The hard part of coalition is over. As the result in Bradford shows, three things are now true. Our Conservative colleagues have finally overreached themselves. Labour is now known to be as ineffective as it really is. And there is a howling void of dissatisfaction where our support used to be. The country has changed since 2010, and we must move to capture the mood, or we are done. Key to this is winning the votes of students, the young, and the disenfranchised.
We have, however we colour it, had a hard time. Most of our policy ‘wins’, like the tax refund and pupil premium, are in many cases tempered by the impact of the cuts. Nick and the leadership chose a strategy of proving our ability to govern by prioritising the Coalition’s survival, holding our noses through tuition fees, the 50p rate reduction, the EU veto etc. We watched our credibility with our student base and our PR hopes melt away. Trading much of our dignity for stability is not the strategy I would have chosen, but I believe that it has done much of the job the leadership wanted it to do. The public will not write us off as incapable of governing anymore, but we now face the opposite risk. Coalition is pulling us so far into Cameron’s orbit that we are viewed as Tories-lite. We are becoming establishment hacks, and there is precious little respect left for that.
A professional, cohesive government was what the country needed. Now it needs turbulence. We can stop digging in with Cameron, and start fighting him loudly, and in public. We need to make radical demands, to be implemented as soon as possible. There is no point making it to 2015 if we look like any other Westminster party with a laundry list of achievements nobody cares about.
A good start would be publicly shooting down internet snooping, an issue that we have shown surprising restraint in so far. We must, absolutely must, win back the students: without their votes we can’t make a difference. Rebuilding trust on campuses will take time, but it can be done – a public apology, for the pledge if not the policy, will go a long way to sending the message that we are still open and honest with the public. A long-term solution for university funding, fees, and intake must be found. We must look into seriously revising drugs policy: decriminalisation is an idea whose time has come. Galloway has shown in Bradford that there is no stomach left for Afghanistan. I believe that we should seriously consider scrapping Trident after all, an incredible waste of money at a time like this.
Land Value Tax must get a hearing. We have to take green policy further, and with blueprints for decarbonising whole cities in a cost-effective way, we just need the political will to make that happen. The banks, as our manifesto says, must be broken up, and a half-hearted Osborne promise to do it next Parliament is not enough. We need to take some of the money out of London’s Zone 1, and take it to the country.
We’ve been in government like the consummate pros the public thought Lib Dems could never be, now it is time to be in government like the brilliant, radical amateurs they voted for. If the coalition cannot stand up to the stress of a more belligerent approach, then we can leave it. It has done its job. Winning skirmishes here and there isn’t enough anymore. Now is the time to be bold, or else irrelevant, and we must start by reconnecting with students.
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17 Comments
I applaud your optimism. I agree with your analysis of the past and of the risk for the future. Where we diverge is my belief that it is now too late for the actions you suggest to make enough of a difference by 2015, let alone by the start of next month when the next wave will break over us in local elections.
We have so spectacularly betrayed the faith put into us by students that they will rightly be “once bitten, twice shy”. How would we prove our good faith to them? By signing a pledge??
We have disaffected many of our traditional supporters – teachers and other public employees among them – by thinking coalition localism means what Liberal Democrats mean by localism (as opposed to Tory “small government”) and pushing through policies that attack their pensions and jobs.
We have attacked the poor through punitive benefit changes in such a way that we are pushing those with “social democratic” principles further towards Labour.
What Gorgeous George has just shown is that centralised party machines cannot operate effectively in changing terrain, yet our party has just released a batch of regional Local Election Manifestos that no one on the ground knew were coming, let alone had any input to.
We have a huge amount of humble pie to eat before we might get trusted again. I fear I may not live to see it.
For once, somebody has managed to write a whole article without recourse to those deadly rose-tinted spectacles! This is a very welcome dose of realism.
If we can’t adopt this agenda, or something like it – what are we there for?
If we can’t reconnect with our natural supporters – what chance have we in 2015?
But can our present leadership hack it?
And what do you suggest we do differently in government? Those little skirmishes you refer to are exactly the victories you’re calling for, but you’ve discounted them because you’re raising the bar. We have a coallition agreement: that’s the big victory. The rest is ensuring we push the Tories on everything they’ve agreed to, but they have the same right to push us to do the things we agreed to, as well, including a speedier reduction of the deficit.
In Afghanistan, the UK already has an exit policy. On internet survaillance, the party is already fighting well. A green investment bank is in the works: more “little victories”.
As a recent graduate, I’m happy to say that students are not a bloc. The Student Union is an pompous, overblown, self-important institution which appropriates members only through a monopoly on student services and a legacy of institutions where naivety, posturing self sacrafice, and disingenous indignity are encouraged as virtues. Anyone at university with a brain understands the difference between tax-and-spend and growth through marketisation: those who support liberalism will support us, as those who support socialism are still doggedly indentured to the Labour party, unless they’ve defected to the Greens (and why woudl liberals wants votes from people so out of step with the ideology?). We are not a party which supports the limitation of students through arbitrary targets, quotas and caps: we support giving anyone who wants to go the means to go, rather than restricting educational enfranchisement to the few lucky enough to go to historically great schools frequented largely by those who are already of means: that’s why even our left party supports student fees.
We should stop obcessing over capturing the protest base: they can’t propel us into government, and if they won’t appreciate it if we ever win a majority. As a party, we need to move on with this obcession with our own innocence, and stop feeling guilty for doing the proper thing. We also need to come to terms with the limitations of coallition and the limitations of controling so little of the Commons, which would limit us even if we were partnered with Labour. If we are limited by anything, it’s a lack of party funding, an anachronistic campaigning system (which has its own advantages, alongside the disadvantages of being unable to take advantage of mass-media), and a geographically indistinct voter base.
Only one choice, if the party really, really wants to take the initiative…..cross the floor and call an end to this coalition. The electorate may, and I stress may, then start to reconnect with the party. Popularity is at an all time low, no one has any faith any longer and May will be an embaressment. Do not think Bradford is in any way indicative of how Labour is ‘ineffective’ as you say. George Galloway is an enigma. As far as respect go, had it been any other candidatye they would have lost their deposit.
Your ‘policy wins’ as stated are merely the teaser given by the tories to keep the coalition in existance so they can plough on with their idealogical policies, robbing the poor to feed the rich…to watch it all unfold disgusts me beyond belief. As for the public apology to the students…it won’t wash, they have been lost now for more than one generation, as I beleive the rest of the electorate. I could go on, but the direction of the party leaves me so angry and as most of my posts don’t get past moderation it would appear we don’t want to face up to the truth !
Toby MacDonnellApr 06 – 12:17 pm……..(and why woudl liberals wants votes from people so out of step with the ideology?)……………….
Would this be the ideology ‘pre’ or’ post’ 2010?
The one thing students, the young & the disenfranchised have in common is that few of them vote. A strategy based on the votes of people who dont , mostly vote seems odd to me.
The local elections are in 4 weeks, I think our losses will be much less than last year, we will see then how rose-tinted my glasses are.
@Tony
I think what you’re missing is that you, as I am, are a young person interested in distinctions between liberalism and socialism. And that means that you’re completely out of step with other young people.
The average young person (or, indeed, the average anyone) does not think of themselves as socialist or a liberal or a conservative or anything else. They have various opinions about particular issues and will vote mainly on the basis of which party/candidate seems to offer the best deal for them and is competent and in tune with their values.
I can tell you right now that the vast majority of people in this country do not consider us in tune with their values (just look at polling by a multitude of different pollsters if you don’t believe me), On tuition fees, while most students, when the new system is explained to them, might consider it a better deal, they see the issue, first and foremost, as an issue where one party made cast iron promises to them and broke them. It’s not the change in fees they’ll think about in voting but the perceived betrayal of trust.
On all those little wins you mention: so what?
On the economy, on welfare, on the NHS and now, potentially, on civil liberties, the narrative believed by most people is that we are either merely limiting the tories slightly, or being taken for a ride by them, or are tory-lite.
Right or wrong that’s the perception and we have to tackle it. And the way to tackle it is not the disastrous way we’ve been doing things so far.
On civil liberties in the past week we’ve seen utterly illiberal and authoritarian proposals. Our response to them as a party was our leaders initially supporting the proposals and then backtracking slightly and promising a “pause”. Now a pause can mean a genuine pause for a rethink or it can mean letting everything die down and then ramming things through. And, whichever way you cut it, it looks much more ineffectual than saying “this is not what we believe in, it was not in the coalition agreement, it is fundamentally wrong and we will not allow it to pass”.
For a better look at this saga I recommend: http://dropsafe.crypticide.com/article/6547
People do not vote for “mildly moderating forces”. They do not vote for people who qualify everything they say. They do not vote for people who seem unwilling to make at least the occasional stand on principle. They do not vote for a party which looks like part of the establishment. They do not vote for tory-lite when there’s already a perfectly good tory party. They do not vote for labour-lite when there’s already a perfectly good labour party, They do not vote for a liberal party if said liberal party seems to be actively refusing to tell people it’s a liberal party or to act like a liberal party.
Our strategy over the past two years has seen our support halve. We have also lost many good, veteran members and activists. Unless we can show ourselves to be distinctly, proudly and actively liberal then we will never win back some of the support we’ve lost – let alone win any new support.
You seem to think that “success” is stopping the tories being quite so tory as they want to be. I think most potential lib dem voters would say that success is about actively making a more liberal country and society. So far we seem to be very good at showing ourselves as being good at the former but pretty awful at times when it comes to the latter.
@George Porter: here, here.
Since the time of Mill, Green, Hobhouse and Hobson, Liberals have understood that individual liberty is only achievable with favourable social and economic circumstances. Freedom and individuality can only flourish in a social environment organised through collective action coordinated by a strong, welfare-oriented, and interventionist state.
The neo-liberal ideology of the modern conservative party shares much with the laissez faire principles of classical liberalism. We moved on from those ideas when Lloyd George, established the foundations of the welfare state in the UK. Modern liberalism was cemented when the Attlee government adopted the full-employment economic policies of Keynes and Beveridge’s cradle to grave welfare state.
The merger of the SDP and Liberal party to form the Liberal Democrats was a recognition that Modern or Social Liberalism and the mixed economy of ethical socialism shared much of the same values. We should never lose sight of where we have come from. We have entered coalition at a time of a national economic emergency. We must exit it with our heritage and principles intact. If that means turbulence in the cabinet and on the backbenches, then so be it.
George Potter. You have described the situation exactly. You are in contact with real voters. Well done!
Sam, great article.
To really differentiate ourselves we need to do at least two things:
Publish a really new economic and business policy that differs radically from the Tories and current capitalism. It needs to focus on employment generation and “good” companies, embracing especially coops and employee ownership.
Secondly, as we see the evidence of the inevitable damage to the NHS caused by implementing this insane bill we need to cry “hold” and do everything to stop it in its tracks. If this is the source of a split in the Coalition then so be it. At the polls the people will decide anyway, and they will remember our integrity.
Finally, just on a tactical issue: can we please stop sweating the small stuff and just focus on the really important matters that concern ninety percent of the population. We make no headway with the voting public spending time on minority issues when they are battling with home economics, schooling, health and a feeling of generalised anxiety.
I agree with George Potter on this one but I also think the response on the doorstep has changed from twelve months ago. Last year we encountered a pretty angry electorate who often said they couldn’t trust us any more. This year they seem much more sympathetic to the reasons we are in the coalition and understanding of our achievements, however not necessarily ready to vote for us again. I expect this year’s district results will be less damaging than last year’s.
Now the electorate are listening again it is up to us to re-engage them with the issues that would make a ‘more liberal country and society’. We must be better placed than we were in 2007 when we had no achievements in power to demonstrate what we are about.
We have the next three years to convince the electorate of all the positive things we can offer in government. The past is another country, let’s stop going there!
John, a liberal party can pluralise the range of corperate structures which are legally recognised, but we can’t force people (or support private companies) to produce a specific kind of business. That would be an over-reach of state involvement in the economy, which produces distortions and imbalances. Let’s keep our eye on proper regulation and oversight.
George, you make a generalised claim about what the majority of voters want (and most of them want the moon). You again say that our objective ought to make the country a more liberal place, and then discount all of the major Lib Dem victories in government as “little” and “insignificant”. We are a minority in parliament, we are a minority in coalition, and have to come to terms with what a minoirty can achieve. We’ve punched well above our weight.
The reason people no longer support us is because of the disconnect between what the party is today and what it was when Charles Kennedy was in charge (when Tony Blair was in charge). This disconnect was because we promised too much: we said we’d get rid of tuititon fees, which Clegg knew wasn’t going to be in our power. Trying to recpature voters who were in love with a false idea of what we can do is never going to work because we’re going to let them down again and again.
Toby, who said anything about forcing? What we lack is s model, based on evidence, of what a good organisation looks like and does in both the private and public sectors. We do not have a business policy because we do not really understand micro-economics, so we get dragged along on the coattails of the Tories, saying foolish things like “bonuses are too high” etc., instead of saying that bonuse are a bad thing in any organisation.
We make a stand on things that really do not matter to the majority of voters (sweating the small stuff) intead of going public with policy statements defining a good workplace, where 24 million people spend 40 hours a week, many of them unhappily. We criticise high pay but offer nothing that can replace the thinking that determines it. We let the CBI get away with some truly offensive proclamations because do not know enough about business to challenge its DG. And yet we have the most powerful platform to do it from, and one of the most respected politicians to do it for us, BIS and Vince Cable.
That is what I mean
I wonder if the hard part is over. The economy has under performed compared to the OBR predictions, deficit elimination is now scheduled to complete AFTER the next general election (so where does that leave our much cherished “equidistance” between Labour and the Tories?), and there are still cuts in public spending yet to be implemented, which in itself will reduce growth with the knock on effect of making deficit reduction even harder.
On top of all that there is the issue of when Israel will attack Iran. Our manifesto was opposed to the UK suporting this policy, but the Tories are likely to support it. So what will Nick Clegg do? The decision he makes could be the hardest he has ever had to make.
@Geoffrey
Unfortunately I don’t think that abandoning a manifesto commitment is a hard decision for Nick.