Over at The Guardian’s Comment Is Free website, former Lib Dem chief exective, Lord (Chris) Rennard – not masterminding the party’s campaign for the first time in the modern party’s existence – has an article analysing the Lib Dems’ poition on the key election themes of tax, trust and reform. Here’s an excerpt:
It’s often said that there are really only two political messages in any election. Opposition parties say “it is time for a change”, while governing parties say: “Don’t let the others wreck it.” Liberal Democrat strategy in the first week has aimed to bracket Labour and the Conservatives together as part of the problem so that Liberal Democrats can appear to be different and uniquely offering “real change”. The classic message debate in elections is invariably “change v more of the same”. Liberal Democrats have tried to say that voting Labour or Conservative means more of the same. Hence their www.labservative.com campaign. …
Nick Clegg’s first target seat visits this week included Hampstead and Kilburn, Watford, Liverpool and Glasgow. This programme was a mirror image of Paddy Ashdown’s tour in 1997 when Liberal Democrats (then starting on 13% nationally) went on to gain 28 seats from the Tories. Nick’s message in each of these seats was simply that they are different. In much of urban Britain, it is the Liberal Democrats who are the challengers to Labour this time.
You can read Chris’s article in full here.
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One Comment
I can’t help but but feel that when Lord Rennard writes “real commitment to Lords reform may help give the Lib Dems a unique selling proposition of the kind sought by any party seeking distinctiveness,” he is displaying the kind of self-awareness and consistency that led to the last line of the piece “Lord Rennard is a former chief executive of the Liberal Democrats”.