This leadership election is, inevitably, getting a little messy. Why inevitably? Because attempts are being made to create massive policy differences where they simply don’t exist, on matters which are important to activists, but far less so to electors.
In case the advisors to Nick Clegg and Chris Huhne don’t know, the key talking points in my town are the middle classes bemoaning the price of petrol and pensioners and families, rightly, concerned about the rising price of staple foods. I wonder how many members of the two campaign teams are aware that bread has more than doubled in price this year?
In electing a leader, surely the key issue is leadership. And it’s not too late to show some.
My challenge to the two contenders is a simple one. Tell us how you are going to lead the PARTY as well as how you would lead the NATION. Because unless you get the first one right the second will never happen.
Tell us how you will improve our results in the elections in May. Tell us about the practical support you will give to Brian Paddick. Tell us about how you will use our largest parliamentary party in 80 years to go out to constituencies and help them build membership and get more councillors elected. Tell us what tactics and what strategy you will employ to ensure we win more seats in Parliament, as the current strategy seems to need reinvigorating. Tell us about how you value ordinary councillors, members and campaigners and about how you are going to give us better support and more attention in the future.
Tell us how you are going to LEAD us.
* Martin Land is a Cambridgeshire Lib Dem activist.
29 Comments
Um, is this for real? In a political election you want the voters not to hear about policy?
I must have woken up in a parallel universe this morning…
Actually there’s a serious point here – the party gives leaders only fairly limited powers to set policy.
On the other hand leaders have a huge influence on the image of the party and getting the best and most diverse set of candidates possible.
Absolutely agree with the above.
To my mind the contest was becoming overtaken by petty point scoring – first by Huhne and his team nitpicking on Clegg’s alleged inconsistencies and then by the subsequent overreaction by Clegg’s more fanatical supporters on these blogs and elsewhere.
Lets hope the latter stages of this contest are more constructive.
No Mark, it’s for real, Martin’s been discussing this in the forum for awhile now, and overall he’s right. On policy, I’m quite happy with both candidates, there are minor differences, but ultimately WE in the membership make policy.
What I really want to know is what they’ll do to sort the structure out and build the party, how they’ll present our ideas and get us more seats and more influence.
I really couldn’t care less on the minutae of our position on Trident, or on what form the pupil premium idea should take, I care how they’re going to sell our policies, how they’re going to LEAD the party, and what they’re going to do to rebuild the party structure.
Martin, I agree completely—we’ve had enough about minor policy differences, let’s see what they’ll do to help us get our act in gear.
I second, third and fourth the praise of this wake-up call. This aspect has been neglected.
But I don’t think time spent discussing policy is wasted from a PR point of view. It’s not just to gratify activists, it’s to give the electorate some idea (if they care) of what to expect – it gives the lie to accusations of not being a “serious” party if we are engaging with the main issues in internal elections. A violent disagreement on how to improve the party machinery would have looked far worse.
It has to be said – I wrote for LDV about this what seems to be light years ago, but it’s only 4 weeks.
There are a number of key issues which do need answering in terms of the style and the detail of how the party is run.
Having campaigned with both Chris and Nick I’ve had the luxury of seeing their approach on the ground – but there are key questions as to the party that do need answers.
I don’t think the campaigning issues have been avoided. At the Bristol hustings, John Kiely, who served over 20 years as a Councillor, asked whether the candidates supported continual spending of our meagre funds on the sanme ‘winnable seats’ where we’ve ‘come a good second’ to the Tories for 30 or 40 years. A good question, especially in the West Country.
However we surely don’t want to debate party targetting strategy in public do we? Some of our more enthusiastic bloggers seem to forget that these things can be read by anyone, and selectively (mis)quoted by Ian Dale & Co. You wouldn’t send a draft of your election leaflets to the other parties agents would you?
For those of you who do want to discuss policy then here’s a good comparison:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7092737.stm
Martin Land writes:
“Tell us how you will improve our results in the elections in May. Tell us about the practical support you will give to Brian Paddick. Tell us about how you will use our largest parliamentary party in 80 years to go out to constituencies and help them build membership and get more councillors elected.”
And more in the same vein.
Does anyone seriously think that the leader of the party can do a great deal about these things?
We need some common sense and clarity about what the job of a leader is and it is not to be some kind of Superman figure who can wave a wand and do everything for the party.
Tony Greaves
The job of a leader should be to inspire. It should be to embody everything that is good about the party. It should be to define our goals and articulate our values. And finally it should be to form and espouse opinions on individual policies.
The trouble is, if you don’t do the first four things, you might as well not bother having policies at all.
So yes, I wholeheartedly endorse this article – well said Martin!
We need a leader who –
1. Projects a good image of the Party – esp. on television
2. Is tough minded, thinks on his feet and keeps calm under fire
3. Has a clear idea of the broad direction in which the Party should go and the drive to lead us in that direction
4. Has a detailed knowledge of policy and can put the necessary parts of that (and only the necessary parts) across clearly.
I have not included “is a true Liberal Democrat” or words to that effect because that goes without question for both our candidates.
I say Chris edges it but that does not entail seeking to demonise Nick.
11 – Worth watching Nick in Plymouth on Saturday:
The point of asking our prospective leaders about policy is not to try and open up big differences between them, but to test them to make sure they are confident about policy, and also to get a feel for where they stand.
In practice, although we know the leader ought to follow the direction set more generally by the party’s structure, there are many circumstances where the leader HAS to take the lead, and we know also that leaders do tend to opush their own ideas onto the party and it’s very difficult to get them turned down once that’s happened – you get branded as some sort of nasty “rebel” if you oppose what the leader has pout forward as a bright idea.
As to the rising price of petrol and bread – well, what do you expect? The world is running out of easily reachable oil, and climate change is biting into food production. Of course, we know the right-wing press won’t put it that way, they’ll say it’s all the fault of evil politicians. We require a leader who actually has the guts to stand up and say that there are various crises in the world which require political action, there aren’t easy paths to solve them, and that simplistic “trust the market” solutions won’t solve them long-term.
Amen to the original article. I submitted a question to this effect for the online hustings earlier.
Of course rises in the prices of bread are down to “evil politicians”.
Food is being subsidised and used as fuels in the US and elsewhere; and it’s this which means that the increase in food production which is needed to feed China’s growing economy isn’t enough to keep prices flat.
If the “evil politicians” weren’t subsidising biofuels, then the effect would be much less.
I agree that it’s mad to subsidise biofuels in the USA and elsewhere but UK politicians can’t do much about that. What they could change (if they wanted to) is the local factors driving the prices of bread, milk and other commodities higher than they should be – namely the overbearing power of the supermarkets. In the case of milk the supermarkets’ gross margin has risen by around 400% from around 15 years ago and is now comparable to the total PROCEEDS received by farmers. Other products have similar trends
This is a clear case of market failure – the supermarkets have too much economic and indeed political power. Cut them down to size in a way that creates a genuinely competitive and diversified market and expect to see the prices of basic foods tumble.
This is something that Huhne does appear to understand and is why I for one will be voting for him.
To reply to some of the points. I’m glad most people seem to agree that this is important and hopefully we will receive a reply from the two candidates at some point.
To Steve Comer; I’m not expecting them to go into detail. A commitment to look carefully at our structures and to pledge to give these matters some priority. Mind you Steve, I’m not as concerned as you perhaps; on my patch the Tory Campaigning strategy is easy to predict. It’s whatever we did last year!
To Tony Greaves: Tony, I have admired your honesty and your radical political stance since I was a YL more than 30 years ago. But when did you get so cynical? Of course the leader is no ‘Superman’ and I’m sure we can rely on you to constantly remind him of it, whichever of the candidates gets the job. However, it is the job of the Leader to delegate. Under Ming we made some progress, thanks to the work of Ed Davey. I would expect the Leader to tell us that he makes these types of commitments to us and to the party – and who he wishes to delegate that too. A Leader is not just a Press Spokes writ large; he is a thinking man manager who must work with Federal Party committees, MPs (even Lords, Tony) to get what we all want. To do his best for us. Company MD’s are not there to do everything themselves; but they are their to make sure everything gets done.
I have to say to Martin (17) that Chrid Huhne did indeed answer the question about campaigning at the Bristol hustings, Nick did not I’m sorry to say.
This has been a feature of both the hustings I’ve seen, and Question Time, you get clarity from Chris, but not from Nick
‘Tell us how you are going to LEAD us’.
To that I think they will have to tell us about the things they believe in. What an empty spectacle this would be if there was even less talk about policy and don’t tell me that the leader will have no effect on the policy and direction of the party.
This isn’t a beauty contest.
How sad that even people interested in politics think that elections should be not about ideas.
Price of bread doubled in a year? Really?
Still do not know who to vote for so I am going for the really radical approach – count the spelling mistakes in each of their glossies – only had Chris’s so far – the green one with Chris doing a Martin Bell impression on the front. My initial superficial check has revealed 4 basic spelling mistakes – I will do a proper check before I look at Nick’s and then assess who really is the best ” communicator”
19. Yes we monitor prices carefully in my neck of the woods and advise the elderly how best to manage. An economy loaf in the Co-op was 32p in January and has risen all year to 62p this week. The BBC recently predicted a £1 loaf by the New Year. 4 pint plastic bottles of milk have risen by 20p and butter by a similar amount. Generally food prices are up, but the staples have risen rapidly. Thanks to the declining price of such ‘essentials’ as 42″ Plasma TV’s inflation is under control; but families and pensioners don’t buy a lot of those! If you didn’t realise prices were changing like that a quick reality check is in order.
By the way; I’m interested in policy, but in this party it’s ME and other members who decide policy through conference, not leadership contenders!
I am not sure the price of bread is the hot topic on the streets at the moment but thanks for the reality check advice!
If you think the leader of the party doesn’t have an affect on the policy of the party then perhaps we could take our reality checks together. You free sometime this week?
21 Martin: interesting, but the price of “premium” bread does not appear to have changed substantially – it’s still around £1.20, and seems to have risen moderately with inflation for the past five years (I can’t prove this…).
What I think is happening is that the supermarkets used to sell bread as a big loss leader – an 800g white sliced loaf used to be 9p in Asda not that long ago, never mind 32p. For some reason, they appear to have switched away from this strategy.
What I’m saying is that I think that the price of bread has been artificially low at the “economy” end for many years, and that recently the subsidy has been lifted as supermarkets try other tactics.
This is all IMHO, YMMV, etc.
What we need to remember is that for most people the price of bread probably IS far more important than ID cards. ID cards are an important Liberal issue yes, but an inward-looking purist issue, to use words favoured by one side in the leadership debate. If you’re the great communicator, you have to tell the masses why issues like ID cards are more important than they think, but you also need to have a feel for the issues that really matter to ordinary people.
The price of bread is an excellent start to leading on to what might seem to be more boring “political” issues, which is the point I was making earlier. We have the big problem that many people switch off to politics, they think it is irrelevant, it’s about posh people talking about things that don’t concern them. What’s more, they’ve been encouraged by the populist press to think this way – make the world safe for the politics of the rich by convincing the poor that politics is something they shouldn’t be involved in, it’s all about nasty people who are best ignored – don’t vote, don’t care.
We used to have the solution to this attitude, and we called it “community politics”. We started from the little things that really bother people, yes the price of bread is a good example, and we showed how actually these were political issues that were linked to the big political questions. We also showed, by that in the early days unlikely thing, getting a Liberal councillor elected, that votes DO count, that people can get things changed through the ballot box, that they didn’t have to accept politics as it was because that’s how it always had to be. Yes, community politics was meant to be more than election-fighting techniques, these were just means to a more worthy aim.
That is why we need people who have their feet on the ground, and who know what ordinary people are talking about. And that is why disparaging “activists” is a bad thing. In our party, activists are people who go out and win votes.
Given the leader-centric focus of most mainstream media coverage (which seems to have been exacerbated since Blair came to power) do we expect a leader to say “well, I think the position on Trident should be XXX but it’s up to the party”? Explaining how LD policy is formulated will surely not work in the soundbite age. So making the right noises on ‘leadership’ is surely the way to reach out to the 82% of the electorate who aren’t currently voting for us. Perhaps.
I want to vote for Matt at #24! He can make the price of bread a liberal issue. Now that’s being a great communicator!
No one is disparaging activists and I think the way to reach out to people is taking about issues and our ideas. I fail to see how either Clegg or Huhne or anyone for that matter could be a leader and not talk about their policy stances, about the things they believe in and why; to deviate from that is the very opposite of leadership.
sanbikinioraion@26 – the price of bread was THE liberal issue for much of the 19th century.
Andy@27 – many of the Cleggies are slagging off the Huhne campaign for being “too focussed on activists” and hence “inward looking”.
Bring back the Corn Laws that’s what I saw 😉
(actually Matthew, it was the Liberal issue because Liberals were all middle class, the working classes didn’t have a vote and were more concerned by other things in many cases, like, well, getting the vote, or not getting shot at Peterloo, etc—gods, it’s ten years since I read anything on the issue)