Well, that was grim. The results for the Liberal Democrats from the European Elections were awful and there’s no varnishing over it. For sure there will be a review of the European aspect of the campaign as well as for the locals.
Despite what the results show, as a party we were right to make the positive case for being IN. Who else was going to do it? We are a liberal and internationalist party and we showed we had the stomach to stand up for our values. We know we cannot (and definitely shouldn’t) out-skeptic the Tories or UKIP. There remains a pro-European minority in this country and we were right to try and defend the view we share with them. Regrettably it seems the majority of them decided not to vote. That is particularly unfortunate at the moment since the UK’s membership of the EU is in real danger.
I see no need for a change to our European Policy coming out of this election. The current one balances the party’s values with realism well. In it, we seek to “improve the EU’s efficiency, transparency, flexibility and democratic accountability”. So, it is the more striking that as a party we do not stress it. It is given barely more than lip service – a qualification – and this has been the case since I joined the party for the first time in 1994. For me this is the most important part of our policy. If we had given it more prominence it wouldn’t have been enough to win the election for us but it might have allowed us to be heard. We were downed out.
Our Liberal Democrat MEPs worked hard on making the EU more transparent, democratic and accountable: championed publishing MEPs voting records, cuttng the EU budget etc. That’s a Liberal record to be proud of. I’m sure Catherine Bearder will continue to do that, and given their record UKIP is likely to do much less. It might be that the effect of last week will be closer cooperation between the three main groups in the European Parliament and integration will continue to move forward. That makes it all the more important that reform of processes should be quicker, more profound, and radical.
Highlighting the reform aspect of our policy doesn’t work against the message of IN, it adds to it. We can still be a party of IN that supported £60bn of university research funding; a party of IN that voted for a crackdown on human traffickers; and and a party of IN that voted to a 80% cut in roaming data charges. There is no alternative to being there. My concern is failing to give the message of reform enough prominence, we allow UKIP and the Tories space to use these arguments – our arguments – as cover for xenophobia and reaction.
This is a small suggestion to rebalance how our policy is put across and I hope that it might allow us to be heard next time. Sometimes emphasis, spirit and tone can be as important as words themselves.
* Matt Burrows is a member of the Spanish branch of Brussels and Europe Local Party.
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26 Comments
… and not a word to reflect the threat stemming from ECB managed consensus on economic matters governed by QMV, where we [might] lose fundamental economic sovereignty. Nah, not worthy of a mention.
“Regrettably it seems the majority of them decided not to vote. That is particularly unfortunate at the moment since the UK’s membership of the EU is in real danger.”
This should tell you something more than perhaps.
For a person set on recognising the results cannot be varnished over, you seem curiously determined to do so.
Was it really such a good way of promoting EU membership?
Only 2% of those entitled to vote, agreed.
It was a crude message on a complex issue. It was delivered centrally by someone that no one trusted.
Agreed.
I also think it’s important that we offer a vision of reform that isn’t simply “giving powers back”.
The EU seems remote and bureaucratic to most people. We need to champion ways to make it more accessible to everyday people. How does someone go about challenging a bad EU regulation?
“…..and I hope that it might allow us to be heard next time.”
Trust me,.. you were heard.
The more important question is when are the voters going to be heard?
We need to use our position in Government – now – to increase accountability of Ministers for their decisions in the European Union via parliament – now.
It’s been a huge missed opportunity over the last 4 years.
‘Subsidiarity’ – the principle that decisions should be made at the most local competent tier of government, is enshrined in the Maastricht Treaty. It is emphatically a Liberal principle and if carried out it would repatriate powers from Brussels to local government as well as Westminster. Promoting this as part of a reform package for the EU would be POPULAR as well as right . So WHY ARE WE NOT DOING IT?
Leekliberal is right. Subsidiarity is the form of federalism we believe in, combined with a more democratic control of necessary EU governance responsibilities through the European Parliament. We have let the gutter press get away with the lie that federalism means centralised European government. But there may be more appeal for the EU as a cost saver: one diplomatic service instead of 28, one army instead of 28 etc.
Martin Tod is right on this and right on his promotion of http://www.libdems4change.org/
For far too long we have had the disgraceful farce of UK ministers and prime ministers saying one thing behind closed doors at Council of Minister meetings and then going out to the TV cameras and saying something else.
All that rubbish about Thatcher handbagging foreigners to get the best for Britain set the tone.
Our lazy media and lazy politicians have conspired in this deception ever since.
What has the DPM done about it in the last four years?
As little as he has done to end the sale of peerages.
The subsidiarity point is a good one, but we have also let the gutter press get away with saying that we don’t want the EU to change or reform, and that we don’t support a referendum, even though we’ve already legislated a trigger for one. The number of times I shouted at my radio over the last four weeks when someone said we don’t support EU reform..! We need to get better at countering inaccurate and damaging portrayals by others.
@leekliberal
Because we’re reeling from crushing election defeats, internal disputes and haven’t finished our manifesto or really our broader programme or message yet.
The good news is that, this being the case there is still time to get ideas like yours rolling. Subsidiarity drawing power and influence down to the local level is something liberals must campaign for vigorously. We need to break the triple lock on progress that powerless councils, a European structure that has spent the last several years trying to avoid tackling the roots of problems, and a stagnant, self-regarding, obsolete Westminster represent.
JohnGrout
Whilst I know what you mean about the press and the radio, our ministers seem to be happy for the recommendations of the Leveson Report to be buried in the long grass.
Just as they seem to be happy for the Chilcot Report to grow mould and disintegrate despite the weasel words of Nick Clegg yesterday.
A more accurate assessment comes from Andrew MacKinlay, former Labour MP for Thurrock, who sat on the Commons foreign affairs committee at the time of the illegal Iraq invasion.
He said he thought Chilcot had surrendered in a “bad, bad day for democracy and justice”.
“The establishment of this country, and the security and intelligence services have won again. Truth has lost out,”
Andrew MacKinlay has a better grip on reality than Clegg unfortunately.
By coincidence that is the same Andrew MacKinlay who was my father’s trade union rep many years ago.
Arnie Gibbons
“Getting rid of Nick will not solve our problems. But without that first step I don’t see how we can start the process of coming up with a viable way to revive the party. Opponents of a coup say that there is no alternative strategy coming from the LibDems4 change, but I see no evidence of a credible existing strategy for the party. The Farage debate was the last throw of the dice -(brave) but it was unsuccessful.”=
@John Grout
Probably the best way to do that would be to agree some simple definitions for a set of EU reforms. I have no idea what reforms of the EU the Lib Dems are calling for, does anyone else?
It’s easy to characterise a party as not having a position if we see very little evidence for the position.
Liberals believe in localism and implementing the EU’s supposed subsidiarity principles .
However, there are some socialists who believe in central planning and the more Europe wide intervention imposed by the EU the better.
There seem to be some socialists at the heart of the Lib Dems who are unconditionally in favour of being in the EU and feeding this message to the media as Lib Dem policy.
Some interesting comments.
I don´t think I varnished over the result but my suggestion is only one of many that are likely to be offered in the coming days and weeks.
The European Parliamentary elections are is effectivelyt a national election and it is reasonable that it would have more central direction than locals. I avoided the leadership question deliberately as enough damage has been done to the party in the past week.
There is no prospect of the Liberal Democrats adopting a Eurosceptic position. Firstly, I don´t think Party opinion would stand it and secondly that stance is well-represented already. A more pro-European position by only ourselves and as for Labour…
One of the points I didn’t have space to include was the culpable silence of the Labour Party on the issue during the election. Clearly they made a partisan rational calculation, but then how much peril does the UK´s membership of the EU have to be in for the Labour party to make a stand. Are they hoping for a Tory victory in next year´s General Election and show their hand in the referendum? It´ll be too late by the . Or will they play politics with it?
Did those who voted at the EU election vote on the issue of Europe?
I think that 10% of the electorate , making near 30% of those who voted, did so on the issue of immigration.
As Bill says above around 2% of the electorate agreed with the message in our campaign.
The Labour address I saw did not mention Europe, at all.
I did not see a Tory address.
We had nothing to say on immigration. We defended the status quo (Nick’s answer in the debates).
If Turkey and/or Ukraine join the EU will EU policy on free movement be the same ?
Leekliberal makes a very valid point.
“Did those who voted at the EU election vote on the issue of Europe?”
Yes.
@jedibeeftrix
‘Yes’
No.
More constructively, they voted on a whole range of issues, one of which was Europe. For many of the UKIP voters, Europe’s existence as an economic and political pooling of resources was the main issue. For some, it was the immigration thing, not the Europe thing as such that was the issue. But for many more, alienation from a wider politics of which Europe is but one part was the thing.
Polling (usual caveats) tells us that support for remaining in the EU is rising and now indicates an In vote in a hypothetical referendum. That hasn’t translated into support for us at the ballot box, but there are reasons – our leader, our wider platform, the coalition, our failures within the coalition and our inability to articulate our successes or string them together in a coherent narrative…
apologies, i took it as a question to be answered personally. 🙂
‘The current one balances the party’s values with realism well. In it, we seek to “improve the EU’s efficiency, transparency, flexibility and democratic accountability”. ‘
I always thought this was our policy, but during the Euro Elections all I heard was that We were the Party of IN, so I presumed we had changed our policy and were now in favour of the EU without change
There was that final question at the TV debate- where do you see the EU in 10 years time, and Nick said, “Pretty much where we are now”. Oh dear – had someone not told Nick what our policy was or did he just decide to change it on a whim?
“My concern is failing to give the message of reform enough prominence, we allow UKIP and the Tories space to use these arguments – our arguments – as cover for xenophobia and reaction.” Spot-on. My biggest concern with Clegg in the debates with Farage is that he kept banging on in a monotonous and repetitive manner on jobs, and utterly failed to give adequate weight to reform. This failure was crowned by his response to what, I recall, was the final question in the second debate, “How would the EU look in 5 years time, Clegg’s lamentable response “pretty much the same”!
Great to see Paddy Ashdown today. If only more like him would speak up for the pro-Europe case we might have less xenophobic, racist comments in the media
On this issue, unlike some others, I don’t perceive a lot of difference in the policies we want, so this time it really is about the presentation. That was always going to be difficult as our MEPs were being kicked for the policies of the coalition government (fair, but kicking the wrong people) and for the state of the world (unfair). But because Euro-elections do not elect a government or even a local council, people use them to express frustrations or strong views on particular issues. We really missed a trick on the latter. For example, our East of England Euro-MP had fought to stop illegal hunting and trapping of migratory birds. He put it in his election leaflet. That was the first I knew about it and I’m a keen birder. Many people won’t have noticed this brief mention. Yet I reckon the RSPB must have about 100,000 members in the East of England and if you add people members of other wildlife and conservation organisations such as local naturalists’ trusts, the figure might well be 150,000. Many, perhaps most of those care enough about their birds being killed to consider changing their vote, or voting instead of staying at home. But to mobilise this vote, you’d need to start well before the election. Then since most of those 150,000 would have a presence on the net which would indicate their commitment or interest, these marvellous social profiling tools or something similar should be able to find them.
We seemed to do very little to target groups of people who were likely to be particularly concerned about certain specific issues. We also attacked UKIP on jobs and weren’t believed, but failed to attack them on their MEPs’ and councillors’ record of laziness, unpopular votes and greed, when we might have been believed.
“I see no need for a change to our European Policy coming out of this election. ……. we seek to “improve the EU’s efficiency, transparency, flexibility and democratic accountability”
Well if only we had fought the European elections on that policy instead of the inept party of in.
When there is a referendum on EU membership will we still be pushing the lie that only the Lib Dems are the Party of In – or will we be telling the truth that Labour, Conservative, Green, SNP and Plaid, whatever out other differences are all in favour of EU membership. What a different view of the Euro-elections that would have promoted – instead of a UKIP triumph, a UKIP fail by 75% to 25%.
Why did the Lib Dems block a referendum – we could have held won, campaigned on a cross party basis and won it. No more UKIP. Strategically inept, we did the opposite and no one will take responsibility. I listened to Ed Davey and other boasting about boosting the UKIP vote in their constituencies to harm the tories, massive miscalculation, yet still no one can say – sorry, I was wrong or even change tack.
We were right to campaign for” in “.However that policy would be stronger if we were to listen to the voters and change our policy on a referendum to a” no ifs no buts referendum”.There is as opinion polls and Euro results show overwhelming support for having a referendum we should listen and change policy.The current position of a referendum if more powers go to Brussels sounds what it is a weasly cop out.We should have the courage of our “in” convictions and be prepared to argue our case in a democratic referendum.
Roger Heape