to be newsworthy or any use as a campaign tool.
The way the new tax policy has been slipped into ‘Make it Happen’ is not a satisfactory way to change policy. It suggests the promoters of this policy have little confidence in their ability to win arguments.
If you can’t convince your own party through open debate, what chance do you have with the electorate?
I entirely agree that the way this latest tax policy has been handled is less than satisfactory, but Liberator criticised the handling of the Tax Commission debate in 2006, which was handled in a far more open manner. That is where we differ.
Sorry? Did I write “less than satisfatory”? I’m becoming keenly aware of these euphemisms I’ve been using. “FXXXing awful” is more accurate.
I’ll be using the term “sub-optimal” in a minute. God help me.