One of the joys of being in government is being hated. Thatcher and Blair were both attacked daily by large numbers of people when they were in power (at times I was one of them) – though of course neither ever lost a General Election.
In contrast, being in opposition tends to be easier – people may disagree with you, but it’s not you making the hard decisions, from which there are inevitably losers as well as winners.
For the Lib Dems it’s going to take some getting used to. Our fate has more often to be ignored than hated.
Is the party up to the job? Yes, of course it is. We’ve shown that when we’ve had, or shared, power up and down the country in local and national governments. We’ve taken the hard decisions, and we’ve stuck with it.
We showed in this election campaign that we weren’t the people to walk away from tough decisions. Which party identified the biggest real cuts in public spending? The Lib Dems.
But it’s going to take some getting used to. We’re going to have to get thicker skins, to accept that our political enemies will target their fire on us, day in, day out. That parts of the media will attack us, and they won’t be gentle.
There’s something else we can accept though: it probably won’t make much difference. For better or worse, partisan attacks on Twitter and blogs from any side don’t tend to sway many voters; nor do attacks in the mainstream media. (Remember that Conservative support failed to rise in the months after the Sun switched from Labour and launched vicious daily assaults on Gordon Brown).
What to do? Accept that some people will hate us, and live with it. Engage with opponents interested in serious debate, and ignore those simply throwing insults. And get on with the job of being a governing party, with all that entails.
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45 Comments
Clegg has signed the death warrant for the Lib Dems
Hebetrayed the country the party and most of all
himself. 64 % of the country voted against the tories
The tories will manipulate them, tory /lib dem coalition
do not work
Morrison
Hi morrison – thanks for providing an excellent example; appreciated.
@Morrison: If you just want to add votes together you can “prove” that 77% of the country voted against the Lib Dems, or that 71% voted against Labour. Just lumping together votes for everyone else is meaningless.
The Lib Dems promised the voters action of four priorities however Parliament looked like after the election: 1) fair taxes; 2) a fair start for every child; 3) a sustainable economy; 4) fair, clean and local politics. The coalition agreement has got significant progress on all four of these. So we are delivering what we promised.
And as for tactical voting, I don’t see how any political party as a moral duty to tactical voters – we should have a duty towards the people who voted for us.
Well said Iain.
Iain , very good points. But labour are extremely good at mythologising their past and demonising their opponents and they will have a large weight of vaguely leftist opinion behind them (BBC/ Guardian etc).
So we will need to be very vigilant.
As regards the supposedly multiple defections from our party over the coalition agreement trumpeted by our Labour opponents, it is worth noting that the only two identified defectors so far picked up on the “defection” thread over at Vote 2007 are Rob Fenwick (regrettably) and “the chairman of Worcester Liberal Democrats” (who he ?), and in neither case have they joined the Labour party.
Yes it is a good example from Morrison, but I see you do not take up challenge that goes with power i.e. defending your position.
Hardly surprising when I posed the question why Vince Cable thinks it is “foolhardy and dangerous” to take 6 billion out of the economy this year, but a week after the election he supports even more money being taken out of the economy. Was it because he was wrong in the first place and recanted , or does he still believe he is right but willing to gamble with the livliehood of millions for his ministerial car?
So defend that! (I am still waiting 2 days)
Your new Energy Sec was on the radio waxing lyrical about the abundance of Green energy in the UK, and about his life long opposition to nuclear power. Guess what we are getting for the price of his ministerial armchair? Yep Nuclear.
You defend that!
The 55% stitch up in the house. I read the comments on here yesterday as Lib-Dems tried to justify it. You could only admire the sheer chutzpah of the wriggling. Naked Gerrymandering.
Defend that?
To the millions who received your party leaflets “only we can stop the Tory” (a clear double narrative).
Defend that.
Psychologists call it cognitive dissonance, ethicists call it moral bankrupcy. Is their a third explaination?
An excellent example of the type of criticism we can expect came on Question Time last night from Melanie Phillips and Mehdi Hasan, who both claimed that our decision to form a coalition was a betrayal of those who voted for us. The raging invective hurled at our party, bordering on the defamatory in some ways, showed two things for me – one, that there is bitter, tribal resentment of the Tories which means that anyone who even talks to them are branded evil, and two, that this country simply isn’t ready for coalition politics yet.
Let’s get one thing quite clear. Those who voted Lib Dem did so because they supported the policies and values we stand for – fair votes, fair and green taxes, civil liberties and a fair start for all children. Many of the policies we advocated now have the chance of being implemented, albeit in a government still determined to enact much that we continue to oppose. That is the nature of pluralist, inclusive political decision-making – as opposed to the mach, ya-boo, finger-pointing, name-calling charade we’re used to – that compromises are made. Being in coalition means we can implement the policies most likely to win wide support, and can continue to argue the case for those that people remain unconvinced about.
I have to say though, the tone of criticism worries me as regards the long-term electoral popularity of the Lib Dems – we have a helluva fight on our hands now…
I think we should be concerned about the prospects of getting the blame for inducing a double dip recession. This would be as a result of public spending cuts being implemented at a time when we still need an economic stimulus to bring about the growth we need to help us pay off these debts.
Why should I think this would happen? This was of course what we were warning the electorate 2 weeks ago about the consequences of voting Tory. In those days we were quite passionate about it.
Gerry
“The 55% stitch up in the house. I read the comments on here yesterday as Lib-Dems tried to justify it. You could only admire the sheer chutzpah of the wriggling. Naked Gerrymandering.
Defend that?”
If you read the comments, you should know that it isn’t a “stitch up” but a move towards fixing the term of parliament, which was a Lib Dem manifesto commitment.
It was also a Labour manifesto commitment, though Labour politicians are now saying it’s a “constitutional outrage” that a simple majority of MPs won’t have the power to force a dissolution of parliament. There’s “cognitive dissonance” for you!
Can no-one see what would have happened if that first ‘prime minister’ debate had not gone the way it did. Nick raised the party from 18-20% in the polls to 30% in just 90 minutes. Without it the Lib Dems could have become a rump of only 20 seats, leaving the Tories with a 50+ majority.
What would that have meant?
Well already several right wing Tories (Redwood, cash etc) have accepted that their anti Europe, Gay, Poor people policies have had to be ditched so we can assume that given a free hand many of the ‘traditional Tory values’ would have been put in place.
Now if any extreme policies are proposed by the Tories Nick Clegg can put his hand up in Cabinet and ask for a meeting of the ‘Coalition’ committee. Its the best safeguard anyone could want against the looney Right. Cameron is the one most shackled by this agreement and if he breaks it the Tories have most to loose and the Lib Dems the most to gain.
As long as Nick and his team plays to the rules and adopt a medium term strategy of sticking with it when things gets rough then they will be the winners.
Th
@Gerry – apart from your 55% think, where you’re wrong, the answer is its no different at all to the Labour government where ministers frequently disagreed vehemently with Govt policy, but implemented it and presented a united front. It’s how politics always works, whether you have coalition government or not.
Yes, that’s a good start… when met with dissent (which is a lot milder than the snarling abuse doled out by Party loyalists on this site), you disengage.
It’s not just other Parties who’re saying this:
@alec – people have accused the Lib Dems of many things, but I don’t think all having the same opinions is one of them. Vigorous debate inside as well as outside the party will be the order of the day, and a good thing too.
Hi, very welcome post Iain. I’d just like to point out that Mehdi’s is not the only view emanating from the New Statesman (although it may well be the dominant one). I wrote this in favour of the coalition two days ago, and I hope to return to the issue. Coalition government is the norm in many parts of the world, not least Europe. Sensible people will, hopefully, eventually get used to the idea that any compromises necessary to form coalitions are not “betrayals” or “constitutional outrages”. They’re just the inevitable consequence of any system that reflects votes more fairly.
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2010/05/labour-party-coalition-lib
Too right! Take, for instance, Tower Hamlets LibDems’ multicultural outlook (well, now) compared to certain County Councils’ treatment of Travellers and other itinerants.
The cats your Party has just herded to vote for this are certainly not the grassroots activists who put it there… just the ones who’ve received a bit of power, and are angling to get as much as 50% of MPs in Cabinet/Ministerial positions.
I’ve not hung around here much for the last couple of days, so can anyone direct me to these reams of “snarling abuse” from Lib Dems to others? All the snarling abuse I’ve seen on Twitter and on the blogs over the past couple of days has been in entirely the opposite direction.
The cats your Party has just herded to vote for this are certainly not the grassroots activists
Given the overwhelming backing given to the coalition by the party’s Federal Executive, which is largely made up of grassroots activists and not people who will be getting any ministerial positions, I’m not sure this criticism is justified.
Iain
There is a huge difference between pragmatism in executing policy and a volte face in implementing a policy that goes against absolutely everything you stand for. No matter what party , the last label I would put on that individual is that of “integrity”.
To hear the secretary of “Energy” wriggle and squirm and then to call it a “compromise”? I think he needs to start looking up a dictionary. He will find the definition more appropriate to the word “capitulation”. The “motivation” for his volte face I am sure he will find many appropriate definitions in the dictionary.
And still no defence of Vince Cable I note. I do think you will need some practice on that one so this is the perfect opportunity.
Anthony : Nice try, but when the 55% clear reflects party expediency it is what it is. However you keep telling yourself that often enough you will actually start to believe it.. Interacting cognitive subsystems offers a good explaination of this process.
On the question of members leaving there is also Jane Watkinson who was Secretary of Leeds Uni Libdems. She seems to be headed towards The Greens. Part of the problem there was that she had a widely reported article in The Guardian dissing the Coalition without making clear that she was resigning her Post. Naturally other Libdems got cross with her & she ,in turn felt hurt. A good example of why we all need to chill & when we dissagree, use careful & cool language.
Hopefully the conference will defuse some the bad feelings.
And the people who voted for you, Anders? Or, as Patrick Chinamasa almost said, can they go to South Africa?
Gerry, in fact, I approve of nuclear power (regardless of my feelings on said wriggling). If only Fish-heid McMoonface in Bute House can be brought around.
The discussion on the Today programme this morning revealed that in Scotland there has to be a 2/3rds majority in favour of the dissolution of Parliament. Such rules are made to give stability to any coalition. As one contributor said “What are people getting het up about?” The furore over the 55% vote has been whipped up by the Labour Party who
can’t cope with the idea of cooperative politics.
NuLabour, the party of illegal war, complicity in torture, ID cards, the Police state, CCTV surveillance, email interception, the party that loves to lock people up so much it introduced thousands of new laws. The party that poodles to the Americans, forces the disabled to work in menial jobs by threatening benefit withdrawal, ignores scientific advice but does exactly what the rightwing tabloids want. NuLabour, the party fully supported by the Murdoch press, the party wholly opposed to fair votes, and so much more that is authoritarian & thoroughly right wing.
Agree that the bile unleashed last night on Question Time by Melanie Phillips and Mehdi Hasan (who made a fascinating coalition couple in their attacks) was quite a spectacle. We need to get used to that kind of thing, but I also think that people such as Hasan in particular are making a major misjudgement of the public mood if they think that it will resonate right now. What it will do is make the activists and politicians nervous, and that’s what we need to be most careful of. Out in the public the coalition is stronger than it is in the political realm, and we need to be careful not to be buffeted by the bitterness of the Labour Party and hard-right of the Tory party.
You over-the-top fool, Colin. How many more times does this have to be explained? Your Party is in Coalition with one which *supported* the invasion. Any moral kudos it had is GONE.
Defend that!
And that’s before we get onto the subject of half the Labour Party being opposed, as opposed… you know… to the Conservative MPs voting in favour.
There were many reasonable arguments to make against the invasion (I know, ‘cos I made them), but the unhinged fury all these years later and after the man responsible is gone suggests that Blair was seen as some sort of daddy-substitute. See, for instance, the bizarre attempt by one commenter here to present Clegg as a proletarian hero alongside Blair; and his sinister attempt to associated Blair with a sadistic Fettes housemaster.
Alec – you make a very good point AGAINST siding with Labour out of lefty sympathy. Labour and the Conservatives voted against us just as much as each other, so the expectation that we ought to have gone with Labour at all cost (even against Labour’s will? V. democratic…) is unfounded.
No, you miss the point entirely, Andrea. There is nothing Left- or Right-wing about foreign wars – Iraq was a single foreign policy issue which has had negligible effect on daily life in this country. It is high politics, and blaming supporters for the chaos makes as much sense as blaming opponents for the chaos in a prolonged Baathist period would have been – i.e. none at all.
Likewise, ID Cards are, arguably, a Left-wing concept as they are an adjunct to the State’s tracking of individuals (either maliciously, or for provision of State assistance), whilst individual liberty tends to the Right. Thus, calling New Labour (on this,at least) Right-wing whilst allying with the self-defined Right reveals the true nonsense in the words you’re attempting to tack on your high political obsessions.
Great article. I was also fascinated by the Melanie Phillips/Mehdi Hasan double act last night. It shows the right and left wingers are really really scared. Their bile emanates from fear, a fear that the moderate rational centrists are winning the argument. We just need to keep our nerve and not give in to these attacks from either side.
The public gave us 23% of their votes because they wanted to see our policies implemented. We owe it to them to do this whereever we can and accept that with only 57 seats we can’t have everything we want. This is grown up, reale politique… We need to approach it with maturity, dignity, intellectual vigour and, yes, a very thick skin!
Alec: calling ID cards ‘left wing’ (regardless of the use of ‘arguably’ in an attempt to soften the claim) is as ridiculous as calling them ‘right wing’. Likewise, the idea that ‘individual liberty tends to the Right’. Of course, if you want to redefine left and right such that ‘left wing’ means ‘opposed to individual liberty’, then you’ll make it true in your own terms; but it’s simply not what most of the world means by those terms.
Alec- I agree with nuclear too. The point is about selling out principles.
Betty- I am afraid you are comparing chalk with cheese. in Scotland and other examples given, the houses are elected by various forms of proportional representation. Therefore, coalition and the need for procedures to cope with the inevitable eventualities (including fixed terms) is pragmatic and democratic, because they are sequalea to the electoral contract.
That is not the system we voted by the other week; it is not the elecoral contract. In fact as Iain was quick to point out we vote for an MP. A representative with one equal vote amongst other representatives. Your 55% fix
You fail to see “what all the furore” is about. i am sure you don’t see it and that is why you also don’t see why your party will be toast.
Nishma, you describe the critique as “bile” and “fear”. Unlike the “rational centre” armed with their “intellectual vigour”.
No the critique is one regarding intellectual coherence. I would have thought that one person would attempt to answer my critique of Vince Cables “foolhardy and dangerous” warnings. Not much evidence of intellectual vigour there.
As for fear, in truth the more I have read Liberal blogs (think a Renaming is in order) the more I am left with the impression of political naivety. Bile is quickly turning to Schandenfruede.
One is left with the analogy of a US presidents’ second term, after 6 months interest shifts to where the power lies next.
Your headlines today are already tomorrows chip paper
This is Alec, and I was intending to switch to this posting handle I use elsewhere. For reasons I cannot begin to speculate on, ‘Alec’ is in pre-moderation so I’ve brought it forward (although IP address ranges may be at work).
Malcolm, I agree that Left/Right is a movable feast, which is why I prefer not to use them… but I was responding in the terms of people who *do* think they’re important.
(And, for anyone wondering why Kehaar, it’s a character from Watership Down: a seagull no-one could understand.)
Ah, I see what happened… it related to a reposte I made to ColinW in response to a reposte he made to my remark at 1111 hrs. If that merited deletion, so should any remark which includes the word “troll”.
I’ll repeat, this change of posting-handle was coming anyway.
“a fear that the moderate rational centrists are winning the argument.”
Hmmm ,but the LDs have done well in urban Labour voting areas by painting themselves as to the radical left of Labour.It isn’t the media backlash you have to fear, although that will be increasingly painful, it is the backlash from that silent, patient and devastating juggernaut- the voters.
AJ, middle-class riots! Upturned bruschetta vans and hurled wine bottles!
That one’s easy. Turns out, those people had a choice: unrestrained power for the Tories, and everything they said they would do, or significantly more moderate policies that cover a lot of liberal ground.
You almost wrote it yourself. The price is not a “ministerial armchair”, it’s a long list of liberal policies being put in place. This is a coalition government: both parties have to give up some ground. The Lib Dems got lower taxes on poor people, a bunch of political reforms, all the education stuff, etc. In exchange they had to let some things go. Mostly it’s things which have always had fairly soft support within the party (nuclear power, joining the euro, etc).
That’s what Ronnie Heslop would have said. All the pre-election polls were pointing to a hung parliament, and that’s precisely what happened. Alone, the LibDems would have been able to speak truth to the power of the PM (which should have been Tory, regardless of my preference for Labour).
Now, they are the power. Time for others to speak truth to it.
Party loyalists are sounding like the Blairites they were lampooning a decade ago. I hope you’re enjoying that radium drink.
@Kehaar “AJ, middle-class riots! Upturned bruschetta vans and hurled wine bottles”
Thanks that made my day!
Not a bad attempt, but sophistry all the same.
Your energy secretary is not compromise it is simple capitulation.
Legislation is always compromise as it goes through its various readings via the lords and select committees. A valid criticism of the last government was that often enactment of policy was badly drafted because they did not make full use of the potential for the legislative process. But still in reality every bit of legislation in the UK is ultimately a compromise, just as this governments’ will be. That is the legislative reality.
However, legislation is policy enacted and it is on the policy front that there is no compromise.
If you look at what is happening it is not compromise, it is Pick and Mix. Have a good look because you will see this pattern. Osbourne and Cable have not reached a compromise of the , what , where , when and how much to cut which should have been based on pragmatic economics (backed by data and theory supplied by the treasury) . No it is that Osbourne does the thing he wants to do, but we will use the lib-dem policy on that particular sector..
Not compromise, its PICK and MIX, with a few gobstoppers for the lib-dems, whilst your buddies feast on chocolate.
Within these words lie the answer to why your response on the two points you chose to deal with is ultimately sophistry.
However, I note, like Iain, that you did not tackle my Vince Cable crticism which was my central point, because without the economy the rest is bunting.
In fact, as I await a response (2 and a half days now), there is an whistling wind in the air and tumbleweeds are rolling.
PS I see as I write this that the water is already coming over the side on the good ship fixup55%. Google news search forcasts stormy waters.
all your talk is coalition good or bad, i dont care, you came to my door and said vote lib dem keep the tories out.
you lied to me a voter thats all i care about.
What did you think of the performance of your lib con, rep Simon Hughes on question time? Rarely have I heard a once noble man sound so hollow. He was ripped to shreds and he is one of your most eloquent fellows, you are goig to be in for a very tough time if that is as good as you get at defending the indefensible.
N Makhno
Why did you think Simon Hughes was noble?
Type in Simon Hughes & Peter Tatchell (Love him or loathe him a man of supreme integrity) Bemondsey 1983 to a google search and see what you find.
23 years before an sort of apology was forced out of him.
this country simply isn’t ready for coalition politics yet
When will it be? We have to drag it kicking and screaming into coalition politics, if necessary. I can’t think of a better way than to make this coalition work, and do good, over a 5 year period. But the idea of waiting around for tribal politics to go out of fashion is a bad one – it just won’t.
When Melanie Phillips is against us I know we’re doing OK. But it will be difficult and we will probably pay a price. Those who are against the deal should ask themselves what other option there was. Labour is in no mood for reason .
Gerry, re nuclear: one LibDem who cannot be accused of double-standards on that is my MP (John Thurso), who resigned from the front bench when the Party opposed it (cf. Dounreay). He received a fair amount of stick from the metropolitan elite, and has more experience in real life and the Shadow Scottish Secretary than Alexander (he was sidelined by Campbell, supposedly for his support for Kennedy).
Re Tatchell: there was a time when I thought of him as the Al Sharpton of gay rights, then he started doing things like confronting Mugabe and putting himself in the thick of it at Moscow (although his prancing around in front of Mushareff’s cavalcade was rank stupidity). Goodness knows what he’s doing in a Party of political cranks and fascists.
Re Hughes: has he stopped crying? As for Bemondsey, Labour had Miranda Grell so your argument doesn’t hold water, you
ToryLabour troll.