The Social Liberal Forum got a profile in The Guardian this week, rightly highlighting its growing influence in the party (something I particularly noted over the Sheffield health debate):
In a tribute to the forum’s growing influence, cabinet ministers Vince Cable and Chris Huhne will attend the SLF conference on Saturday, with party deputy leader Simon Hughes.
The group claims about 1,500 members, and has no full time staff. It has only just appointed a director – Mark Blackburn, a former Lib Dem candidate for Westminster.
The group was set up after the party leadership won a vote at the 2008 party conference that any savings from identifying waste should be used to fund tax cuts, as opposed to more efficient public spending. SLF members saw this as an ideological shift that had to be resisted.
The profile doesn’t really catch the key decision made by the SLF (reflected in some of the changes in the key people involved in it) to be a “we agree with coalition but we want to make it better” group rather than a “we don’t like coalition” group. Even so, the full piece is well worth a read.
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10 Comments
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” … the key decision made by the SLF … to be a “we agree with coalition but we want to make it better” group rather than a “we don’t like coalition” group.”.
How sad. When did the SLF make this decision? Was there a vote?
Is acceptance of tthat position a condition of membership? If so , that rules me out.
No – it’s not a condition of membership – but it is certainly true that most of us involved with setting up the SLF were in favour of going into the coalition but concerned about how it works, our role within it and some of the policies.
“The group was set up after the party leadership won a vote at the 2008 party conference that any savings from identifying waste should be used to fund tax cuts, as opposed to more efficient public spending. SLF members saw this as an ideological shift that had to be resisted.”
So given the choice of letting people decide what to do with their own hard earned money people set up the SLF so that the state could decide how to spend it for them.
I can see the social democracy in this, not sure where the liberalism comes in.
Simon, I can see the Tory in your comments, not sure where any Liberal principles come in.
@david – you are presumably think that our policy of taking low paid people out of tax is a Tory policy then?
that letting people have a choice over how to spend their own money is Tory?
Although I’m not a social liberal I think the SLF can play an important role in helping to bridge the gap between liberals and social liberals/social democrats. We really need to come up with a coherent identity and agenda if we are to move forward. I feel there are quite a lot of areas where we can come to agreement although there are certainly ideological differences.
@Simon – The policy of raising the basic allowance to take low paid people out of tax altogether was strongly supported by most of us who set up the SLF. In fact we did our best to persuade the leadership of the merits of it at that time. They opted for reducing the basic rate instead. Nearer to the election they came round to our way of thinking after finding out that their preferred policy wasn’t easily understood by the public.
Anyway, the formation of the SLF wasn’t just in response to that specific debate. It was due to a number of different issues including progressive taxation, how to reform the public sector, tuition fees and others.
The SLF has never had a conference to decide what it’s policy is on anything, and probably we never will.
Within the SLF there are a range of views which we debate between ourselves.
The “we agree with coalition but we want to make it better” group have done superbly on the NHS reforms recently, not that anyone should be complacent about that, and that has united most of the membership behind that leadership position within the SLF.
@ Geoffrey Payne
Thanks for clarifying what SLF does and does not stand for. Speaking as an opponent of coalition, it would be churlish not to acknowledge that the “we agree with coalition but we want to make it better” group seem to have done pretty well in recent weeks. However, there is also a downside. If the NHS is now reformed and/or privatised more carefully than Lansley would have managed, but problems still happen, the Lib Dems will now share the blame for those problems. From Cameron’s point of view, I suspect that a little bit of watering down was well worth it, in exchange for Lib Dem backing and Lib Dem necks on the block.
Mark Pack, a supreme party loyalist, is now delighted to praise the SLF for “its growing influence in the party”, thanks to “the key decision made by the SLF (reflected in some of the changes in the key people involved in it) to be a “we agree with coalition but we want to make it better” group rather than a “we don’t like coalition” group.” Now, I wonder why Mr Pack is so keen to praise the SLF. Is it because he hopes they will gain influence and get changes to policy implemented? Or, is it because they will usefully provide a harmless safety valve for discontent, and thus unwittingly help the Orange Bookers to carry on tacking rightwards without meeting an effective resistance?
@David Allen
I thought Mark pack was simply stating the obvious, or has he saw it as a writer on LDV. If he is a “supreme party loyalist” then so am I and so are all the mainstream members of the party. I think you see conspiracy where it does not exist!
@Simon Mcgrath
Liberal Neil has addressed most of your points. But the key thing to note is that those of us who did not support tax cuts in 2008 still supported fairer (not higher) taxes and fully endorsed the green/fair tax switch. This involved funding the higher tax threshold by raising taxes on the wealthy. The 2008 motion – somewhat opaquely – seemed to call for proceeds of growth to go into general tax cuts rather than specific investment in a our pro-poor and in our policies (eg free personal care).