Canvassing in the Wythenshawe and Sale East by-election I encountered a number of voters who asked the question; “Lib Dems, I don’t know what they stand for.”
It would be easy, and wrong, to dismiss such a questioner as uninformed or typical of the tribal element in every constituency who have no real interest in your answer.
As the date of the next General Election nears, the answer to this question will be critical to Liberal Democrat prospects.
The compromises of coalition have muddied the waters, and the Liberal Democrats stand to come off worst. In the northern cities, the supporters we won from Labour regard a coalition as a merger and have stopped voting for us or returned to the Labour fold. In the south, Tories who voted Lib Dem to keep Labour out may find Ukip more appealing.
It won’t be easy to show why we are different. With the Tories already planning to adopt Lib Dem policies such as increasing the income tax threshold, and Labour busy re-crafting our policies on childcare and the mansion tax, we should be flattered, but as the old saying goes, flattery will get you nowhere. Stealing our clothes may leave us very naked come the election.
This is a golden opportunity for Lib Dem members to have their say on the issues they feel should be in our 2015 manifesto. Making clear what we stand for is vital to rebuild our membership and motivate our activists, and there are already a number of areas where we can make a case for being very different from the others.
We are already the lead party in making the case for remaining in Europe, dropping Trident, and championing renewable energy as both a job creator and a weapon in the battle against climate change.
There are other areas where we can be very different to Labour and the Conservatives. The police have suffered deep cuts at the hands of the Tories, and Labour have publicly committed to making further cuts. Waiting in the wings are private companies eager to take over policing functions on a contractual basis. Leonard Hobhouse, the liberal theorist and sociologist, argued that the greatest guardian of our civil rights was an impartial judiciary and independent police service. A police service provided by contracted private companies driven by the profit motive will be far from independent.
The police have made the cuts asked of them to date, but further cuts appear ideologically driven and threaten the concept of an independent police. The Liberal Democrats should be just as ideological, and come out publicly against further cuts to the policing budget. Let Labour and the Tories argue for further cuts to this key public service, we should say ‘enough, our civil liberties are now at risk’.
To our members I say; whether it is our housing, jobs or economic policy, get writing now. Who knows, your idea might just make it into our 2015 manifesto.
* Matt Gallagher is a Lib Dem activist in the Manchester Withington constituency. In 2012 he represented the party as its candidate for Police and Crime Commissioner for Greater Manchester. He is a member of Amnesty International and a keen defender of civil and human rights. He is married with two grown up children and three grandchildren.
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35 Comments
“We are already the lead party in making the case for remaining in Europe, dropping Trident, and championing renewable energy as both a job creator and a weapon in the battle against climate change”
A bit optimistic – we are the party of in – but not about how the EU needs reforming. Dropping Trident would be sensible and popular, so instead the leadership have gone down the dead end of dropping one submarine, which appeals to no one. Renewable energy was going w ell till the subsidy was cut and Ed Davey seems a keen support of nuclear power and fracking. On crime Clegg makes vague noises about drugs reform but with no plan and no consistency. On income tax he seems unable to grasp that increasingt he tax threshold is a policy, it is not a principle. The people who would have expected to benefit most from the change have been hit by other benefit reforms and don’t feel better off or grateful. How does one know what the liberal Democrats stand for when on one had they increase the tax threshold so people are better off in work and then at the same time make them pay 30% of council tax? Why support votes at 16 yet change housing benefit so you have to be over 35 to even qualify for a single roomed flat ? On crime – why are we sanctioning people’s benefits and allowing food banks to flourish as if this was a good thing ? What reform of prisons have their been ? about as much as the House of Lords ? What happend to the million homes a year – dropped for fiddling the figures on affordable housing.
So yes there is a distinctive agenda we could adopt – but it might mean actually promoting Liberal Solutions and not some “centre ground” Cleggite fantasy.
Well, we are the party of optimists! The points you make are symptomatic of the ‘muddy’ coalition politics I mentioned. This is why it is important for the membership to reclaim the manifesto and shape the policies we carry into the next election. I’m at a manifesto meeting tonight and I will be making this very point.
Agree and would love to contribute to the manifesto process, but so far I’ve found the process pretty opaque. No responses to any idea submissions (maybe they’re all terrible) and no manifesto roadshow events in England outside of greater London. Hopefully there will be more opportunities to contribute at Spring Conference.
As someone who was a Lib Dem voter in the last 2 General Elections, but has now joined another party there are a number of things that you have done to show me that you don’t speak for me any more, and thus don’t deserve my support – but the principle one is on Civil Liberties. With a couple of honourable exceptions (Mr Huppert) you give the appearance of having abandoned any pretence at being a Liberal party.
As examples:
1) Snowdon allegations – where are you talking about investigating GCHQ / preventing abuse of process again / restricting theft of innocent citizens data? – Nowhere that I have seen
2) care.data database – being implemented without comment or criticism from your party – I appreciate that you are in coalition, but you are still able to speak – and you are choosing not to.
3) Cameron’s po*n filter – very little discussion from Lib Dems about what is a fundamental breach of personal freedom. (and which doesn’t achieve anything anyway)
For the sake of the country, I hope that you rediscover what it was that made you a liberal party, but at the moment you give the appearance of being very far from it.
I think the main problem we have is that few people know anything about us other than the negative stereotypes in the press. This just goes to show how, despite being in government, we are being squeezed out of the media.
We are the only party in favour of genuine political reform, egalitarian without leaning on statism like Labour, green while actually living in the real world, internationalist rather than isolationist, in favour of private enterprise while realising it is not the solution to many problems where public ownership is better.
What astounds me is that we are even asking ourselves these questions. We know what our party stands for. We just need to get out there and tell people.
Perhaps Lennon might care to reveal what party he has joined. It can’t be the Tories or Labour, both with a poor record on civil liberties. I suppose it might be UKIP , which has some pretence of being libertarian, though with its popularist streak it’s difficult to imagine it standing up for minority rights. Simarly the Greens in England and Wales (who incidentally have delegated their policy on the future of the UK to an entirely separate party in Scotland) have demonstrated through their one MP that in reality they are essentially state socialists with a green fringe. So what is this political party with such a deep commitment to civil liberties?
@Graham Evans – The Pirate Party. (I agree in general with your comments above about the other parties)
Yes it is (at the moment) a minor party, but it appears that there is an increasing fracturing of the body politic in the UK and I would rather be in a minor party that I mostly agree with and can argue for, than a different slightly less minor party which I find myself getting cross at on a regular basis, and for whom I kept finding myself having to make excuses.
Oh, and to add to my list above – the fact that there is even a debate about the Jesus and Mo cartoons – I mean if half of your party don’t even recognise a basic liberty such as Free Speech then I fear that you are already lost to the middling mindlessness of centrist social democracy rather than the radical liberalism of your past.
“The police have suffered deep cuts at the hands of the Tories…”
No, not the Tories. It’s at the hands of the coalition, of which we are active members. Remember?
I noticed that Lennon’s concerns were about issues under the control of Tory-run govt. depts. such an Foreign Office, Home Office and Health, where our views carry as much weight as Ed Milibands (i.e. none). Our power in the Coalition comes when the votes need to be counted, and experience has taught us that every time we openly criticise one of their departments we spend the rest of the week diverted from our message as we counter media suggestions that the ‘coalition is finished, split, in trouble etc., I am satisfied that there are a great deal of behind the scenes rows and points made without giving Labour and the media more bricks to throw at us. But, my post is about the future, and where we go from here, and how we engage the members.
Ed, The police agreed that they should share in the cuts as part of the deficit reduction plan we signed up to, but it is the next trance of cuts that threaten civil liberties, and it is these we should oppose.
@Ed Wilson
“No, not the Tories. It’s at the hands of the coalition, of which we are active members. Remember?”
Well said. The constant refrain by LDs of blaming bad stuff on the Cons but trying to claim credit for the Cons not being quite as bad as we all remember them being is ridiculous.
The Cons are able to cut funds to the Police because of the LDs
The Cons are able to cut support for some of the most vulnerable because of the LDs
The Cons are able to bully schools into becoming Academies because of the LDs
Repeat ad infinitum
We hear how the LDs are the minority party of the coalition & that’s why they aren’t able to stop all those actions from going ahead yet in the very next breath we’re told that 75% of the LD manifest has been enacted & how proud you all are !
“I don’t know what you stand for” is very polite.
I don’t think any Council could adopt STV without primary legislation.
Tony
@ Lennon
I don’t know much about the Pirates in the UK but I have followed their progress in Germany so I do understand where you’re coming from. However after some initial success, partly thanks to the German PR electoral system, the party does seem more recently to have faded. You might be interested to read an analysis of their stance undertaken by Political Compass and compare that with the LDs in 2010. http://www.politicalcompass.org/germany2013 and http://www.politicalcompass.org/ukparties2010
@RC “We know what our party stands for.”
I think the problem is that Lib Dem MPs and the leadership in particular have not stood up and said what the party stands for and how it differs from an overwhelmingly Tory coalition. Perhaps this is for good reasons (e.g. collective responsibility) but it has given the impression that the positions of the Lib Dems and the Coalition are one and the same.
@Graham Evans – aware of the political compass viewpoint, and although not fully accurate it is a reasonably short-hand summary for the location of parties views. I would say that the UK Pirate Party is, if anything, more socially liberal than listed there, and economically should probably be more to the right of centre than centre (but this is somewhat fluid – where on the economic scale to you put ‘scrap income tax and replace with LVT’ for example?).
Anyway, I was not meaning to derail the thread with adverts for another party (which is why I didn’t name it originally) but to provide you with a genuine anecdote to aid your discussion. As we all know, the plural of anecdote is not data and it might well be that I am very much an exception and the party is correct (from a numbers perspective) to have moved the way it appears to have done. In my view it would be a great shame if that is the destination of the party of Gladstone and Mill – but either way truly Liberal ideas will continue – in other parties if necessary.
@ Caractacus – “On income tax he seems unable to grasp that increasingt he tax threshold is a policy, it is not a principle. The people who would have expected to benefit most from the change have been hit by other benefit reforms and don’t feel better off or grateful.”
This is in principle a good thing (not necessarily in practice), because it reduces the electorates dependence on the largesse and thus the creation of a client-state.
A race to the top (of wonderful promises), if you will.
Thoroughly disillusioned. The country seems to be going back to the Victorian era. FOOD BANKS ! For heaven’s sake. And we’re a part of it!
I used to think referendums were good until we saw the result of the one on PR (Alternative Vote). The voters were manipulated and probably always will be.
I used to think politicians were good, but I feel many do not, and have not, lived in the real world.
I’m not convinced anyone should earn more than the Prime Minister. And people with bonuses of over £1M !! *****
Difficult to be positive. I will try.
For goodness sake – RENEWABLE ENERGY! Go for it. Promote it
Whatever we need to do to get rid of Food Banks. People shouldn’t be in such a state that they need to use them. Make sure they are not in that state.
I’m not convinced about the never ending cuts policy. Surely many businesses took out loans to start? The country should be investing, and if that means borrowing to do so, so be it. If you cut a job, particularly in the Public Sector which is where the cuts are, you end that person’s contribution to the local economy, and you have to pay them, through benefits, to be off work. Sorry. Doesn’t make sense to me.
Housing – get them built. No one should be homeless!
I joined the Liberal Party in my 20’s and am now 62. Here in N. Somerset it seems no one wants to be our PPC so we stand no chance of winning. How many LibDem MPs will there be next time? Talk of future coalition deals is a waste of time.
Sorry … first and probably last time I will contribute to a discussion like this. Disillusioned.
I thought that our new policy on the Trident successor is to have three submarines on part time patrols, and not always carrying missiles. We did receive some criticism for this policy. It does save some money over having four submarines on continuous patrol as we currently have. We need to be careful with money and so the reduced number of submarines does make sense.
Regarding our current soundbite of being the party of ‘in’ the EU. We need to be extremely cautious about the claim that our membership safeguards 3 million jobs. This is quite a shaky statement when you look into it. It is based upon a report produced 14 years ago by a less well known university. Since then the professor who co-authored it has made clear that it has been misinterpreted, and he now says that we would not lose 3 million jobs if we left the EU. Unfortunately UKIP are on to this fact now, and we risk losing even more credibility with the electorate if we keep pushing this 3 million jobs message.
I think the same question could be asked of the other parties as well.
I think that people know what the Tories and UKIP stand for, the Daily Mail, Express and Sun make sure of that.
There is a problem I think that if all the Lib Dems stand for these days is raising tax thresholds, then it is not enough to get people to vote for us.
Otherwise we would expect to do better in Labour seats in places like Manchester.
“It does save some money over having four submarines on continuous patrol as we currently have. We need to be careful with money and so the reduced number of submarines does make sense.”
It saves about 5% of the cost whilst providing around only 66% of the utility.
“There is a problem I think that if all the Lib Dems stand for these days is raising tax thresholds, then it is not enough to get people to vote for us.”
Especially if the Tories stand for precisely the same thing!
Jedibeeftrix ‘It saves about 5% of the cost whilst providing around only 66% of the utility.’
Do you think we should revise the policy then, either to have 4 submarines, or to abandon a nuclear deterrent altogether?
The article states: ‘We are already the lead party in making the case for remaining in Europe, dropping Trident, and championing renewable energy as both a job creator and a weapon in the battle against climate change.’
So are we dropping Trident or not? Never mind the public being confused by what we stand for, I am confused now too! Does anybody have an up to date definitive party line on Trident successor? I would be interested to read it if anybody has a link to a confirmed and recent document.
I know that the cold war has gone, yet there are plenty of hostile players on the world stage. Can we unilaterally disarm?
On Trident, the party policy hasn’t changed. We remain opposed to a like-for-like replacement that will cost upwards of £100 billion. The current coalition policy is to defer making a decision on this until after the next GE. As I understand it the party is not opposed to a nuclear deterrent per se, but to the vastly expensive American system with its inherent restrictions.
“We are already the lead party in making the case for remaining in Europe, dropping Trident, and championing renewable energy as both a job creator and a weapon in the battle against climate change.”
Agree on Europe, the Greens trump us on the environment (but we are natural bed-fellows). Where I think you are sadly wrong is on “dropping Trident” … We really lost the opportunity to have a sane and authentic defence policy through our votes in the September conference in Glasgow.
I can not defend the mish-mash policy on defence that we have now adopted. It is an aberration, extremely difficult to explain on the doorstep … and I say this because I do believe that in a fallen world, we (unfortunately) need to have armed forces to protect against all the multifarious challenges we encounter … and I have a deep respect and gratitude for all who serve in our armed forces. I am so sad that our defence policy is not fit-for-purpose!
More broadly, that our sane policies have been stolen by others, who now cloak themselves in our glory is very painful. Yet it is part of our service to the nation. Which is better, bad policy with us in power, or good policy with us not in power? Why are we in politics? It is very painful … we are a Party scorned from all sides, but our policies have been stolen. In this way, as a Christian and member of the Liberal Democrat Christian Forum, I see parallels with the way that Jesus suffered. I am not claiming here any divine rights for us as Lib Dems, nor that we are more Christian, only that serving the country is very painful, can be misunderstood, leads to scorn … but what are we here for, to dominate or to serve?
@ Joe king
http://jedibeeftrix.wordpress.com/2012/09/28/thoughts-on-the-successor-deterrent-cmc-is-in/
I think people need reminding that our image is tarnished, not simply because we have had to compromise in government, but because Nick Clegg has not made it clear when that has happened. Following the traditional collective responsibility line, he has not improved the way we do politics. In coalition he has even accepted conservative policies which were not in the agreement and maybe he had to, but he did not make it clear it was part of the compromise of having to work with the conservatives.
He is now beginning to correct that, but the mold has already set in so many people’s minds. He has joined the gang of leaders who feel so inclined to bow to popular comment, fears and selfish concerns.
May I suggest at least two more items for the manifesto which might repair our image.
One is to repeal the so-called bedroom tax and replace it with something much better, including a commitment to build more social housing. We are supposed to be on the side of the less well off.
The other is to repeal the lobbying act; we continue to see big business having great access to government, while ordinary citizens are now greatly restricted. As a pro-business party we need to make it clear that we want business to operate for the common good.
“I don’t know what you stand for”. Surely you can’t have failed to grasp by now that a 9% poll rating and a minus 57% for Nick Clegg, makes the wider point, that voters don’t just look at ‘what you stand for’ [today], but, are aware of the fact that it may or may not be, what you stand for 24 hours from now? Policies, (and principles), with a shelf life of hours, and days are simply not worthy of a vote.
It’s interesting that all of the comments here talk about differentiation from the Tories. Obviously that’s the national picture thing, but in places like Manchester where we’re facing Labour, I do think we need a clearer vision of how a Lib Dem-run Manchester City Council would be different from a Labour administration.
In certain areas this has happened – the Manchester Lib Dems proposed an alternative budget for the city which kept open the services that Labour chose to shut, mostly by cutting expenditure on vanity projects and capping senior executive salaries at the Council – but this doesn’t seem to have twigged with the electorate yet.
We have an adversarial political system so STV or PR is not a viable option. The whole structure of political, economic and social regulation needs to change. Campaigning and fighting for a Stronger Economy a Fairer Society is just continuing the Yah Boo adversarial politics of the current system.
The first party to have in its manifesto a commitment to a Fair Economy a Strong Society and spells out the way forward to achieve it will win the next election. I hope it will be the Liberal Democrat party.
If we define ourselves with weaknesses then our opponents will exploit them. Just received one of those UKIP leaflets:
“FIGHTING FOR YOU AGAINST…
Labour immigration failure
Tory over-development
Liberal sell-out to the EU
Green energy price hikes”
Nightmare.
Nigel Jones comment will be agreed with by many. In particular, his suggestion – “…. .. to repeal the so-called bedroom tax and replace it with something much better, including a commitment to build more social housing”
A Liberal Democrat policy to repeal the bedroom tax (in line with our MSPs) and build what we used to call Council Housing would have huge public appeal. It would help to dispel the image of uncaring rich public school boys that most people associate with the coalition.
Unfortunately Clegg, Davey and Laws personify that toxic image of rich boys who have done well out of the recession and done well out of the coalition. At the very least a new leader of the party is needed, someone who is not tarnished with an orange book / quasi Tory record.
Liberalism has always been associated with a strong streak of optimism, and in this regard the LibDems do remain very much a liberal party. Up to a point, this optimism is entirely justified: I do believe that with hard work and a clearer message, the LibDems could recover public support to the point where they again regularly save their deposit in by-election.
@Joe King – Our Trident policy is a nonsense; it is internally inconsistent, and because it is both saves next-to-no-money and makes no strategic sense, we should bin it and move on. Either:
A: We believe that there is a serious risk between now and 2050 that
(i) we need the highest level of deterrence assurance that Trident provides and
(ii) there will not be time to move to that posture in future;
In which case we need to have like-for-like replacement and CASD;
B: We don’t believe this, are prepared to go have a nuclear system that offers lower levels of deterrence assurance (of which there are several choices at a range of prices); or
C: We get out of the nuclear club altogether.
Since our “96% of the cost for 66% of the capability” policy isn’t any of A B or C, we should look for a policy that is coherent, rather than the most expensive fence we’ve ever built to sit on.
“Since our “96% of the cost for 66% of the capability” policy isn’t any of A B or C, we should look for a policy that is coherent, rather than the most expensive fence we’ve ever built to sit on.”
Agreed.
B. is not an unreasonable position, the party has simply arrived at an unreasonable policy position to achieve it.
Lennon:
I don’t agree with all your conclusions (for example, at the autumn conference we overwhelmingly rejected anything approaching Cameron’s porn filter: the motion was referred back, but if you’d been present for the debate it would have sent a clear message). However, I think you approach this question the right way. When people say “We don’t know what you stand for”, they are not requesting a list of policies, even important policies. They want to see a coherent thread in our policies, to see what we believe in rather than what proposals we have for government. I agree that in government we’ve made this less rather than more clear, though in fact we have stood up for civil liberties on several occasions against the Tories (and Labour’s appalling record on this is still fresh). But people in working-class parts of Manchester will not have civil liberties top of the list. A more equal society and giving back power to communities and individuals – those might help.
There is one part of Matt’s post that puzzles me. Most tactical Liberal or Liberal Democrat voters in the south of England have never been voting for us to keep Labour out. Most natural Tories in the south vote Tory, oddly. Most southern tactical voters are Labour-inclined and vote for us to beat the Tories. In local elections, they still do where we make the case. In the general election? We’ll see.