Some thirty years ago (according to his famous Diaries) Alan Clark MP, at the time a minister in Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government, was sent to Truro in Cornwall to beef up support for the Conservative candidate in a by-election caused by the tragic death of local Liberal MP David Penhaligon in a road accident. Clark complained that despite Truro being ‘natural’ Conservative territory, the candidate he supported was likely to lose (indeed he did). This produced a lament in the Diaries about the way the Liberals got ‘dug in’ by working hard in constituencies (his visits to his own constituency in Plymouth from Saltwood Castle in far-off Kent were notoriously infrequent) and once dug in were very hard to dig out! They geared people up on local issues of limited importance, Clark claimed, and made them feel that they were able to challenge the establishment and take on the world. Hence the reference to the Newton Ferrers mums.

 What Clark lamented in Liberal (about to become Liberal Democrat) behaviour has been a feature of the party’s commitment to community politics for a long time. In a speech to the Liberal Democrat Spring Conference in March 2023, Ed Davey declared that ‘community politics is something our party is built on. It is what sets us apart from other parties.’  The Lib Dem leader talked of candidates being ‘connected to the communities they represent’, ‘hearing their concerns on the doorstep’ (as opposed to making cold calls on a phone) and of ‘first winning their trust – and then ultimately their votes.’

Of course, it can be said that this is what all politicians say, whatever party they represent. But it isn’t. Keir Starmer caused some criticism in The Guardian a couple of weeks back, when he talked of focusing on ‘delivery, delivery, delivery,’ as if he was managing a company that was trying to deal with angry customers who found their deliveries behind schedule. The electors had been turned into passive recipients of goodies from their elected representatives.

 Where politics is concerned, the voter is a citizen, not a customer. It may be an advantage that Lib Dems, unlike Labour and the Conservatives, have never had a natural constituency (at least since the time of the nonconformist conscience) to which they could ‘deliver’ when they were in power. They have had to build up support in the way Ed Davey describes. 

  Nowadays there is also Reform to reckon with. As John Curtice pointed out in a recent analysis for the BBC, Reform appeals to those who, like the Brexiteers a decade ago, feel threatened by changes in society they cannot handle. Foreigners are undesirable, some sexual orientations are undesirable if they’re even possible, refugees are deceiving at best, dangerous at worst and climate change is an invention of woke scientists. Meanwhile speeches emphasise the ‘destruction of Britain’ and the ‘erosion of Britain’ (Elon Musk), offering a constant litany of all things bad so that people can convince themselves that everything is hopeless. It is at this point that the would-be dictator inserts himself as the ‘deliverer’ who will put things right. Stay passive and watch what I can do with the power you give me. It is a technique perfected by Trump. Elect me and I’ll end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours. Then everyone can sleep safely in their beds. Be nice to me with your royal pageantry and I’ll deliver you a nice deal on tariffs.