Opinion: What should the new leader do in his first 100 days? #7

Dear Nick,

If you and you staff have the time, I’ve made many comments over the past two months about how the party needs reforming and reorganising.

But that’s not the object of today. I want to talk to you about the most important meeting of your first 100 days. A meeting, of course, that according to its to principle protagonists will not take place. A meeting, we will not be able to read about until one of you publishes your memoirs. I refer to your first meeting with David Cameron.

It’s important that you set out our stall. Point out the unlikelihood of a Tory majority in the next parliament, though he knows that already. Outline the deal-breakers for us for a future coalition government. An end to Council Tax. An end to ID cards. Real reforms in the public sector. Much of this he will agree with anyway.

Make sure he is well aware that the real talking would only start once a hung party comes about in which the Tories (or us!) are the largest party. Make sure that he is well aware that we will fight them tooth and nail and remain their worst nightmare in electoral terms.

It’s the most difficult meeting you face; but probably the most important. But if we want to create a truly Liberal Britain, we have to accept that coalitions are the inevitable consequence of a reformed constitution and that as a party we are mature enough to accept them, however reluctantly.

Yours sincerely,

Martin

* Martin Land is a Cambridgeshire Liberal Democrat Activist.

Read more by or more about .
This entry was posted in Leadership Election and Op-eds.
Advert

4 Comments

  • Derek Young 27th Dec '07 - 5:36pm

    This is all very well, but the horse has bolted. The result of the leadership election makes all this strategising redundant.

    Cameron is going to make ground at the next election, and some of his party’s progress will be in winning seats we presently hold. The only way to counteract this was to capture more ground in currently Labour-held seats. This is very unlikely to happen if Labour supporters in 1997, 2001 and 2005 believe that the Lib Dems and Tories are very much alike.

    Whether or not this is fair or objective, the fact that people even ask the question of what differentiates Cameron and Clegg should be proof enough of a simple fact: people believe that they are very similar. And why shouldn’t they think that? 93% of people’s impression is formed by how people look and how people sound, and only 7% is formed by what people actually say.

    To argue that Cameron is different, as Clegg is doing, because different issues drove them into politics, is putting all your eggs in the basket that only gives 7% of a result. Cameron and Clegg look alike and sound alike, this will convince people that they are alike unless something drastic and dramatic happens to the contrary.

    This impression suits Cameron down to the ground, so no such drastic or dramatic event is going to come from him. Nothing that happened during the leadership election suggests that Clegg believes such action is necessary or desirable, so the odds are very high that nothing like this will happen.

    It is hard, in the light of this, to see a future which does not involve a marked Lib Dem decline for as long as Cameron and Clegg remain their respective parties’ leaders.

    The leadership result has ignored a vital and basic lesson of modern communications – be distinctive. Figuring out how we do not pay the penalty should be the top priority.

  • Meet Brown, have a drink with Cameron, but if we get a hung Parliament, the natural coalition of parties whose policies are copies of one another are New Labour and Tory. Just keep reminding them of it every time anyone asks who LibDems will ally with.

  • Peter Bancroft 28th Dec '07 - 4:03pm

    Just as a I reject those who won’t even consider a coalition with the Tories, it would be wrong to go to an election with that in plan – as would it be wrong to suggest to David Cameron at this stage that a coalition with us is something that we’re willing to offer.

    After an election we’d have to see which way the wind is blowing. Maybe entering a coalition with one of the two parties could be useful, maybe staying out is the best bet, but we won’t know until then.

    Of all of these first 100 day posts, I thought that Simon Titley’s was the most promising, but whilst it talked about the need for a strategy, it unfortunately didn’t go into what he thinks that might be!

  • Henry Sparbrooke 29th Dec '07 - 3:35pm

    Is it only me who thinks that declaring a new leader just before the Christmas break was the worst time to do it?

    Onoy the political anoraks are paying cursory attention and most of the general public have other things on their mind. To add to the problem the news industry have less staff and usually focus on the traditional end of year round ups.

    I just get this bad feeling Nick’s elevation to leadership will be handicapped by being unable to make any real running on the news agenda in the critical first few weeks of his leadership and any following announcements will suffer from ever decreasing interest.

Post a Comment

Lib Dem Voice welcomes comments from everyone but we ask you to be polite, to be on topic and to be who you say you are. You can read our comments policy in full here. Please respect it and all readers of the site.

To have your photo next to your comment please signup your email address with Gravatar.

Your email is never published. Required fields are marked *

*
*
Please complete the name of this site, Liberal Democrat ...?

Advert

Recent Comments

  • Paul R
    “That means guaranteeing fair wages, empowering communities to shape the policies that affect their lives, and fostering a culture of accountability” The...
  • Mary Fulton
    So increases in income tax and cuts to large part of the public sector? Sounds like a recipe to ensure Reform UK builds its support even further…...
  • Ellyott
    The strange aspect is that the UK functioned relatively better, in terms of getting houses built, labour intensive industries, much bigger numbers in the armed ...
  • Linda Chung
    Vince - a great article, wide ranging and thought provoking. Even more interesting are the comments - but I find the China-bashing a bit superficial. Linda Ch...
  • Suzanne Fletcher
    @BigTallTim I don't know whether "the party" agrees or disagrees as nobody has said anything. Given everyone is saying anything publicly I can only assume they...