Jeremy Hargreaves recently launched Engage, the Liberal Democrats’ “new policy network”. Its goal is to give party members “the chance to talk about ideas, about policy and politics.” A welcome objective – but is this the right way to go about it?

The trouble with this initiative is that it emphasises process rather than politics. The ‘instant policy discussion kit’, in particular, reminds me of the sketch in Monty Python’s Meaning of Life in which a couple of middle-aged American tourists enters a restaurant and is offered conversational topics instead of food. Whenever did we lose our spontaneity?

Jeremy rightly highlights the lack of debate in the party but this problem goes beyond the narrow question of involvement in policy-making. Healthy political debate should be the lifeblood of the party. It supplies vitality and a sense of purpose to inspire and motivate our members and supporters. It supplies rigour and vigour to our ideas and policies.

But debate is also the lifeblood of democracy because politics is ultimately about making moral choices. You can’t revive politics without having real debate about those choices, which means argument about competing ideas, not a heavily managed process.

Advocates of ‘consensus politics’ stigmatise debate as ‘yah-boo politics’ but it is a myth that people dislike political argument. Substantial argument is what differentiates parties and politicians, and provides people with a real choice. It is the absence of argument and thus choice that has driven down participation and voter turnout, because it makes politicians sound the same and politics seem irrelevant. And when the mainstream parties (of which the Liberal Democrats are now one) can’t be differentiated, it is the parties on the fringe that stand out and benefit from our reticence.

The mere fact that ‘Engage’ is deemed necessary tells us that something has gone horribly wrong. Political debate has declined because, since the 1980s, our political life has been hollowed out and drained of ideological content. If ‘Engage’ plans to address this state of affairs, it must first understand how and why de-politicisation happened. There are several reasons, many of which are common to British politics and not specific to the Liberal Democrats:

• The ‘end of ideology’ – Following the end of the cold war, the basic ideological questions were assumed settled. The argument within the political mainstream was confined to a debate about nuances or replaced by personality issues.

• Moral relativism – It became unfashionable to express clear moral or ethical opinions. There were no longer any universal values, no ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. Anyone failing to observe this proscription was accused of being ‘judgemental’.

• Managerialism – Politics implies the existence of alternatives. But since the big questions were assumed settled and morality was derided, politics was replaced by managerialism, with its talk of ‘efficiency’, ‘targets’ and ‘delivery’.

• Followership – With no great causes to fight for or any distinguishing ideas to set them apart, politicians resorted to followership rather than leadership. Instead of engaging in ideological argument with one another, they competed to agree with public opinion.

• Marketing – To achieve followership, politicians imported American election campaign techniques modelled on the psychoanalytical methods employed in advertising and marketing. Focus groups and opinion polls were used to determine policy, which often amounted to little more than superficial ‘initiatives’ contrived to capture the next day’s headlines.

• Spin – Politicians dared not risk communicating uncomfortable information to the public because they feared it would be rejected. So they tried to tell the public what they thought the public wanted to hear. The political culture of spin is simply a logical outcome of the belief that all communication must be attractive.

These trends have emptied politics of meaning. Mainstream politicians no longer stand up for what they believe in (assuming they still believe in anything). Instead of genuine debate, we get a litany of sanitised and banal slogans.

As if this were not bad enough, the Liberal Democrats added some methods of their own for suppressing debate:

• Merger – When the Liberal Party and SDP merged in 1988, the new party’s leading figures were terrified that the merger might unravel. They responded by centralising power and making ideological debate taboo. The party conference was effectively neutered by confining debate to ‘take it or leave it’ motions endorsing green papers.

• Demonisation of the membership – Since the 1970s (if not earlier), what might loosely be termed the party’s ‘right wing’ has never really been an ideological project (its ideological fads have come and gone). Instead, it has been characterised by a belief that a Westminster-based elite always knows best and has an entitlement to power; and that the duty of party members is to accept what they are told uncritically. This attitude was reinforced at the merger by the SDP leadership’s paranoia rooted in its experience of Labour Party in-fighting. Hence the perennial attacks on the conference and grassroots members, the smear stories about ‘beards and sandals’ and the idiotic demands for a ‘Clause 4 Moment’.

• ‘Middle ground’ strategy – Successive leaderships have believed in the folly of converging on the same crowded territory as New Labour and the Tories. As a result, the Liberal Democrats have spent more time trying to avoid causing offence to voters who don’t share their values than they have trying to enthuse and mobilise voters who do. (The honourable exception was Charles Kennedy’s opposition to the Iraq war – consider how the party benefitted by standing out from the crowd, and how much more it might benefit if it did likewise in other areas of policy).

• Parochialism – Community politics, which began with noble aims, rapidly degenerated into an obsession with electoral tactics, based on a conviction that the party could advance solely by exploiting local grievances. This enables the party to duck moral choices. There is no incentive to debate when the party is fixated on parochial issues about which there is no argument. After all, everyone agrees that dog shit and pot holes are a bad thing.

• ‘We can win everywhere’ – If everyone agrees that dog shit and pot holes are a bad thing, it follows that the party can appeal equally to every demographic in every location. But this strategy inhibits the party from saying anything controversial that might capture people’s imagination, because there’ll always be someone in somebody’s ward somewhere that might be offended.

• Anti-intellectualism – The party’s local campaigning style demands a Stakhanovite work ethic, producing a culture of ‘mindless activism’ that prizes brawn over brain. People who debate political ideas are disparaged as dilettantes (“They should be out delivering leaflets!”). This is why too many of the party’s MPs and PPCs are ‘casework kings’ lacking the intellect to grasp the bigger picture.
If Jeremy Hargreaves and his team want ‘Engage’ to achieve its stated aims, they must recognise and tackle these issues. They should ask themselves why previous initiatives, notably ‘Meeting the Challenge’, ran into the sand and had no lasting impact. And they will face some stiff opposition:

• They must confront the arrogant and snobbish elite in and around Westminster that holds the party’s membership and internal democracy in contempt.

• They must confront the marketing men in the leader’s bunker who would back a policy of slaughtering all the first-born if their focus group feedback suggested it might play well.

• They must confront a leader who thinks the best way to introduce a profound change to tax policy is to slip a couple of lines into the pre-manifesto while nobody’s looking.

• They must confront the national media and its tendency to vilify all debate as a ‘row’, a ‘split’ or a ‘challenge to the leadership’.

• They must confront ascetic party activists who believe that the human soul is redeemed by delivering leaflets in a force 10 gale.

It is clear that encouraging real debate will require more than arranging some extra ‘pizza & politics’ evenings. Restoring political content and meaning to the party needs a radical culture change. And when British politics is at an historic turning point, it is an urgent task. At this time of crisis, with the economic and political systems thoroughly discredited, the Liberal Democrats should be brimming with bold ideas about the way forward – but where are their vision, clarity and passion? Where is the evidence of strategic thinking, original insights or ideological coherence? Not in ‘Make it Happen’ or ‘A Fresh Start for Britain’, that’s for sure.

The party should be articulating a compelling political vision of where we want to be heading and how we might try to get there. How could ‘Engage’ stimulate this? Here are a few practical ideas for getting some real debate going:

• Local ideas – The Liberal Democrats control or share control in many local authorities. Here, political debate is not academic but a real exercise in using power. The ‘Engage’ team, together with ALDC, should conduct an audit in places such as Sheffield, Camden, Newcastle and Bristol. How is the party’s membership involved in local policy-making? How are local communities involved? How are Liberal principles applied in practice? Let’s find out and get the best ideas circulated more widely and adopted around the party.

• Book clubs – Book clubs are very popular throughout Britain and the party should exploit this trend. In recent years, three important books have been published about Liberal Democrat ideas – The Orange Book, Reinventing the State and the IPPR’s Beyond Liberty. Yet how many party members have read all three books? Perhaps a hundred at most. Or what about the significant booklets published lately, such as the ALDC’s The Theory and Practice of Community Economics and Community Politics Today, or the booklet edited by Graham Watson and me, Liberalism – something to shout about? Or major Liberal works, from John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty to Vince Cable’s The Storm? ‘Engage’ should organise a network of local book clubs within the party, bulk-buy and circulate these books, and get members reading and arguing.

• Thinkers’ panel – ‘Engage’ has produced “a list of potential guest speakers” but how many of these are simply bog-standard spokespeople who would probably only trot out the party line? Treating party members to a passive experience is unlikely to provoke much debate. Instead, ‘Engage’ should be encouraging local parties to invite the party’s more stimulating and provocative thinkers, to lead discussions not deliver speeches.

• Stop framing debates – The outcome of political debate is determined more by the way a debate is framed than the actual debate itself. The party’s Federal Policy and Conference Committees have had an unfortunate habit of ironing out differences before conference, to present a pre-digested compromise for rubber-stamping. Instead, ‘Engage’ must ensure these differences are aired throughout the party – at meetings and online – then brought to the floor of conference. Let’s see some genuine debate at conference instead of a stage-managed series of stock speeches by MPs and PPCs.

• Stop apologising – ‘Engage’ must draw the poison by removing the contrite and conciliatory tone from the party’s policy statements. No matter how healthy the debate ‘Engage’ fosters, its achievements will be neutralised if the party continues to express its policies in mealy-mouthed terms. There is no point having any policy unless we are prepared to argue for it passionately.

Above all, ‘Engage’ must promote the idea that political debate is more than merely permissible or a luxury you can fit in if you’ve got time. Debate is essential otherwise the party loses its ideological purpose.
We’ll know ‘Engage’ has worked when political debate is normal; when our members think nothing of going down the pub for a good argument without any prompts from Cowley Street; when the resulting grassroots opinion counts for something; and when our party argues its case in the honest language of liberal values instead of the doublespeak of marketing slogans.

The last thing the party needs is another safety valve. If ‘Engage’ is to be of any lasting value, it must take risks and encourage genuine debate because, as D H Lawrence said, “it would be fun to upset the apple-cart and see which way the apples would go a-rolling.”

And if that prospect unsettles you, remember Voltaire’s words: “Doubt is an unpleasant mental state, but certainty is ridiculous.”

* Simon Titley is a Liberal Democrat activist who does what he can to provoke debate by helping to write and produce Liberator magazine.