The fact that there are just over four months now until the general election put me into a pensive mood about the state of British politics, what we need to do to change it and what I need to do to win.
The “trends” are:
- People are increasingly disengaged from politics and have little faith in either politicians or the political process
- People are increasingly not aligned to individual political parties
- Young people, in particular, generally struggle to see the relevance of politics to their own lives
- Because of prolonged austerity and “squeezed” living standards for the majority, populism, the politics of fear and a culture of blame are rallying support for extremist parties such as Ukip.
Much of this looks grim. Yet at the same time, there are flashes of positive engagement in our society–some of it political– that give hope:
- The high turnout at the Scottish referendum
- The success of single issue and petition websites such as 38 degrees and Change.org which seem to connect with young people particularly well
- The rate of engagement and giving to high profile causes, such as Children in Need, Sports Relief, Disasters Emergency Committee, etc
Teasing out why and how people engage from this list can give us some steers as politicians about what we should be doing to make ourselves relevant.
- Issues that have meaning to people and are readily comprehensible, inspire and motivate them. People voted in high numbers at the referendum in Scotland because it actually meant something to them. Also, it was a high stakes referendum, so people knew they had to get out and vote to ensure that their vote counted. There was a feeling of importance and urgency about getting out and voting.
- Empathy is important. People invest in issues, whatever they may be, that stir their emotions. The fact that Sports Relief and Children in Need continue to amass successively higher totals, even during a prolonged recession/low growth period, shows us that when people care, they act.
- The internet is a great tool for sharing information and creating platforms that ease interaction. Social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc, can enable connections to happen between people who, in many cases, would normally never have the chance to meet. Sites such as Youtube enable you to broadcast what you are doing, creating, thinking, promoting, etc, and invite support and feedback. Single issue websites such as 38 degrees are successfully using this sharing/broadcasting ability and interactivity around political issues without being politically aligned.
So, what should we be doing, as politicians? I call it the “4 I’s”: we need to Inspire; we should possess political Instinct; we should talk about the Ideas that motivate us; and we should make greater use of the Internet to share, listen and interact.
Politicians have to inspire people to show that the issues they are campaigning on are important and matter, and to engender trust. They need to use whatever political instinct they have to understand what issues matter to people–and this is one area, involving essentially one issue, where Farage resounds with ordinary voters. BUT, to avoid populism, they also need to explain and generally share their ideas to generate interest and ignite passions on issues that previously may not have seemed important to many people.
Finally, the Internet serves as a modern tool through which politicians can: inspire “followers”, “friends” and others; react to breaking issues and news using their instinct (not achingly rehearsed political correctness); and spread their ideas and values through blogging, Youtube, etc. Imagine if Winston Churchill or Martin Luther King or William Beveridge had access to the Internet in their lifetimes? How much further might their ideas have gone?
Whoever can master the “4 I’s” in 2015 will be a winner, in my opinion. I aim to be one of them.
* Helen Flynn is an Executive Member of the LDEA. She is a former Parliamentary Candidate and Harrogate Borough Councillor and has served on the Federal Policy Committee and Federal Board. She has been a school governor in a variety of settings for 19 years and currently chairs a multi academy trust in the north of England.
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34 Comments
And here is what our dear leader thinks will win hearts and minds: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/general-election-2015/11324152/Vote-LibDem-for-another-Coalition-Nick-Clegg-says.html
Just saying.
On a more positive note, I think that those who developed our campaigning techniques in the 1970s , if they had had today’s technology, would have produced a campaigning nexus similar to that of 38 degrees.
38 degrees is not single issue campaigning really is it? It is just that it uses distinct campaigns in exactly the way our party used to campaign up until relatively recently.
Very much agree with the need to inspire with ideas. A Lib Dem position that is set against other parties as a compromise will not inspire. For example, I’d love to see our party showing a greater vision on tackling climate change, not just adopting the existing coalition compromise as the party policy.
I’d add another ‘I’ , Intelligiblity. What we say has to be understandable to non politicos and journos, has to resonate with people and not just be the ‘safe, on message answer’. Plain language, genuine interaction – perhaps another ‘I’ – and honesty. We aren’t going to get away from the politics of fear in a hurry, but we can reduce its impact.
Perhaps one final ‘I’. Intelligent. We should be intelligent as opposed to intellectual.
I disagree with Helen about the internet.
The internet as configured is the biggest threat to human liberty that has ever been conceived of.
The danger (at the moment)is not so much the state as private corporations scanning personal data, like your internet searches, your emails, your private messaging, your Facebook posts, to build up a picture of you. Been turned down for life insurance or a job interview? It may be because you emailed somebody about smoking, or searched your company’s on-line sickness policy.
This reads like the transcript of a staff training session at Wernham Hogg.
Clegg appears to believe he can inspire the electorate o vote for coalition. This man just does not get it, we should have got rid of him months ago. If “Cleggism’ is going to be the main driving force in this campaign then this is one activist who will not lift a finger to help. There is a faint hope that the spring conference will produce a Liberal agenda and not the rubbish we are getting from Clegg and friends.
Tsar Nicholas – I think the current Lib Dem leadership fails to see the illiberal possibilities in big business. They think we only need to pare back the state in order to be free.
I agree with AndrewR and Tsar. The rise of the internet correlates with the fall of the political class, as people find new methods of engagement that circumvent Parliamentary politics altogether. What Helen would posit as internet engagement also serves as a method to encourage what is being termed “anti-virality” (see Lib Dem YouTube channel for a great example). As the party has followed her logic its declined in power and created public space for people to ridicule it. Helen misses the point that sites like 38 Degrees are popular precisely because they’re not politically aligned.
I’d like to highlight to Tsar that Huppert and Farron submitted an EDM (written by Google,Apple.etc) to allow tech corps complete power over surveillance whilst removing it from the government (leaving only the corporations capable of internet intelligence services).
” Imagine if Winston Churchill or Martin Luther King or William Beveridge had access to the Internet in their lifetimes?”
…they’d of spent their days playing Candy Crush Saga?
Good luck in Harrogate and Knaresborough, Helen Flynn.
You are right to say — ” Politicians have to inspire people to show that the issues they are campaigning on are important and matter, and to engender trust. ”
That is a fact that causes me great pain as a Liberal Democrat because all the evidence shows that we have the least inspiring, least trustworthy leadership of any party in living memory. I hope you can insulate your Harrogate campaign from the albatross around our necks. I have no doubt that you will be able to inspire and build trust locally.
BTW. — It is NOT four months to the General Election.
The General Election has already started.
The date for the beginning of a candidate’s expenses was before Christmas.
The Conservatives started a major blitz of campaigning back in late October/early November.
In one hundred days and three weeks, it will all be over.
Imagine if Winston Churchill or Martin Luther King or William Beveridge had access to the Internet in their lifetimes? How much further might their ideas have gone?
– In terms of Winston Churchill his career would have been utterly trashed by the tweeting outrage coming from Greece, that’s assuming of course he still had a career following the internet traffic caused by the gassing of the Iraqi kurds.
– and the campaigns of Luther King and Beveridge would have taken a lot longer when having to contend with trolling disinformation.
Winston Churchill spent far too much time playing backgammon, and hating himself for his own mental indiscipline, when he knew the effort ought to be going into writing the next speech. Still, he did bestir himself to work, about enough…
…so yes, he’d have been playing Candy Crush Saga!
I like the article. I guess the task is morphing into a “radical centre” (LibDem) agenda in tension with a somewhat cracked right-left tension between Labour and Tories, and a second tension with “parties of protest” which would be disastrous if they got near power (particularly UKIP). A Labour-Tory coalition would be interesting in terms of the amount of common ground they might find.
I guess our task now is to be sufficiently much the place of radical centre thought to hold something genuinely rich, and not lead people to squander their votes on protest parties or by not voting.
If am also interested that our federalising approach fits much more comfortably with greater devolution, in contrast with the starkness of “Independence or Bust” or “Devolution as an afterthought” which has been in much of the discourse.
Mark Argent 5th Jan ’15 – 1:04pm
Could you explain in a little more detail what you mean when you say —
” …our task now is to be sufficiently much the place of radical centre thought to hold something genuinely rich… ” ??
What is this “radical centre thought” ?
Who thinks it ?
Does it have anything to do with anchors ?
Why is that our task now ?
A good article. I might be able to function effectively below the line, but I can’t quite manage to write an article yet.
In 2015 I’ve pretty much decided I’m going to be supporting individual Lib Dem MPs and candidates, rather than the party as a whole, so I and many others are looking for leaders who can represent us.
Regards
What about radical liberalism underpinned by social justice .Isnt that what the Liberal Democrats modern constitution and preamble was supposed to promote
Candy crush saga is boring. But maybe less boring than nc trying to inspire people to vot for the LDs as not quite as bad as the Tories or Labour.
@JohnTilley “What is this “radical centre thought”?”
I do get confused by claims to be radically centrist. It sounds like spin to make it seem more exciting than splitting the difference between Labour and Tories which is the uninspiring impression given by phrases from the leadership about “anchoring in the centre ground” and “tempering the excesses” of another party.
It would be helpful to see some examples of Lib Dem policies that are centrist and radical.
I suspect that we all have a different idea of where the centre is anyway, with most of us holding a collection of views to the left in some policy areas and to the right in others, and we believe they average out as centrist. Some Lib Dems might define their centrist position as being economically to the right but in favour of equal marriage, whilst others might hold diametrically opposite views and still call it centrist. The centre ground could be crowded with people who fundamentally disagree with each other.
ChrisB:
No they did NOT. The motion did not say anything about “allow[ing] tech corps complete power over surveillance”. It was specifically about ending GCHQ surveillance, and did not mention surveillance by the companies that run the Internet-based services that GCHQ is snooping over because that is a separate issue. It is anyway a bit rich for you to spin it in those terms when you apparently think that ISPs (another form of tech corp) should be given carte blanche to pick winners in the digital economic marketplace.
Picking up John’s question:
By “radical centre” I mean something that is not a limp compromise between right and left, but mixes liberalism and social inclusion .
An example might be cuts and deficit reduction. Parts of the Tory world seem to have an ideological attraction to cuts, ignoring their brutality, and holding again an ideological attack on “big government”. Parts of the Labour world do more or less the opposite, sometimes pushing the Keynsian model of spending one’s way out of a crisis way too far. In both cases they are tending to talk as if this is a UK phenomenon. What about the alternative case which says:
1) it was a global slowdown, and some of what Gordon Brown did was wise;
2) global interconnectedness means somet fb the solution is also global, and some regional, making it crucial to work well with our European partners;
3) disabling things happen if government gets too big or too small;
4) the deficit can be brought down by cuts or by economic growth that increases win come from taxation: cuts must not be done in a way that undermines recovery — that rules out headline-grabbing comments on the date by which it will be eliminated (whatever that actually means), and calls for a lot of pragmatism;
5) it makes sense to think of major investment projects (like Crosstunnel and HS 1/2) in terms of their long-term effect on the UK economy, not the short term impact on deficits;
6) can we haven he conversation about cuts and growth in terms off hat is best for the whole people of the UK and not just the supporters of one or other main party.
In passing, that last point signposts a manifesto that is about then old of the whole country, not simply mobilising one party’s supporters. That is harder to sell, but a brilliant place in which to start negotiations on a coalition agreement.
Mark Argent
Thank you for replying to my question.
Not sure that I go along with everything you say but I certainly welcome your point (1).
The top of our party are deluding themselves when they repeat the Conservative Big Lie that they “inherited a mess” which was “all the fault of the last government”.
You are quite right to say — ” 1) it was a global slowdown, and some of what Gordon Brown did was wise; ”
Mind you – it will not make you very popular with some of the people who comment in LDV. 🙂
Peter Watson
Yes you make a good point. Now that the legislation has gone through and everybody accepts gay marriage those Liberal Democrats that have been caricatured as ‘Thatcherites for Gay Marriage’ have only got their Thatcherism to work for. I would not want to live in a country where the political centre was Thatcherism and therefore logically Attila the Hun would be considered to be on the centre-left.
Mark Argent,
If you, or Helen Flynn, were in charge of defining the Lib Dem campaign and its overall aims, it might be worth voting for. But you’re not. Nick Clegg is doing that, and placing “coalition” centre stage, as the Telegraph article linked by Bill le Breton (first posting) demonstrates. Just in case anyone misses the point, Simon Hughes is echoing Clegg’s words.
Please also look very carefully at the words used by Clegg in the Telegraph article. Balanced between Tories and Labour, or not balanced?
“Labour represent a clear and present danger to the recovery. Their economic policy consists of huge borrowing and total denial about their responsibility for what happened last time”.
“The Tories are trying to sell voters an ideological approach to cuts to public services packaged up as continuity.
It’s a con.”
It might sound balanced at first sight. But look more closely. Could one conceivably work with a party which was “a clear and present danger” due to the “huge” financial risks it would take, and its “total denial” about those risks? Hardly.
Could one work with a party which was “ideological”, which proposed “cuts” (as almost every party does), and which was being dishonest in the way it campaigned? Oh yes.
Swallow hard Nick, peg on nose now, frightfully sorry chaps, it just has to be five more years of the jolly old Tories, don’t you know?
David Allen
Yes – you are right.
He just repeats the CONSERVATIVE BIG LIE.
We all know that, as Mark Argent says, it was a world wide economic mess not just the last government.
The BIG LIE — “Labour represent a clear and present danger to the recovery. Their economic policy consists of huge borrowing and total denial about their responsibility for what happened last time”.
This is particularly stupid because Liberal Democrat ideas on government spending are far closer to Labour than to the Comservatives.
Any objective analysis shows that the overlap of Labour and Liberal Democrat positions since the Autumn Statement puts the two parties on one side of the divide and the Conservatives (and Coalitionist Poodles) on the other side.
Nobody will believe this stuff from Clegg, not even those people who atvthemoment intend to vote Liberal Democrat.
Whether they will still actually vote Liberal Democrat on 7th May depends on how well we manage to hide Clegg and distance our decent MPs from his nonsense.
@Bill le Breton
“38 degrees is not single issue campaigning really is it? It is just that it uses distinct campaigns in exactly the way our party used to campaign up until relatively recently.”
You are right that where it was organised the Lib Dems hve campaigned in such a manner. I would argue, however, that the Party nationally has never geared itself up to campaign effectively (or appeared bothered about doing so), however good it once was at winning by-elections.
A very good article. I agree that when we see the effort people put into running the London Marathon for good causes and fundraising for Children in Need it is surprising that politicians have so little confidence that people do care and do want justice. I think a fairer tax regime is essential, pointing out that digging deep for the NHS and care of the elderly is worth it for a decent society. I think people want to be inspired to give and share. So inspiration is the key and ‘back to basics’ on a decent transport system, adequate housing, better protection for the employed in work – and those out of work, especially if they are unwell. Whatever happened to the unions? Fairness for students must figure in the there somewhere – this cannot be brushed aside – and a rigorous education that delivers for those not going to uni. New ways of thinking like the University apprenticeships scheme are a good way forward. I think inspiration is the key from people who believe in it. PS Not sure there is such a thing as a radical centre!
Very interesting to read wide ranging comments on this piece. I wanted to write more, but felt constrained by the normal length of pieces on LDV!
The two extra points I would want to make are about really simplifying messages and explaining the ideas that make us Lib Dems. People still see us as being between Tories and Labour, in Clegg’s middle ground, and don’t understand what we innately stand for. But in essence there are two overriding ideas: conservatism and progressiveness (is that a word?!), which is actually Liberalism by another name. Labour (socialism) is a blip brought about historically by changes in working practices. We see Labour now struggling to find their project, unable to come up with distinctive policy, idea-less.
We should be firmly on our natural progressive ground, explaining that we are about equality of opportunity, narrowing gaps in wealth and power, truly setting people free to reach their potential. Then all our policies become more simple to explain, because they come out of and are consistent with our progressive stance.
The Internet is important and consistent with our progressive stance, because it is progressive in and of itself and does offer opportunity, access to knowledge and information and, crucially, the ability to interact. Yes, it does have negative points, but I would argue that it has overall a net positive impact, and we should embrace it as a new and progressive campaigning tool. We cannot afford to be left behind or be massivelydiminished at the next General Election. Our ideas are too important.
I can absolutely identify with the “trends” that Helen identifies but I don’t see them as trends so much as symptoms of a bankrupt political establishment comprising all three main parties. Similarly, the “flashes of positive engagement” are attempts by the population to find workarounds to a dysfunctional political culture – with the SNP proposing dumping Westminster altogether.
The implication is that Helen’s I’s should start with Introspection; we need to take a long, hard and frank look at what Lib Dems have been doing wrong (and note that the problem is clearly centred in the national party since local parties have often got it right). Anything else is to ignore Einstein’s definition of insanity by doing the same thing time and again and expecting a different result.
Firstly, we need to rethink the internal organisation. Great armies and great companies are great largely because they are organised to support their ambitions and have the logistics, management structures etc. – whatever it takes – to win. For some reason many leaders forget this and blithely assume that the force of their blind ambition will carry them through. It won’t. The Lib Dems are burdened by a structure that was painfully negotiated at the time of the Liberal/SDP merger which bows to all the sacred cows of that time – that the policy-making process should be participatory and deliberative for example. But …. as we have seen it has never led to much policy that has excited members let alone the electorate, debate on important subjects (reform of the EU for instance) has been suppressed and, in government, Clegg and Company cheerfully ignore not just specific policies but the broad policy stance (such as it is). In other words the party is every bit as dysfunctional in its own way as Westminster and while it remains so it has little to bring to the table.
Secondly, we must work out what Lib Dems are about in a way that goes beyond the usual limp hand-waving. For years the party has sought to navigate to power by finding policies that poll well in tests and avoiding any debate that might expose splits so that after over two decades the party still doesn’t have a coherent narrative to put to the electorate. This is inexcusable and leaves everyone scratching around to understand what is going wrong and what can be done to fix it as Mark Argent attempts above or, as in Clegg’s case, simply adopting big chunks of the Conservative worldview. The public know perfectly well that neoliberalism has failed but they don’t know what the alternative is and that is what they want to hear. In short, they want leadership but that is in short supply.
@Alex
I don’t want to derail this thread any, but if you remove internet surveillance from the government and don’t legislate regarding companies then you’re removing it from the government and leaving it with the tech companies are you not? Huppert and Farron copied that EDM directly from the Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc, website – I understand that you’re OK with that, but it doesn’t work for me.
Secondly, regarding net neutrality (which is waaay off topic) that legislation is still coming into effect, we’ll see how everyone feels over the next 6 months as mobile and internet bills rise in order to pay for legislated over-provisioning. It’s not liberal to tell companies they have to buy more infrastructure.
@ChrisB: As I understand it, Google etc are concerned mainly about being expected to do the dirty work of the security services, something they understandably do not want to do, because of both cost and customer relations. Also I think you’ve got it the wrong way round: establish the principle that it is OK for government to snoop on people’s private data and that would make it OK for private companies to do the same.
As for net neutrality, your scenario won’t happen. Competition and improved technology will continue to drive down costs and increase capacity. Companies do not need be forced to buy more infrastucture because increased demand and better technology would make it profitable. But that is not what this legislation is about. It is about preventing telcos from abusing their position by blocking/slowing access to competing or non-preferred websites.
You sound like a spokesman for the legacy telcos/cable companies.
Since the Liberal Democrats are unable to agree on the sort of radical policies that the country needs and most of the electorate would not understand them if they did then Clegg’s appeal for people to vote LD if they do not trust the Conservative or Labour parties to govern alone seems about the only realistic thing to say. The English party does not have any inspiring leaders like Jo Grimond or Jeremy Thorpe or even anyone like Tony Blair and no one would believe anything the party said anyway so the only realistic chance of preventing an electoral disaster is to hope that enough people will vote Lib Dem to prevent a single party government.
All the research done on the opinions of the electorate and my own personal observations seem to indicate that hardly anyone has a clue what any of the parties stand for and usually vote on either tribal lines or vague feelings about what might be best for them personally. You can forget any notion that any one votes for what is best in the national interest. Western democracy as it was traditionally understood is dead and we need to formulate a new way of organising the government in the interests of all the people and not for specific groups like the wealthy or the public sector workers, for example. Anyone got any ideas ? Those with plans to spend huge sums of money need to think what the implications of this might be.
Well one way we can make headway is to respond to members enquirers. I have been in touch with aPPC, and local party people and NOT one has been back in touch. And this has been more than 3 months!! I am a new member, but would have thought that the party would want to encourage dialogue with new people. I am sorry to say this, but when it seems the main people , or PPCs get in the position of standing in an election, they don’t care/worry about the ordinary member. I for one am really thinking of leaving the party ( who, I must say, is/was a breathe of fresh air in politics), as its seems the party dosen’t want to involve the public. I listen to what people say in my local area, and pub, and they all say similar…. nobody is listening anymore. (just my 2 pence worth!!)
It is important to ensure you keep on board people like me who want clear lib dem water between you and the Tories.
The party has lost it’s Integrity. Without integrity you have no trust. Without trust no one listens to your arguments. A leadership/party that can vote directly against party policies and freely given pledges cannot be trusted by its own party let alone the general electorate. Abstention in coalition may be considered Honourable. Voting against the basic beliefs of the party is not. To blame the Labour party for the world banking crisis and what followed is blatant nonsense and also the height of stupidity. To be unable to put your best economic expert and generally respected figure into the treasury is just understandable; as the conservatives could well have (and understandably) vetoed it. But not to use him as the lead in the election team can only be seen as willful self inflicted damage to the party’s electoral chances. Like many others I have left the party and have had no communication from them at any level to enquire my reasons and views. I can only believe that the current leadership and rump party membership is intent on the destruction of the liberal democratic party as I have known it for 50 years.