We’ve had an extraordinarily successful month. Back in April, we were written off, now we are clear leaders of a national movement that potentially includes over half the country. But we must be prepared for the cost of success.
Many who want a People’s Vote will join us, but they won’t agree with all our policies. A key part of our values is the belief that people should not be enslaved by conformity and should think for themselves. Well, that belief is going to be put to the test.
There are many thousands of social democrats who are disgusted with Corbyn’s economic illiteracy, his hardline socialism, and his supporters’ intolerance of anyone who disagrees with him. If these thousands join us, and especially if some of them are moderate Labour MPs, that will start to change the culture of our party.
There will be thousands of Tory members who are disgusted with the way their leadership have caved into populism, have put personal careers and party before country, and are leading the nation in a calamitous direction. If these thousands join us, and especially if some are moderate Tory MPs, that will start to change the culture of our party.
This will be painful but necessary. If we refused to be a broad church, then we’d only get narrow support and the two-party system would re-assert itself. If so, our country, as it suffered under a succession of governments led by dishonest populists of the left and right, would rightly treat us with contempt.
Of course, it’s only a small minority in our party who oppose the broad-based alliance needed to change our country’s direction. But they are a loud minority, and they call our potential fellow members “neoliberals”, “reactionaries”, “soggy centrists”, and “authoritarians”.
Part of our party’s culture is that we don’t like unnecessary conflict. If someone is rude, we prefer just to change the conversation. Often that’s sensible. But, in this case, we must not stay silent.
If our potential fellow members hear themselves being insulted by Liberal Democrats, and no Liberal Democrat speaks up in their defence, they’ll not join. And if enough of them don’t join, this historical opportunity may be lost.
We must not let that happen.
* George Kendall is the acting chair of the Social Democrat Group. He writes in a personal capacity.
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23 Comments
Couldnt agree more George we have a golden oppertunity to build a broad progressive social liberal movement without all the doctrinal baggage that has held british politics back for many decades in this country .Evidence based policy making rather than ideological lurches to the left or right .Brexit is a manifestation of how that can cripple a country that has only just recently escaped a external recession brought about by casino economics in the international financial markets .simplistic solutions that claim the grass is greener if only we adopt one or other economic model will just put us back into the same scenario .
Hear hear. The Voters are listening to us again & we must greet them with open hearts. Liberals should work with those who are not Liberals, (inside & outside the Party) to break open the system & let people in.
I take George’s point, but at the end of the day, political parties exist to fight for a particular set of values. We already have a problem that people sometimes aren’t clear what the party’s values are, diluting our identity further is not without cost (as George implicitly acknowledges in his opening statement about being “prepared for the cost of success”.
I don’t want to be overly tribal, MPs and members who are happy to sign up to the statement of values set out in the preamble to our party constitution are, of course, welcome. But we need to be clear that people who join this party are doing just that: joining *this* party.
If they want to argue from within to change it, fair enough, the line between entryism and arguing your corner has always been a little fuzzy, but nobody should be expecting us to throw away our party’s philosophical heritage just to get them in the door.
Neil Sandison. How do you build a social liberal movement without doctrine?
Doctrinal ‘barrage’ ia bit perjorative. Doctrine is a set of beliefs.
Values are choices – choices of ways to live.
Our values and our doctrine is set our in the preamble to the constitution.
The preamble is quite broad but not a licence to believe anything or support any policy.
People are welcome to join but they must be made aware of that Preamble. And they must feel that they have joined an organisation whose members are completely committed to it.
Agreed with Andy and Bill. I would also point out that we’ve spent the past nine years putting out mushy centrist messaging, not standing for anything, and been bimbling along at seven to nine percent in the polls. Less than a month of “Bollocks to Brexit” — actually taking a stand on something — and we’re topping the polls and have had the two best election results in the party’s history. There should be a lesson there.
*Obviously* not everyone in the party is going to agree with everyone else, and the party should be a broad church, but those of us who actually care about policies and principles, rather than just wanting to back the winning football team, should not stop standing up for our principles in order to win people over — *especially* since it’s very apparent that taking a stand is far better at doing that than pre-compromised mush is.
George as usual writes from a stance of sensible and the word I utilise, flexible.
It’s ironic this man prefers not to self describe as Liberal, prefers, social democrat.
We have few in our terrific party more in tune with Liberalism, as is or should be, than him.
As a previous Social Democrat who adopted the Liberal political philosophy many years ago I agree with you George. If people are searching for a party which allows them to enter with the hope of finding a political family and develop their own ‘take’ on the political positions they find there then I believe we are that party. The essential requirement is that they support the preamble to our constitution.
@Andrew,
In my opinion, the party over the last four years has been very similar to the party as it was from 1988 to 2010.
Would you call the party’s campaigning under Paddy Ashdown and Charles Kennedy “mushy centrist”?
If so, how do you explain the times over that period, when we polled even higher than we are now?
@Bill le Breton
This may seem to be a small distinction, but it is not.
I don’t want us to build a social liberal movement, I want us to build a Liberal Democrat movement, as defined by the preamble. The difference is that the Liberal Democrats were formed from Liberals and Social Democrats, and that means that a Social Democrat has just as much right to be a party member as a Liberal, and should be just as welcome.
@Andy Hinton
I don’t want us to throw away our party’s philosophical heritage, as defined in the party’s preamble.
My concern is with those who want to throw away the social democrat part of our heritage.
“In my opinion, the party over the last four years has been very similar to the party as it was from 1988 to 2010.
Would you call the party’s campaigning under Paddy Ashdown and Charles Kennedy “mushy centrist”?”
This is where we disagree. When we won seats in 1997 and 2005, it was because we had clear, principled, liberal messages based around clear policies whose appeal people could instantly see. Opposing the Iraq war, “penny on tax for education”, passports for the people of Hong Kong, opposition to ID cards — these were things that people could actually remember.
On the other hand, for years now we have been afraid to actually make a case for anything at all. We cringed away in 2017 from promoting the party’s policies on sex work or drug decriminalisation because people were afraid to make a case for them on the doorstep. We’ve had the most fence-sitting policy possible on Brexit — not “stop Brexit” but “let’s have another referendum”. And as a result we’ve spent years in the doldrums.
We’ve *finally* started making the messaging clear on Brexit, even if the policy itself is still a precompromised soggy mess, and we’ve been rewarded by people actually voting for us.
The lesson here is not “we must stop having positions on anything in case someone disagrees with us”, the lesson is that when you take a firm stance and are clear about what you stand for, some people will actually agree.
When he and a few of his followers refused to join the Social and Liberal Democrats, David Owen made the quip that his doctor had always advised him to “eat salads for breakfast”. When the party ditched the ‘Social’ and was mocked for not knowing what it wanted to be called, a supporter countered; “Better to change your name and to keep your policies”. We know the rest.
So here we are some thirty years later and another ex Labour MP may have to eat humble pie. This time, however, it might also be the potential ‘winner’ of this latest tussle for the middle ground, who may, if they want to change the system, have to change their attitude towards those, whose beliefs may not be as ‘pure’ as theirs.
If you really want to make the difference you have got to compromise. Being ‘Liberal’ might be fine with PR. Under FPTP being Liberal alone won’t do it. So, until the new dawn arrives, if you want those percentages to stay in the 20s and even higher, I would be wary of trying to ram that preamble down people’s throats.
@Andrew Hickey
Thanks for bringing up the examples of the party’s policies on sex work and on drug legalisation (I think our policy is now to legalise cannabis, though it was previously to decriminalise).
Do you think promoting those policies would have had the sort of positive impact that a penny on income tax had, or our current policy on Brexit has?
Some of these policies are very important for a minority but are regarded as minor issues by the majority. In my opinion, we should endlessly repeat messages about the policies which are keys concerns for a huge swathe of the country. (On message, in volume, over time)
On other issues, I think we should still have those policies, but we should do relatively little to promote them because to win, we need to convince our target voters that we are on their side, by focussing almost exclusively on the key messages that our target voters care about.
However, there is a third category of policies which I think should be non-party issues. And this is precisely because I believe we should be a broad church. Why alienate members on issues that are not key? And why try to shackle our MPs on everything.
Members of the party will have massively different opinions on what should be in this third category. But, in my opinion, policy on sex work should be one of them.
Sadly, Conference is rarely is given a chance to vote for an amendment that proposes no policy, so we have few, if any, policy areas where we have positively voted for no policy. We just have some policies where we have rejected the policy (which is regarded by many as a policy against, and so a different thing entirely).
It is always difficult to make the distinction between principle and policy. I think the absolute principle category should be strictly limited but it definitely exists. For example I do not think we could accommodate views on the economy which advocated either total state control or complete abolition of the public sector. However there is a lot of scope between these two extremes. Also we must learn the lesson from the success of our recent adoption of straightforward understandable messages. While we must not descend into mere sloganising I do wonder how much resource we should continue to devote to conference resolutions pages long which (let’s face it) often contain far too much dancing on the heads of pins.
“Why alienate members on issues that are not key?”
And this is the crux of it. Those issues may not be important to *you*. They are important to a lot of other people. Your argument is, in essence, that everyone who has different priorities to you should just shut up about the issues that are important to them, in the interests of getting MPs elected who don’t agree with them. Quite what the people who *do* care about those issues get out of this, you haven’t made clear.
@Andrew Hickey
I think you misunderstand me.
Have another read of what I wrote.
I said: “Some of these policies are very important for a minority but are regarded as minor issues by the majority.”
So we agree that these issues are very important to some people.
I said: “Members of the party will have massively different opinions on what should be in this third category.”
So are we agreed that there is a lot of room for debate in this area?
Where did I say that people who disagree with me should shut up? I don’t think I have ever said that. In fact, I believe the opposite. In my opinion, a big, but rarely acknowledged problem in this party is that many people don’t feel free to say what they think.
What I was saying is that I want *the party as a whole* to devote its resources to campaigning on issues that will help the party win over its target voters. Individual members should, of course, be free to say what they want. I would be appalled if the party were trying to shut individuals up.
In the article, I am saying the opposite. That people like me, who might disagree with certain people, should stop shutting up. And that when people are rude, we should challenge them, and encourage them instead to debate these issues politely.
As I wrote in my comment above, there is a difficult question here. I want us to be tolerant of different views on what I think are secondary issues. The problem is, we will disagree over what secondary issues are, or indeed whether there are any secondary issues.
And there is an irony as well. Some members think that we should try to keep people out of the party who disagree with them on certain issues, and by implication that existing members of the party who disagree with them on those issues are not welcome. I am suggesting we should be more tolerant of different opinions on these issues.
And yet I’m the one being accused of being intolerant, accused of telling people to shut up.
I do believe that the tectonic plates of politics are shifting and it is reversing the “Strange Death of Liberal England” where the old Liberal Party was gradually replaced by Labour as the main progressive party in early 20th Century and the trends are broadly across Europe.
Labour have become both too associated with long term welfare interests and with professionals, primarily in public services and the public sector. They are increasingly seen as irrelevant to would be aspirational working class communities and do not perform well in either rural areas or most suburbs. In addition, labour are losing the Celtic nations they once relied upon to get them over the line.
I am not saying that long term welfare interests are not important, just that the thrust of policies and perceived interests see too many people consider that it does not help them now. Of course Corbyn has made things far worse for themselves and has accelerated the decline of their core vote.
But with the Tories brought low by a brexit it is impossible to make an acceptable go of it, while showing them up as incompetent, LibDems will be able to draw from both sides, which is probably a post war first. A real opportunity.
LibDems topped the EU polls in London, including 15 boroughs and had the greatest gains nationally at 15, considering that Farage just re-launched UKIP under a new name and gained just 5 MEP’s.
LibDems are now in poll position to in London Mayor in 2020
The sister Alliance Party in N.I. had record council gains and their first MEP.
The LibDems also won the previous two local elections on councils and councillors gained.
Across Europe ALDE, the Liberal group had easily the largest gains at forty odd MEP’s in 3rd place and are in a good place to replace the Socialists into 2nd place in 2023.
Liberal policies of devolving power and public money to local levels, an active Industrial Policy and creating institutions to better manage capitalism are more in keeping with the times than Labour’s centralisation and eye watering increases in tax, borrowing and spending, as well as their planned government take overs of company boards.
It’s a Liberal future
@John
I agree with much of your post, except that you conflate the Liberals Democrats with Liberals.
We are not just a Liberal party, we were formed as a merger of social democrats add liberals. That heritage lives on. Charles Kennedy was a social democrat. Vince Cable and Shirley Williams are social democrats. And there are many, many more.
It might be a Liberal Democrat future if we can seize this unique opportunity. But I fear, if we are tribalist, do not form a broad church, and do not welcome people with a wide range of opinions, then those we are rejecting will stop voting for us, the opportunity will be lost, and the #labservative duopoly will reassert itself.
George Kendall
I want us to build a Liberal Democrat movement, as defined by the preamble.
Sure, and thanks to Caron Lindsay for having put up the preamble here and before to remind everyone of what the Liberal Democrats are, or ought to be, about.
Perhaps George, you are unaware of the extent to which it was the Liberals who insisted that the preamble took this form. In particular, it was the Liberals who insisted, against the wishes of the SDP, that the phrase “no one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity” be in the preamble. This was taken from the preamble to the Liberal Party constitution, and was seen as a key definition of what we are about.
I say this now to point out that the belief that seems to have developed that the old Liberal Party was to the right of the SDP and stood for what now gets called “neoliberalism” is completely wrong. The reality is that we were very much NOT seeing liberalism as primarily about reducing the state. As the preamble makes clear, we accepted the role of the state as necessary to preserve true freedom.
@George Kendall
“But I fear, if we are tribalist, do not form a broad church, and do not welcome people with a wide range of opinions, then those we are rejecting will stop voting for us, the opportunity will be lost, and the #labservative duopoly will reassert itself.”
George – if anyone was being tribalist round here I would have thought it was you, obsessing about social democrats as opposed to liberal democrats.
Why is there such a big issue about any LibDems perhaps having reservations about welcoming ChUK people when they seem at pains not to tell us their values? If any.
@Nonconformistradical
You said: “George – if anyone was being tribalist round here I would have thought it was you, obsessing about social democrats as opposed to liberal democrats.”
When I have written about the differences between social democrats and liberals, it has sometimes been when self-identified liberals have explicitly asked me to do so, as happened today. But I also do so after I read people who perpetuate the idea that to be a liberal democrat, you have to be a liberal, and so deny our party’s social democratic heritage.
But can you point me to where I have written about the differences between social democrats and liberal democrats? I’m not sure I ever have. I think that would be meaningless, because the Liberal Democrats is a party that encompasses both liberals and social democrats.
@Matthew Huntbach
I don’t think I’ve ever accused Liberals of being neo-liberals. In fact, I try never to use the term – too often it’s used by Marxists to describe anyone one millimetre less leftwing than they are.
What I do think is that Liberalism has always covered a wide spectrum of belief, from the centre to the left. That has been true in this party, and, though I don’t know this from direct experience, it seems obvious it was true in the old Liberal party. (At least, it has seemed that way to me, when I have heard a few who have lamented that everything would have been so much better if John Pardoe had beaten David Steel)
If anyone wants to respond to my thoughts on the differences between liberalism and social democracy, I’d love to read what you think:
https://www.facebook.com/SocialDemocratGroup/posts/2419317234981080?comment_id=2419367768309360&comment_tracking=%7B%22tn%22%3A%22R%22%7D
George, I am an irregular reader of this forum, so I may be, er, out of date. But I think your point above needs emphasising, because it increasingly seems to me that you have hit the nail on the head — but not hard enough. Too much discussion goes on, which is based on a hidden misconception. And that is caused by the elusive connection between two commonplace terms: Liberal, and Neoliberal (variously spelt). If I’ve got it right, Liberal as in Liberal Democrat describes one who subscribes to the social or moral belief in egalitarian freedom tempered by a spirit of fellowship and social responsibility. “Neoliberal” does not mean an up-to-date version of that, because it is not applied to the social context, but to a particular doctrine held by those who profess expertise in Economics, and in particular in the theories that used to be called laisser-faire, and later Thatcherism. So, for forty years or more, Conservatives have been neo-liberals. Unfortunately, so have some who are liberals in our own sense of the word; members of our own party, alas. I keep myself going by nourishing the belief that the Lib Dems have twigged, at last, having realised with dismay the academic error (or swindle?) which has given us our current Austerity. There are very encouraging hints of this in your opening piece, as well as later. But we need somehow now to purge ourselves not only of the error itself, but also of the smell the Cons have succeeded in imparting to our ‘brand’: today’s Liberals are not Neoliberals, I trust.
And I hope they . . .we, I mean, are moving towards adopting as a central policy, and under a better title, a thoroughgoing (there is no otherway) Universal Basic Income, renamed. Now is the time for it, to mend the impending pain of the Conservative Brexit.
I’m delighted that a lot of people have been reading this article recently.
It was posted several weeks ago, so the comments section isn’t active. But if anyone wants to discuss it, do post a comment on the following Facebook page. I’ll get a notification, and I’ll read your comment.
https://www.facebook.com/SocialDemocratGroup/posts/2417887825124021
Reading this thread, there seems to be a lot of talking past each other.
George says (rightly in my view) that to be successful we need to reach out to people who don’t agree with us on everything. We do this by emphasising where we agree and being friendly and respectful where they don’t quite agree with us yet.
I think this is the right approach. People won’t initially agree with our whole programme, but being welcoming makes it more likely to convince them. And even if they remain unconvinced, we’d prefer that “on balance” they still see us as the best option available to them.
Most of the disagreeing responses have been based on concerns that this would result in diluting some of our more radical policies. They argue (also rightly in my view) that we shouldn’t sacrifice good policy in the name of being “centrist” or having “broad appeal”
But I don’t think George has ONCE suggested that we compromise our policy to get people in. He’s just asked us to be to be welcoming and deal with disagreements respectfully, emphasising how they would fit in rather than they wouldn’t.
It may be that some eventually find that they disagree with our policies to the point that they can support us, which is fair enough.
But let them make that decision themselves. In the meantime let’s be as welcoming as possible and emphasise the things we agree on rather than the things we disagree on.
Daniel,
Thanks for the comment. Yes, broadly you are right. The core of the article is we need to reach out to people who may not agree with us on everything.
And yes, as always, I think there has been a bit of talking past each other. That’s the internet!
However, to be fair to Andrew Hickey, there are some issues where, personally, I would prefer us to leave the decision to our MPs – if it’s an issue which is not core to our beliefs and where it is not necessary for a government to have policy on.
I give one example, in my comment (linked below), I say that I don’t think a policy on sex workers is necessary.
https://www.libdemvoice.org/success-will-bring-a-painful-challenge-and-we-must-embrace-it-60986.html#comment-500415
Of course, whether to have no policy on an issue would be for conference party to vote on, and perhaps most members would disagree with me.
At present, we seem to have policy on everything, and people never seem to consider the option of leaving it to a free vote, where our MPs are free to vote in different ways. That’s something I would like us to reflect on. But it’s a separate issue, and one I may develop in another article.