Former North Devon MP Nick Harvey writes for the Mirror that the Liberal Democrats have a great opportunity in the wake of Jeremy Corbyn’s election and sets out what we must do to take advantage of it:
Socially, we must fight unfair benefit cuts which hit the weakest and undermine the working poor.
We must expose the chicanery of a “living wage” which will barely match the existing “minimum wage” if inflated in line with past trends.
Economically, we campaign unequivocally for Britain’s membership of the world’s largest market, the European Union, and for global efforts to liberalise trade fairly.
Both Tories and Labour have authoritarian tendencies which risk civil liberties on the altar of security fears: we alone can strike the right balance between them.
We must protect public services from Tory vandalism.
After inflicting damage on ourselves through the student fees disaster, we must re-establish ourselves as leaders in the politics of education, with the 14-19 sector ripe for a fresh start.
Interestingly, at the time of writing 44% of respondents to the poll at the bottom of the page think that moderate Labour MPs should join the Liberal Democrats. Whether the Liberal Democrat membership would welcome them is, of course, another matter.
You can read the whole article here.
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9 Comments
Labour MPs not happy with Corbyn should definitely be welcome. If some donors move over too then they might be able to retain their seats. Douglas Carswell did it.
It’s funny how yesterday’s authoritarian and pro-war New Labour MPs are today’s ‘moderates’ when there are potential defections to be had. It’s almost like the Liberal opposition to authoritarianism, nuclear weapons and war go out the window when there’s a basic anti-socialist position to take.
@Mike
“It’s funny how yesterday’s authoritarian and pro-war New Labour MPs are today’s ‘moderates’ when there are potential defections to be had.”
I’m not sure why you think that anybody in the Labour Party who is pro-authoritarian would want to switch to the Liberal Democrats. That’s rather one of Jeremy Corbyn’s defining features from what I have read about him.
Why would any Labour MP’s defect to a party led by Tim Farron ? At the moment the Party is a side show with no talent. The infighting has already begun over new Airport capacity and Trident. Why would a Labour MP look at an even more divided Party ?
@Eddie
On the question of “if some donors move over …”, don’t forget what the front page lead story in Thursday’s Times reported:
“One of Labour’s biggest donors has vowed to bankroll MPs who want to defect from the party as he branded Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership the “beginning of the end”.
Assem Allam, the multimillionaire owner of Hull City football club, said he would fund moderate figures prepared to launch a centrist party or defect to the Liberal Democrats.
The Egyptian-born tycoon, who has donated £720,000 to Labour since 2010, had already dismissed the party as a “dead horse” and he would no longer contribute cash.”
@PHIL THOMAS
”Why would any Labour MP’s defect to a party led by Tim Farron?”
I think the question is rather, why would they not? Or are you saying you have some problem with Tim?
You seem to have the bizarre notion that any Lib Dem policy on which there isn’t 100% agreement (and I don’t know any policy where there is 100% agreement) means “infighting”. Rubbish!
Incidentally, the problem with the Labour Party isn’t that it is divided, it is that they have a case of “the lunatics taking over the asylum”.
@Simon I guess it must have been some other bearded Islington Labour MP voting againat all those authoritarian policies of the Blair-Brown years. It’s a funny old world when tbe Liberal leader supports extra-judicial murders while the Labour leader calls for due process with no exceptions.
And I guess all those ‘moderates’ who followed Blair into the lobbies are a completely different set of ‘moderates’ to the ones Cable etc are flirting with.
In any case, good luck – we don’t want them, and you seriously need to make up the numbers, even if it’s at the expense of becoming New Labour 20 years too late.
How can the lib dems fill any void left by Corbyn moving labour to the left when the lib dems don’t know who they are or what they stand for? Assuming corbyn will actually be the leader for very long that is.
If the lib dems really were liberals i doubt they’d want a bunch of control freak labour MPs to join the party anyway. But then again the word liberal is so vague in the lib dems that it’s meaningless, which is why pretty much anyone can be a lib dem.
There is plenty of space for a liberal party in Britain regardless of Jeremy corbyn. Look at Canada, they have FPTP and a genuine 3 party system and the liberals could be about to win the federal election next month. But that’s because the Canadian liberal party actually have an ideology and something definable to vote for.
If I was still a Lib Dem supporter, I wouldn’t want anything to do with disaffected Blairites. If this party is ever to recover, you’d do well to stay far away from them. More well-suited identikit careerists, warmongers, authoritarians, Murdoch brown-nosers, and those who formulate their beliefs based on focus groups and what the ad men say rather than deeply held principles are the last things your party needs.
No, you’d be better off actually telling the public what you believe in, challenging the rotten establishment, questioning our current inequitable financial orthodoxy and truly fighting for the millions of people in this country who have no power and who have been ignored by politicians for years.
@Stephen Campbell: “you’d be better off actually telling the public what you believe in”
Well that’s not going to happen is it? How can the lib dems tell the public what they believe in when they don’t even know the answer to that themselves.
Did you hear how what is left of the parliamentary party voted on the assited dying bill? 25% including the leader didn’t vote, the remaining 75% were split 50/50.
What the lib dems believe in changes from place to place and day to day, no one can nail it down.
And likewise, who the typical lib dem voter is (or rather was) varies from time to time and place to place too.
In the south west of England the typical lib dem voter was an anti Tory voter, usually someone persuaded to vote lib dem after reading that it was a two horse race and that labour couldn’t win there and since their only choice was conservative or lib dem they needed to decide who they hated the most. Well a coalition with the conservatives has put a stop to that support.
In places like Edinburgh, North East Fife, Cambridge, Cardiff and a whole heap of other university towns and cities the typical lib dem voter was a young person in higher education, but then there was tuition fees…
In most of Scotland the typical lib dem voter used to be your average social democrat busy body, but they didn’t much like the centre right coalition either.
The liberal democrats do not know who they are or who will vote for them. Their strategy at the general election was let’s run 57 different local campaigns. How does a party like that tell people what they believe in?