So, an elected House of Lords; a massive victory for our party from a historical viewpoint, and a good reason for longstanding party members to feel warm and fuzzy as our support collapses in the north. Yet is it the badly-needed policy victory that we can take to the electorate as a compelling reason for voting Liberal Democrats? Not by miles.
Call it the dissatisfied carping of a relative newcomer to the party, but I can’t help but notice our distressing tendency to be insular and self-obsessed at times like this, giving critics’ barbs of ‘liberal elitists’ extra sharpness. It’s most certainly not Nick Clegg’s fault; it would be endemic in any political party regaining power after a century without. Yet he is as guilty as any grassroots member of putting party before country at the moment, blindly driving us into a rut that seems set to continue as the wins of our participation in the Coalition are ever more drowned out by failures of communication.
Compared to the Labour and Conservative party machines, our amateurishness is being exposed again and again in brutal fashion. We’re wonderful at talking to ourselves, no doubt about it. Yet tuition fees, income tax reform, the pupil premium, and electoral reform are all policies we had genuinely positive influence on, and when it came to telling the public something went seriously wrong. Let’s face it; if we can’t make a big deal out of taxing the poorest workers less, then we’re not going to get anywhere telling people about how exciting it will be to elect the Lords!
If we learn anything from AV’s crushing defeat it should be that we’re wasting our time using hard-won political capital on electoral reform. Putting it bluntly, not enough people care to make it worth spending significant time and energy on. It’s long past time to put it at the back of the manifesto and focus on something that the general public do care about. Populism is an oft-derided term, something that the tabloids and New Labour do, yet remember: millions read The Sun and over ten million voted for Tony Blair! House of Lords reform should be something akin to fox-hunting being banned, a small side gift to party fundamentalists but certainly not a central policy objective – and especially not when we are as politically damaged as we are at the moment.
So, we need to change our priorities if we ever want to be in power again. The course of action we are on now is showing us up as out of touch, out of date, and placing our interests before those of voters. Securing the decriminalisation of cannabis or a referendum on EU membership (supported by Tim Farron, I was interested to note) would be much more popular wins than House of Lords reform. Both are easy to explain, both set us apart from the Conservatives, and neither would compromise on our liberalism one iota. Of course, being realistic I doubt either will happen soon, but we need better evidence than House of Lords reform if we are ever to present ourselves and the Coalition as a positive force in normal peoples’ lives.
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39 Comments
Excellent.
There’s always an argument between principles and pragmatism. But I think it’s possible to go for more “populist” policies without risking dumping Lib Dem principles. However we should not confuse “populist” with “called for by the right-wing press in the name of the public” because they are very, very different things. I mentioned here recently Johann Hari’s Independent article from April 2010 on the fact that popular opinion in Britain is a lot further to the Left than it would appear from reading the tabloids. He notes, for example:
The above represent some good starting points for LibDem policy that would be entirely in line with party positions. I also seem to recall that a consistent majority in YouGov polls supports the re-nationalisation of the railways. That also makes lots of sense. We could also go back to Beveridge and identify how we might force the Five Giants back into the boxes from which they re-emerged in 1979.
So… yes, by all means let’s go for “populist” policies that Liberal Democrats can support without sacrificing principles. Let’s just make sure, through proper research, that they really are policies with popular support, and not ideas promulgated by right-wing media.
Populism is all very well, as long as it is backed up by principles.
@Richard E – the problem is, when you then say to the Great British Public “OK, but we’ll need to raise tax to pay for all that” then answer is inevitably a resounding no!
We did have a populist policy once – we wanted to abolish tuition fees. We ditched that.
I understand what you mean, though. There is an large tendancy towards constitutional geekery in the Lib Dems which often filters through in our policies. One of the things the SNP have managed to do in Scotland is get past their obsession with independence and reach out to non-independence voters, even though it lies behind their every action. We need to do the same with electoral reform and the House of Lords – neither of these are really big issues for the country.
The vote on continuing membership of the EU would be a good one. It won’t happen, though, because (a) it will split the Tories, though probably not as much as it would have 10 years ago, and (b) the fact we’d almost certainly lose would be disasterous for the economy.
Talk about the economy. The Party should find something it can agree on with the Tories about improving the economy, and then make a Really Big Thing about it.
Free trade, deregulation, anything that will not requite a blazing row in the heart of government.
“Yet is it the badly-needed policy victory that we can take to the electorate as a compelling reason for voting Liberal Democrats? Not by miles. Call it the dissatisfied carping of a relative newcomer to the party, but I can’t help but notice our distressing tendency to be insular and self-obsessed at times like this”
An excellent article Zadok, with which I am thoroughly agreed.
The Lib-Dem’s in believing themselves to be a ‘key’ pillar of the mythical progressive majority have done nothing more than marginalise themselves from popular politics.
Because they didn’t [need] to win at adversarial politics they felt they were free to pursue their pointy-headed obsessions regardless of its relevance, or lack thereof, to the wider electorate.
Having had the progressive-minority forcibly rammed down the party’s throat perhaps now is a time to realise that if the Lib-Dem’s are going to make a difference then they need to win.
That requires throwing off two sets of mental shackles:
1. Endless whining about how FPTP is unfair, and how it marginalises smaller parties. The answer is to look at how Liberalism can appeal to the wider electorate, and look to unseat whichever of the two big incumbents looks ossified and increasingly irrelevent to the wants and needs of the people. In short, prey on a vulnerability.
2. Endless whining about the populist theme, and tribal nature, of the big parties. Of the two words “representative democracy” it is the former that is truly important, the latter is merely a means to achieve the end. Being recognised as the “party of europe” in a largely euro-sceptic nation is just downright stupid in a non proportional system.
As i wrote over a year ago now, we exist in a two-and-a-party-system, and the Lib-Dems are point-five party, so it is their lot to be opportunistic young ‘thrusters’ unless they wish to remain marginalised in perpetuity:
http://jedibeeftrix.wordpress.com/2010/03/21/uk-election-2010-%e2%80%93-and-why-voting-lib-dem-isnt-a-waste-of-time/
What I find painful is that I see a fine Whig/Liberal ideology crippled, emotionally, trapped in the mindset that it must remain an ancillary centre-left party, at a time when Labour has spent ten years painting itself into a corner of economic incompetence and paternalistic authoritarianism.
Your chance is here, now, and if the coalition comes to a rosy finale in 2015 then the Lib-Dem’s can stand in front of every voter in the land as a party competent progressive-left politics. If Labour gets locked out for another term then by 2020 it could turn out that the Lib-Dem’s emerge from the general election as the natural home of left-wing politics in Britain.
Some populism would be a fine thing!
I don’t think the Lib Dems will never be able to harness popularism. The party has too many guardian readers that believe they’re right and the public are wrong. Populist policies make the average Lib Dem nauseous.
Labour and the Conservatives took the populist liberal vote (along with the politicians) long ago. Winning it back would take more than championing a few choice causes, especially considering the toxic legacy of the tuition fees fiasco.
Apologies over the typo, I of course meant ever rather than never.
I’m confused.
At the last GE, the party ran on four key fundamental areas. One of them was constitutional refom (I believe Nick called it “fair politics”), which was to include Lords reform as an obvious “why wasn’t this done a century ago” point.
But the other three points were given equal prominence, and whenever pushed on them, Clegg and Cable and other leading speakers always tried to move the topic away from PR and constitutional reform onto the other three areas as they knew that a) they were good, popular ideas and b) the public don’t care much about the reform point.
Given that a) we’re getting all 4 key areas and b) the leadership already acknowledges it in their campaiging style, isn’t this article merely buying into media misrepresentation about what the party is about and not actually responding to what the party is about?
Another key point. I believe in pluralist politics, I believe each party should represent a core constituency of people. Most people may not care at all about Lords reform, although they’ll agree with it if asked. But some people do. Those people? They’re our core support, or should be.
Saying “most people don’t care” may, or may not, be true. But we’re not trying to appeal to the people that don’t care, or that think the country is being swamped with immigrants, or that believe that all our laws are made in Brussels.
We’re trying to appeal to Liberals, many of whom currently and historically vote for one of the other parties.
Zadok is right to say the party is, and should be, more than just a constitutional reform campaign.
Given that it palpably is, and the leadership have, rightly, been making this point for years, isn’t the point of this article um, a bit pointless?
@ Charles – “The party has too many guardian readers that believe they’re right and the public are wrong. Populist policies make the average Lib Dem nauseous.”
I do worry that you may be right. For all that I admire the author for the broad thrust of the article the chosen suggestion of an appropriate popular doggy-treat to train public opinion makes worrying reading:
“House of Lords reform should be something akin to fox-hunting being banned, a small side gift to party fundamentalists but certainly not a central policy objective”
Populism isn’t something to keep the extremists happy, it should be a position that allows the party to dominate wide swathes of popular opinion.
Lords reform is a fundamental change, not something to be given away as a sop to extremists.
Banning fox hunting with hounds was fundamentally illiberal. There are only two mechanisms to logically ban fox hunting:
1. demonstrate that the method is unusually cruel
2. declare the fox no longer to be a controlled pest
The Burns report could not report hunting with hounds to be unusually cruel, and the fox remains a pest, so the ban was nothing more than an unwarranted and illiberal removal of individual liberty.
Well said, and I have argued the same points (less cogently) for ages.
As a lifelong liberal/democrat, I frankly couldn’t give a monkeys about Lords reform and the wider electorate is going to weigh “betrayals” on the NHS and tuition fees against any constitutional change and find us wanting.
I no longer know what our MPs stand for; we seem far too comfortable with the Tories .
The word “populism” spolis an otherwise good posting. You don’t really support “populism”, which implies things like bring-back-hanging, bobbies-on-the-beat, short-sharp-shocks, bread-and-circuses, etc. What you really mean is that you oppose things that are grossly non-populist, or as jedibeeftrix neatly puts it, pointy-headed obsessions. And there you are right!
The author seems to have forgotten that David Cameron says he is “fully committed” to this reform.
You can read it on page 6 here:
http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/sites/default/files/resources/house-of-lords-reform-draft-bill.pdf
above his signature, alongside that of Nick Clegg:
“We look forward to the report from the Joint Committee which we will consider with great care. We are both strongly persuaded that this is a unique opportunity for our country to instil greater democracy into our institutions and are fully committed to holding the first elections to the reformed House of Lords in 2015.”
You may suspect that even so he’ll look for ways to delay it and eventually wriggle out of doing it, but for the LibDems to now say
“Actually, we’ve lost interest in this”
would be madness.
What you need to do is build the case for reforming the House of Lords on its potential practical benefits in terms of improved government, rather than just relying on abstract arguments about fairness and democracy – important though those principles are, of course.
My essentially pragmatic approach has long been and still is that the primary purpose of a reformed Second Chamber of Parliament should be to compensate for the serious and inherent defects of the first chamber, as described in my rather long comment here:
https://www.libdemvoice.org/dpmqs-groundhog-limbo-dancing-24249.html
Which I believe would give the people of this country significantly better laws and government, and so would be of real practical benefit to them.
Thanks to all for comments so far. Firstly, those saying populism can be consistent with principle are completely right – the very mindset that relegates populism as tabloid-ism was one of the things I am arguing against.
I’d disagree with that Johann Hari article of Richard E’s, however. “Populism” doesn’t mean giving into a particular viewpoint of either right or left by its very definition. People on both sides of the political spectrum always tiresomely claim that they are in the ‘silent majority’ of people in this country – even we Lib Dems in our own little niche. Personally, I wouldn’t call a maximum wage liberal, for example, although I agree that several other points there would make good policy, not least a less interventionist foreign policy stance. If there’s one thing the silent majority of people in this country are, it’s cynical of politicians claiming the moral high ground as they wage war.
KL, agreed with every word, although I’d hesitate before calling abolishing tuition fees universally popular. What mattered there was that it was popular amongst our then-voter-base – whether you think students should contribute to their own education or not, doing a u-turn like that would have been foolish even with a well-explained replacement. We all know the result with a badly-explained one…
AD – agreed that we need to find common ground with the Tories as much as we do disagreements. The economy is still the main reason (excuse?) we have for being in coalition, and it should be on our minds all the time.
Thanks for the kind words, jedibeeftrix, and again, agreed up to a point with what you say. I’m hesitant about advising that we actually drop the pro-European ideology, for example – of all the things we’re known for, it’s one of the significant ones. People I spoke to before the 2010 gen. election were wary of voting for us due to a belief that we’d drop the Pound and take us into the Euro, but were fine when I stressed we’d hold a referendum on it – we’re very bad at explaining ourselves when it comes to Europe, especially vs the cheery down-to-earth scepticism shown by UKIP, who are astonishingly bad at using that constructively. I agree that 2015 will be our big chance – but I think advocating a big swing leftwards could just as easily lose us everything. Far too early to tell.
Charles, you’d agree that a move in that direction would be a real lifeline, though? I’m with you re attitude of this party… think it’s easier to change than you think, however. Look at Lembit – would it be so hard to build up a similar politician’s profile without the reality tv stuff? Or is that actually the best way to proceed? Vince seemed more popular amongst my immediate friends when he went on Strictly, so maybe we should get the Glee Club on Britain’s Got Talent?
MatGB – I’m not attacking the party’s manifesto or pre-election stance, and there’s a lot of truth in what you say, but I think it’s worth challenging even as an intellectual exercise. You castigate the idea of us being obsessed over electoral reform as ‘media misrepresentation’ and ask us to think instead about what the party is actually about – yet let’s suppose that what the media say is based (however loosely!) on fact, and consider that voters often are known to listen to the media. Isn’t it worth attempting to speak to them, rather than ourselves, and putting their first interests first, rather than ours? You also say we have a duty to appeal to liberals, and indeed so, yet Lords reform will not drag them back from voting for other parties. Let’s be honest (cheap shot alert!) we’ve been strongly in favour of electoral reform for 100 years – how well have we done as a result? Isn’t it time to consider a different approach?
Jedibeeftrix’s second point re my choice of foxhunting – I think you misunderstood, I wasn’t calling foxhunting or HoL reform populist but saying the opposite. The party should get on with populist stuff, and keep ‘extremists’ happy with things like that. Both hunting and HoL reforms are big things – but only in certain people’s perception. I disagree strongly with you, by the by, banning fox hunting was one of the few good things Labour have done. If you accept that animals can feel torment on a similar level to humans in certain situations, then how can you put your pleasure above their suffering? But Peter Singer vs liberalism is a topic for another article…
Aargh, more comments!
Redndead, thanks, although I’d query whether our MPs working alongside the Tories without constant tantrums a la Brown means that they’ve lost their values. Sarah Teather and Michael Gove seem to be doing good things in education, from the little I know about it – would engineering arguments to appeal to the anti-Tory vote REALLY overcome their distaste for us for joining the coalition in the first place?
David Allen, it depends on your definition. I admit to being mildly mischievous in picking that word for its illiberal implications and shock value, but yes, like you say, not so much in favour of populism as against non-populism.
Denis Cooper, I like and respect Cameron as PM, but after AV I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him, and any LD relying on his word is foolish at best. You’re right that suddenly dropping Lords reform would seem odd, but constructing an argument in favour of it that would get enough of the public on our side to make it worthwhile politically? It’d take far too long and far too much energy which could be better spent elsewhere. If the HoL bill is brought down by Tory backbenchers, and Cameron then has to give us something else (something… populist!) to keep us happy, would that really be so terrible? They’re happy, we’re happy, and we’ve made more of the public happy with us. Win, win, win.
Phase out income tax by raising the starting threshold, replacing it with a levy on unearned wealth.
Practical, progressive and populist.
There is much to agree with here. I’d certainly agree that it is time for people to accept that there is no silent progressive majority. I think it is reasonable to say that some policies, such as Lords reform, resonate with the purists rather than the majority. And it is refreshing to hear someone treat populism as something other than a dirty word. Being the third party does not mean being professionally contrary.
But some of this does come over as a bit, with all due respect, naive. Tax thresholds are well and good, but in the context of everything else (not least VAT) it doesn’t really offer a stand out win. Fees and pupil premium were in no way a triumph in any real sense of the term. And let’s not forget that there is still Libya ready to go wrong.
A populist, distinctive policy that would put the Conservatives on the wrong side of the argument, and would be awkward for Labour. I’ll make a suggestion and let everyone shout me down if need be – look for ways to reign in buy-to-let property. It would make the Tory opposition look like them as the party that cares for the rich and propertied alone, and would drive a wedge between old and new Labour.
I thought that reforming the broken apparatus of state was populist – it seemed so in the wake of the expenses saga last May. I’d suggest that fixing the economy, educating our young people properly and not engaging in expensive, wasteful and illegal wars would all be popular, if not exactly populist. It’s not the message that’s muted, but the messengers. The trouble is the messengers don’t have credibility because of tuition fees and so we look like part of the wider problem now, not a solution.
Fix that, and popularity will return. Populism can stay buried.
John Mc –
‘I thought that reforming the broken apparatus of state was populist – it seemed so in the wake of the expenses saga last May. I’d suggest that fixing the economy, educating our young people properly and not engaging in expensive, wasteful and illegal wars would all be popular, if not exactly populist. It’s not the message that’s muted, but the messengers. The trouble is the messengers don’t have credibility because of tuition fees and so we look like part of the wider problem now, not a solution.’
I realise that it is heresy in these parts – but the expenses thing was rather bigger on the internet than off it. Libya should have been left well, well alone, so the boat’s sailed on that one.
I think though that the point being made is that your suggestions are good in the way that motherhood and apple pie are good.
Duncan, naive? I suppose it depends on what you think a party of our size could conceivably gain from coalition – whether they are victories or not, surely it’s sensible to hail them as such? I’d argue that cutting tax is more popular/populist than BTL reform, although, again, it’s all in how and how much you sell it.
Agreed with John Mc. The antiwar public needs a sensible political party to lead it – our anti-Iraq popularity is surely an easier target than replacing Labour as the left-wing party or whatever the target is at the moment.
There does seem to be a fine line in the OPs article and between some of the commentators here and I’m not entirely sure where the weight of opinion in the comments actually lies.
Theres a big difference between populism and better PR. In between that there is a compromise position of prioritising some things which come under a liberal agenda but might not be our favourites but the public would prefer.
I would strongly chasten against populism, I’m proud to be a member of a party that has reasons for being right about something and doesn’t change these when the public votes against them, our policies are rationally and empirically thought out; they shouldn’t be the play-things of voters.
Of course every single member of the lib dems except the PR team (although maybe even them) thinks that our PR could be better.
I’m just not really sure what people are arguing on this page? Should we:
1) keep our policies and emphasise the popular ones more,
2) should we just promote the already popular policies we have put in place
3) or should we adopt policies which broadly fit in with our ideology but are popular.
Those 3 options are worded similarly but in my opinion are vastly different and I think at the moment I side with 1) and maybe a little dose of 2) but I want nothing to do with 3).
My only problem with this is that the voters who have been lost (whether that turns out to be temporary or permanent) have gone elsewhere partly because of policies that have been dropped or perceived to have been dropped.
A free education up to first degree level, enabling anyone who has the ability to reach their potential was hugely popular, avoiding the VAT bombshell was popular too as was a pupil premium made up of “new” money. All also had sound basis in the principles of the party.
Popular policies are not what’s needed, but popular policies that keep to the principles people vote for are. Those who want an exit from Europe will not vote Lib Dem even if they are the party to provide the means of exit through a referendum.
@ Zadok – “but I think advocating a big swing leftwards could just as easily lose us everything”
Just so we are clear I am not advocating a swing leftwards, merely that there are a large number of people in this country who will never be tory, due to the desire to ‘care’ a little more, and that labour have no god given right to claim to be their primary political representative.
A few people have raised issues with the use of the word populism here, and I would have to add my serious concerns. The job of a politician is not to do what the public wants, but what they need. The Liberal Democrats should be developing policies from the first principle of “what will improve the well-being of the people of this nation and beyond?” The moment that good policy is secondary to popular policy is the start of the slow descent of this country into dysfunctional misery. People don’t trust politicians any more. They don’t join political parties in order to change the world. Why is this? I believe it is because politicians never ask for their trust. Most policies since the dawn of New Labour have gone through the test of populism, and been targeted at the middle ground of potential swing voters. What is actually required to rebuild trust is for politicians to devise policies that will create strong benefits regardless of their initial popularity. The task of a good politician is then to persuade the public that this course is the best one, a task made all the easier by the fact that the politician believes it to be the case.
Better PR is of course always useful, but it is massively helped if politicians can appear on television presenting policies they are passionate about with enthusiasm and confidence, without having to resort to failing to answer questions with prepared lines they don’t believe.
The irony of this rejection of populism and reduced requirement for spin is the fact that it might just be the means for politicians to regain people’s respect and so might be the most populist stance we could take.
Rant over.
The author, like several recent Op-Eds in this forum, appears to take his view of what the Liberal Democrats are and do almost entirely from what is reported in the national press – most of which is hostile to us, the rest is at best neutral, and absolutely all of it is ignorant, preferring to report it in Westminster bubble terms rather than in terms of the wider party. The press in general reports us by making up what it thinks should be our story, and then reporting its opinion as if it were fact, if it really has to doing so by making use of a few Wesztminster bubble contacts it has in the party, who are mostly people who have their own agenda. I have been a member of the party for over 30 years, this is how it always has been, I remember for example how what the press reported as “news” about the Liberal/SDP alliance bore little resemblence to what was really happening but rather reflected what it wanted to see.
What the author suggests is alread largely covered by what the party has been doing since the 1970s under the name “community politics”. Perhaps he ought to read a little about it.
I believe passionately in drug policy reform but I don’t think it’s “populist” by a mile. Whomever decriminalises cannabis in this country can expect to surrender a chunk of the vote for a generation.
@jedibeeftrix
I’m not sure. The Labour core vote is about 30%. I don’t think much headway can be made into that because that could quite easily represent the statist vote. How they want government to behave is fundamentally at odds to liberalism. At the last election the Lib Dem’s probably managed to take about as many votes away from Labour as they could.
As for the non-statist vote the Lib Dem’s have the Conservatives as their opponent, which means their biggest problems are in fact caring Tories. While Conservatives can hold the caring reformist ground there’s not much to attract non-statists to the Lib Dems, not unless you’re die hard anti-nuclear or pro-electoral reform.
@Richy
It was the pro-cannabis stance of the Lib Dems that made me switch from them to the Conservatives back when I was 15, that and sitting next to a paranoid cannabis user in class. I didn’t buy the claims that legalising drugs would help to protect children then and I don’t now.
How about standing up for the Disabled? you know the most disadvantage section of society…… we certainty need help atm, or do the LDs think the Disabled ‘popular enough?
@Nige:
Afraid it probably won’t happen. All three major parties now see the sick and disabled as the sacrificial lamb. Instead of properly going after the cause of the financial crisis (the banking sector and their greed) the Coalition sees fit to put the biggest burden onto the backs of the most vulnerable in society. We all hear about how horrible it is when pensioners have to decide between food and heating in the winter, but society now seems to expect the sick/disabled to face the same choice and be happy about it at the same time (because we’re all feckless scroungers, you know). The sick and disabled face the largest cuts of any group in society and we have all been branded as scroungers and fakes by the Coalition and their misleading (and sometimes downright wrong) stats to the press. The disabled charity SCOPE released figures a fortnight ago that showed disabled hate crime is up as well as random violence and verbal abuse from strangers (many accusing disabled people of being scroungers) based on tabloid lies. This major report was ignored by all the press (except the Guardian) and the biggest march of disabled people in history a couple weeks ago was also ignored by the press (again, except the Guardian).
Yet nothing but silence from all three main parties.
It is not right to stay in the European Union when the EU taxes us so that Prince Charles can be paid by the CAP £500,000 each and every year for the privilege of owning land that he has inherited tax free – or the Duke of Westminster £300,000 each and every year, for example.
French farmers will never agree to a sufficient change in the CAP. We should leave full membership of the EU and become an Associate Member, with Turkey in due course becoming a similarly Associate Member at the other end of the Continent of Europe. That will save Turkey’s face, bring a Muslim country into a loose association with other European countries, and keep the French and Germans happy, because they would not want Turkey as full members of the EU.
We should stop the nonsense of allowing any Bulgarians and Romanians into this country while restricting Commonwealth immigrants.
The Liberal Party without the socially-OK inegalitarian EU-enthusiastic SDP ex Labour people who turned it into the Liberal Democrats would have come to see all that. They would, like the continuation Liberal Party (www.liberal.org.uk) , have quite rightly opposed joining the Euro. They would also have been campaigning for a referendum on leaving the EU – as they should concentrate on doing now – instead of disgracefully promising to support one on the Lisbon Treaty and then breaking their promise.
The LibDems will wither away unless they start to reflect a liberal and popular opposition to our full membership of the bureaucratic EU. It will then be worth while for them to start to adopt truly Liberal policies for positively redistributing the inheritance of unearned wealth to give liberty, property and security for all in a liberal popular capitalist rather than a conservative dynastic capitalist country. And also, I agree, for truly liberal policies for decriminalising drugs and ending the drug wars and prohibitionist gangsterism.
@Squeedle
Yes, I fear you are right. the plight of the disabled is being ignored, maybe when the full repercussions of these reforms (especially the change in WCA descriptors that were made on 31 march) are seen in full by others and if sufficient people feel enough pity, there maybe support for the disabled.
“Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are” Benjamin Franklin
“We should leave full membership of the EU and become an Associate Member”
Or, simply leave the EU and Join EFTA, it would take mere weeks to achieve:
http://conservativehome.blogs.com/files/eftaortheeu.pdf
Why do people define themselves as Lib Dems? Simple question with a lot of answers.
I’d argue that a good few of the answers would be of the “pointy headed” variety. More so than when you ask the same question to Tories or Labour members/supporters.
Therein lays the rub. As has been pointed out by more eloquent voices Lib Dem core concerns can seem like frippery in times of economic hardship.
Tying yourselves to the economic right will, however, not prove populist. It will prove that we all might as well vote Tory and have done with it.
“Jedibeeftrix”
Thank you for that. A very exciting Bruges Group article! A resolution to that effect at this year’s 126th Annual Liberal Party Assembly in Kidderminster would be good.
Vote Liberal! FOR leaving the European Union. FOR joining the European Free Trade Association. FOR creating in the UK greater equality of opportunity in education, health and the inheritance of wealth. Liberty, property and security for all! The positive side of populist protest!
Vote Liberal Democrat?. FOR the Euro – “when the time is right”? FOR a Federal Europe – “when the time is right”? – FOR – being treated like Greece!? Bah!
Apoligies for inaccuracy – the 126tth Annual LIberal Party Assembly will be at Wolverhampton, not Kidderminster, on Saturday 1st October 2011.
My pleasure Dane. 😉
@ Dean Clouston…which particular phone box in Wolverhampton?
Kelvin Colwill.
The Friends Meeting House. Bring your mobile.