So, we’ve had a bounce of new members. The fight back begins and we’re planning how to make the Lib Dems strong again. All great stuff.
But hold on a minute. This is the biggest opportunity in my lifetime to change progressive politics for the better, and drag parties that were born in the 19th and 20th centuries into the 21st. But if we’re to grasp that opportunity, surely we need to think beyond just our own party?
I’ve written elsewhere about how the Liberal brand is weak – see: The Lib Dems need to appeal to people’s hearts, not their heads [Facebook] – but more fundamentally, politics is weak. About a third of people don’t vote at all whilst many (a majority?) view politicians as self-serving, elitist or irrelevant to their lives. Even those who vote often do so without enthusiasm. Will all this be changed by a resurgence of the Lib Dem party alone? I doubt it will be sufficient.
Britain has two parties (the Liberals and Conservatives) that were founded on 19th century ideologies and one (Labour) on a 20th century one. But we’re in the 21st century. Conservatism is by its nature the slowest to change, but do people understand “Liberalism” in a modern liberal democracy? And where are the organised working classes of “Labour”? It seems to me that we started out down a road many years ago but now the landscape has changed and we’re lost.
The SNP are not a new party, but they have forged a new identity in the 21st century, which enthused many people to vote with pride and enthusiasm. They had a clear brand, credibility gained through a track record of regional government, clear adversaries, looked like the people they were aiming to represent, promised a hope of something new and better, and got the airtime to communicate these. I’d suggest that neither us nor Labour managed to communicate a single one of these attributes.
And it’s not just in Scotland; in Greece, Spain and India, traditional dynasties have been usurped by new (or re-invented) parties.
So where am I leading with this? Well, the next national election we’ll have to fight is the EU referendum. Our “IN” stance is a cause that could unite many; we could work in a grass-roots campaign team formed from several parties, and non-party-political people too. But my call is: let’s not do this at arms-length, between erstwhile adversaries, instead let’s do so with an open mind and formally team up for the referendum. Let’s even give it a brand that isn’t just about the EU but about the future of our country.
The point of this is not only to win the referendum, but also to get used to working together. Because it’s only by working together that new things arise. Maybe, just maybe, this might take us one step towards forging a joint new identity. Because, if we want to break the mould and create an exciting, engaging, politics fit for the 21st century, then surely we need to look beyond just our own party?
25 Comments
Very sensible article – I agree with everything you’ve said. The Liberal Democrats do need to re-invent as a well-connected 21st century party, with transparency and clarity in it’s policies and direction. We need to provide thought leadership, and not react to each and every issue that looks like it might increase or decrease votes. The whole political system in the UK is weary and stale, and reform is necessary.
All 3 main Parties have roots in the 19th century & all 3 developed as Movements. The Movement as pect of both Tories & Liberals withered away & both have re-invented themselves several times. The Party that has changed the least is Labour, until now. They are having to face making a century of change in a few months & its unlikely they will survive in one piece.
On the European campaign, we need to invove as many forces as possible. The AV campaign became a clique & that was partly why it lost.
This posting has a lot in common – a lot that is good – with Jakub Kaliszewski’s post that follows it. So I can only make the same response – This is an idea whose time has come!
“……So where am I leading with this? Well, the next national election we’ll have to fight is the EU referendum”
Wrong!
Leaving aside that a referendum is not an election, this statement is just factually wrong.
The government says there will be a referendum “before the end of 2017”.
1—–There will be local council by-elections through the course of this year and every years.
2—–There may well be parliamentary by-elections in 2015, 2016 and the early part of 2017 before a referendum.
3—–There will be a real all up election for the Edinburgh Parliament. (Wales and NI as well?)
4—–There will be a real election for The London Assembly and for the Mayor of London now that Boris Onson has confirmed that he is doing a runner before the chickens come home to roost.
5—–There will be lots of electons in Trade Unions, Students Unions, the Church of England, the Co-op, for the executive of The National Trust and a host of other voluntary bodies. Some of us will have an opportunity to vote and or stand for election in many of these.
The referendum is important but the party needs to get back into the habit of fighting and winning byelections at every level from Parish and Town Council through to Westminster Parliament. Every May there will be a fresh round of elections. Instead of the Number of Liberal Democrat Councillors going down every year we can now build and ensure the momentum is upwards. We need to replace the mentality of decline that has ossified the party in recent years and build with successes.
@JT I am not convinced about your point 5. The fox hunters tried to get members on the National Trust council and failed comprehensively. I suspect political inclined people will suffer the same fate.
Peter Hayes
Forgive me, I may not have explained myself properly.
I was not suggesting that we should put up a slate of Liberal Democrat candidates in the elections listed in my point 5.
Although I have in the past in NT internal elections voted a particular way because I was contacted by another member of our party. One such occasion was indeed when the fox hunters tried to mount a “take over” of the NT.
My point was that it is possible to take part in a whole range of elections to help build a Liberal Democrat society.
Keeping the ‘killing for kicks brigade’ out of the top positions in the NT was one small victory for Liberal Democrats and others organising quietly and voting accordingly. 🙂
Am I a pessimist or are we beginning to discover that there is relatively little room for manouevre in sorting out the major problems of the day. With parties moving inexorably towards the centre ground, at the moment at least, can the Lib Dems really offer a new vision that people will actually vote for? Of course I hope we can, but despite us having the best manifesto in terms of original policy content, the electorate didn’t vote for it. Sorry, a bit negative I know, but the number of progressive new ideas in proportion to the column inches about policy in the newspapers is very small. As a society we seem to be talking more and more about less and less.
I think a large part of the problem is that, for many years, everyone and their dog have been using the word ‘liberal’ to mean little more than ‘I’m a bit right-on.’
I commend you for groping towards a truth Dave, but I don’t think that you or anyone else I have read has quite grasped what is happening politically. Labour’s existential crisis dates from the fall of the Berlin Wall (and for once Paul Barker is right), not because Labour was ever crypto-communist but because Eastern European socialism supplied a solid template from which the watered down versions of social democracy of Western socialist parties were derived. Similarly, liberalism is in crisis because it has been unable to get to grips with the contradictions presented by globalisation: liberals believe that international free trade is per se a ‘good thing’ and that there should be as few barriers to it as possible, but on the other hand it leads inexorably to a massive growth in power of multinational capitalism which can only be countered, if at all, by ceding national power to multinational political institutions like the EU, so that liberal beliefs in challenging the concentration of power and subsidiarity are squeezed into irrelevance by these opposing forces. In place of the ‘old’ parties people preaching simple solutions arise: new nationalisms – Scottish, Welsh, UKIP, Mebyon KernowWalloon, French National Front, Golden Dawn – some worse
(sorry, I didn’t mean to post at that point) – some worse than others, but all dangerous to a considered and stable polity. Another strand of the new politics is utopianism: the Greens, Syriza, and other anti-austerity parties. The truth is that, in the UK anyway, we have been living beyond our means for decades, our incomes artificially boosted by tax cuts funded from the sale of state assets, from North Sea oil revenues, and from the artificial inflation of property prices, all ways that successive governments have tried to buy support from the middle class swing voters. The pitch made by the Green Party at this election was therefore a deeply conservative one. And the Conservative Party itself, promising no tax rises, enshrined in law for the next five years, bafflingly irresponsible for a ‘steady as you go’ party, but then the Conservative Party has always been fundamentally unprincipled and is therefore, in a strange way, probably best placed to cope with the political void that the twenty-first century has become.
Tony Hill, I fear your post can be summarised as “When everyone else’s ideas are outdated, simplistic or irresponsible, you might as well vote for the crooks. They’re grounded, and they know what they’re doing. It’s just a pity that what they’re doing is telling lies in order to get away with theft. But hey, at least they’re properly organised!”
After the Coalition calamity, deep pessimism is understandable. But if we can’t do better than that, we ought to get out of politics, and go away and dig the garden…
“Britain has two parties (the Liberals and Conservatives) that were founded on 19th century ideologies and one (Labour) on a 20th century one.”
It might be more accurate to say:
“Britain has two parties (the Liberals and Conservatives) that were founded on 18th-century ideologies and one (Labour) on a 19th century one.”
Excellent couple of comments from tonyhill.
LDV should promote them to the status of a separate article so that could form the basis of a new discussion and thread.
Thank you, tonyhill.
I agree with John Tilley – the points raised by Tony Hill are important. My response was a first attempt to tackle them. I hope it doesn’t come across as simply dismissive – that was not the intention!
I cant really agree that the problems of the labour party are linked with the fall of the Berlin wall. They may coincide somewhat in time, but labour’s problem is the demise of the unionised work force, which is the block of voters who created it. The conservatives still represent the landed gentry, as is immediately clear from comparing a map of constituencies and population densities.
landed gentry too have been having a difficult time, and faced an uphill struggle when the voting franchise was extended to more and more people, but they have weathered their crisis better than labour have theirs. Both parties have reached out to the centre ground for more support, but it is a pure fallacy to believe that any popular party can be based just there. The centre, as it is presently defined, is the group of voters who do not identify themselves with any particular party.
For a third party to win it is not sufficient to play the two party game, that is virtually to lose before you have begun. It is necessary to throw away the two sides dogma and stand for something different to the other two. Liberals conspicuously failed to do this in coalition, with the result we have now.
Labour too have their own existential crisis. What has saved them, but at the same time probably stymied their ability to change, is their position as the other established main party, Tweedledum to the conservatives Tweedledee. In a sensible system where parties reflected the will of the voters, both the twins would have been consigned to history long ago. As things stand, voters choose the party they hate least, or just give up on the whole thing.
I think perhaps I understand why some people think there is a home to be found in the centre. Maybe there are two things being confused here. One is the pool of voters not committed to any party, and the other is the pool of voters whose interests are neither landed gentry nor unionised labour. The middle class. In trying to widen their base, all political parties have sought to be as inclusive of disparate views as possible, a strategy perhaps inevitable, but equally self-destructive. In the end, the voters spot they are being lied to, because it is simply impossible to please all sides at once. This is a fundamental problem with Cameron’s recent calls for a government serving the needs of everyone. Although there is a strand of ‘noblesse oblige’ in the traditional conservative party, where the lord cares for his servants too because they are his, modern right wing thinking denies any such responsibility. ‘Trickle down’ is an argument that the rich need do absolutely nothing except try to get as rich as they possibly can, and magically everyone will benefit. Never in history has this worked for the greater good.
Labours losses at the moment stem not from being too far to the left, but from allowing the conservatives to create a propaganda victory. Liberals helped along this conservative victory by agreeing that labour policies were all wrong, while simultaneously saying they agreed with the conservative government just past. labour and liberals both denied their own vision of the future. Left or right, no vision is way worse to a voter than the wrong vision. Most voters do not read manifestos.
Liberal Democrats were actually formed in the 20th Century problem is the coalition made us slip back in 19th Century Classical Liberalism .Agree we must become a party that is viable in the 21st Century but we will not do that if we seek economic solutions currently espoused by either the centre left or centre right .first we have to recognise all of our citizens make a contribution to the common wealth of our modern state .demonising any section of it undermines the state and makes us all collectively poorer .We need bottom up solutions to our problems led through our communities with devolved powers local government and local enterprise isn’t the problem its the solution.
@Danny – “The conservatives still represent the landed gentry, as is immediately clear from comparing a map of constituencies and population densities.”
If the Conservatives were relying solely on the votes of the landed gentry they’d have been wiped out generations ago. There can’t be more than a few thousand of them and their estates won’t employ sufficient to make a difference even if their employer could control the way they vote (which, since the introduction of the secret ballot they can’t)
The conservatives win because they represent the middle and “respectable” working class and have done for the last 150 years or so.
TCO
The landed gentry are not what they were, but are still a force in the land. It is no longer necessary to actually own land to belong to the class which believes it has proprietorial rights over land. Virtually every household adjacent or near an open field believes it has the right to preserve that field for its own benefit evermore. Another word might be NIMBY.
The countryside was once the factory floor of Britain. We now have a situation where almost the reverse holds true, and all that are left are the gentry, who have turfed out their peasants, and turned their homes into country retreats. Maybe they personally only have a quarter acre plot, or a flat in a converted mansion but they fight all the more for their lifestyle because their claim to it is so minimal.
Living in a constituency which is a town, adjacent to another way greater in area which is countryside, this division is quite obvious. the contrast between what may be regarded as labour areas and conservative areas is clear and defined by law. In conservative areas, it is forbidden to build on that sacred land. In labour areas, the hoi polloi are expected to make room for all that unsightly, inconvenient construction and manufacturing, as well as house all those peasants. The modern transport system has simply allowed the gentry to separate themselves more firmly from the under classes.
I make a broad brush distinction between labour and conservative which obviously is not so clear as this, both because people’s views cover a spread not just extremes, and because the messy matter of dividing the country into constituencies does not generate exact division. Nonetheless, there is a fundamental difference across the country between labour and conservative areas, and gentry is as good a word as any for the people now occupying the countryside.
This new gentry has grown up in my lifetime, though I dare say the trends already existed before that. This legally enshrined apartheid system is perfectly obvious from an electoral map of the country, showing which party won in what area. Amazing how ‘the left’ allowed it to happen under their noses.
@Danny if you’re talking about commuting, that’s a phenomenon that’s as old as the Liberal Party.
Furthermore modern communications is eroding the need to live close to a “place” of work; work is more and more an activity rather than a place.
The wealthier now congregate in the more attractive of our towns and cities because they can.
A family example. My great grandfather was a small farmer. He and his rather large family had a small farm which would be considered way too small to be viable today. On the strength of this, he ended up with each of his children living in a house of some sort, which he owned and eventually they all inherited. Today those houses would represent a real fortune, well beyond the possibility for anyone to afford on agricultural wages. Indeed, these properties today house a fine selection of rich people. Most are changed unrecognisably, and the most significant thing about them was that they existed and therefore the right to build a dwelling on that site existed. Could anyone possibly do what he did today? Absolutely not. The countryside is a playground for the rich. All those high sounding planning rules which claim to preserve this or that for posterity or the environment? Oh no.
This is a real apartheid system where the rich live in one area and the poor in another. Maybe I don’t care if the rich choose to live apart, but I do care if the system is rigged to provide them an unfair proportion of the nations resources. If that monopoly of the nations resources materially harms the majority of the population. Perhaps that is the definition of being rich. I dont see it as the definition of a democratic society. Some things just havn’t changed in 100 years.
Politics for the 21st century:
Ideational power > Advocators > Deliberative Democracy > Participatory > Citizenship = a Libdem Political Family
Ideational power is probably the least understood facet of power. The influence of ideas in international politics is undisputed; however, different meta-theoretical orientations have led to a multitude of “operationalisations” of the concept.
There are at least three (ideal type) views: first, a social constructivist reading argues for “ideas all the way down” (Wendt 1999). From such a perspective, ideas presuppose particular interests and actors’ behaviour is explained through processes of socialization and interaction within a certain type of institution.
Second, a realist reading of a Machiavellian tradition is based on an understanding of the use of ideas as a strategic act in which ideas are not endogenously constructed. Decision makers cover their true intentions and use ideas as “just hooks (…) to propagate and to legitimize their interests” (Goldstein and Keohane 1993:4).
Third, a liberal reading attributes to ideas causal power in cases where interests are of secondary importance (Goldstein and Keohane 1993). The concept of ideational power is its myriad meanings hold a promising attempt made to specify the ways ideas influence politics.
Two overlapping concepts that draw from the above-mentioned traditions and combine a rationalist and a sociological institutionalist understanding are briefly elaborated below with regards to the effects of focal points and the processes of framing.
The concept of “focal point” in the neoliberal tradition is a “road map” that influences outcomes in cases where no clear-cut preferences or multiple equilibriums exist (Goldstein and Keohane 1993:4,13). In other words, the liberal concept argues that ideas matter in the absence of strong preferences or in situations where a balance of guiding principles exists.
However, a strand of new institutionalism suggests that these focal points may influence actors’ behaviour without their active endorsement (see for example Denzau and North 1994; Pierson 2000). Such a “sociological” focal point – coined a “mental map” – can help actors to incorporate confirmatory information, while simultaneously filtering out non-confirmatory information.
Related to the concept of focal points and how ideas can matter is a growing literature on framing (Keck and Sikkink 1998). Frames can be defined as “specific metaphors, symbolic representations and cognitive clues used to render or cast behaviour and events in an evaluative mode and to suggest alternative modes of actions” (Zald 1996:262).
Frames help actors to transform information into knowledge. Moreover, actors themselves attempt to construct frames and legitimise them (Joachim 2003). Framing usually provokes counter-framing, therefore it is important if a frame
is to prevail that “it ‘resonates’ with the experiences and the empirical context of the targeted audience” (Joachim 2003:251).
The outcome derives from competition between frames. Contrary to what most social constructivist approaches suggest, the process of framing and the search for focal points attributes to individuals an active role that frees them from being “over-socialized” (Barnett 1999).”
[Adapted from: Different facets of power in decision-making, Manfred Elsig, September 2006]
Lots of interesting posts on this thread – thanks everyone and keep it up. I thought I’d wait a while before coming back in to the conversation.
Perhaps I’ll rephrase my argument. All parties need to evolve, to keep up with the times. Usually, this evolution happens within each party and each maintains their independent position. Usually, that’s because each party has a different underlying ideology.
But evolution doesn’t always happen like that. And that’s my point; we’re not the only party looking at a long road ahead and re-examining what we stand for, so I’d like to broaden out that conversation to progressives of all parties and of none. And since we rarely get the opportunity to work with other parties, I thought the EU referendum would be a great catalyst for that discussion.
I’m not saying that our party should immediately form a pact with another; it’s way too early to even consider anything like that and right now it would be more useful for us to spend time working out what our own goals are. But my call is to keep an open mind; for the coming years are one of those rare moments when fundamental change could happen that breaks through party barriers, and even redefines the ideologies that underpin them, in the light of a new century. Let’s celebrate Liberalism and our membership bounce, but let’s not lose sight of a big opportunity to evolve British politics in a different way as well.
PS apologies to those who say I’ve got my political history and my choice of centuries wrong. I went on the basis of the formation of the individual parties and am happy to be corrected. But suffice to say that all of them started some time ago and much of the electorate could do with a refresh of what the ideologies mean today.
PPS with regard to John Tilley’s comment, and leaving aside whether a referendum is an election or not, the EU referendum will indeed be the next opportunity for everyone in the UK to vote together for one thing. Of course we should fight every election before then, but the EU referendum will be unique as it will be across the whole country at once and it we could fight it across traditional party boundaries.
I think labour lost this election just gone because they were disunited. It wasnt just conservatives attacking Milliband. Conservatives gleefully pointed out the splits in labour. Labour needed a clear message, consistent with their track record. All they did in the end was say the conservatives were sort of right, and in their last government they had been sort of wrong. Not encouraging. Whether right or wrong, conservatives looked much more like they had a clear vision.
The lesson of the coalition must be that the liberals also lost any clear vision of their own, and as a result they were swept away. Anyone proposing coalitions or partnerships needs to reflect on the name of this party, which I keep calling liberal out of habit and convenience, but is liberal democrat. Are people prepared for the liberal labour party? If it came into existence, would it remain as divided as labour is now, with the same results?
Fair enough Danny, a disunited party does no one any good. But put it this way: we have three-and-a-half parties that are to the centre-left or left in England (four in Scotland or Wales) and one-and-a-half to the right (UKIP is the half, in both cases). The ones on the left are therefore always at a disadvantage. Maybe we can’t find common ground between us, and then that’s fair enough too. But let’s not start out with that as the default presumption.