Where do we go from here? Beyond the talk of electoral strategy and tactics, methods of campaigning and targeting, we need to look at what the purpose of the party.
Several people on these pages have reported that the party was clobbered by Tory scare tactics directed at a Labour-SNP coalition. If so, there’s only so much we can do about that, the actions of others. But we can have control over what the party is, what it stands for and what it should do in the future.
One is that image counts. Despite the electoral maths and rhetoric about the economic crisis in 2010, the party wasn’t a natural partner for the Tories. This caused us real problems when the party broke its pledge not to raise tuition fees. No amount of spin could overcome that. In future we need to honour our promises, however costly they are.
Another is the character of the party. Its rising vote share since 1988 has been based less on a core vote and more on being a party of protest. Even as the party abandoned equidistance after 1992 it attracted votes from those suspicious of New Labour and the Tories and wary of extremism of all kinds.
That changed in 2010 when we stopped being a party of protest and became a party of government. Ed Davey and Simon Hughes said in their concession speeches that voters were punishing us for being in the coalition. But analysts at the British Election Survey disagreed. On their election night blog they reported that less than a fifth credited the Lib Dems with either improving or weakening the economy in government. As they said: ‘How can you convince people to vote for you if they feel you have been irrelevant?’
This is telling when looking at the vote share: Labour and Conservatives saw little change in their share of the vote from 2010. Lib Dems, meanwhile, lost 15% from last time. Many of those votes will have gone to the SNP, Greens, even UKIP – all protest parties. There will also have been churn between Labour, Tories and Lib Dems, with former Lib Dem supporters opting for one of the two bigger national parties.
So where does this all take us? Despite the current rawness of the defeat, a time in opposition will be helpful to rehabilitate. But can and will we do it?
One question I have is about our ‘irrelevance.’ If we’re not a party of government but a party of protest, would we be satisfied with that? As a smaller party we can certainly punch above our weight at certain moments – as in a hung parliament. But those moments will be fleeting, only at the time of negotiations. That will be when we can get our best deal. After that we will be seen as the junior partner, our influence diminished. While this isn’t relevant now, given the majority government, it should be a lesson for the future – especially if the prospect of a fragmented party system in Parliament continues.
* Guy Burton is Assistant Professor in the School of Politics, History and International Relations at the University of Nottingham, Malaysia Campus. Between 2010 and 2012 he was a researcher at Birzeit University in the West Bank. Previously he was a researcher for the Liberal Democrats in Parliament and was a GLA candidate for the party in 2004.
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I think we should see ourselves as a party of opposition rather than of protest, as protest parties are purely two-dimensional. Look at UKIP and the Green Party – although they would argue otherwise their platform is build on a single issue. If we become purely a protest party we only feed into a negative voting cycle (I.e vote LibDem if you hate the Tories) and not on the key issues that should be important to all – the positive messages of promoting equality and fairness to all in society. We need to stay the course of being a national multi-issue party and ride out the storm rather than sell out for a quick-fix solution to a long term problem
Guy this is a thoughtful and helpful piece and deserves careful reflection.
Two quibbles now: the first small but actually significant.
You say we lost 15% of our vote share. Actually in starker terms we lost 65% of our vote compared with 2010.
The second is to ask you to think more carefully about this party of protest tag and to point you to Prof Alex Marsh’s blog, Alex’s Archives, http://www.alexsarchives.org/2015/05/liberalism-redux/ , because it contains a very good definition of our Liberalism and what this means for our activism.
He writes, “Liberalism was, is, and hopefully always will be a radical vision for society. But it more about the process than the destination. Liberalism is a restless energy. A restless energy to overcome the forces pushing for privilege and partiality. A restless energy directed at preserving a plural society.”
This is what the lost 4.5 million as well as our present supporters liked and knew about the Liberal Democrats; that restless energy.sometimes pushing for, sometimes preserving and always campaigning.
You may call this protest, I do. But it is something that does not stop when you enter government on our own or with partners as in Westminster in 2010. Our representatives in the Welsh Assembly did this, so too our MSPs, when both of these had responsibility for the administration, and so to did all our best council groups.
Being in GOvernment does not mean you need not push for and preserve, in fact you have to organise and recruit to and communicate about those campaigns all the more. Government is not done for people – for LIberals it is done WITH people.
That is why I equate Liberalism with campaigning. Not all campaigners are Liberals but all Liberals have to be campaigners, by the above definition.
THat is what we abandoned as we entered public office in Westminster or at least appeared to, so you cannot blame people who thought we were Liberals because of our restless campaigning suddenly doubting our Liberal credentials.
To loose 65% of our support, almost all our MPs MEPs MSPs AMs and thousands of councillors was not because we forgot that protest is the process and must be a constant one.
Last line ‘WAS because we forgot that protest is the process and must be a constant one. (obviously).
Of course the party of protest tag was a smear by those seeking to end the Steel, Ashdown, MacClellan, Kennedy, Campdell tradition of Liberal Action. It was a ‘step’ to power and a very costly one.
Thanks Guy, a better analysis than many.
However you repeat the old chestnut of —
“… If we’re not a party of government but a party of protest, would we be satisfied with that? ”
If you frame your question solely in terms of the Westminster Bubble you are in danger of getting a Daft answer.
It is possible to be a party of protest and a party of power. Power is not held exclusively in one corner of Westminster.
Working with people in their community to take power and use it does not require a pass to the House of Commons.
Like it or not our MPs are only slightly too numerous to fill a single taxi.
For the next five years Liberal Democrats who are serious about power need to challenge power outside of Westminster.
The illusions of being in power between 2010 and 2015 need to be put on one side.
To rebuild, the party needs to win back the trust of people where it really matters, in their communities.
Those communities may be geographical or social or economic or cultural or something else.
That is where the action will be until 2020.
Liberal Democrats are in danger of looking like a bunch of old bores crying over not being in Coalition.
We need to move on.
I agree with Bill le Breton.
A party that has integrity and is resisting the status quo to achieve change is a party of protest. As far as I’m concerned, the only reason party of protest became an issue was when the phrase was ideologically used by the previous leadership of the party to defeat opinions in the party that were outside their favour.
Agree with Alan H. Admittedly I am somewhat biased, having made the jump from supporter to member in 2010 precisely because we’d finally committed ourselves to being more than a party of protest on the national level. I think there is a difference between protest and opposition (and you’ll find even the official opposition sometimes finds itself acting as a protest party as I think it did under Ed Miliband). The fundamental difference is one of credibility and its end goal. A party of protest will tend to advocate an easy path and will make unrealistic pledges (including I’d say the fabled tuition fees one) without concerns for their actual implementation because ultimately it is considering only what will make it more popular now rather than what would actually be possible were the party to be in government (which should be any party’s ultimate end goal). In contrast a party of opposition is always thinking with regards to its policies about actually implementing them. It does not merely say the present government is wrong, but present what alternative government under it would be like. Having as its end goal, in our case, a radical, responsible and liberal government.
Obviously us actually being in government is much further away now than we might like, but we need to make sure that as we rebuild (and action on the ground, getting control of councils is indeed key to that rebuilding) we don’t become seen as a protest or an anti-X Party vote again. Otherwise we’re just setting ourselves up for a collapse again the next time a situation like 2010 comes around.
Messrs Tilley and Le Breton are right. It’s about campaigning.
I don’t know where this word “protest” came from. Or rather, I do know and it is not a pleasant thought. It came from people who wanted us to stop being a radical party with our own ideas and agendas which we campaign for, and to become a moderating party in which we act in a “responsible” way and have the role of preventing the other parties from doing more than half of what they want to do (whatever it is). Also a party that simply operates through the traditional means of the Westminster/Whitehall set up rather than working with people inside and outside to get the changes we want. And who had no idea of how to maintain a campaigning approach in government. And when the Coalition started it was these people who turned out to be calling the shots in the party.
No wonder we have lost around two-thirds of our Councillors in the past five years.
So “protest” was a word invented by these walking disasters to denigrate everyone who thought our purpose in government was to help promote our objectives and principles, not just water down those of the Tories, and that the way to do this was to continue campaigning.
Tony Greaves
‘So “protest” was a word invented by these walking disasters to denigrate everyone who thought our purpose in government was to help promote our objectives and principles’
Is that quite fair, Mr Greaves? I remember, after various stunning by-elections, people cheerfully saying they had voted LibDem as a protest vote, but had every intention of reverting to their usual allegiance come the General Election, and too often they did. So the term has been around for years.
There is a sense in which Liberal Democrats should , if true to their roots, be a Party that protests (rather than a Party of protest) in the Liberal tradition of challenging the rights of any accumulation of power whether this be global big business, organised religions or government at any level: EU, Westminster or local. We are a party who have been at the forefront of setting limits on the reach of powerful groups and defended individual liberties.
Protest, however, means too many things and includes voters who would as soon vote for any other smaller party. Our 2010 (and before) vote splits 5 ways: core Libs; soft Lib Dems; anti Labour tactical; anti Tory tactical and protest voters. By entering government in coalition we immediately lost the last two and as a consequence weakened support amongst the next two groups.
Mishandling tuition fees hit us hard and it became a totemic issue for opponents. I think this issue will dissipate and plans to reduce fees to £6000 will disappear from the Labour agenda. Those calling for a full apology have not thought it through: the only way to actually apologise would be to say that it was wrong to bring in the new fees structure and commit once again to scrapping fees. This would necessitate tax increases or government cuts elsewhere. In the terms of those calling for a full apology, nothing else would be meaningful. Far from putting a lid on the issue it would give it more mileage.
I am not happy with tuition fees, but a gripe I had and still have was that those in the leadership who agreed with the measures failed to strongly advocate the new system. Instead they left supporters who were at best lukewarm about the proposals to make a defence. This is one way it was mishandled, I also think we should have shelved the issue, but floated the new scheme as a suggestion and waited until Labour’s old scheme became more and more unsustainable before bringing in change. Unfortunately this approach would have led to University cuts and fewer students at university.
To regain seats, whether we like it or not we need to attract voters into all 5 groups I outlined above, however any illusions of the solidity of support will have been dispelled, but if we become a party of protest rather than a party that protests the consequence will simply be that we regain our illusions.
I think the future is taking the “Alex Salmond strategy” of making it clear that we are in politics for a purpose and not for ministerial seats. I thought it was going to be difficult to compete against him in Gordon as soon as I heard him say he would give up one of his salaries if he were elected. This was a bit of a different message to the Lib Dem one at the time: “Vote for us so we can go back into coalition government.”.
Having said that: I desperately want the party to be a party of government again, but we might have to take the long route. We should also work with like minded people in Labour and the Conservatives who broadly share our values.
On the Sunday politics last week Andrew Neil asked three journalists whether the Lib Dems were finished. Janan Ganesh said he thought the Lib Dems were probably over; Polly Toynbee said she thinks the Lib Dems are over because “they were always a protest party and now the Greens have taken that mantle (paraphrased) and Nick Watt said they can come back but “it might take 20 to 30 years and it’s got to be on the left and it’s got to be a protest party”.
So, clearly, the image of the Liberal Democrats as a “protest party” is rather ingrained and some journalists unprompted seem to think this is all the party is destined to be. I think they are wrong – no party has a history as rich as the Liberal Democrats or a philosophy as strong as ours. Yes, the Liberal Democrats might fail to come back, but I believe the dominant party of government in the future will be much closer to liberalism than conservatism or socialism. This is also what the past tells us: pro business, pro public services and pro equal rights.
My vote went to Plaid, after 20 years of supporting the Liberal Democrats and a decade before that of supporting the SDP/Alliance. Why did you lose my vote?
I don’t think it is so simple as the loss of the “party of protest” label, though I will come back to that. You lost my vote because the Coalition Agreement did not protect Lib Dem MPs from having to vote to hurt the poor, unemployed, disabled, the destitute, and to vote to have to ruin communities, destroy services and undermine charities. I have NO BLOODY IDEA why the Coalition Agreement meant the Lib Dems had to vote in favour of these things, maybe it was all rushed, maybe it was this Orange Book I now read so much about, but voting to do these things destroyed the Lib Dems not only as a party of protest but as one of left-wing progressive ideals.
Maybe it is a lesson learned, but I would have thought it would have been a lesson learned better before you did it!
And yes, I do think the only way back is to focus on the Party of Protest label. I make this point on my blog (see link) and point out that only a progressive alliance coming together to defeat Tory flagship illiberal policies can be the way back. If this alliance, perhaps even if it has to led by the SNP, can bring a No Confidence vote about in 18 months, then the Lib Dems can campaign on that record, can run their defeated incumbents, their almost victorious challengers, and GET THEIR SEATS BACK.
Jon Davies: I think Lib Dems were always going to lose your vote once they entered government and became associated with the hard decision that governments have to make. Of course that it was a coalition government in the midst of a severe economic depression made it that much easier to lose your vote.
If Plaid became a governing party, I think you would have to look elsewhere again. On the other hand, depending on your constituency, the actions of the government over the next five years might motivate you to vote tactically, in which case it would not necessarily be for a Lib Dem.
Martin, thank you for your reply. Respectfully, you don’t live where I do. If I lived in a larger city I perhaps would not have seen so harshly what the Coalition’s policies did to a poor Welsh town, struggling to get by. The charities and bodies set up by the council have almost all been closed down. Bedroom Tax takes thousands of pounds a week out of the economy but does not even give it to the county, but to London. Its not even as if the people penalised have any choice – all council properties were built as 2+ bedroom. I have spent 8 years volunteering at a local charity and in a few weeks we will close for good. The reasons are many, and not all national, but stealing our volunteers for Workfare, making our disabled volunteers have assessments that said if they volunteered then they weren’t disabled, and huge council cuts that cut our basic grant to shreds are three major reasons.
Why WOULD a social liberal party vote to take money off the poor, why would they force people to stop volunteering and work for free for businesses, why would they force disabled people to humiliate themselves at ATOS interviews that were not even final if they passed? Why would the Lib Dems do that?
That is the anger I had, and why I voted for Plaid.
Hate to be pessimistic , if possible after such a result . But don’t assume anything in terms of step-by-step recovery. If the eight seats held were contested again today , knowing what voters’ know now, you may not even hold those?
The real risk for a party with a representation numbering only 8 seats. Is that voting Lib Dem is seen as a wasted vote; much as it is for the Greens and Ukip, thwarting their advance . Be in no doubt this is an existential crisis for the party. I wish it well .
Please be clear, I see a real opportunity to fight back, and as the party I have always supported in one way or another, I would dearly love to see the Lib Dems fight back. I believe strongly that a lot of the core vote was lost in 2015 because, like me, whilst we would have liked to have supported our local MP, a good man standing up for local issues, national issues meant we could not IN GOOD CONSCIENCE vote for the Liberal Democrats. Please understand that! Voters are not slaves or subordinates, in the final analysis our vote needs to be won. When we can look around and see devastation, we lose faith even in a party that has defined our political beliefs since we were teenagers.
The big advantage that the Lib Dems, the Greens and Plaid have over UKIP is that they are all PROGRESSIVE parties, not regressive parties looking backwards.
But in the current dire circumstances, I don’t think that any of them can do more than be a vocal and visual voice of protest UNLESS they work together with the larger progressive left. I know that Scottish Lib Dems are appalled at the idea of ceding leadership on any issue to the SNP, but the Lib Dems are no longer in government, and the SNP have as many MPs now as the Lib Dems had before 2015. Only by working together can a progressive alliance challenge the Tories and stand any chance of bring them down.
Waiting 5 years is no answer. The Lib Dems have to fight every inch of the way hand in hand with the other progressive left parties. Anything else is to condemn themselves to irrelevance.
@Jon Davies
Do you think that the Lib Dems should have ignored the offer of a coalition in 2010? If so, then maybe a minority Tory government would have been the outcome. Would that have been the better option?
@ Voter. There was no need for the LibDem MPs to gleefully front those policies that were the foundation stones for what will happen next or wave their order papers supporting Osborne. I blame your MPs and cohorts for what happened, there is nobody else to blame. Everyone else knew what the outcome was going to be. When pointing this out we were called trolls. Yet there is still so much denial that people like me who did vote for you in 2010 believe that you would do the same again.
I think that we need to listen carefully to what Jon Davies is saying as I suspect that he reflects the views of many who have previously supported the party but now deserted us. As part of the coalition we voted for a number of Tory policies which were or should have been an anathema for Liberals. It may well be that many of our MP’s were having to hold their noses whilst they did this but vote they did. I suspect that one of the reasons why this happened as often as it seemed to was that the parliamentary party, and in particular our ministers, seemed to lose touch with the grassroots members. Our ministers seemed to accept the traditional way of working as a minister even though it was wholly inappropriate for a coalition government. If I wrote to a Lib-Dem minister, in my capacity as a senior Lib-Dem councillor, then I would expect to get a reply from that minister. Instead too often I found that it was passed to a Tory minister to deal with because it was the Tory who was responsible for the policy and this is what the ministerial handbook said should happen. That would be fine in a one party government but not in a coalition one.
I believe that we will come back and I will work hard for that to happen, and if people start to vote for us again as a protest then I’m happy with that. The definition of liberalism that Bill le Britton quotes has plenty of room for protest and protesters within it. Losing that campaigning and radical approach was part of the problem. If voters were asked n the last few weeks what our party stood for then I suspect that many would have struggled to give a good answer. We need to rediscover our radical, campaigning core and once we get that we can go forward quickly. I don’t see any reason why we can’t quickly get back to the habit of winning by elections with massive swings like we used to.
Last week I lost my council seat by six votes. I aim to win it back next time. It will be far easier to do this if I am representing a party known for its strength in campaigning and its commitment to protecting individuals, communities and our environment rather than just as a party that tries to keep the others located in the centre ground.
@Jon Davies ‘Why WOULD a social liberal party vote to take money off the poor, why would they force people to stop volunteering and work for free for businesses, why would they force disabled people to humiliate themselves at ATOS interviews that were not even final if they passed? Why would the Lib Dems do that?’
I suspect that most LibDems did not see the above as desirable ends, but unfortunately did not ensure enough was done to repair the gaping holes in the safety net so that the most vulnerable did not fall through. I’m sure that you would agree, though, that something needs to be done about the welfare system. I know that most of it is benefits to older people, but the main thing I can think of that should be comparatively easy, as far as acceptability is concerned, is cutting winter heating allowances to pensioners living on the Costa Brava and suchlike warm places, though I believe there is some preliminary work required to make that legal.
It is perhaps worth remembering that the Labour Party were also keen on workfare, for example, making highly qualified and experienced unemployed people fold clothes in a charity shop for their benefits, with no positive outcome. Assuming that they were not simply being evil, it suggests that changing the welfare system is not as easy as one might think, though that is no excuse for not sitting down and working out how to do so.
You mention the SNP; they, despite their anti-austerity rhetoric, I suspect that were they to become in charge of Scottish welfare, they too would find it difficult to do away with all the dreadful aspects that you have identified, at least in the short term. The Scottish Government’s defence of the council-tax freeze, which disproportionately benefits the top bands (though at last they are consulting on a replacement), and protecting free university education at the expense of college places, also benefiting the better-off, plus refusal to use the tax-varying powers which Holyrood already had until they let them lapse, does not suggest a progressive party, unfortunately for your suggestion.
Among Clegg’s many failings, the biggest has to be not demanding PR for local elections . That would have offered a clear route back. FPTP was and remains the only real enemy.
The party as a ‘party that protests’ rather than a ‘party of protest’ makes sense to me. I remember reading a few days ago, I think it was Richard Kemp’s article about the role of party groups of various sizes. We are now firmly in the smallest category described in it and the realistic, sensible and strategically sound role in that category is to be an awkward squad raising uncomfortable points that help to make a case justifying our presence at all.
Beyond that, Jon Davies is broadly right, and the rest of us need to stop challenging him and people like him to consider what might have happened in 2010. Apart from anything else, such arguments are backwards facing and we must move on if we are to rebuild.
We also need to get past the angry tribalistic response to the SNP and to a lesser extent Plaid Cymru. The Alliance in Northern Ireland exists as a Union-neutral political voice for liberalism, devolved government and peaceful community relations, in a country where the nationalists and unionists go further than anything seen in Scotland or Wales so far. We perhaps have something we could learn from them.
Thank you all for the comments, especially Bill le Breton, John Tilly and Tony Greaves, whose points this response is directed towards.
Bill le Breton: I take your point about the figures; maths was never my strong point!
I completely agree that if the party focuses solely on Westminster (or elected bodies including Scotland, Wales – even councils) it will remain irrelevant. It needs to get beyond the leading circle’s preoccupation with being ‘responsible’ and become a campaigning party. I don’t think that this the party abandoned the latter only in the last five years; even in opposition we wanted to seen as safe, reliable. My recollection during the 2001-05 Parliament was that on the main issue – the Iraq war – the party’s grassroots rather than the leadership, was in the lead.
But what should the party campaign on? I’ve read a lot on the site this week about articulating liberal values and principles, but these need to be distilled into concrete messages. In 2003 it was rejecting a unilateral war of aggression. In 2010 it was about tuition fees and burden it would place on young people. And today? There are so many places to start: protecting the Human Rights Act, devolution, preventing cuts which will remove (health, education, employment opportunities, placing checks on government surveillance (a la Snowden).
These issues don’t belong to only Lib Dems though. So campaigning needs to be rethought. Revisiting community politics in its original (radical) form would be a way forward. That means moving away from a focus on community politics only at election times. It means making common cause with various other groups, joining with them in protests, direct action… It would be a way of reconnecting Lib Dems with the wider public and ensuring that it is a meaningful party of (ongoing) protest (rather than protest at election time).
I think it is feasible that the Liberal Democrats could and are very well placed to be ADVOCATES of participism, so that they are countering and holding the government to account, according to principles of direct participatory democracy and replacing economic and social competition with cooperation.
Guy Burton: “Ed Davey and Simon Hughes said in their concession speeches that voters were punishing us for being in the coalition. But analysts at the British Election Survey disagreed. On their election night blog they reported that less than a fifth credited the Lib Dems with either improving or weakening the economy in government.”
No, that’s faulty logic. Less than a fifth of the public thought the Lib Dems had significantly influenced the way the Conservatives had handled the economy. But, all of the public knew that it was the Lib Dems who had chosen to give the Conservatives the job to do! The Lib Dems could have stood neutral, or they could have sought to prevent a Conservative Government, but they chose to support Conservative-led government, and to join it. Then, in the view of more than four-fifths of the public, they had no significant influence within that government.
So that’s why voters could, and did, punish the Lib Dems for being in the coalition. Those voters who liked the way the Tories run an economy, voted Tory. Those voters who didn’t like the way the Tories run an economy, sought to vote for a party who convincingly argued that they would do things differently. The Lib Dems had little attraction to either kind of voter.
Definition of ‘participism’, please, preferably with examples.
Jane Ann Liston: “‘So “protest” was a word invented by these walking disasters to denigrate everyone who thought our purpose in government was to help promote our objectives and principles’
Is that quite fair, Mr Greaves? I remember, after various stunning by-elections, people cheerfully saying they had voted LibDem as a protest vote, but had every intention of reverting to their usual allegiance come the General Election, and too often they did. So the term has been around for years.”
After 5 years of real, actual experience of government as a part of the coalition surely the “UK Liberal Democratic Party” has ascended past the worthless role of “protest” party (in the sense of simply collecting votes at by-elections as a way of signalling discontent with the other bigger parties). This is now a party with depth of talent and professional development; it can either build on these attributes or implode.
To elucidate their vision for a new society, advocates of participism categorize their aspirations into what they term a “liberating theory”.
Liberating theory is a holistic framework for understanding society that looks at the whole of society and the interrelations among different parts of people’s social lives. Participism groups human society into four primary “spheres”, all of which are set within an international and ecological context, and each of which has a set of defining functions:
◾The political sphere: policy-making, administration, and collective implementation.
◾The economic sphere: production, consumption, and allocation of the material means of life.
◾The kinship sphere: procreation, nurturance, socialisation, gender, sexuality, and organisation of daily home life.
◾The community sphere: development of collectively shared historical identities, culture, religion, spirituality, linguistic relations, lifestyles, and social celebrations.
Guy Burton 17th May ’15 – 4:06pm
I remember a rather successful councillor from East End of London called Eric Flounders.
Against all the advice and traditional party wisdom about polling day organisation, he said that if he had done his job properly in his ward in Tower Hamlets he did not need a poling day organisation taking numbers and rushing round knocking on doors because he knew his community would turnout and vote for him.
The annoying thing was (for those of us who do rush around on the day) in that year he won with an enormous majority.
Instead of getting up before dawn delivering last minutes leafets and knocking on the doors of supporters, he stayed in bed until the afternoon and went to the count to see the hundreds of votes stacking up for him.
As you say —
“… Revisiting community politics in its original (radical) form would be a way forward. That means moving away from a focus on community politics only at election times. It means making common cause with various other groups, joining with them in protests, direct action… It would be a way of reconnecting Lib Dems with the wider public and ensuring that it is a meaningful party …”
The worst possible thing for the party and for a new leader would be to keep harking back to the Coalition years.
Norman Lamb, if you are reading this — take note.
from the article
“Several people on these pages have reported that the party was clobbered by Tory scare tactics directed at a Labour-SNP coalition. If so, there’s only so much we can do about that”
Well here are my ideas on this.
First, you need to be aware of the concerns of people and then you need to either convince them that they are wrong about Labour, or say that you would only prop up a Labour government under certain specific conditions.
As an outsider, it appears to me that Clegg was not interested in reaching out because he felt that the people were locked in already. Lord Oakeshott warned about the danger to the party but it seems that neither the party nor Clegg were willing to listen.
Guy, thanks for your very thoughtful reply and the challenge it sets to us all.
I rather think that non-Tories all face a similar problem. I have been interested in Brad DeLOng’s recent conclusion that **RIGHT Neoliberalism** has reestablished its dominance on both sides of the Atlantic with its claim that “social democracy (is) one huge mistake–that it created a North Atlantic of takers who mooched off the makers. It holds that if we got rid of social democracy, we would have a utopia because the makers wouldn’t have to carry the takers on their backs and the takers would shape up–or if the takers did not shape up, serve them right! The moochers would then wallow in their much deserved squalor and misery. And the makers would not have to, as they do now, suffer the pain of watching the moochers live tolerable lives.”
The macro political challenge for non-Tories is therefore to re-establish the claim for Liberalism and Social Democracy which (again borrowing from DeLong): 1. accepts that market mechanisms–properly-regulated market mechanisms–are more likely than not a better road to social democratic ends . and that 2. convinces powerful influences that without social democracy and social liberalism underpinning a market economy and preserving a space for private property and private enterprise, communities will divide and strife increase, as haves retreat to ‘gated communities’ and havenots take to the streets.
We know what happened under 18 years of Tory rule 79/97, and the extensive rebuilding of social and community capital that was required after it, but we also know that the ‘permission’ that Blair (and Ashdown) won, to undertake that reconstruction, has been lost, has been squandered, has been traduced and has to be regained.
Can it be regained? Will it take 18 years or longer? Last time (in the mid90s) it really only happened when both the people and business lost confidence in the Tories being the best economic managers.
That illumination began with Black Wednesday. Who can say what will bring it about next time? If the Tories were seen to have forced the UK to the Brexit door that might be of similar consequence to our foolish entry into the ERM in 1990(?) and our expensive, chaotic departure from it in 1992.
‘Party of protest’ is a dismissive tag created by the big two parties. Maybe it is possible that people voted for us because of our policies on tuition fees, electoral reform and the environment.
Guy,
you say “One question I have is about our ‘irrelevance.” The economist came out with an endorsement for a continuation of the coalition before this electionhttp://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21650113-despite-risk-europe-coalition-led-david-cameron-should-have-second-term-who.
It’s post election analysis offers an explanation for the party’s meltdown as being a loss of relevance and a failure to enunciate a clear message in a crowded field. Coalition government with the Tories previously removed the party of protest raison detre’. The key points of the analysis are that the other mainstream parties have swallowed much of the Libdem ideology e.g. the Conservative embrace of causes like gay marriage and New Labour’s absorption of much of the Liberal agenda. Even the SNP is pro-gay marriage and pro-immigration.
In short, the papers argument is that Mr. Clegg lost not because liberalism is under threat but because it has become mainstream.
Where do we go from here? As the economist analysis suggest, Liberalism is not the sole preserve of the Liberal Democrats. It is embedded in western-style democracy. Even Douglas Carswell, the sole MP representing 4m UKIP voters espouses Gladstonian liberalism as a political and economic ideology.
The Liberal party merged with the SDP for a specific purpose. To provide a modern political alternative to class based politics grounded in Liberalism and social democracy. There remains an urgent need to a party that can protect the rights of the individual from the overbearing interference of the state and those who control wealth and land; and that is committed to delivering a social justice that rejects the authoritarian centralisation of socialist state control.
If we are not a party that continues to aspire to that historic mission, then we would indeed become an irrelevance.
As Bill Le Breton notes above, campaigning is the key. Talking about Liberal values along with every other party is meaningless unless your words and actions are seen to make a beneficial difference to the lives of the great majority of ordinary people.
I never heard Tories or Labour telling folk not to vote for use because we were a party of protest. This tag was invented by Lib Dems to beat ourselves with.
We are not a party of protest, we are a party of ideas.
From the welfare state onwards, Liberals have always tried to put forward non-doctrinaire, not left, not right, policies that have instinctive support from the electorate. Time and again, Labour and Tories have nicked a LD policy and presented it as their own a few months later.
The most popular parts of coalition policy were all straight lifts from our manifesto and didnt even get a mention in the Tories.
However difficult coming back is going to be, we are at least now in the position where we can once again tease out policies that resonate with the public, and not have to worry about their immediate popularity. A couple of years into this disatrous majority government (who now have to try and deliver things they thought would fail in coalition) they will be exposed for the incompetent frauds they are
David Allen: Thank you for the comment. The British Election Survey’s statement that only around 20% of voters thought Lib Dems had had a significant influence on the coalition suggests that four-fifths didn’t. In other words, the Lib Dems’ presence made no difference. Whether right or wrong, that’s the perception. So they suggest that Lib Dems weren’t a primary calculation for voters. That’s my point about the party’s strongest position was immediately after the election, when they had bargaining chips in the negotiations. After, less so. Maybe another form of governance might have sustained that influence, perhaps confidence and supply?
Joe Bourke: I read that article in the Economist as well. It has superficial appeal, but it assumes that the Lib Dems’ only pitch was being ‘liberal’. I don’t think any one political party has a monopoly on this, but if we dig deeper we find that different groups/parties have varying notions of what the label means. Tories, Labour and Lib Dems are all broadly committed to the market (economic liberalism) although as Bill le Breton points out, there were variations regarding commitment to regulation. Socially, some battles appear won (e.g. gay marriage), but others remain outstanding (freedom to privacy in our electronic communications?). What will be important is to identify those issues where Lib Dems offer a distinctive alternative that offers ‘more’ freedom/opportunity than the others (I recall the manifesto a few elections back were ‘green proofed’; why not a similar ‘liberal proofing’?).
In campaigning for freedom/opportunity, etc, the Lib Dems needn’t do so in isolation. There are lots of groups in society that want the same. If the party is to have an existence in the country (as opposed to at election time) it must make common cause with these different groups and interests, building coalitions locally, nationally, internationally.
I dunno about a party of protest, I think really. the Lib Dems need to win back trust and understand that MPs are representatives. Nothing about the people voting Lib Dem in to 2010 suggested they wanted a Coalition with the conservatives the party shouldn’t have gone into one. The drop off in support was almost immediate. It’s as simple as that. The SNP took over in Scotland because they have guiding principles and they stick to them. But firs and foremost they reflect the people who vote for them, They know that they can’t take people’s votes and then pretend they are voting for something else. That’s why the Lib Dems lost and it’s why Labour lost. Scotland and its why Britain will break up, people have realised you don’t have to vote for the same old same old.
At least 3 potential campaigns have already emerged. The obvious one is against the further welfare cuts which will target those who cannot easily fight back. The second, the removal of legal aid to the weakest members of society, and third – the potential to join with other protest parties for a fair voting system. The range of protests will increase rapidly during this first year of parliament – we are going to be very busy!
Surely we are a party which wants change. The only way to achieve that is to constantly question and campaign against things which are unfair and wrong. To some extent that involves protesting but that does not make us solely a party of protest. Many of us have attended demonstrations which could be considered to be protest, such as the march against S28 for those who can remember it and the outcome was that it was repealed. I think we should be a party of ambition especially for those people whose ambition is not recognised or supported at the moment.
Bill le Breton ( quoting Brad DeLong ) writes :
“It,… [ RIGHT Neoliberalism ], holds that if we got rid of social democracy, we would have a utopia because the makers wouldn’t have to carry the takers on their backs and the takers would shape up–or if the takers did not shape up, serve them right!”
This is an interesting comment, and is a worrying social shift, which has also occurred to me, and seems to dovetail into the *Shy Tory* concept. What if society has, quietly,.. with no prior warning, ..subdivided into those who are ‘doing OK’, and those who are ‘NOT doing OK’? But worse than that,.. What if the ‘doing OK’s’, have ‘shrugged’, and decided to look the other way, and ignore the plight of the ‘NOT doing OK’s.’?
“The macro political challenge for non-Tories is therefore to re-establish the claim for Liberalism and Social Democracy”
But the problem seems to be that all the ‘non-Tories’ parties are struggling to identify who they represent, and worse than that, the choice of anything ‘left wing’, now appears out of bounds, leaving ‘right wing’ or ‘centre ground’ as the only (voter acceptable), options. Could it be, that ‘left wing’ has died, and that even *protestation* and has been consigned to a state of impotent ‘shoe gazing’ as the vulnerable become permanently excluded? Have *Shy Tories* been supplemented with *ambivalent ‘shoe gazing’ Social Democrats*?
We rarely these days (in the era of now) ever look at history and how the movement has evolved over the years. 100 years ago this month if I recall Liberal PM Asquith entered into a coalition with the Conservatives effectively bringing to an end the last wholly liberal Gvmt in Britain. That coalition and many of the decisions made were to lead to the eventual downfall of liberalism in the UK and its replacement as one of the biggest forces by labour. It’s not to say there weren’t some good decisions made by DLG and the rest but something happened which created a schism at the heart of liberslism. But it didn’t go away. It survived through many tough times. Let’s look back at how our great tradition has endured and learn some lessons before we despair too much and throw the baby out with the bath water.
To suggest it’s a choice between “party of protest” and “party of government” is to beg the question, especially since they both a capable of meaning different things as they appear to even in this one thread.
For instance, what does “party of government” actually mean. I spoke to a Lib Dem voting friend who lives just outside Taunton a few days after the election. She interpreted it as prostitution – “we want to keep the limos” – and switched to Tory. Was she wrong?
Then again, what does “protest” mean ‘none-of-the-above’ or ‘campaigning’? For as long as I can remember around half the votes the party ever got in a national election were in the ‘none-of-the-above’ category which is why the vote was always so soft and relying on it was always going to lead to problems once in power. In opposition voters could project onto the Lib Dems almost whatever positions they wanted and that the Party often pandered to that which is why opponents so often observed that we said one thing to one group, something else to another. I in government such ambiguities are resolved most found out that they were wrong, that the Lib Dem leadership (though not the members) were just another bunch of Thatcherites – see Jon Davies’ comments above.
What about a “party of principle”? I sensed long before the election that, after decades of electoral disappointment, influential people within the Lib Dems had moved subtly from a position of “we want to change things” to “we want a share in power”. The first is to serve the nation, the second only for the careerists who have now been found out. Contrast that with both the SNP and UKIP; irrespective of whether you think their positions are sensible or snake oil, it can’t be denied that they have been big winners with of this last election.
Guy, good article.
I echo Jon. Davis.
For a party that wants PR, which would inevitivatbly lead to more coalition governments, 2010 was an opportunity to show how a coalition government could work in practice. Instead, we got Tory light. That’s my perception anyway.
Jon is quite correct that Libdem MPs should never have voted for anything that goes against liberal principles.
Instead, the coalition should have focused on compromising on policy content, not on supporting eachother’s policies with (it appeared) no challenge.
Bedroom tax is a good example. (I appreciate that I don’t know exactly how the Libdems voted and would appreciate if anyone could steer me to a source with the facts).
What I perceived probably happened is that the lib dems agreed to vote for it in exchange for Tories votes on something else.
What SHOULD have happened is that the Tories wanted to introduce a bedroom tax. Libdems should have said, “ok, what exactly are you trying to achieve”. Tory hypothetical response, “we’re tired of taxpayers funding benefit claimants’ ‘wants’ rather than their ‘needs’ – we want to reduce the welfare bill and only provide the basics”. LibDem’s should then have said, “ok, let’s think up some ideas that can achieve that without hurting anyone”.
That’s a coalition government that I would have been happy to see in again,.
I think the best future position for the party is this:
Broad party aims that the whole party agrees on and will never go against.
Individual candidates committing to fight for specific policy. The manifesto would be a list of these policies, each with a candidates name against them. This would focus the electorate on individuals and individual policies rather than on the party. All other candidates could publicly endorse the fellow candidates they support, and rally around them, campaigning for them and using social media to rally support.
I think one if the problems with the current system is that people vote for the party leader rather than the candidate. To gain momentum again under FPTP, the local electorate must have belief that their individual candidate is going to make a difference with their 1 seat. I think a lot of great MPs and candidates lost as a result of a protest against the party’s decision to go into coalition. Candidates shouldn’t feel they have to tow a party line. In fact, I’m not sure there should even be a complex party line for a party that is unlikely to get a majority – after all, how can you ever keep complex promises. Make the party itself into essentially a coalition of independent candidates with mutual aims and only one or two specific pledges in common, for example, electoral reform.
I want to be a member of a party that aspires to govern the country using Liberal principles as its guiding principle. Our electoral system is not kind to small parties, or those not of the binary spectrum. I agree with much of Joe’s commentary, that liberal principles are somewhat embedded in either of the two ‘main’ parties, economic ones with the Tories, social ones with Labour.
I also have a rather simple analysis, which is that to be in power de facto generate opprobrium and dissent from a sizeable number of the voting populace simply because it requires making choices in which one group of people are losers, and that in our complex world easy choices (for or against equal marriage, national sovereignty…) are few and far between.
The next five years are going to be hard, not least because the political choices that we will face will mean some of those people that we have recently acquired will be lost. However I value the discussions that we as a party are able to have, and, importantly, am willing to accept decisions once reached if they are reflective of our collective will.
What evidence is there that our growth since 1988 was largely as a party of protest? To answer this, one would need to define clearly what was meant by “a party of protest”. You could argue that if Labour grew originally on the back of horror about poverty, that it was a party of protest. Clearly many Tories don’t like benefits claimants or immigrants. Does that make them a party of protest? To men it’s only meaningful if (1), the party does not offer credible solutions to the thing protested about and (2), if the causes that draw people to vote for it are disparate, with no unifying theme, or (3) if many of the party’s voters are disgruntled with no clear ideas of who to blame or what could be done. Yes, because we were no in power nationally and because our policies were relatively little known, we attracted some dissatisfied people whose beliefs had little to do with ours. But contrary to Guy’s opening statement, by the early years of this century a clear profile of the typical Lib Dem voter was emerging – more pro-diversity than the average Labour voter, for example.
Yes, a share of power has lost us protest voters, but much more seriously, it’s lost us many people whose beliefs would seem to make them natural Liberal Democrats. Had most of our vote in 2010 been a protest vote, you would have expected most of it (in England at least) to go to UKIP, but all analyses I’ve seen suggest the Lib Dem to UKIP shift was never more than small: UKIP took mostly from the Tories and in some areas, Labour.
Oh, what a typo – not “to men”, but TO ME!
@Guy Burton 18th May ’15 – 1:39am
“The British Election Survey’s statement that only around 20% of voters thought Lib Dems had had a significant influence on the coalition suggests that four-fifths didn’t. In other words, the Lib Dems’ presence made no difference. ”
No, no, no – you’re missing David Allen’s point again: significant influence is not the same as difference. In an unpleasant marriage one person might make all the decisions – but there wouldn’t be a marriage without two participants.
I’m very pleased to see many people getting behind the “party of protest” tag and asking what precisely is meant by it.
We may have been shipping in, shipping out quite a lot of voters in the Ashdown/Kennedy years and on to 2010, but if you look at the profile of Liberal Democrat voters by the end of the period, it was pretty clear: our voters were more pro-diversity and pro-civil-liberties than anyone else, broady in favour of redistributing income from the rich to the poor and moderate on tax and spend. In other words, most people who voted Liberal Democrat were basically Liberals. Our problem was that a considerable number of people like this voted for someone else. from time to time. What’s happened since is that we’ve alienated most of our natural voters to the extent that some say they’ll never vote for us again. We’ll see. But to turn the tide – and avoid extinction – the first task is to reconnect with these natural Liberals, who are heavily represented among young voters.
Simon Banks: “Our problem was that a considerable number of people like this voted for someone else. from time to time. What’s happened since is that we’ve alienated most of our natural voters to the extent that some say they’ll never vote for us again.”
I wouldn’t be sure about that. In fact, the flexibility of such voters makes it a bit more likely that they’ll come back, if they are given something to come back to.
The damage was done by the newspapers since the 1970s. Libdems was seen as infantile (the wild child of politics ie. the radical side) and promiscuous (as the connotation in its name is liberal: loose moral ie. freedom) by the common mass and there was no-one countering this onslaught even up until now.
And the media has honed in on any behaviour which reinforces this image of infantilism and loose morals. For example, Nick Clegg saying he didn’t want to be Prime Minister only reinforced the infantile side and the behaviour of ministers (Alistair Carmichael) doesn’t help.
This is what the Conservative (the grown up parent) and Labour (the serious sibling) used as a strategy in their elections. And our strategy should have been to create the family theme which could have countered this political psychological element.
And also the fact that there seems to be a backward looking attitude, that means the Libdems are seen as not being relevant to modern politics and should be confined to the history books.
Nothing has shifted this view, because of a crap PR Campaign, that doesn’t make any on going in-roads to being a change of perception to the mainstream voters via the media. The media treat the Libdems in a very patronizing tone in delivery, and the Libdems has let it get away with it since the 1970s to-date.