Although on the surface, British politics appears to have settled down a little in the last few months (Conservatives ahead, Gordon Brown in Michael Foot territory), underneath it all there is still a huge brittleness about it all.
You see it many weeks in council by-election results, where the Liberal Democrats often notch up dramatic swings from the Conservatives in by-elections in the southern-half of England.
You see it in research such as Newsnight’s focus group comparing Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg. At the start – few very had heard of Nick – but by the end – he was by far and away the most popular.
This brittleness is also there in the underlying dynamics of the big issue – the economy. Many of the most vocal and extreme exponents of the virtues of free markets, removing regulations and letting the financial markets roam free, have had their words turn to dust – and now want us, the taxpayers, to pick up the bills for their blunders. This discrediting of the deregulation zealots, added to the unappetising sight of managers crashing their firms into the ground, expecting the taxpayer to pick up the pieces – but still themselves personally walk away with large bank balances and pension pots – should be manna from heaven for those in political parties challenging the zealots.
Yet – here in Britain it is the Conservative Party riding high in the polls despite their policy proposals being so at odds with the reality of the times. Only last year – and after the turmoil in the world’s financial systems had started – the Conservative Party published an official policy review from John Redwood saying that, “We see no need to continue to regulate the provision of mortgage finance.”
Wiser heads in the Conservative Party may well now wish to back away from this – indeed, when I appeared on Question Time and Deputy Labour Leader Harriet Harman quoted these words at Conservative MP Alan Duncan, Alan denied any knowledge of where the words had come from!
But this gap between what our country needs – effective regulation, not blind faith in deregulation – and what the Conservatives want offers the Liberal Democrats an opportunity. It is the same story with tax – where our policies would focus on helping the least well-off, asking polluters and the extremely wealthy to pay more, whilst the Conservative tax cuts (in as much as they are willing to give any details) would focus on giving the most help to the most well-off.
Someone recently joked to me that just as in the US it is near-obligatory for Presidential candidates to say “God Bless America” in every speech, it is now near-obligatory for Liberal Democrats to bless Vince Cable every time – but there is a reason for this! Because Vince has helped steer the party to a very effective treble-response to these challenges: regulation where necessary (as with the banning of short-selling on financial stocks), efficiencies where possible (as with axing ID cards) and putting our priorities on helping the least, not the most, well-off.
That approach is one which I think not only commands very broad support within the party – as we saw in the votes at conference on parts of it – but also begins to give us that overall narrative which makes our policies hang together in a coherent and easy to follow way.
So – as we end our conference and wait to see how the rest of the conference plays out – I’m in a very optimistic mood!
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9 Comments
Really good article.
The question for me though is how do we raise the national profile- we get nowhere near the amount of coverage we deserve, and as such we don’t even figure in much of the public zeitgeist.
How do we turn this around? The fact that Vince got things right, the fact that the tax plan is solid and well thought out and the fact that we are making the kind of decisions the other parties are scared of is all well and good, but we are still on the outside edges of the public zeitgeist.
What can we do to change this- do we need to attack the media more, and call them out on why they barely bother to cover the Lib Dems?
Do we need to take the fight to the Tories in a far more agressive manner?
As the newsnight poll (although not scientific or particually fair) showed, when people know about the party and its policies they like what they hear- how do we let the country know?
I actually thought that Ian Hislop made the best point on QT – why do people still openly laugh at the idea of voting for the party that is offering everything they clamour for?
We solve that one and it really will be prepare for government time.
Jiggles – as the late, great David Penhaligon would say: “Stick it on a piece of paper and shove it through a letterbox”
“Many of the most vocal and extreme exponents of the virtues of free markets … have had their words turn to dust – and now want us, the taxpayers, to pick up the bills for their blunders.”
Which exponents of free markets have called for government bail-outs? By definition, free-marketeers have been arguing against the bail-outs.
See here, for example.
Also, the recent crash has occurred mainly in areas of heavy regulation, and thus, while I am no expert in the field of finance, it can be argued that regulatory failure is to blame.
Again, see here for another example.
People vote Lib Dem because they don’t know any better, but they are learning, as proven by the dismal performance in Glasgow.
You are the party that denied us a voice on the EU.
For the first time in over thirty years we had a chance to speak,regardless of what Clegg said, constitution or not,we wanted to speak and you denied us.
Incompetence can be forgiven, betrayal cannot, and there is a certain clause in the constitutional treaty that will come back to haunt you and destroy both Labour and the Libnotdems!!
This interview with Joseph Stiglitz shows that it was indeed Alan Greenspan who not only set US interest rates too low, but deregulated the markets who bears a big responsibility for all this.
http://tinyurl.com/6qdd3k
If he had not done so of course, US growth would have been less and all this free market fundamentalism, some of which has crept into the Liberal Democrats, would not have been anything like as trendy as it has been up until now.
There was a reason why Keynes and not Hayak was the pre-eminent liberal economist in the 20th century. His analysis of the 1930s depression was spot on, and his solutions largely worked.
Things are different enough today that we have to update his presciptions from back then, but the fashion for Hayak and neo-liberalism has been shown to be the road to nowhere.
Neil, much as I loved David Penhaligon, some of us are keeping the paper recycling mills in business as it is!
That’s why the comment was directed at ‘Jiggles’ and not at you 😉
“why do people still openly laugh at the idea of voting for the party that is offering everything they clamour for?”
Good question and I can think of a million different reasons different people might come up with. A bit of glamour and celebrity/expert endorsement is often one way to help swing things along, but that tends not to be the liberal way (and are Bill Bailey and Sandi Toksvig glamorous enough to appeal to the thronging multitude?).