An article on Politics Home suggests that some activists want to see us using similar tactics to Reform UK to get noticed.
Based on snippets from the Social Liberal Forum conference last weekend, and an interview with Bobby Dean, the article provides some useful insight into discussions happening not just in St Albans but across the party.
I’m repeatedly hearing people who want us to stop hand-wringing and actually stand up for our values. Abstentions in Parliament on issues where we should take a stance come in for particular disapproval.
I’m still seething from our response to Keir Starmer’s disgraceful speech on immigration, which even he admits he regrets, which basically amounted to “we need to train British people to do jobs.” We should have been much more robust, as I said at the time:
We should ride a coach and horses through Labour’s plans and we should be bold. We should not give a damn about what the Daily Mail says or thinks.
We should shout about the benefits of being an open, liberal, generous-spirited country and we should not put up with yet another Government failing to meet the needs of our communities by investing enough in public services and housing and then using people who choose this country to live as scapegoats for their failure. We need big picture emotional language that reflects our values as Liberal Democrats. It’s time to challenge the language of prejudice with good, solid practical ideas that will improve the quality of our lives.
At last week’s Social Liberal Forum conference in Daisy Cooper’s St Albans constituency, our treasury spokesperson heard similar views according to Politics Home.
A Lib Dem councillor later told PoliticsHome: “What are we actually known for? People know what Reform stands for… I don’t think we would consider ourselves to be wishy-washy or centrist, but that is where lots of people have us.”
We are too nice, said one member:
“We’re too nice,” one party member exclaimed during the conference. “Nick Clegg [former Lib Dem deputy prime minister] was unbelievably nice in the coalition, and we got screwed. It is time we start saying it how it is. We can politely say, look, that is an absolute load of bullshit.”
SLF Chair John Shreeve is quoted as saying:
Why is it that Nigel Farage, with barely any policy detail, is dictating the traffic?” he asked.
He’s doing it from a vision perspective, and we are not doing enough to promote our vision.
I think he’s getting away with it because he is not being challenged. While Labour and Conservatives pander to him, there is clear space to call him out on his nonsense. We are perfectly placed to do this and in fact have a responsibility to do so. If nobody comes out with a clear anti populist narrative, there will be a continued rightward drift in policy and government which will harm people.
The stuff he’s coming out with on encouraging women to have more babies is awful and resonant of the Christian Nationalist pronatalist agenda we are seeing from Trump. He’s talking about rolling back abortion rights, too.
But there are two sides to challenging him. Alongside the calling out has to come a proper vision of how we will fix things. That’s a key thing. Reform just make people angry and divided. We have oodles of policy, based on our values which can be fashioned into a clear vision that appeals to positive emotions and ultimately will fix the problems people are upset about. We need more and better housing, a stronger safety net and functioning public services and we need to convince people we can deliver that using robust and clear language.
Bobby Dean told Politics Home:
“Reform is flipping the table, breaking the consensus and saying ‘we can’t carry on like this, we must do something radically different.
“I don’t like what they’re offering, but that’s what they’re offering, right? I’d like the Lib Dems to be positioned in a similar way.”
He said the Lib Dems should push causes that have “clear enemies” as a way of creating identity.
The Lib Dems claim credit for pushing Labour to extend the vote to 16–17 year olds and to act on sewage. Farage has also begun speaking about the country’s dirty waterways, calling for partial nationalisation of the water industry.
“But he’s not going to reverse his position on net zero, and neither are we,” Dean said.
“So we need those types of fights where there are going to be clear opponents to it.”
No doubt these discussions will continue and are bound to be a key factor in the party’s internal elections coming up this Autumn.
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social
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29 Comments
Yes!
There are a large chunk of voters who are in favour of immigration. Who are they to vote for if they’re looking for a party who will loudly and proudly stand up for it?
Correct on all counts, I have a lot of these frustrations especially around our frequent abstentions and happy to see this is getting an airing.
@Andrew: I imagine you’ll find the vast majority of voters are in favour of some immigration (including treating immigrants fairly, and accepting a reasonable number of genuine asylum seekers). But outside the activist base, I’d also imagine you’ll find very few who are in favour of the extraordinarily high levels of immigration that we’ve seen in recent years, and equally few who are in favour of any significant immigration happening illegally or via small boats. I really don’t understand why anyone would imagine that an open, liberal, society requires immigration to be as high as it currently is.
Actually, a truly Liberal Society would let people move freely between countries so they can go where their skills are most needed. This ‘othering’ of people who come here to work and prosper is just another example of a blame culture that wants scapegoats for their own failures.
As a society we need an open and respectful discussion of the jobs our ageing society needs done and who is going to do those jobs, not vitriolic diatribes about immigration. If LibDems fail to make this case then we leave the door open to REFUK.
The new youthful Reform UK leader of Warwickshire County Council said last week ‘the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats are finished’. I don’t know, nor care much, about the Tories. But he’s right about us. We’re finished being nice. We’re finished thinking Reform UK might actually have a serious plan. Time to re-read Sun Tzu.
Not entirely sure that abandoning “niceness” is a good thing. It’s one of the (few?) things that makes us stand out in the public mind. Nigel Farage has a carefully curated image as a bluff bar-room bully (but supposedly on your side). Perhaps we should see ourselves in the image of the stereotypical hospital matron, using their feared gruff exterior to get you take the medicine (in our case political truths as opposed to a pack of lies), but not concealing their underlying niceness. Being nice doesn’t need to be being mamby-pamby. But we do need clearer and sharper messaging and, as Professor Curtice put it, a charismatic leadership that speaks human (Christine Jardine, Josh Babarinde?). We don’t need to stop being nice.
I have to admit I have rarely seen such a thoroughly mistaken narrative about what British people want from their politicians and why, in a substantial number of constituencies, they chose the Liberal Democrats in 2024.
It wasn’t because of a few key staff in head office, whatever Tim Farron’s election review tried to tell us, and it wasn’t that they suddenly wanted Britain to become a massively more liberal place and it definitely wasn’t that they had read our policies and decided that were the best. None of those things registered with 99% of them.
Equally it wasn’t down to Ed’s stunts, although that did have the vital effect of raising our national profile.
It was the fact that the British people and particularly people who usually voted Conservative in national elections were sick and tired of the arrogance, bluff and bluster and total shambles the party they had habitually voted for in General elections for decades. They have seen the consequences of blind political idealism in the decline of our country and they didn’t want any more of it.
What they wanted and still want is competence and they have seen it in Lib Dem councils.
They may have voted for Lib Dems locally, they may even have voted for us in parliamentary by-elections and that was vital to raise our profile in the last few years, but they didn’t vote for us because they want more radical politicos.
They want practical steps to solve our national crisis.
Non sequitur : “being more radical doesn’t mean being less nice.”
Actually the Polling on Voting & Policies suggest that Our Voters have a good idea of what we stand for & broadly share Members Values. There’s nothing wrong with Niceness or being Hard-Working.
The big strength & weakness of Reform & The Greens is a strong identification with a single Issue, could We, Should We try to find an Issue of our own ?
Indeed Paul,
For a party a single issue or theme (not too wide) can be very useful in being understood by the voters, but to work it needs to be relevant to their priorities.
To most people, Competence will win over change (any fool can change things, even Kier Starmer), nice (which frequently is seen as and often is actually weakness), hard working (Not quite enough, but Hard-working + Ability = Competence).
The big advantage for the Lib Dems is almost everyone except 100% Starmerites know the last four governments (6 PMs) were all below one on the competence scale, but most Lib Dems who have been in power locally and those who impressed in Coalition were like Vince, Ed and Michael Moore/Alistair Carmichael score quite highly. Indeed for many the period of Coalition is now looked back on as a high water mark for competent government.
I still think if we asked the question in canvassing and polling, Competence would win and we would come out best of all on that measure.
David
All political parties in this country have their internal dichotomies.
We have a party of ‘the Left’ and (so-say) the ‘working class’ that has deep connections to the establishment, the leaders of the legal profession and civil service, and has not produced a government that has seriously questioned the distribution of wealth in this country since the 70s (at least).
We have a ‘conservative’ party that deep distrusts existing institutions and is frequently engaged in a paranoid war on any traditional institution or moral value that places a perceived check on the will of the rich, and believes – in the country that basically invented the independent civil service and welfare state, over 100 years ago – that government should be radically cut back to the bare bones.
In the Lib Dems we have a party that receives votes for being perceived as centrist, consultative and consensualist, many of whose activists believe they are on a crusade for personal freedom and questioning of established cultural norms, don’t value those who conform to consensus values and can be quite sneery about them.
None of these parties want to look any of these facts in the face. Most of them can’t because they derive their campaigning energy from activists who committed to causes that either their leadership or voters (or both) aren’t.
As one of the organisers of the SLF Conference I would like to say thank you very much to Caron for the write up.
Personally I do not like the argument that we are “too nice” as though being nasty is a better alternative. We could of course be more outspoken, more hard hitting and from that show the people what we stand for.
My personal take is that we have a serious public sector funding crises at the moment. We address that by saying we will not make the unpopular decisions that Labour are making, but the onus is up to the reporter to ask and find out how we will fund our spending committments. When you add it all up; defence, overseas aid, social care, NHS, compensation claims, we could be looking at something like £100Billion.
And so it does not look like we are able to meet the scale of the challenge, rather like Labour pior to the last general election.
If we could be more upfront, for example when we previously said we would increase taxation by 1p in the pound to fund education, then people might start to believe we are serious about doing what we propose.
Although I am not proposing a general increase in taxation at a time of a cost of living crises. The tax increases should be focussed on those who can afford to pay more tax, the rich. Which is a whole other topic of course.
Interesting reflections from Geoffrey Cox on the 1p tax issue.
I’d suggest a bit more consistency. I recall Charlie Kennedy campaigning for putting up income tabs by 1p for education, and a couple of years later, under a different leader, I was asked to deliver leaflets in a by-election in Scotland with, guess what, reducing income tax by 1p…… for what reason I don’t know.
The party needs to make its mind up about whether it’s a radical party or not. A bit of this and a bit of that is not the stuff of radical government.
“When you add it all up; defence, overseas aid, social care, NHS, compensation claims, we could be looking at something like £100Billion.”
“If we could be more upfront, for example when we previously said we would increase taxation by 1p in the pound to fund education, then people might start to believe we are serious .”
1p on income tax raises may be £1.6bilion in year one and £2.1 billion in year two.
Raising the main rate of Class 1 National Insurance for employees by 1p could raise £5.35 billion in 2026/7, £5.3 billion in 2027/8 and £5.4 billion in 2028/9. Raising the standard rate of VAT by one percentage point could raise £8.8 billion in 2026/7, £9.2 billion in 2027/8 and £9.55 billion in 2028/9.
Raising the standard rate of VAT by 1% could raise £8.8 billion in 2026/7, £9.2 billion in 2027/8 and £9.55 billion in 2028/9.
These are general taxes where most of the money comes from. I agree that a general increase in taxation would be foolish in current circumstances , but “Taxing the rich” will get nowhere near raising £100billion, and would effectively be not much more than a political gesture “red meat for the comrades” if you will.
https://www.actuarialpost.co.uk/article/changing-a-big-hitting-tax-may-raise-billions-but-at-a-cost-25177.htm#:~:text=Adding%201p%20on%20higher%20rate,5.4%20billion%20in%202028%2F9.
Here is an interesting paper setting out the arguments against a wealth tax from a highly experienced tax advisor who also happens to be a member of the national constitutional committee of the Labour Party. (According to the Guardian he has advised policy makers in 5 political parties – I imagine including ours.) in brief the paper concludes:
1 The suggested amount of money that can be raised (10bn to £25bn) is unrealistic
2 Wealth taxes are complicated and take time to have effect.
3 Wealthy people decide to leave the country and take their money with them.
4 Countries that impose wealth taxes tend to remove them
Oopps – forgot the link: https://taxpolicy.org.uk/2025/07/22/uk-wealth-tax-anti-growth/
@Tristan Ward – Interesting link, not read all of it.
What is clear the wealthy and Non-Doms have in the main adopted their country hopping lifestyles to avoid paying tax (and not just UK taxes), plus ensured their wealth and money has also remained largely independently mobile, to mitigate potential tax liabilities.
Obviously, there is a difference between UK nationals who have become non-doms and foreign nationals who have become UK non-doms, so any taxation or subscription (to maintain their non-dom status) needs to probably be slightly different, to encourage them to invest more in the UK.
@Tristan – as I said, a whole different topic
As a counterpoint to the arguments against a wealth tax – I recommend all read this FT article: https://www.ft.com/content/7ec2c02f-d304-419d-ad12-f1fcfcce86a0
@ Andrew Calder
Thank you but unfortunately the article is behind a pay wall. Can you please sumerize it?
@ Tristan
You can often get a glimpse of an article behind a paywall. If you are quick you can copy it all to the clipboard using the CTRL-A and CTRL-C keys and then paste it CTRL-V into a Word file. It’s not perfect but you can pick out the bits you need. See link below.
An interesting quote from this article:
“Switzerland and Norway have two of the world’s richest, most successful and best-governed economies. They both levy net wealth taxes and have been doing so for a very long time. While such a tax may sometimes be politically contested, there is no sign at all that levying it is difficult in purely practical terms. In Norway, for example, property values are automatically assessed based on formulas, financial companies report bank and investment holdings to the tax authorities, and unlisted company stakes are taxed based on their reported accounting values.”
https://1drv.ms/w/c/18fa7f25181c7a17/EWqGP0DXHO5HgmfQcTZ-_WkB7KOEx9PMnWwqkgWOmHv3JA?e=9EUVvY
“Niceness” is not a useful word for anyone who enjoyed Barry Humphries horrendous creation Dame Edna Everidge, up there (or down there) with Hyacinth Bucket. A generous, open struggle for human rights, social justice, internationalism, radical constitutional reform and fairer taxation are much more credible signifiers of who we are and what we are.
@Peter
re Ft article:
Another way to circumvent paywalls is to use a different access path.
So whilst the direct link you provided came up against the paywall – with no article behind it (something that seems to be common with The Telegraph). A change to MS Edge browser, a Bing search on “Trade and wealth tax myth-busting” and clicking on the Bing News link returned got the full article.
@Peter + Tristan: FT: “Anecdotally, one successful entrepreneur once told me that when he was building his start-up, he couldn’t care less about how he was going to be taxed if he ever became a multi-millionaire, but that a lower income tax rate would have been of much more help back then than a lower wealth tax.”
I agree with the first part of this, having been involved in several start ups during the 1980’s before Thatcher reduced taxes. To anyone starting a business and worried about taxation, I remind them that the majority of businesses fail and of those that succeed, few generate more than a good income, ie. generate returns that are above the allowances the government gives to entrepreneurs. So if you are wildly successful, you will have won the lottery.
As for the second part, I think the issues isn’t income tax, but all the PAYE deductions that have to be paid each month, seemingly just adding to the costs accruing whilst waiting for income to take-off.
Hence a wealth tax is probably more worrying to those who are already extremely wealthy rather than those who aspire to make a difference and dream of becoming wealthy.
@Tristan Ward
Archive.today is a useful tool for dealing with paywalled articles (although not perfect as some text can still be obscured by pop-up windows). Here is the link for that FT article: https://archive.ph/TwJQq
@Tristan Ward
Archive.today is a useful tool for dealing with paywalled articles (although not perfect as some text can still be obscured by pop-up windows). Here is the link for that FT article: https://archive.ph/TwJQq
@ Roland,
What you say is all fair enough. It’s a bit lazy to accept that wealth taxes won’t work on the say-so of the ruling class 🙂 Most of us want a more equal society. If we can’t achieve this democratically by taxation reform, what are the alternatives? Nationalisation without compensation? Violent revolution?
So we have to find a way of making it work. The FT article goes on to say:
” A wealth tax allows a state to reduce other taxes instead, such as the corporate tax on profits. Norway has abolished the inheritance tax; Switzerland mostly doesn’t tax capital gains or inheritances. If anything, a net wealth tax rewards better (or luckier) entrepreneurs because you pay the same no matter how big the return on your pot of capital, whereas corporate or income taxes make you pay more the more successfully you invest. In this sense, a net wealth tax is a handmaiden of capitalism.
Although I don’t personally agree with abolishing inheritance taxes which are a form of wealth tax on the deceased. I’d rathe pay taxes after I’m dead than while I’m still alive!
The best weapon against Reform is their ignorance ,following Richard Dickson comments New Reform leader rails against cycle routes but does not seem to recognise Active Travel Routes will enable walking ,cycling and wheeling which will help regenerate our market towns like Rugby that are unable to compete with the out of town shopping malls with acres of free parking . Businesses do not thrive and survive without foot and wheel fall ie customers so Active Travel , Repopulating out town centres is the new economics we should embrace . not as Reform is doing disparaging such innovation .
Clear, strong policy messages on our priority of supporting the public sector – and the professionals who run it – is nice and radical.