If a week is a long time in politics, the first year of Nick Clegg’s leadership has the feel of several lifetimes. Even without yet another change in the captaincy of the ship, there would have been a number challenges facing the Liberal Democrats.
The main internal challenge was perhaps the process of taking command of the ship itself. Mutinies notwithstanding, taking over any vessel is complex. There are the strengths and foibles of the crew to get to grips with – and while perhaps these are best not discussed in public, it would be foolish of any leader not to understand them so as to play his team to best advantage. There are also the idiosyncrasies and quirks of the ship as the captain learns the difference between dangerous clanks and the normal creaks of political life. Unfortunately for Clegg, and the Party, the last two transitions of power have not been seamless. The wheel was allowed to spin – at points nearly out of control – requiring extensive time and strength to steady it, let alone get it back on course. That is effort a third Party can ill afford. Such internal machinations damage the morale of Party activists and members certainly, but more dangerous is the affect it can have on the credibility of the Party with the electorate. Happily we can all now have confidence that this Leader will get on with building a strong Leadership Team well into the future.
Yet, however important the internal jockeying for position may seem to those involved – it pales into insignificance in the face of increasingly ominous external challenges: continuing conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan, nuclear noise in Iran and South Korea, Russian troops on the move, ever more brazen acts of piracy, urban terrorism, religious riots, and disasters both natural and man-made.
These are tumultuous waters but surveying the scene from the United States, there are two specific events that could create either fair or foul weather for Liberal Democrats. These are: 1) Barack Obama’s Presidency and; 2) the ‘domino-effect’ of crises across national economies rooted in unprecedented global slide. The question is: how has our relatively new captain has been navigating the shoals and reefs and what he should be looking for in the months ahead – particularly in transatlantic waters?
These two overarching issues are more inter-related than they might first appear. The economic crisis seemed to come unawares to most, but our Party was prepared. Clegg inherited perhaps the best economic team as demonstrated by the fact we have been right earlier and more often than anyone else. Our spokespeople are rightly treated as trusted pundits as much as political hacks in terms of the remedies they propose. Clegg has brought his own personal expertise to bear and continues to make it a cornerstone of his leadership portfolio.
However, therein also lies a danger. Despite the fact that Clegg and the team have put a huge amount of effort into keeping the focus on low and middle incomes families – it is difficult to be both pundit and campaigner. The average voter feels betrayed by the economic system and they remain deeply suspicious that the political system was at least complicit in that betrayal. We are the party most solidly associated with ‘fairness’ but the higher the level of macroeconomic debate becomes, the more likely it is that the voters will declare a plague on all our houses – or at least the houses that haven’t been repossessed.
Clegg’s counter to that danger has been his deliberate effort get out of the Westminster village. If plagiarism is the highest form of flattery, we know from Mr. Cameron’s attempts that our Leader’s ‘town meetings’ are working. We are, at last, re-discovering the strategy first promoted by the ’92 General Election Team of actively generating local and regional media coverage through top-to-bottom integrated campaigning (done then by funding Regional Media Coordinators and coordinating national tours around agreed campaigning themes).
This initiative will create dividends but we must not get impatient if it takes time. We know that people increasingly get their information from the Internet but we also know that their most trusted sources of information are local. Over the coming months we must continue to educate the electorate on basic economics, but also reassure them that the Party will fight their corner.
It is this last point that brings the full force of the second event into play. What are the opportunities – and dangers – for the Clegg leadership and the Party of the Obama presidency? Doubtless, Barack Obama would have romped to victory amongst Liberal Democrats voters. From his views of the Iraq war to his inspirational style, he has been embraced as a symbol of a fresh start for American politics and for international cooperation. The expectations of his Administration are growing precipitously, but are they warranted?
If the web of global interdependence is woven with the threads of economic policy we should worry that some of the most delicate threads will now be handled by a ham-fisted – not to mention pork-barreled and nearly single-partied Congress. This does not bode well for the international dependents of those threads. Be under no illusion the UK, as well as some of the poorest people in the world, will feel it if Congress starts to tangle those threads. Some CEOs have been protected for so long you would have thought they were on an endangered species list. They have forgotten the laws of supply and demand and rather than face stronger regulation or the painful realignment of their industry, come cap in hand to Washington. Meanwhile, many trade unions cry foul while hiding their own agenda behind the skirts of human rights and environmental concerns. Obama is on the record as challenging long-standing deals such as NAFTA and even threatening unilateral alteration to its terms. A vocal critic of special interests and lobbyists, one of his first statements in Washington after his election was a plea to Congress to bail out the car manufacturers. Some in his party have even begun to demand a ‘moratorium on free trade’.
International cooperation is clearly required in issues of peace and conflict but it is perhaps an even more necessary requirement for global economic prosperity. Unilateral military action by President Bush made him one of the most unpopular Presidents of all time. Unilateral economic action by President Obama could make the repair of that reputation impossible. It will require strong leadership to stay the course of free and open trade in the face of the increasingly fearful clamor for more protection – but stay the course he must. Liberal Democrats should remain circumspect until we see how the distinctly protectionist themes which have been a consistent drumbeat below his rhetoric of change and hope, actually affect his policies in office.
A year of choppy waters inevitably takes a toll on the captain, the crew and the ship but we remain the only party that stands outside the system, willing take decisions for the good of the system, while reforming it so as to be responsive to the needs of ordinary people. Our leadership is sure and the journey from here promises to get only more interesting.
Dr Alison Holmes is a Postdoctoral Fellow and Lecturer in Transatlantic Studies at Yale University. She lived in the UK for 21 years and worked for the Liberal Democrats from 1987 – 1997 including roles in the Whip’s Office, the Leader’s Office, Cowley Street and as Campaign Manager of both the 1992 and 1997 General Elections under Paddy Ashdown. She is editor of ‘A Liberal Mind in Action: Essays in Honour of Richard Holme’ and author of a forthcoming book, ‘The Third Way: Globalisation’s Legacy’.
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18 Comments
Excellent article for which we should all be grateful even though I profoundly disagree.
The problem with the Briish Economy was a flow of unsustainable credit focused on a bubble in a single asset class, Housing. because the boom went on so long (60 quaters) many people have forgotten how differnt things can be and its going to be a shock.
I see “Iraq” and the left liberal protest votes that came with it as our credit boom. Rather than recognising it as a one off windfall that should have been invested we have treated it as a permenent increase in income on which a more lavish lifestyle can be based. When the credit is turned off readjusting can be painful. Because the party’s expansionary boom began just after Black Wednesday and the tory collapse many people have forgotten just hard it is to be a third party.
Our current success is vested in a single Asset class, Vince Cable. He told us so
and there is credit for a while in having the only effective prophet in our colours. However as in maslows heirarchy of needs in a recession – a bad one – people will focus on bread and butter.
And its here to revert to and slightly mix your nautical analogy that we are moving away from the open goal and towards the Ice berg. I seriously worry about the current confused focus on
1. Tax Cuts. One of the party’s biggest weakneses is the perception that we can say anything because we’ll never be in power. After 12 years of much increased disapline it happening again. tax cuts for “low and midle income people” ” ordinary people” and then later “90% of people being better off”. people now the country is going bust and we seem to be being so vague and unfundd that we are saying jam tomorrow and free ake.
2. No Focus on Jobs. can we please send a memo to every party spokes person that you can only cut some ones income taxes if they have an Income to tax! Unemployment will be 2 Millon in January with a consensus develping on 3 million by next christmas and possibly more.
If we can fund Income tax cuts why are we not focusing more on spending that will save jobs.
3. Shopping doesn’t make you Free. The Green New Deal was launched on 21/7/08 yet its taken the party nearly 6 months to respond. We are now told that we are favouring spending the £12.5bn in VAT cuts on capital works though as its the week before cristmas no one is listening.
We seem to have ben very ken to push the line that big tax cuts would get people consumming again without asking if the consummer boom was sustainable in the first place.
I could go on but thats enough mutiny for one afternoon. I certainly hope for a steadier hand on the tiller in the New Year, a firm sense of direction rather than the belief that any port will do in a storm.
Thanks Alison, a very useful analysis providing much food for thought.
(And nice to see you here on LDV – recruited by LDV’s Yale correspondent Mr Huzzey no doubt!)
By coincidence we had that nice Mr Clegg here in Oxford last week and I was discussing the effectiveness of Paddy’s ‘get out of Westminster’ visits with his staff.
It is easy to forget just how hard paddy had to work before he really made his mark, and how long it took.
I think you are right to identify both the economic crisis and Obama’s victory as factors that could be a huge opportunity for the Lib Dems, but it is up to us to grasp it.
We need to identify a few very clear policies that highlight our principles and that are clearly different from the two party consensus.
The ‘Green New Deal’ could be one of those, as could our tax policies if we pitch them right.
One thing that pulls these threads together is that thw whole party has got to get out there and sell both the leader and these key policies.
We eventually got this right with Paddy, particularly in the 92-97 Parliament and we need to do the same now.
“We remain the only party that stands outside the system”
No, we don’t, or at least we aren’t seen as standing outside the system by most voters. That is the nub of our problem: we have ended up in the worst of both worlds, trying too hard to put across an image that makes us look like just another political party fully part of the system, while not actually getting the benefit of being part of the system.
I don’t think “selling the leader” is how to solve this problem. That makes us look like just another system party – a leader based in Westminster who runs the show, its members just happy little salespeople who do his bidding.
We need radical new ways of putting forward what politics is and how it might be practised to make clear that we are different, that we aren’t part of the system. We need to encourage the idea of the party as actively empowering its members and being part of the community. We shouldn’t need to be sending the leader out or his happy salespeople out to knock on a million doors to find out what ordinary people think. The people of this country should be cinfident that we ARE a party of ordinary people, and for that reason we and our leaders know what ordianry people think and feel.
My advice – ditch the PR and media experts at the centre. These people know how to sell a consumer product, but our party should not be a consumer product. It should be a campaigning force rising up from the people.
David Morton is right – the crucial thing we are missing is a clear sense of direction. We need that, more than any other party, to counter the constant refrain from our enemies and from the public that “We don’t know what you Lib Dems stand for”. If we keep changing our position, people certainly will not know what we stand for!
Unfortunately, Clegg seems unable to provide the necessary clarity. I think this all dates back to a disastrously mis-fought leadership election. Like Ming before him, Nick fought on a “steady-as-she-goes” prospectus. Unlike Ming, he then tried to tear up that prospectus, and floated the idea of a violent shift to the right and to a populist, quasi-Thatcherite tax-cut-and-spending-cuts policy. That approach, in turn, seems to have been abandoned at least for now, in the face of the credit crisis and internal opposition. But we are still drifting. Witness the latest tentative shift towards green spending instead of tax cuts. (But it was announced at a climate march, and so it may have been just one of those things you say to appeal to the people you happen to be speaking to at the time.)
So we are led by a political weathercock. And the bird has now been turning in the breeze for so long that it seems quite unable to settle down.
Cameron, I’m afraid, has shown us how to do it right. If you stand for your party leadership, and you want to reposition your party, you must make that crystal clear at the time. Then your party has to buy into it, and it can’t then complain when you act the way you said you were going to. When a big issue like the financial crisis arises, you must find a suitable mast, and nail your colours to it. Whatever the economic merits, Cameron has chosen a simple appeal to prudence and rectitude, and rammed home the message by sticking to it. And finally, if you do change your policy, as Cameron did over future spending plans, you don’t just blurt out something new at a protest march. You say “I have changed my mind. Here are my reasons. You can see why I’m doing it, and you can understand what I’m all about.”
I’m losing track of the number of times I post on this site to the effect that “this week’s clanger isn’t a resigning issue….”
It really shouldn’t be so difficult! Brown’s VAT cut has bombed, Cameron’s do-nothing policy has failed to thrill the public. Like Obama (and Merkel) we should be spending to create jobs through the Green New Deal. Can we hope for real leadership?
“to a populist, quasi-Thatcherite tax-cut-and-spending-cuts policy.”
Rubbish
When did Thatcher raise taxes for the wealthy to cut them further down the scale.
We are hardly talking Thatcherite spending cuts by scrapping ID cards and Baby bonds either
There are plenty of things to criticise in party policy – but it does little good to exaggerate them.
“We are hardly talking Thatcherite spending cuts by scrapping ID cards and Baby bonds either”
Hang on a bit!
As far as I know party policy is still to identify £20bn a year spending cuts – partly to fund tax cuts, if possible – and they have still to be identified.
Maybe they never will be identified, but if we’re honest then a lot more would have to be cut in addition to ID cards and baby bonds.
£20bn is 3% AIUI. And we identified similar measures in 2005 – and most will be returned to public spending
Like you I would like to see greater clarity in identifying them but they are not “Thatcherite cuts” however you present them.
Unless the cuts are identified, I don’t see how there can be any sensible discussion of what they are or what they aren’t!
And if you’re saying they _were_ essentially identified 3 years ago, I don’t understand why it’s so difficult to identify them now. Jeremy Paxman asked Nick Clegg at the time of the conference where the money was going to come from, and he was unable to indicate anything like £20bn worth of savings.
CCF: He also gave a reason why at the time. Firstly, specifying it now gives other parties time to work out their line of attack and work up some selective statistics to show how we’d be effectively murdering fluffy kittens by scrapping certain spending. Secondly, the closer to the time of the election which will actually be fought on this policy it is specified, the more relevant it will be. The trouble with fiscal policy is that it easily overtaken by events.
“And if you’re saying they _were_ essentially identified 3 years ago, I don’t understand why it’s so difficult to identify them now.”
Generally nor do I – except that 3 years ago isn’t today so some changes we planned then don’t exist now.
I’m sanguine about finding that £3 billion though – my criticism has been on how the tax cuts stack up with our existing spending policies – and ones we keep announcing.
Andy,
What you say sounds fair enough were it not for the fact that Brown uses the figure every week without fail to hammer us every week at PMQs and forgive me but the evidence from the polls is that it is a line of attack that works. The essential problem is that having been specific about the figure of £20 billion people expect follow-through and the decimal point costing of where that is all coming from; you can’t be specific about a figure then hazy about the math behind it and this essentially gets us to the nub of the debate and Clegg’s main failures which can broadly be characterised as spectacular tactical misjudgments which essetnially diminish his already small capacity for impact.
Hywel,
Whether or not you think “quasi-Thatcherite” is “rubbish” depends on how you look at it. If you think it’s enough to identify that there are differences between Clegg and Thatcher, then I suppose you might shout “rubbish”.
If, on the other hand, you think that Clegg is blatantly trying to appeal to human cupidity when he uses words such as “billions” of cuts, “big, permanent tax cuts”, and “vast bulk” of tax cuts, then you might be more impressed by the similarities. Doesn’t it all sound just a little like “Greed is Good”?
Now I grant you that Clegg has rowed back a lot on such language since his most purple patch just before Conference. So maybe I should accept that my glass is half full. I just don’t know whether we are witnessing a permanent abandonment of right-wing populism, or a temporary soft-pedalling of long term goals, or what. Are you confident you know which way we are headed? I’m not!
Darrell:
I’m not sure I’d disagree with your objection to giving a number but not the maths behind it. I suspect the main reasoning was in wanting to signal a shift away from being the “higher tax” party of the public imagination – do that just before an election and you leave the party way more vulnerable to the “we can’t trust you, what do you stand for?” line of attack. Do it now, and people say “Well, that’s all very well, but how much are we talking here?”, leading to the desire to reveal details. But then that has the problems I outlined above.
So what we end up with is a kind of halfway house. It’s not ideal, but I can see how Nick and the rest of the senior party got there (at least I think I can!). The trouble with wailing about “spectacular tactical misjudgments” is that we can’t really be sure what the outcomes of other courses of action would have been. What I suspect we can say, however, is that whatever he’d done, there would have been the same general love of shitting all over the party in most of the press, using whatever reasoning seemed to make sense to them at the time.
Andy,
My opinion on the math is neither here nor there; what I am trying to say is that having given the figure it’s what people expect and not giving it has problems of its own as I illustrated. I accept your points about the problems of revealing it now…however, it is kind of a ‘devil and the deep blue sea’ situation because both of our points are valid if that makes sense…
I think what you are banking on is that closer to the election when the math comes out people will be more convinced which may or may not pan out. However, the problem with that to my mind leading up to this election is to me that there is a very clear risk that will be drowned out in the sound and fury coming from what will be a bitter scrap (Lord Jacobs was right about that at least). There are already signs that we are hemorraging support to Labour because it’s softer supporters are rallying to the cause….Brown maybe an ineffective leader but he is good at banging the tribal drums and that is a problem for us….
“He also gave a reason why at the time. Firstly, specifying it now gives other parties time to work out their line of attack and work up some selective statistics to show how we’d be effectively murdering fluffy kittens by scrapping certain spending. Secondly, the closer to the time of the election which will actually be fought on this policy it is specified, the more relevant it will be. The trouble with fiscal policy is that it easily overtaken by events.”
Actually, that’s not the impression I’ve got at all.
Julia Goldsworthy was asked to identify £15bn of cuts more than two years ago. Then earlier this year Jeremy Browne was asked to identify £20bn of cuts. Then at the time of the conference we were told that Cable and Clegg had been hard at work all summer identifying them. Then a month ago Clegg said they would be identified “in the next few weeks”.
And I disagree completely about the suggestion that specifying them now would give other parties time to “work out their line of attack”. Leaving the cuts unspecified allows the other parties to say absolutely anything they like – as Dr Brown has been doing. If the savings are really going to come from cancelling wasteful, unpopular projects, far better to name those projects as early and as often as possible.
I’m a bit confused by what people are referring to as the “Green New Deal” here. Could someone clarify – do people mean the specific proposals published under that name by the New Economics Foundation, produced by Caroline Lucas and others, or just a general strategy of putting money into capital spending beneficial to the environment, as advocated here by David Allen?
We had a fringe meeting at the last Lib Dem conference on the theme of the Green New Deal, and Steve Webb responded specifically to the paper by the New Economics Foundation. Although he mentioned that he had strong disagreements with parts of it, on the whole he was supportive of it. It is something that the party is interested in, without question.
As for Nick Clegg’s first year as leader, I would say that it started off with a great first speech as leader at our first conference, and not quite so impressive at our last conference, although he would obviously be delighted at the coverage he got for his decisive “victory” at conference for his tax plans.
He is struggling to get the party noticed by the wider general public. No one has ever said it would be easy, but we are running out of time. It is also noticeable that the SNP are doing far better in Scotland, and given that independence is not a popular policy (according to the Scottish Lib Dems), then it is worth considering what they are doing which we are not.
One difference is that they are more clearly opposed to replacing Trident. I think it is a traversty that we are not that clear ourselves and are effectively ignoring the issue.