Julian Astle, former Paddy Ashdown adviser, has blogged his reaction to a piece in last week’s Sunday Telegraph which claimed that the Liberal Democrats are planning to change – as Julian puts it – “their logo, their name, their direction and their leader”.
Of these, Julian speculates that there is a possibility that the party’s logo may change in some way during this Parliament. However here’s what Julian has to say about the latter three – as one might expect, he’s pretty sceptical:
The Liberal Democrat party was created by the merger of the Liberal Party and the Social Democratic Party (it was briefly even called the Social and Liberal Democrats before good sense intervened). It remains an internal coalition of centrist liberals and Left-of-centre social democrats. Which is why, at its heart, the debate about the party’s name is also a debate about its direction.
At his party’s spring conference earlier this month, Nick Clegg could not have been clearer about where he sees the future for the Lib Dems, saying: “We are liberals and we own the freehold to the centre ground of British politics. Our politics is the politics of the radical centre. We are governing from the middle, for the middle.”
However you say them, these are clearly not the words of a man planning to reinsert the word ’social’ into his party’s name before heading leftwards in search of votes. Which is why, if the Liberal Democrats really wanted to change their party’s name and direction, they would first need to change their leader. So how likely is that? Let’s leapfrog the fact that the vast majority of Lib Dems support Nick Clegg and consider the next problem. It is hard to see how the party could oust Nick Clegg while remaining a part of the coalition; an expression of no confidence in the leader would, in effect, be an expression of no-confidence in his decision to govern with the Conservatives.
You can read the whole post here.
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5 Comments
I do not know of anyone seriously campaigning within the party to change it’s name.
The main reasons why Nick Clegg should watch out as far as his leadership is concerned is that; he cannot get his preferred policies through conference, he cannot enthuse the members with his leader’s speeches (for example the last one was mainly about alarm clock Britain which had the paradoxical effect of sending people to sleep) , he has upset a lot of local activists and councilors by supporting the local government cuts, free schools, academies and NHS reforms, he is unpopular with the electorate according to opinion polls and it would not look good to have him as leader if we remain under 15% in the national opinion polls 18 months in advance of the next general election. Remember what happened to Ming Campbell when he wasn’t up to the job.
Centrist Liberals and left of centre social democrats ????
This re-writing of the history of the sdp MUST stop, they were all too often socially conservative and in thrall to david ‘nukem’ owen. The sdp were the right of the Labour party of their day – in essence, proto-Blairites.
Personally, I do favour a return to the purer name. I can’t see that ‘Democrats’ adds anything, and just makes the whoe thing a little bit clunky.
This was published a day late wasn’t it?
The only response when any organisation changes its logo is that a lot of other people take the proverbial.
I’d predict:: “‘Dead duck replaced by…”
If the general response to a new logo (other than by those who have paid thousands to whoever designed it, and by the designers) has EVER been positive, in the entire history of time, I’ll stand corrected.
Why go to the trouble and expense of changing “their logo, their name, their direction and their leader” when all which is needed is for the Party Leadership to listen to what the more Social Liberal Party (left-of-centre) Members are saying and act upon it! Our voices are not being heard, let alone heeded. We have slogged our guts out for many, many years to get all of them into Parliament, the least they could do is to actually take notice of what we are saying. The Party cannot go on as it is doing, propping up the Conservatives and their “slam the poor and favour the rich” policies – the Party needs to change from the inside, starting at the top. That costs nothing in terms of cash, just for those who are in power and in Government to change their attitudes to the many thousands of us who put them there. Social Liberalism is alive and well – and don’t forget it!
We don’t want a split Party – we want equality within the Party and that means equality of values and ethos from both ends of the spectrum within the Party.