The Liberal Democrat bird of liberty has never before flown this low. It has been a long 45 years of pride as the only real third party in British politics. Now liberalism has been driven into the wasteland. Politically irrelevant and utterly ignored by the British media. You’d have hardly guessed there’s a new leader with how little has been seen of him.
Back in 2010 the Liberal Democrats stood for three things – The hopes of the young, the distrust of the authoritarian tendencies of the major two parties, and the protest vote. The first they lost in the PR catastrophe that was student tuition fees, the second they lost as a party of power which sided with the Conservatives, the last they lost to the booming popularity of UKIP and the Greens.
So what are the Liberal Democrats left with? They don’t dominate any single demographic and people have forgotten what they stand for. They command no media attention to change these impressions or build a base. How can they possibly move forward from here?
The #libdemfightback is a noble campaign but it is doomed to fail as long as it continues to bounce around the Liberal Democrat youth without ever escaping into the real world outside them, the world which cares little for internal political chat with people who get their news and opinions from what their friends post on Facebook. or from the BBC.
It’s time to look at what Britain First and the Greens do right. What the Conservatives do right. What they do right is that they pick a simple, popular position and they hammer it home. They hammer it home with hyperbole, with repetition and by calling on the base emotions of pride, anger and fear.
The reason the Liberal Democrats have lost the ear of Britain is because too many in the party believe they’re better than that. They believe they can continue to champion sensible and dignified politics, intelligent causes aiming for intelligent results. They believe the common sense of the British people means eventually everyone will see how right and just they are. Unfortunately, that’s simply not how politics works anymore. The Liberal Democrats need to learn how to be viral, they need to learn how to be seen.
Not all of this is about how to broadcast your image. It is also about what your image is. The second major problem with the Liberal Democrats is that they have lost their message. Lack of conviction one way or the other has become the standard for the party, exemplified by Tim Farron’s inability to condemn discrimination against homosexuals when asked if they were sinful – We’ll accept your beliefs whatever they are, just let us believe whatever we want as well.
That’s simply not good enough in this political arena. It’s a perfectly “nice” position to have but it doesn’t translate as real conviction. It is a conviction to being without position. It’s a dedication to letting people vote for someone else.
The Liberal Democrats need to embrace their core beliefs with more strength than that. They need to discard the messages which leave room for nuance and being “nice”. It is time to pull out the tough rhetoric with tough policies. Fight hard against the policies of the war on drugs and frame them as murdering our youth. Campaign against Trident as a threat to our national security, starving our military of resources in the name of a vanity project. Condemn radical Islam as anti-women and don’t pause for breath before decrying radical Christians for homophobia. Don’t sit on the fence for economics – champion the best of capitalism whilst demanding the bankers who break the rules are dragged before court. Insist on a true living wage framed not by socialism but as a vital step to end benefit culture and reinvigorate British capitalism. Call for an end to jails which pump out as many criminals as harmless recreational drug users are shoved in but bring about a crackdown on sexual violence and tax evasion. Hoist a guillotine over the heads of the banks with sanctions that not only bust a hole into the side of their business but slap those responsible behind bars.
For too long the Liberal Democrats have been too nice. Being liberal does not mean being quiet or soft. It is time to strike hard against intolerance, be forceful against inequality and be tough on rule breakers and oppressors. It is time to bring in a new kind of muscular liberalism which shouts loud enough to be heard and casts a shadow wide enough to win. It is time to not only grasp public sentiment and emotions but turn them to drive the liberal message. It is time for an end of the party of “live and let live” and time for a party that insists on LIBERALISM in block capitals.
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33 Comments
“Back in 2010 the Liberal Democrats stood for three things –” … You forgot “(4) a lot of former Labour supporters attracted by our position on the Iraq war we were going to lose anyway once Labour was out of power and able to do oppositionist posturing”. We just lost them quicker going into coalition. Apart from that I like your style.
Hoping this is a satirical piece. Otherwise I think I just read the way to be liberal is to cease to be liberal.
Housing, human rights, pro EU, speaking for the voiceless & voteless, backing enterprise – SMEs the lifeblood of the UK economy – we’ll be banging on about these a lot Whether people are listening to Tim yet I don’t know . But they will in time.
Excellent piece. The LDs need to be about liberalism, and perhaps need to help popular understanding of how other positions derive. It shouldn’t be a hard sell, it’s not an ideology or driven by greed, privilege or envy, but a human and humane uplifting philosophy. A good start though would be made if elected representatives took more care of it themselves!
Ben – It is not satirical at all. Part of championing tolerance and freedoms means not standing by and allowing intolerance and oppression to continue unopposed. We need to be far louder and more aggressive in the face of those who would erase liberal ideals from the map.
Being nice is all well and good, but there’s a time to stop being nice. Being accepting of intolerance is not liberal, fighting hard against it is.
I agree with some of this. I do think the way forward is to be more vocally liberal.
”Calling on the base emotions of pride, fear and anger”, sorry Tristan, I think you have taken a wrong turn. I also think Tim has made more impact this conference than you realise. Dumbing down is not the answer, clear, passionate articulation is, which I think he exemplified. Not wanting to dent your zeal, commendable as it is, just hoping to hone it.
Well, as someone with a finance background the last thing I want is for bankers to be treated worse than paedophiles and rapists. The banker Tom Hayes recently got a 14 year sentence.
As Ben Midgley says: it would be the party ceasing to be liberal. You are right on attacking terrorism, but some more nuance is needed. An 18 year old girl died after taking an ecstasy pill on the weekend. The message that the ‘war on drugs is murdering our youth’ won’t resonate very much.
I actually wrote this before his conference speech but it was only edited to a shortened version and published today. I thoroughly enjoyed Farron’s speech and I think it had all the passion and zeal we need to get out message out properly. However, I still think it needs a firmer message to push. This article put it well: http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2015/09/what-makes-a-liberal-tim-farron-doesnt-seem-to-know/
“”Calling on the base emotions of pride, fear and anger”, sorry Tristan, I think you have taken a wrong turn.” – Expecting all voters to vote entirely on carefully considered rational arguments and to constantly fall on our side of debates because of it is a mistake. People vote with their hearts and emotions more often than their heads. We need to recognise and tap into that.
@ Tristan Gray: I may not agree with you on all of your policy approaches but very well said indeed.
@ Ben Midgley: I see no satire at all in this thought provoking article. Liberalism, across it’s spectrum, tends to attract nice, reasonable people precisely because it is reasonable and is almost always willing to accept that there is room for doubt. The thing is, those same “nice” people then assume that being “nice” is a core part of Liberalism. It isn’t, it’s a product of it.
We just spent 5 years, in my view, in a thoroughly unpleasant government, laying the foundations of an even more unpleasant one, whilst being so nice to each other that anyone of raised a question was slapped down. We almost “niced” ourselves into oblivion.
If we can be that muscular over so many policies that the party doesn’t even believe, surely we can be muscular about policies that we do believe in?
Radical Liberalism in particular grew in the crucible of decent human reaction to the worst of the Industrial Revolution. Whether this was from secularists, Congregationalists, Methodists, Quakers, or any of the other sources of our founding fathers, they knew what it was to be outraged by something they knew to be wrong. They knew how to express both the outrage and to develop and propose solutions in a muscular way to the uncaring and unmoved. They also knew the pain of compromise that governing requires.
We now know how to compromise in government. We need to go on and rediscover outrage and muscular support for our proposed solutions. This will not make us any less Liberal, even if we aren’t quite so nice.
This article is bang on. To be heard, to be distinctive we need to be radically liberal. Taking issues not discussed in the current political discourse and making them relevant is how we break through.
Eddie: I’m also from a finance background. I don’t think nearly enough senior financiers were punished for their part in the financial crisis and the various scandals that have followed. The public is tired of their economic well-being being subject to the whims of men who cheat and manipulate the system, we should recognise and stand up for those feelings.
Nuance isn’t liberal, the two are not interconnected. Attitude is not something tied innately to any part of what liberalism is. If we are to rebuild our youth vote we need to fight on ground which is a personal and important topic to them – being demonised for their use of recreational drugs, and being made victims of exploitative dealers of the black market, is one of those things.
Thank you Phil, you put that better than I did I think.
“People vote with their hearts and emotions more often than their heads. We need to recognise and tap into that.”
Well done, Tristan. Great to see someone within our party publicly acknowledging this.
Fortunately, we have a leader who does the hearts and minds stuff very well. We saw this in the section on refugees in his speech yesterday.
I think we could also do with adding a human element to hit home why current policies are failing – the international campaign for girls’ education wouldn’t be half as potent without someone like Malala as its human face. We need to be showing the public real world examples of people who have lost everything because of ridiculous drugs policies, or who have found themselves on the verge of homelessness because of the lack of house building in this country. We might not like them, but the Mail and other right-wing tabloids do this sort of thing to great effect to push their lines (e.g. that teenage girl who died after taking ecstasy) and Labour and left-leaning papers do it very well too (e.g. the depressed man who was driven to suicide by the DWP’s ‘fit for work’ programme).
We have a tendency in this party, perhaps because of our intellectual nature as individuals (which is why we are liberals, after all), to talk in the abstract. Voters don’t make decisions based on the abstract, they vote based on what they can see and feel. With Tim as leader we have a real opportunity to take hold of 2-3 of our ‘pet’ causes and make changes to public sentiment – he’s a human, caring leader. We talk about speaking up for the dispossessed and the disadvantaged – well let’s prove it.
If people believe that the liberal democrats have lost their way in the race to government then they need to speak louder and say if we ever stand of chance of winning we need to think about these things to. I believe that Tim was very clear on the direction that he wishes to take the party and also showed true emotion on the matter but if anyone thinks that he should be heading in a different direction they should shout louder. After all we have to remember that Liberal Youth is the next generation so lets start making the different we need to.
“We have a tendency in this party, perhaps because of our intellectual nature as individuals (which is why we are liberals, after all), to talk in the abstract. Voters don’t make decisions based on the abstract, they vote based on what they can see and feel.” – Exactly this. This is what I was trying to stress on the section on how we communicate.
I love how Tim Farron speaks with emotion. It’s a step in the right direction. I should emphasise this was written before his conference speech else I would have referenced that in the article. But we need policies and campaigns to match the language. Over-emphasis on language and not having strong policies to match is where UKIP and the Greens fail and we cannot let ourselves join them.
There is a lot more right than wrong in this article. Far too often, nice liberals talk to other nice liberals and develop a nice form of confirmation bias, that the world is a nicer place when everybody is nice to each other. Meanwhile, a thumping majority of other people live in a real world where there is a lot of nastiness around, where threats are often real, where you have to pick sides, where you have to stand up for what you believe in. The Lib Dems are far too nice to be trusted. They said they were promising not to put up tuition fees, then they were too nice (i.e. weak) to stop it happening. So – What’s the use of “nice” Liberal Democrats to anybody?
One slight caveat – Let’s pick our fights selectively. Let’s not do what Corbyn has done, which is to start by saying that republicanism was “not his fight”, and then stand silent through the national anthem, so that republicanism is now well and truly a fight he has taken on for himself. Tristan mentions having a go at Christians about homophobia, whereas I would say let’s just attack homophobia, full stop. Let’s not make all Christians, including the many who aren’t homophobic, feel that we are not the party they want to vote for.
“The Liberal Democrats need to embrace their core beliefs …”
But do they know what their core beliefs are? Does Tim Farron know? Isabel Hardman in the linked Spectator article makes a good case that he doesn’t appear to so, while I agree we need to be more “muscular” and don’t have any problems with the suggestions offered in the penultimate paragraph, a list of “Good Policies” doesn’t cut the mustard either.
It’s all very well to call for “liberalism” but if it has no generally understood meaning then it’s meaningless – just wallpapering over the cracks – and becomes like the traditional English approach to talking to foreigners – speak LOUDLY and s-l-o-w-l-y. I fear the Lib Dems increasingly resemble a fundamentalist cult that has failed to grasp key parts of the faith handed down by their forefathers. Under the resulting stress they circle the waggons, become increasingly shrill and start to regard outsiders as beyond the pale of salvation. That is NOT a winning pitch.
Core beliefs, politically speaking, are rooted in a view of how the world works, in particular but not exclusively the economy. That’s highly contentious because, inevitably, many people’s view is greatly coloured by what advantages them and their families rather than logic. The Lib Dems have never developed a coherent view so by default they usually adopt the ruling paradigm which is Tory. That inevitably leads to Tory (or Tory-lite) policies. It also makes them unfit for government (despite Clegg’s claims to the contrary) as the voters clearly concluded.
Tim Farron is still finding his feet as leader but the real test of his leadership will be whether he can in the next 6 – 12 months put together a team that can explain what liberalism mean in the modern world.
I find this a rather superficial article.
Being emotional is part of the equation and I think Tim Farron does that very well, lets see if it pays off.
I think jumbling up Britain First with the Green Party is somewhat ridiculous to be honest. Supporters of the Greens and supporters of the far right come from very different demographic groups and are not interchangeable between each other just because one is better at being emotional than the other.
“What the Conservatives do right. What they do right is that they pick a simple, popular position and they hammer it home.”
A few years ago I heard Chris Rennard, then Chief Executive, explain how the manifesto was written and it was exactly that. He argued that polling shows the top concerns of voters are remarkably stable over time – the economy/jobs, NHS, education, housing etc. His approach was therefore to pick some position and a form of words that encapsulated it that polled well with focus groups and then hit that repeatedly and hard for each of these key topics.
I think I can see why he would think that’s a good idea. It’s a natural development of targeting in local elections – one letter for the old folks home, a different one for the housing estate, each tailored to their likely situation and interests.
The trouble is it amounts to finding a parade and getting in front of it with a megaphone . It’s only manoeuvring, it doesn’t offer a joined-up vision and hence it doesn’t work well in national elections where people are looking for leadership.
FWIW it’s NOT what the Conservatives do although superficially similar. They pick a position they want to get to (not necessarily either simple or popular). Very often they work out they can’t get there in one jump so they identify a series of stepping stones which may not be obvious except in retrospect. Then they jump from one stepping stone to the next dragging the Overton window in the desired direction as they go.
For example the miner’s strike. Thatcher was determined to break them but couldn’t immediately take them on; they were too strong, public opinion wasn’t reliably onside and the law wasn’t as supportive to her as she wanted. So there was a blizzard of anti-union propaganda; every strike was an opportunity to demonise unions, to paint them as the source of all economic ills. Public opinion was gradually shifted, a series of salami-slicing laws were introduced until she judged the time was right. That’s strategy and policy coming together in a powerful mix and is something Lib Dems need to learn.
I worry that this is what they are doing to the NHS. Pile additional but very popular requirements on the staff with no extra money (eg a 24×7 service), carry on underfunding it until people think of it as a second rate service, alienate the staff so that they are forced to strike thus further alienating the public from the NHS , then allow the private sector to take it over.
Muscular Liberalism is a policy promoted by David Cameron.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscular_liberalism
Is this what the author has in mind ? It sounds siilar to the Cameron position
Ed Joyce
David – Completely agree. Defining and stiffening our policies is important rather than remaining just vaguely “liberal”.
Geoffrey – I’m not sure you read all of my article, you only reference about half way through it, and I answer your concern in the rest. Of course the first half alone would seem superficial, it’s only half an argument.
Gordon – Absolutely agree, we should be a signpost party rather than a weather-vane. By picking our policies with strength and determination we should be able to swing public opinion somewhat. I was only cautioning against picking deeply unpopular causes or leaping from issue to issue instead of concentrating on our aims.
Ed – Yes, the liberalism I am pushing for has a lot in common with that argued for by Cameron in his speeches. I would caution that the “liberal” part of this should come first though, rather than the “muscular” part. He places the emphasis on the wrong word. However, the basic concept of being tough on intolerance and promoting liberal values with no sense of moral relativity is the same.
Stephen – “We have a tendency in this party, perhaps because of our intellectual nature as individuals (which is why we are liberals, after all), to talk in the abstract. Voters don’t make decisions based on the abstract, they vote based on what they can see and feel”
Oh dear I could say so much. So if the LibDems is the home of intellectuals, how come 8 MP’s? Surely you should have been able to run rings around that stupid Cameron? And of course it follows the Labour Party as stupid, full of those stupid cloth cap people – there can’t be any intellectuals there. The smug self-congratulation theme running through many LDV posts, whilst mocking Corbyn (despite his appeal extending to recruiting more members than in the LibDem Party in 2 weeks) and the half-hearted, unapologetic attempts to disassociate yourself, selectively, from the Coalition are astonishingly arrogant, conceited, and so out-of-touch with what many think. Don’t believe me? Type ‘LibDems’ into Twitter and see what comments come up.
Oh dear, this sounds like the late and unlamented “tough Liberalism” of yesteryear. Surely we need clarity not superficial macho language. But all this talk of toughness, muscularity, stiffening, crackdowns and hard strikes is probably not designed for middle-aged ladies such as myself!!
There have been a number of articles of this nature. I am afraid that running around trying to find those remaining aspects of sexuality where there is some state discrimination, so we can say “look, we’re liberals, we’re against that sort of thing” looks kind of desperate. Similar with the drugs issue – as Eddie Sammon points out, there are arguments the other way round. Those who look back to the 19th century as an era of pure liberalism tend to shut their eyes to the fact that the Liberal Party at the time had close links with nonconformist Christianity, and with the temperance movement which wanted to restrict use of alcohol.
For most people these are fairly fringe issues, and not the main thing which impinges on their freedom. A party which puts across the image of being obsessed with issues that aren’t in the forefront of most people’s minds, while having little to say on the bread-and-butter issues that are, will not get much support, and certainly not the sort of support that wins seats under the First Past the Post electoral system. It could probably bump along comfortably winning some 5% of the vote, which would be mostly from people who live lives so comfortably that they can afford to put their political attention to this sort of thing i.e rich trendies, if we had a continental-style proportional representation system. But we don’t, and aren’t likely to get one soon.
Matthew, I think you’re being a bit hard on Tristan, who does mention defence, economics, the living wage and prison policy alongside drugs and sex discrimination. Your point is better directed against the party leadership – past and present.
To rephrase what I think is your argument – We are saying “Thank heavens for bigotry, refugees, spies and drugs. All these phenomena give us a chance to show off our liberalism and put forward clear policies which define us as a party. If there weren’t any bigots, if Assad stopped bombing and welcomed his people back home, if the Internet broke down and GCHQ had to shut its doors, and if the kids just got bored with drugs, it would be terrible for the Liberal Democrats. We would have lost everything we stand for!”
David Allen
To rephrase what I think is your argument
Er, no. That is not at all my argument.
I am saying that the sort of party proposed here is unlikely to win any seats. It will come across as a party obsessed with issues which for most people are fairly fringe.
That is what happened to the Labour Party in the 1980s, which enabled the Liberal Party and SDP to make progress. The Labour Party seemed to have lost interest in the concerns of ordinary people, and instead to be obsessed by “loony left” issues or “political correctness”. This was particularly so in the south, where Labour had less of the working class trade union membership than it had in the north, so it seemed very much a party of weird intellectual elite types. That is why the mass anti-Tory vote in the south shifted to us, and why simple electioneering tactics based on immediate community issues worked so well to win us votes.
OK Matthew, there are differences but also a lot of similarities between our recent comments. You’re saying that obsession with “fringe” issues will not win elections. I’d agree with that, but I’m also pointing out that our reasons for favouring “fringe” issues are somewhat suspect. Talking about refugees does enable us to say rather less about other issues, such as “why did we help the Tories dismantle the NHS and welfare?”, and “will we offer a real alternative to increasing inequality?” Eventually, we will be asked to talk about non-fringe issues, and if we just evade all the tough questions, we will be ridiculed.
Muscular Liberalism. If this means we are go to stand up for Athiest, Agnostics, LGBT people and non conformist and kick up an almighty fuss about murder, oppression and the pathetic supine compliance with frankly odious doctrines whether it be Putin or the worst excesses of religion. Then I fully support it. If it means the support of the legalisation of basically harmless personal recreational drug use. I fully support it. If it means that we call out the monetary persecution of the physically and the mentally disabled for the nasty political expediency that it is. Then I fully endorse it. If it means we commit ending the privileges of hereditary power and wealth. Then I endorse it. My only real problems come when liberalism turns into an excuse for letting influence accumulate in hands of what anti capitalist call the 1 per centers. We can make a better world without turning people into the amorphous lumpen proletariat of socialism or pandering to elites or the ridiculous concept of the big man endemic in capitalism. Deep down. I sometimes suspect that Liberalism is a sort of loosely agreed anarchy and the belief that people can work together without hitting each other over the head with codswallop ideology or the bragging rites glorified personality cults.
David Allen
I’d agree with that, but I’m also pointing out that our reasons for favouring “fringe” issues are somewhat suspect.
Oh, sure, I agree with you on that. It seems that now the Orange Bookers have been rumbled, they are trying a new strategy – don’t actually go on like they used to about how Thatcherite economics is the core of liberalism, but go on about fringe aspects which a be waved around to show “look, we’re not Tories”, but don’t actually conflict with having a thoroughly Thatcherite stand on economics.
Well Tristan I think you need to rethink a good deal of this. You speak grandly about 45 years of Liberalism but unless you are a latter day Dorian Gray you were clearly not born 45 years ago. Believe me those of us who have lived through many more than 45 years of Liberalism have withstood a very great deal of what might by some be called a ‘wasteland’, but in reality never was, because there were always the faithful keeping the torch burning. We have never given up what we believe in; we have fought for it no matter what and the only way we can succeed is if the younger generation prove equally tough and just get on with what needs to be done.
Anne McElvoy has been doing a series on BBC Radio 4 about Liberalism. She takes a broad sweep through time.
On 17/12/2015 she mentioned Roy Jenkins and lists his achievements as a liberal within the Labour Party in government. She should also have mentioned a young Liberal MP called David Steel, known as the “Boy David”, who took a private member’s bill through the Commons while the Home Secretary provided tactical advice and large quantities of parliamentary time.
Those who thought that Roy Jenkins was a Liberal included former party leader Jo Grimond. Roy Jenkins himself, repeated Jo Grimond’s quote with approval to the Liberal International in Paris during the early days of Paddy Ashdown’s leadership: “an Asquithian Liberal”.
The final episode is on 18/12/2015.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_McElvoy