Tag Archives: future strategy

A positive light on the Labour leadership election

By Will Wilshere | Sat 1st August 2015 - 12:25 pm

View image | gettyimages.com

In case anyone hasn’t noticed Labour is in a spot of bother over its leadership election. Jeremy Corbyn looks relatively comfortable in his position as favourite to win and the other candidates seem to be busy bickering over who is best to challenge him for the position of Labour leader. I’ve seen it thrown around that if Corbyn wins there’ll be a mass migration from Labour, or even that no matter who they elect they’ve got themselves into a flat spin and aren’t likely to recover.

I’ve also seen it thrown around that if that happens we’ll be the ones they’ll likely turn to, partly thanks to our new leader and partly due to the fact we’re seen as being nearest to Labour politically. I’d like to think that this is true; I’ve often thought that a large number of people who identify as Labour voters would happily support us if they were more aware of what we stood for as a party.

Firstly we need to remember that it’s almost certain now that the next general election will be in 2020 instead of the relative uncertainty of the past. Labour is still the second party in the UK parliament, even if their vote collapses like it did in Scotland they’re not going to lose their position in the Commons just yet. Arguably this is the best time for Labour to have this happen, early enough into the new government that it’s not impossible for whoever becomes leader to try and fix things. Five years is a long time, especially in politics, anything could happen and we can’t count on a weakened Labour.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged labour and labour leadership election | 79 Comments

Pay the top, squeeze the lot – the intuitive definition of Toryism

By George Smid | Sat 25th July 2015 - 8:55 am

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It is indicative that the ‘Welfare Bill’ made a news splash mainly for the Labour Party’s disarray “now we vote, now we won’t”. Otherwise no emotions shown or played, no questions, no strong public reaction. (With the exception of Tim Farron’s speech). The conclusion? Business as usual.

At the other end of the political spectrum, Labour is leaning left – we do not know the policies yet but the move is apparent. Whatever the result of the Labour leader’s election it will be ‘business as usual’.

What it shows is that Labour and the Tories are reverting to their stereotype. During my hustings as a PPC for South Holland and Deepings I argued that we cannot rely on ‘business friendly Labour’ and ‘working people Tories’. I reasoned that if and when they are put under pressure, if and when they have to make a decision in face of uncertainty, they will retort to their ‘intuitive reaction’: so the Tories will cut taxes for the rich and benefits for the poor and the Labour expresses preferences for Jeremy Corbyn.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged liberal democrats and political narrative | 13 Comments

Opinion: Filling the gulf in British politics – making the centre ground our own

By Jim Williams | Wed 24th June 2015 - 4:49 pm

On May 8^th Nick Clegg told us that fear won the election. He was right. But hope played just as important a part.

It was hope that took votes from the Lib Dems: Ed Miliband’s hope that shackling business would help the poor; the Green hope that uncoupling ourselves from our addiction to economic growth would deliver social justice; the SNP hope that a fiscally empowered Scotland could abandon austerity.

Each of these visions is as misleading as it is inspirational.

The general election amounted to a choice between firm Tory hands on the reins and the whip alike, and four loose notions of where we ought to be heading – but never how to get there.

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Posted in Op-eds | 24 Comments

Opinion: No change please, we’re Liberal Democrats

By Alexander Ehmann | Thu 18th June 2015 - 8:55 am

There is an inherent predilection in our political culture towards continual reorganisation. A culture that often holds us back and stops valuable reforms from maturing and embedding.

This frustrating desire to manifest difference via perpetual revolution may offer some cautionary tales for our own forthcoming leadership election.

I start by saying that I am genuinely open-minded about who it is that should go on to lead our party. However, I am concerned that two issues risk becoming incorrectly linked in the emerging campaigns.

That the Liberal Democrats in the last election adopted a ‘centring’ approach is clear. That the Liberal Democrats suffered a huge electoral defeat is also beyond challenge. The question is whether there is anything in ‘centring’ that is (almost by nature) politically hazardous or whether in fact the issue was implementation of this strategy.

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Posted in Op-eds | 29 Comments

Opinion: A liberal future

By David Murray | Fri 5th June 2015 - 1:30 pm

In the conclusion to his book ‘The Future of Politics’ published in 2000, Charles Kennedy stated

It will not be possible to categorize the voter of 2020 as a socialist, or a conservative. Instead, the voter of 2020 will be a variety of things: internationalist, green, committed to properly funded public services, technologically aware and liberal. That could make the voter of 2020 a natural Liberal Democrat supporter – but only if he or she hasn’t lost faith in politics altogether.

He believed that politicians have to restore a sense of idealism to politics, but that first, we have to know what our ideals are, and re-define our basic principles. Charles made clear that his key principle was a firm belief in liberty. As we consider electing a new leader, I would urge both old and new members to read this book before voting. I read it when it was first published, and have just read it again, following his tragic death.

There is much in the book that is as relevant today, as when it was published in 2000. It was three years into a ‘New Labour’ government under Tony Blair, and the government was already beginning to lose trust with the public, after all the initial euphoria of 1997. Charles emphasised that,

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Posted in News | Also tagged charles kennedy | 37 Comments

Opinion: Lib Dems and the politics of protest

By Guy Burton | Fri 29th May 2015 - 1:30 pm

The other week I asked whether the Lib Dems were a party of government or a party of protest. Many welcome comments were made, including a good one pointing out that a political party can be both: that to reach government it needs to be a vehicle of protest, to identify what’s wrong so that it can offer change.

As I thought about that point, I read Ben Marguiles’ blog on Liberal/Lib Dem electoral performance in relation to other parties. Whether Lib Dems like it or not, his observations highlight the contingent relationship between the party and the politics of protest.

Marguiles observes that previous analysis shows that when the party system is polarised – i.e. the two main parties diverge from the centre, the Liberals and their successors have done well. This was the case between 1945 and 2010 when Britain had a two-and-a-half party system. But where the political party system as a whole is polarised, the Lib Dems suffer. Marguiles puts this down to the rise of other political parties, like the Greens, SNP and UKIP, which all drew votes away from both the centre and both Labour and the Tories. The result? The Lib Dems saw their share of the vote drop. Marguiles does add a rider to this; that the party’s in government may also have made it vulnerable, but that may be due to insufficient data analysis having been done on that specific topic.

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Posted in News | Also tagged liberal democrats and politics of protest | 48 Comments

Opinion: Left or right? Which way lies the Future of the Liberal Democrats?

By Samuel Skubala | Tue 26th May 2015 - 2:55 pm

This is my first article for Lib Dem Voice – I’ve often been on the site, and finally decided I’d try and write for it!

It was a night of tragedies for the Liberal Democrats.

Sitting in my student accommodation, I was watching my first election being old enough to vote, with horror. Vince Cable, Charles Kennedy, Danny Alexander – bastions of British liberalism fell, one by one. As I’m sure we’re all aware, the party lost over 85% of its representation in parliament, having just eight seats midday on the 8^th May. Nick Clegg’s resignation speech later that day really resonated with me – the flame of liberalism in this country was still flickering, but far dimmer than it was 24 hours earlier.

The party now stands on the precipice – without the right leadership, and policies, we risk being cast into the oblivion of obscurity along with the other minor parties. Elections within majoritarian systems such as the UK cannot be fought from the centre-ground – the First Past the Post voting system does not allow such parties to thrive, aside from being the recipient of protest votes.

This is why, we must, ironically do as we told the voters during the campaign – look left, look right. The party must shift one way or the other – doing nothing is out of the question. It must find an identity.

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Posted in Op-eds | 48 Comments

LibLink: Ryan Coetzee: The Liberal Democrats must reunite, rebuild or remain in opposition

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 23rd May 2015 - 11:55 am

View image | gettyimages.com

Ryan Coetzee has written a long article for the Guardian in which he analyses our election defeat and looks to the future.

He looked at the three fronts of the electoral battlefield, Scotland, Labour-facing and Tory facing seats. He looked at the Tories’ fear tactics throughout the campaign:

About four weeks from election day it became clear that The Fear was hurting us. We tried everything we could to counter it: fear of a Tory minority government in hock to its own right wing, Ukip and the DUP; fear of Tory cuts to welfare, schools and other unprotected departments; ruling out participation in any government that relied on SNP support; offering ourselves as the only guarantors of a stable coalition. All of it was trumped by The Fear, and on a scale we didn’t see coming.

I cannot help wonder what would have happened if Miliband and Clegg had turned round to David Cameron and told him that he was talking nonsense. By ruling out coalition with the SNP, we legitimised his depiction of them as the ultimate bogey party. They were never going to anything other than a pain in the backside. They aren’t monsters. The worst they would be able to do would be to propose amendments on the likes of Trident which would be voted down by virtually everyone else bar a few of us and a few Labour lefties. I understand, I think, why we didn’t do that – it hadn’t gone so well when Clegg faced down Farage, however much we might admire his courage in doing so. I suspect, though that a joint initiative to combat the Tory fear might have helped Clegg and Miliband see they could work tougher and combat the ridiculous Tory scaremongering. Mind you, Labour’s policy platform was so weak, it might all have been in vain anyway.

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Posted in LibLink and Op-eds | Also tagged featured, guardian and ryan coetzee | 85 Comments

Opinion: The role of the Lib Dems as a party of protest

By Guy Burton | Sun 17th May 2015 - 10:25 am

Where do we go from here? Beyond the talk of electoral strategy and tactics, methods of campaigning and targeting, we need to look at what the purpose of the party.

Several people on these pages have reported that the party was clobbered by Tory scare tactics directed at a Labour-SNP coalition. If so, there’s only so much we can do about that, the actions of others. But we can have control over what the party is, what it stands for and what it should do in the future.

One is that image counts. Despite the electoral maths and rhetoric about the economic crisis in 2010, the party wasn’t a natural partner for the Tories. This caused us real problems when the party broke its pledge not to raise tuition fees. No amount of spin could overcome that. In future we need to honour our promises, however costly they are.

Another is the character of the party. Its rising vote share since 1988 has been based less on a core vote and more on being a party of protest. Even as the party abandoned equidistance after 1992 it attracted votes from those suspicious of New Labour and the Tories and wary of extremism of all kinds.

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Posted in Op-eds | 50 Comments

Opinion: Fury and the future

By Zack Polanski | Sat 16th May 2015 - 11:55 am

I’m furious.

It’s not an ideal place to begin to write a blog but I imagine it can be harnessed effectively by it’s conclusion.

I’m furious. Thankfully not at the electorate which is always a hiding to nothing. No, it’s mainly with a Tory party that has managed to sneak away with winning an election whilst avoiding being held truly accountable.

We know they will make £12 billion of welfare cuts yet they managed to avoid telling us which of the most vulnerable are most likely to be hit.

I’m furious at a Tory party who played the politics of nationalism and remember that only one day after the Scottish referendum, Cameron was talking the language of division over English votes for English laws.

And fury simply turns into incredulity when we see that Michael Gove is now the Minister responsible for justice.

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Posted in News | Also tagged liberal democrat leadership | 13 Comments

Opinion: On being beaten

By Ed Fordham | Thu 14th May 2015 - 7:35 pm

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After hours of counting on the morning on Friday 7^th May 2010 it was announced for the world to see that Glenda Jackson was re-elected elected as the Member of Parliament for Hampstead and Kilburn. Hidden beneath this was my own result where I lost by 842. A close result, except that I was in third place – in 2010 the best placed third placed loser in Britain I’m told.

In most of the accounts of the 2010 General Election H&K as it was dubbed, is listed as the seat the LD’s hoped to win – Nick Clegg had launch his campaign there. I was cited as a close friend (one paper even said I was his best man – I wasn’t!).

Indeed I remember at the count when the Conservative candidate went back to his team – he said “She’s won”. One of his campaign asked hastily – “and Fordham?” – “he’s third came the reply” – “Yes” they cheered.

But for me as I walked home and for the days afterwards it was more than losing. I’m a Liberal Democrat – I’m used to losing counts. But losing as a candidate it is highly personal.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged general election 2015 | 14 Comments

Opinion: 10,000 reasons to be cheerful

By Gareth Epps | Wed 13th May 2015 - 9:55 am

Different people adjust to adversity in different ways. Some were unwittingly preparing for 8 May for months. Some didn’t see it coming. Others may only be starting to sense it now.

All three groups were represented at the informal catch-up I had in Yorkshire last Friday, and all were present at Liberator magazine’s post-election drink last night. The welcome set of thank-you receptions and new members’ parties will provide the opportunity for catharsis and preparing this fightback.

And it really is a positive thing. For whatever reason, we have an unprecedented and totally welcome surge in membership. Some relishing a new future; some doing what I did in 1992 and joining this great party so a shock general election result like that doesn’t happen again. And many of the rest of us who have had our grumpy moments in recent years are feeling curiously optimistic too.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged liberal democrats | 21 Comments

Opinion: GE2015, where did it all go wrong?

By Adam Warner | Sun 10th May 2015 - 3:30 pm

The 2015 election is certainly not one to remember for the Liberal Democrats. Losing many great MP’s like David Laws and Vince Cable will certainly take a long time to recover from, but what exactly went wrong and why did we do much worse than forecast.

Triumph of fear over hope.

There is no doubt that the Conservative tactics of pitting England against Scotland worked for them. The idea of a Labour-SNP coalition was too much for many centre ground floating voters who voted tactically for them. Instead of defending their record and talking about the real issues the Conservatives instead spent the campaign promoting English nationalism and spreading fear. This tactic did for many of our MPs in Tory-LD marginal in the southern regions of England. Whilst it has worked in the short term it will cause problems for David Cameron over the course of the next parliament as he governs a hugely divided country with little support north of the border.

SNP Success

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged campaign feedback | 73 Comments

Opinion: We need a positive and distinct liberal identity. And then we must burn it into the consciousness of the electorate.

By Julian Gregory | Sun 10th May 2015 - 12:03 pm

Voters have rewarded parties with strong, positive messages and punished those with more equivocal positions.

The two clear winners of the election were the Tories and UKIP, which more than quadrupled its share of the national vote compared to 2010.

Most voters pay very little attention to politics, but even they knew what these two parties stood for. Vote Tory for an economic plan that is working and to avoid instability under Labour and the SNP. Vote UKIP to cut immigration and reclaim our national sovereignty.

Labour and the Lib Dems, the two main losers, both had messages that were in some sense equivocal.

Labour spent five years vacillating between the Blairite centre ground and being the party of the Left that Ed Miliband clearly wanted it to be. And in the pressure of an election campaign, it settled for being an ‘austerity lite’ option, reluctant to confirm that it would spend more than the Tories.

The Lib Dems deliberately chose an equivocal message. We said that we wouldn’t focus only on the economy or on addressing inequality, but rather would do a bit of both. And we defined ourselves by reference to the two main parties and largely negatively; we aren’t cruel like the Tories, and we won’t trash the economy like Labour.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged liberalism | 96 Comments

Opinion: Where now?

By Hamish Mackenzie | Sat 9th May 2015 - 2:15 pm

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Over the last two years I have worked as a campaign organiser with Lib Dem MPs in the Highlands and Islands. However, after last night’s terrible results that is now over for me. I can’t pretend that I am not bitterly disappointed, not merely for myself but because we have lost some of the finest politicians of this generation from the Commons, at a time when experienced level headed liberals are needed most. Many excellent Constituency Organisers, who I have worked with, have now lost their jobs and many wonderful volunteers have given up their time and effort and feel like it has come to nothing in so many places. All of this is through no fault of their own and in spite of running brilliant ground campaigns as Lib Dems so often do. But, hey, that’s democracy.

As Lib Dems we are hurting; every member, activist and supporter should feel hard done by because we went into coalition because it was in the national interest and we’re being punished for it. Our opponents and the media have now written us off as a sideshow or an irrelevance, but I truly believe that we can come back, that we can once again act as a constructive alternative to the “red to blue to red to blue” politics that we’ve all campaigned against for so long.

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Posted in Op-eds | 24 Comments

Opinion: Where now for liberalism?

By Sean Davey | Sat 9th May 2015 - 10:43 am

Over the next few days, weeks and months there are a few grim but necessary processes which the Liberal Democrats (not to mention Labour and UKIP also) will have to go through: electing a new leader, debating the purpose and ideology that guides the party, and ultimately regrouping to lick our collective wounds.

Perhaps more important than the theatrics of these things unfolding, is the question well what’s next? The decimation of the party as a parliamentary force – following on from the sustained loss of local government Liberal Democrats over the past five years – has disrupted the status quo, and now more than ever a new generation will need to rise up to carry the torch of Liberalism.

Unlike Labour and the Conservatives with their safe seats even when relegated to the opposition benches this does not simply mean a new leader, a new direction and “rising stars”. For the Liberal Democrats we really are back to building ourselves up as a party of local and national government.

In re-building the party we have a stark choice: change versus more of the same. I suspect this phrase will be banded about plenty in the ideological and strategic battles for the party’s soul and direction, but change must come in the ‘who’ as much as the ‘what’ and ‘why’.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged liberalism | 41 Comments

Opinion: A new hope for electoral reform?

By T J Marsden | Sat 9th May 2015 - 9:17 am

Much will be said and written about what happened on the 7^th. But we need to think about what happens next now. We have been heavily defeated, and it would be easy to allow that defeat to set the mood and leave us paralysed. We must not let that happen.

The electoral system has delivered a result that bears little resemblance to the popular vote. Our own defeat has been amplified by this – as has been pointed out elsewhere, our parliamentary presence was within 25,000 votes of being wiped out entirely. Imagine, two million votes for no representation at all. We need to work with the others who have been disenfranchised by the electoral system. The Greens, who went home with one seat for one and a half million votes. UKIP, who won the support of almost four million people but who also get but a single seat. The SNP might have benefited hugely from the system, but they are now looking at their seats being rendered powerless by EVEL, and also support reform

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Posted in News | Also tagged electoral reform | 46 Comments

Opinion: Five quick thoughts on what we do next

By Rob Blackie | Fri 8th May 2015 - 6:58 pm

Firstly we all need to take a few days off. Losing so many of our MPs is incredibly painful – when we know how they were champions of liberalism, as well as great local representatives. It’s easy for us to post-rationalise our problems to fit our existing prejudices, but smarter to take a short break.

Secondly we shouldn’t assume that everything winners do is good, and everything losers do is stupid. There are doubtless many things we did wrong, but not everything we did was wrong. Equally while we may have been hit hard by the other parties, we shouldn’t assume that aping them is the right solution.

Thirdly we should recognise that our problems fighting Labour, the Tories and the SNP may be very different. It is unlikely that there is one message or campaign technique that will allow us to be successful against all of these opponents.

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Posted in Op-eds | 72 Comments

Opinion: where do we go from here?

By RIchard Clifton | Fri 8th May 2015 - 5:38 pm

I was a member of the Labour Party, but in the nineteen eighties joined the Social Democratic Party when it split away. In 1983 the Labour Party was committed to leaving the European Union. I saw the SDP as having the pro-European, internationalist outlook that the Labour Party had abandoned.

By 1997 I had arrived in the new Liberal Democrat Party after the SDP merged with the Liberals. The Conservative MP for the constituency I was then in, Carshalton and Wallington, produced an interesting leaflet arguing that the Lib Dems were well to the left of “new” Labour. He aimed to deter people from voting for such radicalism, but it strengthened my support for the Lib Dems. When we were the only party opposing the Iraq war, I felt the party was positioned in the right place on the political spectrum, a party espousing liberal, radical and reformist policies, concerned about the environment, the welfare state and the socially excluded, while opposed to militarism. I want us to get back there.

Since 2010 it has been events that have re-positioned the party rather than decisions to re-position ourselves. Given the election outcome in 2010 and the sense of national crisis – a hung Parliament, a failing economy – there was no responsible option but to enter coalition. Undoubtedly we did not say clearly enough that this was an alliance of people with quite different philosophies and outlooks, forged in the national interest, and that coalition means that some things not in your manifesto and not what you would have really wanted would be done.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged featured | 104 Comments

Opinion: A radical, liberal vision

By Michael Berwick-Gooding | Wed 18th June 2014 - 11:59 am

Nick Clegg has set out his Liberal vision and I think it is inadequate as I see his vision as mainly about pursuing less pure liberal economic policies and education. Education policy has been a big part of our appeal. A penny on income tax for improvements to education was a good policy. It resulted in the Labour government putting a penny on National Insurance to pay for improvements to education. The pupil premium in 2010 has been implemented by the Coalition government. However we shouldn’t reply on education policy …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged citizens income | 20 Comments

Opinion: It’s time to concentrate on the “Fairer Society”

By David Pollard | Wed 4th June 2014 - 3:30 pm

The main criticism of the party leadership after the terrible European election results has come from those who see themselves on the ‘Fairer Society’ wing of the party. Over the last 4 years the Conservatives in the Coalition have swung more and more to the right on the NHS, welfare and immigration, making the decision to enter the coalition more and more untenable. Liberal Democrats in Government have continued to feel themselves constrained by ‘cabinet collective responsibility’ (CCR) even as the rightward shift has undermined the Liberal Democrat position on a ‘Fairer Society’

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged bedroom tax and fairness | 23 Comments

Opinion: Long term gains from short term arguments

By Gordon Lishman | Wed 4th June 2014 - 8:57 am

Most participants in the post-election debate have concentrated on specific changes they want now: the Leader, his advisers, the communications team, the detail of policy issues etc. I firmly believe that the underlying issues are systemic rather than one-off and that we should use the opportunity to establish structures for the future which minimise the likelihood of problems arising and improve our capacity as a democratic Party for dealing with them.

Some key targets:

Agreement by the Party in advance on the elements which underpin construction

…

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged liberal democrats | 28 Comments

Opinion: We must ask the right questions

By Chris Bowers | Sun 1st June 2014 - 11:59 am

In an era of increasingly presidential-style politics, it’s very tempting to fire the party leader when things go wrong – but would this actually help us for next year’s general and local elections?

To answer this, I feel we need to ask what made us successful pre-2010, what is actually going to work for us next year, will doing this be enhanced by having a different leader, and is there a better leader than the one we’ve got?

There are two obvious reasons for our pre-2010 rise. One was that we were …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged general election 2014, leadership and nick clegg | 21 Comments

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