Shirley Williams predicts Labour MPs could come together with Lib Dems if Corbyn wins

Speaking to the Huffington Post, Shirley Williams recalls the formation of the SDP in 1981, a key reason for which was the decision of left-wing Labour to campaign to take Britain out of the EEC:

We had a genuine sense of being betrayed…on Europe, we were outraged.

Shirley is then asked if she thinks there is a risk of another split in the Labour party:

Yes I think there is. I don’t think there will be a very quick breakaway but I think what there will be, in my view over the next couple of years, a move towards saying why doesn’t the democratic left get together and there’s quite a lot of people saying that already, in order to do that they would have to buy into certain fundamental values.

I think therefore there’s a basis for a coming together among the slightly leftier end of the Liberal Democrats and the slightly centralist area of the Labour Party.”

* Paul Walter is a Liberal Democrat activist and member of the Liberal Democrat Voice team. He blogs at Liberal Burblings.

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69 Comments

  • Glenn Andrews 13th Aug '15 - 9:48am

    We can’t have people defecting from other parties swelling our ranks; we must bar these potential infiltrators!

  • Little Jackie Paper 13th Aug '15 - 10:25am

    I’ve been promised this Labour spilt every year now since about 1995. What is going on in Labour is an election contested between differing wings of the party. No more no less. This isn’t the early 1980s – why do we insist on looking at politics as if the 1980s will somehow magically repeat itself? Times have changed and moved on.

    Incidentally, should that headline be, ‘IF Corbyn wins.’

  • Oh no………… if they are ‘Liberals ‘ yes ……. but not the right wing Labour I know……… looking for life boat like many SDP defector MPS were (IMO). Politically it would be better for us to make them stay and fight the left….and watch the blood bath for the next 5 years..

  • David Faggiani 13th Aug '15 - 10:30am

    This was pretty interesting in the Guardian today, on building a progressive coalition. Mostly because it introduced me to the East Devon Alliance (EDA) http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/aug/12/could-you-build-new-part-of-the-left-labour-jeremy-corbyn

  • @Glenn Andrews
    “We can’t have people defecting from other parties swelling our ranks; we must bar these potential infiltrators!”

    That isn’t what Shirley is suggesting though. She’s talking about “a coming together among the slightly leftier end of the Liberal Democrats and the slightly centralist area of the Labour Party” i.e. BOTH parties splitting, rather than centrist Labourites breaking off and joining the Lib Dems en masse – which I assure you will not happen.

  • Let’s be clear. IF Corbyn wins and IF that leads to a Labour split, then anyone wanting to join us would need to convince the party that they are Liberal Democrats. We can’t accept people just because they’re MPs. In my experience many defectors eventually go back to the party they left or leave us and go off into the wilderness. We never benefited from the SDP members locally because they didn’t do very much and we had to do it all ourselves, as usual.
    I urged Shirley at the time to come and join the Liberals and not form the SDP. In my view progressive politics would have been much better if she had and we would have been spared much grief. (And Shirley is a Liberal!)

  • Richard Underhill 13th Aug '15 - 11:05am

    It wasn’t just the Labour Party which split, the SDP did as well. David Owen is still in the House of Lords. After his faction came behind the Monster Raving Loony Party in a parliamentary by-election in Merseyside David Sainsbury withdrew funding from them.
    When we won the Eastbourne by-elelction a continuing Liberal had stood against us, and did so again in the subsequent general election in which we lost the seat. A continuing Liberal also stood against in the Ribble Valley by-election, which we won, but lost in the subsequent general election.
    We were fortunate to be against only one splinter group at a time. A simultaneous attack would have been more difficult for us.
    Shirley Williams is much loved in our party, a national treasure, but how is she seen in the Labour Party? One of the Gang of Four? A life peer? Just look at the lost deposits that Labour had in 1983., when the Tories had an overall majority of 151 in the Commons under the first-past-the-post electoral system. How well does she know them now?

  • “I think therefore there’s a basis for a coming together among the slightly leftier end of the Liberal Democrats and the slightly centralist area of the Labour Party.” Shirley Williams. Oh dear, therein lies the fallacy….. and I’m sorry Shirley but you just don’t get it.

    It was bad enough coping with the policies and consequences of five years of Orange Bookism without having to endure an influx of right wing authoritarian ‘aspirational’ Labourites. As a radical Liberal I have absolutely no time for Thatcherlite New Labour which didn’t even have the bottle to vote against the recent welfare changes. It would be interesting to track the eventual destiny of people like Daniel Finkelstein, David Mundell and John Horam who were SDP escapees in 1980 frozen to death..

    Let’s give Tim a chance to flap his radical wings…………. but if we get an influx of escaping Blairites…. then a Corbyn Labour Party or a Caroline Lucas Green Party suddenly becomes a tad enticing.

  • Glenn Andrews 13th Aug '15 - 11:19am

    @Stuart; that was more a tongue in cheek jibe at Labour’s vetting of some of it’s new members…. In a years time there will be the Liberal Democrats and there will be Labour…..there is no need for either party to split and they won’t, and I’d agree with you that there is unlikely to be any mass defections from either camp: That’s not to say there won’t be a few more than usual though.

  • Richard Underhill 13th Aug '15 - 11:20am

    David Raw 13th Aug ’15 – 11:13am
    Daniel Finkelstein is a Tory peer who writes in the Times, doing a statistical analysis on football and about politics.

  • @ Richard Underhill

    I know full well who Finky is…. hence the comment. Now look up Horam and Mundell. It would be funny if Andrew Adonis of Academy fame and Roger Liddle turned up yet again for a second bite of the cherry.

  • Richard Stallard 13th Aug '15 - 11:51am

    I don’t think many self-respecting Labour politicians will want anything to do with the LDs. Less than a year ago, the LDs were in bed with the ‘enemy’, don’t forget, and are now political pariahs.

  • Richard Underhill 13th Aug '15 - 11:54am

    David Raw 13th Aug ’15 – 11:30am Of course you do, hence your comment, i was agreeing with you.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Mundell, Sad about Tweeddale, which used to have a Liberal MP.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Horam

  • I’m actually with @David Raw on this one. The Liberal Democrats represent a part of the political spectrum quite distinct from most of the Labour party – although we have both “left” and “right” wings, LD policy is, and must remain, Liberal – a concept quite alien to many Labour MPs.

    I’d much rather our party works WITH a Corbyn-led opposition (who says he is comfortable with a “broad church”), rather than those who’d sabotage their own party because the result of a democratic election wasn’t what they wanted it to be – yet have no understanding of Liberty.

  • Richard Underhill 13th Aug '15 - 12:02pm

    Richard Stallard 13th Aug ’15 – 11:51am Not many self-respecting Labour politicians will want anything to do with us.
    If JC wins the Labour leadership and their party splits their MPs can continue in the Commons saying that the Labour Party left them. They would not be compelled by existing rules to contest parliamentary by-elections. Electoral reform would become more urgent and more necessary but less likely. It would take more than one general election to sort out the problems so caused.

  • Neil Sandison 13th Aug '15 - 12:15pm

    Give Shirley a break re-alignments do happen that’s how the Liberal Democrats were born .The purest didn’t like it then and they will probable hate it again in the future .Will they all be ex Labour probable not .The genuine one nation conservatives will become increasingly uncomfortable with George Osbourne dismantling key parts of the social infrastructure of this country . There are still active former SDP members on local councils up and down this country who are proud Liberal Democrats and lets not forget both Shirley Williams and Charles Kennedy made huge contributions to the development of what we now call social liberal values.

  • @ Richard Underhill.

    Thanks for that, Richard. Tweeddale was of course part of David Steel’s constituency pre-boundary changes. His daughter Catriona fought against Mundell in 2010. No doubt we’ll get more boundary changes soon.

    We took a hammering in the Borders in May after 50 years of Liberal representation (not long ago two MP’s and two directly elected MSP’s). The SNP made much of the Coalition link with the Tories. Sadly Mike Moore was badly treated by Clegg and deserved much better than he got.

    It’s going to be a long slog but the only way is to re-establish our radical credentials again. Jim Hume is a hardworking regional list MSP so I hope all is not lost.

  • Richard Underhill 13th Aug '15 - 1:08pm

    David Raw 13th Aug ’15 – 12:41pm
    i was in Michael Moore ‘s constituency for a few days during the referendum, it being the nearest to Tunbridge Wells.
    i was also in the audience when he and Charles Kennedy had a fringe meeting at conference in Glasgow.
    Charles was in favour of full federalism for England and had spoken in Tony Blair’s constituency with the PM in the north-east referendum. He blamed John Prescott’s campaigning skills and Tony Blair for appointing him.

  • Were the Labour Party to split over a foreseen leadership victory by Jeremy Corbyn, the resulting rebel faction would almost certainly be several times larger than the current Liberal Democrat contingent in the House of Commons. Such a faction would not be trying to “join the Lib Dems” — they would, if anything, be seeking, or more likely demanding, that the Liberal Democrats be absorbed into their new party.

    I should hope that Tim Farron would see them off.

  • As Shirley said any reaction will not be likely to be soon. In the Corbyn may not be elected. As the election date approaches more and more Labour members will be thinking about having a chance to win. Even so, a lot of damage has been done. It could prove harder in some ways if Corbyn does not win as his faction would be likely to throw their weight around and demand strong influence. A Corbyn win will not precipitate a split because Corbyn’s own past behaviour has included frequent rebellion against the party line so dissenters may feel they have a free hand. The tipping point could be deselections. MPs might cross over to us or simply become independent rather than face a deselection attempt.

    There is little point in discussing a Corbyn victory now, but it would require us to reconsider how we position ourselves: we could be faced with some difficult decisions.

  • Stephen Hesketh 13th Aug '15 - 2:59pm

    If I were an illiberal centrist Labourite I would have joined the Labour party.

    Just as people from that tradition have helped neuter Democratic Socialism, they would go on to neuter Liberalism and Liberal Democracy.

    I personally would not be a voter for, or member of, a party of status quo-supporting political managers and fixers.

  • PHIL THOMAS 13th Aug '15 - 3:10pm

    All this talk about Labour members joining the LD’s is wishful thinking. I suspect the last Party anyone would want to join at the present time are the LD’s. Tim Farron will turn out to be a disaster. Once again the LD’s chose the wrong leader. At least Jeremy Corbyn stands for something. Doesn’t say 1 thing in one place and something different elsewhere to get votes.

  • Phil Thomas wrote:

    “All this talk about Labour members joining the LD’s is wishful thinking. ”

    I would say fearful thinking. The last thing we need is a bunch disgruntled Blairites knocking on our door.

    Remember what Blairism was. It was an amorphous, difficult to pin down creed, that combined enthusiastic adherence to US foreign policy as a moral force for good, extreme deference to the rich and powerful, policy-making by spin doctor and focus group, control freakery, centralisation, and the erosion of civil liberties. Do we, as Liberal Democrats, really want an ounce of that landing on our doormats?

    Rest assured, though. Disgruntled Blairites will not come our way. Blairism is a belief system that only exists to exercise power on behalf of the elite. It has no role in opposition. Disgruntled Blairites are much more likely to leave politics altogether and do what their hero does – go into business and the media and make bundles of dosh.

  • nvelope2003 13th Aug '15 - 3:43pm

    A Labour split is not going to happen. Corbyn will almost certainly win the leadership and the opinion polls will show what people think of him. I know they got the election wrong but it was very narrow and opinion polls have a 2% margin of error, not a 32% margin. In the unlikely event of a collapse in Labour support a few MPs might get a bit nervous and then they will ask Corbyn to resign but I do not expect this to happen. He seems to have caught the mood of many if not the whole nation, even some Conservatives have noticed it. Farron would have been right if Cooper, Kendall or Burnham wins but he will look like a poor man’s Corbyn if Corbyn wins. People will want the real thing. Maybe the party will pick up a few seats with the help of labour votes but I think the right will rally round the Conservatives and there will be no place for the smaller parties.

  • Richard Underhill 13th Aug '15 - 3:54pm

    Sesenco “Blairism is a belief system that only exists to exercise power on behalf of the elite. It has no role in opposition.”
    Actually Tony Blair as leader of the opposition saw increases in votes, councillors, MPs and MEPs. So did we at the same time, so maybe part of the reason was a fin de siecle Tory government under John Major.
    It derives from advice from Bill Clinton and the New Democrats in the USA, simultaneously attracting the support of exisiting supporters and new members.
    As Leader of the Opposition Tony Blair did not order any combat troops into actions. As PM he did so four times.

  • Mick Taylor 13th Aug ’15 – 10:45am…………….Let’s be clear. IF Corbyn wins and IF that leads to a Labour split, then anyone wanting to join us would need to convince the party that they are Liberal Democrats. ………..

    Which sort of Liberal Democrats would that be; pre-2010, 2010-15 or post 2015?

  • Stephen Campbell 13th Aug '15 - 5:16pm

    @Sesenco: “I would say fearful thinking. The last thing we need is a bunch disgruntled Blairites knocking on our door.”

    If I was still a Lib Dem, I wouldn’t want the Blairites anywhere near the party either.

    Let us not forget that Blair and his followers are responsible for the Iraq war, quite possibly a war crime. And they have the blood of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis on their hands.

    I strongly agree with every word of your post. Blairism is a discredited ideology. I think the electorate have had enough of politics by PR and ad-men.

  • Jayne Mansfield 13th Aug '15 - 5:27pm

    I think that what is going on in the Labour Party at present is healthy.

    It is shameful that some people are trying to undermine party democracy by paying £3 to subvert the will of the real party members. Nevertheless, if Jeremy Corbyn wins the election fairly, and as a consequence, some members take their bat and ball home, one wonders what sort of democrats they are.

  • In the media Corbyn being portrayed as a ‘loony’ whilst the frontrunner for the next Tory leadership (a man with really dangerous ideas and the morals of an alley cat) smiles his way between gaffs and is applauded by the same media….
    Cameron is corrupting the whole parliamentary system and breaking ‘solemn promises’ daily and, whilst the 2015 election has come and gone (‘gone’ being the operative word) and LDV is still obsessing over Corbyn/Labour….

  • David Evans 13th Aug '15 - 5:58pm

    But can anyone explain why a Labour MP who wants a political future would even dream of choosing to join with the Lib Dems bearing in mind how successful we are at the current time?

  • The surge in support for Corbyn is a function of the failure of the Labour Party to use its time in opposition to rethink its ideological position after the death of socialism in the 1990s and the discrediting of the ideology, if one can call it that, of Blairite Third Way managerialism. Corbyn’s ideology is looking backwards to the days when democratic socialism still had imagined exemplars in eastern Europe and Latin America, but it is a blind alley in today’s world. I suspect that the shock that a Corbyn victory would cause to the majority of the parliamentary Labour Party would jolt the party into doing the sort of soul-searching about its purpose and direction that should have happened immediately after the 2010 election. On the other hand it is perfectly possibly that Labour’s organisation could collapse into a shambles of factional in-fighting, in which case I would expect most of the parliamentarians with ability to gradually ease out of politics and make money instead. Is there any other option, now, in western capitalist economies, than to have two (or more) parties which compete for power on the basis of very marginal differences in policies, personalities, and apparent freshness of approach?

  • Very important to move on properly. Essential the party re-establishes itself as a party not a coalition or arrangement with others. Very important that we get the respect back from those on the left who see us a “betrayers” etc. I well recall Shirley Williams being described to me in 1983, by Labour supporters in Wigan, as a traitor. 1981 was 34 years ago, there was only 20 years between World war 1 and 11, and look at all what happened in between. In those 34 years there have been enormous social, economic and world structural changes. So lets forget arrangements with others etc, and let us plough our own furrow to regain the electorates identity and trust. A glance at our appalling standing in Scotland, where we are just seen as one of pro UK parties shows just how important this is.

  • @David Evans: perhaps – clearly unlike you – the Labour MP might believe that the Lib Dems will recover quite quickly.

  • Matthew Huntbach 13th Aug '15 - 8:25pm

    Jayne Mansfield

    It is shameful that some people are trying to undermine party democracy by paying £3 to subvert the will of the real party members.

    Well, until recently we were always being told by the great and good in the media that the answer to the problems of politics was to introduce primaries i.e. a system where anyone can vote for who would by a party’s candidate. But now we have that, in effect, and the great and good don’t like the result, they claim it’s a bad thing.

  • We need to be very careful here. Obviously we want more members. and voters. But as a few others have said, we must avoid becoming a fly-paper for disgruntled Blairites.
    In the period after the 1997 election we had lots of ex-Tories join us. We never asked what was the benefit – we just took them. A lot of them were genuinely pro-European, so couldn’t stand Hague/IDS, but that doesn’t mean they were Liberals. We can’t have people joining us just because they don’t like Corbyn. If JC is elected, Tim needs to say, “Anyone who shares our Liberal values is welcome. But understand this is a Liberal party. Not a Blairite one. This is not 1981, and nor is it 1997. Don’t join us unless you are a Liberal.”
    I would love to see a headline saying that Blair, Mandelson and John McTernan had all tried to join us – and we’d rejected them! (I’m not joking).

  • TonyJ “Don’t join us unless you are a Liberal.””

    Do you mean a Liberal like John Tilley or like David Laws? They seem to be at opposite ends of the ‘liberal’ spectrum. Not sure which Lib Dems are most like Tony Blair but I would imagine Laws is pretty close to him ideologically.

    This is the problem when you try to pigeon-hole people into political tribes!

  • Goodbye New Labour – hello Syriza Labour!

  • Richard Underhill 13th Aug '15 - 11:05pm

    Jayne Mansfield 13th Aug ’15 – 5:27pm “It is shameful that some people are trying to undermine party democracy by paying £3 to subvert the will of the real party members. ”
    Yes it is shameful. i have not done so. This is a matter which is almost entirely for the Labour Party, resulting in public expenditure on one salaried post.
    The Labour Party has often addressed class as an issue, but in this case has created different classes of voters. The mess is of their own making. Ed Miliband should consider an apology to Labour supporters.

  • Richard Underhill 13th Aug '15 - 11:13pm

    Why?

  • Neil Sandison 12.15pm “There are still active former SDP members on local councils up and down this country who are proud Liberal Democrats”. I am one and very proud to be so.

  • Richard Stallard 13th Aug '15 - 11:21pm

    “It is shameful that some people are trying to undermine party democracy by paying £3 to subvert the will of the real party members.”
    Indeed, Labour should be very ashamed of being stupid enough to introduce a flawed system that people can take advantage of.

  • Jayne Mansfield 13th Aug '15 - 11:23pm

    @ Matthew Huntbach,
    I believe that there are tories boasting that they are paying the money and voting for Jeremy Corbyn. I expect no better of them, lucky for them that they have £3 to spare for that sort of thing.

    Anyway, even if Jeremy Corbyn does win the leadership, there are 5 years until the next election. If he makes a pig’s ear of things and his current popularity plummets, the party might decide that they want him to stand aside and select a new leader, with a different set of policies. The next five years seems like the ideal opportunity for the Labour Party to decide what it stands for in a fast changing world.

    As someone who still lurks around here despite not voting Liberal Democrat in the last GE, I do so because want to know what the Liberal Democrat Party will be like under the leadership of Tim Farron, then I can decide whether I will be voting for the party at the next election. ( Also, I do find the discussions enlightening and I have certainly changed my position on some things as the result of following some).

  • Jayne Mansfield 13th Aug '15 - 11:35pm

    @ TonyJ,
    I understand what you are getting at, but to be truthful, the more I read on here, the less sure I am of what it is to be a Liberal, there are so many competing claims ( role of the state etc.) For instance what differentiates you from the Liberal Party?

  • “why doesn’t the democratic left get together” Shirley is this a joke it indicates that the left of the labour party could join with the Lib Dems however there is a bit of a problem in that the Lib Dems spent the last five years propping up a Tory government who hit the people with austerity, and furthermore it looks as if you will be joined in the undemocratic unelected House of Lords with two ex Tory cabinet ministers Danny Alexander and Vince Cable to keep you company.

  • I don’t think Jeremy Corbyn is going to win the Labour leadership. His support is exaggerated by the media.

  • Bill le Breton 14th Aug '15 - 10:18am

    MayI thank Jennie Rigg.

    Thanks to her twitter link on the right of this page, she pointed to a very important piece by James Graham, http://www.theliberati.net/quaequamblog/2015/08/13/jeremy-corbyn-blairism-is-magical-thinking/

    James in turn links to a piece from May 2013 by Simon Titley, which is well worth following.

    Sometimes when I provide more than one link in a comment the dreaded automatic moderator intervenes, so I have refrained from the link. But both James and Simon’s pieces are ‘must reads’.

  • Bill le Breton 14th Aug '15 - 10:54am

    And still got mod-ed!!! but editor quick on the ball. Thanks.

  • Jayne Mansfield 14th Aug '15 - 11:42am

    @ Richard Stallard,
    Indeed Richard, just as shopkeepers should not put goods on display in shops so that people with few scruples can take advantage and steal them.

    People do have agency when it comes to making moral decisions. Are you listening Toby Young et al?

    Who was it that said Liberal Democrats see the best in people?

  • Richard Underhill 14th Aug '15 - 11:49am

    Jayne Mansfield 13th Aug ’15 – 11:35pm
    May i suggest a couple of books? ‘Why I am a Liberal’ and ‘Why I am a Liberal Democrat’.
    i have just reread the preamble to the constitution of the Liberal Democrats and the equivalent for the former Liberal Party. Two noticeable differences are the enviromental agenda, as a former Lancashire county councillor said at the time, and specific inclusion of sexual orientation. There are others and the world changed in 1989.

  • Richard Underhill 14th Aug '15 - 11:52am

    Jayne Mansfield 13th Aug ’15 – 11:23pm
    Other tories are discouraging them in the press, it could bring their party into disrepute.

  • Richard Stallard 14th Aug '15 - 12:28pm

    “Indeed Richard, just as shopkeepers should not put goods on display in shops so that people with few scruples can take advantage and steal them.”
    The valuable items aren’t put on display if the shopkeeper has any sense. They’ll be tagged, behind glass or what you see on the shelf will be just the empty boxes.
    Any party so stupid as devise a selection procedures flawed as Labour’s deserves to be taken for a ride. Someone, probably all misty-eyed with diversity and “inclusiveness” forgot to take their common-sense pill that morning!

  • @ Jayne Mansfield: ” … what differentiates you from the Liberal Party?” Assuming you mean what little remains of the post merger continuing Liberal Party, the big difference is that they support UK withdrawal from the EU (to the extent that their Cornish group stood down in favour of UKIP at the General Election. I believe that they also support Scottish independence.

    Mind you, there is no rule that Liberalism has to be represented by one party. Both Denmark (with Radikale Venstre and Venstre) and The Netherlands (with D66 and VVD) have separate social and economic liberal parties. Though they both have fairer voting systems. France has a number of parties that could be described as Liberal but, with their unforegiving electoral system, they tend to be tied to the Centre Right or Centre Left blocs.

  • Richard Underhill 14th Aug '15 - 12:45pm

    Richard Stallard 14th Aug ’15 – 12:28pm
    Dear namesake, please provide a link back to the sentence in quotes.

  • Richard Underhill 14th Aug '15 - 12:46pm

    ISBN 0 413 54570 9
    ISBN 0 413 54550 4

  • John Tilley 14th Aug '15 - 2:12pm

    Phyllis 13th Aug ’15 – 10:00pm

    Phyllis
    I am not sure Iike the company you suggest for me on that particular spectrum. 🙂
    I hope I am allowed to say that my Liberalism is clearly set out in the preamble to constitution of the party (and was so in the preamble to the constitution of the pre 1989 Liberal Party.)

    Whilst people of clearly different shades of LIberal Democrat opinion can happily sign up to the words in the preamble there have been some people in recent times who have tried to introduce Hayek-inspired, free-market Conservatism or Libertarianism where those ideas do not belong.

    I suggest that those ideas and objectives closely associated with the former MP for Yeovil are alien to the Liberal Tradition going back 300 years and more. (See Conrad Russell’s writings on the subject.).

    If your over-riding political objective is a “small state” as set out by David Laws, then you would clearly be more at home in a political party that believes in such a thing.
    Similarly, if your over-riding object is a Blairite state (in which rampant capitalism and militarism are sugar-coated with a pretence of social concern but very little substance) joining the Liberal Democrats might not be the brightest move.

    There are people in The Labour Party that I would welcome into our party with open arms — they are aged 24 or under and they wrote off our party five years ago when they felt betrayed by Clegg, Laws and other promise-breakers.

  • John Tilley 14th Aug '15 - 2:17pm

    I would echo Richard Underhill’s recommendation of ‘Why I am a Liberal Democrat’.

    The Beveridge book of the late 1940s — Why I am a Liberal — is also a cracking read and gives the lie to those who appear to think that Liberalism in the past was some sort of small-state dreamer’s philosophy, it never was.

  • We need PR anyhow.

    Thank God we have Tim Farron – I was on the verge of leaving had that has-been clung-on (Clegg’s final speech was his best ever!) – a pity that he had not delivered it 5 years ago, although dear old Chris Hughne had some issues).

    There are 4 reasons that I would vote for Jeremy Corbyn: (1) I agree with (yet a cost-effective,) re-nationalization of the railways and water; (2) we need to have a genuine socialist alternative ( I say this as a Lib DEM – we need this for democracy; (3) it will help open up some space in the middle-ground, although I am quite radical on the environment , defence and foreign policy (hey on the last, I believe that we need to commit 2% of GDP for defence, but we need to be wise, and going for some crap Danny Alexander (actually I love him!!) highland fudge does not cut the mustard (a few mixed metaphors here!

  • Jayne Mansfield 14th Aug '15 - 3:49pm

    @ Richard Underhill,
    Thank you for the recommendations.

    I never even considered voting for another party until post 2010 . As a mere voter, I had no idea about the ideological arguments that were taking place.

    Splendid as she is, even Shirley Williams went down in my estimation because of the Health and Social Care Act. As did Vince Cable over tuition fees, and I used to be an avid follower, and had quite ‘a thing’ about him.

    I hope that Tim Farron can turn things round for the party.

  • Simon Banks 14th Aug '15 - 4:42pm

    I assume she means “centrist”, not “centralist”. The Labour Party has many centralists all the way from its far Right to its far Left.

    If Corbyn wins and some Labour people can’t stand it, and assuming only a handful joined the Tories, there would be two possibilities, not mutually exclusive:

    (1): A lot of Labour anti-Corbynites join the Liberal Democrats;
    (2): They form their own party – or short of that, go into open revolt within the Labour Party and wait to be either expelled or appeased.

    I don’t quite understand what Shirley’s suggesting when she talks about the slightly leftish Liberal Democrats coming together with these people. Is she suggesting a split in our party? If not, surely any “coming together” would have to involve the whole party. With a new leader generally seen as “leftish”, and not necessarily slightly, it’s hard to see our party splitting to facilitate a new alignment.

    Any recruits to our ranks should be natural Liberals. There are plenty such people in the Labour Party (and some in the Tories), but they are a minority whichever wing of Labour you’re looking at. So an MP, lord or councillor seeking to join us should be interviewed. In some cases that would be a short interview and we’d be delighted to have them. In other cases we should be prepared to reply politely that we didn’t think their views fitted in our party.

    Were a kind of SDP2 to be created, including some people and views we’d welcome and others we wouldn’t, we should be prepared to look at areas where we might co-operate. This might include joint campaigns (but it would be good to draw in other parties and organisations) and local agreements over seats to be fought, but NOT any UK or even England wide pact imposed on unwilling local parties, Liberal Democrat or SDP2. The same goes for any degree of co-operation with Labour. Not all the Labour left is illiberal.

    By the way, in that picture, hasn’t Paddy aged?

  • Katerina Porter 14th Aug '15 - 5:49pm

    There is an awful Reds under the Bed reaction going on. I personally never voted Labour, occasionally One Nation Tory but usually Liberal. However I did not join the party until the Alliance. Roy Jenkins Shirley Williams Bill Rogers Charles Kennedy contributed hugely. The Attlee government did top down nationalisation and overdid it anyway and I still don’t like Labour but there are some interesting ideas in an article in Wednesday’s Guardian. by John McDonnell. Where there are natural monopolies public ownership has some merit and is accountable . Rather that than than the Sercos etc who have sometimes been incompetent and sometimes actually fraudulent.

  • Simon Arnold 14th Aug '15 - 7:24pm

    This is a step too far. Keep, Labour as far away, as possible.

  • Simon Hebditch 16th Aug '15 - 11:50am

    Whatever happens in the Labour leadership election, surely “progressives” must form a broad alliance across the centre left in order to contest the Tory enemies. There will be a whole range of policy areas that we should combine on and provide both a parliamentary opposition and extra parliamentary action. So when are we going to encourage such an alliance between ourselves, Labour, the Greens, the SNP and the myriad of centre left campaigning organisations?

  • Richard Underhill 16th Aug '15 - 1:30pm

    i prefer the marx brothers, especially the one with the mustache.

  • Richard Underhill 17th Aug '15 - 4:32pm

    Gordon Brown’s comments about democracy should be seen in the context of his own leadership election. He arranged for Jack Straw to sew up the nominations from Labour MPs far beyond what he needed for nomination, but so as to make it impossible for other MPs to stand, thereby denying the ordinary members of a vote, but allowing a vote for deputy leader, won by Harriet Harman. Just to show who was boss he immediately appointed her as party chair, an elected position.

  • Richard Underhill 17th Aug '15 - 5:08pm

    Harriet Harman loyally prepared the Labour Party for a general election, which Gordon Brown indecisively delayed, like Callaghan before him. Allowing the PM to decide the date of a general election for party advantage is political corruption, stopped by the Fixed Term Parliament Act.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed-term_Parliaments_Act_2011

  • Richard Underhill 17th Aug '15 - 5:14pm

    When introducing the Bill to the House of Commons, Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, said that “by setting the date that parliament will dissolve, our prime minister is giving up the right to pick and choose the date of the next general election—that’s a true first in British politics

  • Richard Underhill 20th Aug '15 - 12:57pm

    Richard Kemp’s view applies outside Liverpool.
    “Of particular interest will be those 8% of members who seem to be backing Liz Kendall. I really cannot see how any politician of honour who supported Kendall can stay in the Party that will be morphed into existence soon after Corbyn gets his hands on power. But in many ways it is now irrelevant who becomes the Leader. Labour Parties at levels with the exception of the Parliamentary Labour Party will be dominated by inward looking disputes. In the Parliamentary Party the Corbyn faction will be in such a small minority that it is hard to see how they will function with most capable politicians (flip flop Burnham being an exception) saying that they would not join the shadow cabinet. Stand by for a shadow cabinet of none-entities who will remorselessly picked off by the Press and Tories.”
    I am basing this prediction on hind sight. I base my view on how Lib Dems should react should react on practical experience. If some people want to come over to the Lib Dems we should not welcome them with open arms. We should ask ourselves two related questions. Are WE sorry that they have been in another party because we failed to attract them? Will THEY fit into our Party in a constructive and empathetic way? If the answer is yes to both – let them in. If no to both do not. Not all defectors are worth having.
    Whatever happens the Lib Dems are gaining strength. We should be confident enough in our own principles to watch whilst the Labour Party implodes but not depend on it as a way forward.”

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