Political parties need distinctive policies. The Liberal Democrats had them in the 2005 election, with their own policy in foreign affairs (opposing military intervention in Iraq) and their own policy at home (supporting modest tax increases to pay for public services, something Labour had run away from ever since it lost the 1992 election).
Five years later, the Liberal Democrats went into Coalition government. That wasn’t a mistake in itself, but Nick Clegg did not insist upon one of the three ‘great posts’ – Chancellor, Home Office or Foreign Office. Compare the moment when Germany’s Greens went into coalition with the Social Democrats. Joschka Fischer became the Foreign Minister and had a clear impact on German foreign policy. As Deputy Prime Minister, Clegg may have had the effect of modifying government policy and making it less ‘excessive’ – like other deputies before him (Whitelaw? Prescott?) – but having a general watering-down effect on government policy does not mean giving it a distinctive flavour. Fischer was able to make a policy area his own (up to a point) and the Greens didn’t suffer too much electorally as a consequence. Clegg, despite some achievements, was not associated with a specifically Liberal vision and was punished heavily in 2015.
Since then, the Liberal Democrats have found it difficult to find a distinctive policy. When it comes to environmental policies, they risk being seen as Green-lite, when it comes to caring and welfare they are in danger of seeming Labour-lite and their distinctive stance on the EU has been at least partly overtaken by events. So where can their distinctive contribution come from?
Start from Liberal strengths. They lie at the local level. Liberal Democrats have always supported local issues and remain well represented in local government. This is not parochialism – people care about these things. But a really effective local politics links up with national issues. People may think it is just a question of campaigning to keep a bus service running or a post office open. They forget that local concerns have to be integrated into national strategies.
Take the UK picture as a whole. Many in Scotland think it can only manage its affairs effectively through independence. One way to counter this is to make sure that English regions, alongside Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, can maintain their distinctive identity through the institutions of the British Union. Regions and nations should be represented in a second chamber at Westminster purged of peers, just as the German regions are represented in its second chamber, the Bundesrat. People may not want ‘yet more tiers of government’, but they will support better use of those that exist already.
I lived a lot of my life in Devon and Cornwall. Traditionally, the Liberals had many MPs there, not least because they were associated with giving the Westcountry a distinctive voice. That perspective has gone. It can be won back by campaigning to structure things nationally so that local interests are at the heart of government. That might help the Liberal Democrats to recover their distinctive voice, not only in the West Country but in all parts of the country.
* Mark Corner is a UK national, who teaches economic history and philosophy at the University of Leuven, is married to a Czech EU official and lives in Brussels. He has just published A Tale of Two Unions suggesting that Brexit may damage the British Union unless the UK becomes more positive about the way the European Union is structured.
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42 Comments
By all means, give the LDV editors a well earned Christmas break; but surely now is the time for that ‘deal’ to be discussed.
I gather that Lib Dem MPs are going to vote against it when it comes before parliament. Why? Surely an abstention would suffice? Or is the party still intent on committing electoral suicide again? Look what happened to that ‘Revoke’ strategy just over a year ago.
Sorry, Dr Corner, if my response has precious little to do with your piece. This latest news silence on LDV is just killing me! I need a bit of red meat, so BRING IT ON!!
I agree with John Marriott. Although we can all say people deserve a break, the Conservatives don’t give you one, and our party’s lack of any message to its members on its response to this pathetic deal is frightening.
It is clear that the deal is bad not just for the lovely aesthetic reasons that so many Lib Dems love, like Erasmus and Frictionless trade, but because it doesn’t deliver what the Conservatives promised to the British people – surrendering on fishing rights, accepting EU rules on so many things, agreeing to external monitoring mechanisms, massive increase in paperwork for exporters etc etc.
Labour will follow the Starmer strategy of Vote with the government, moan about largely unspecified matters and don’t say anything specific until it is clear to everyone that things have already gone wrong.
If we leave it until then, it will be too late for us and we will be ignored once again. We have to be ahead of the game.
Right now we need decisive leadership on matters that are important to the majority of people of this country and not just niche modern ‘progressive’ issues so loved by so many in our movement.
The time is now and our leading figures need to be told to step up to the plate. If they don’t, we will continue the slide into obscurity and irrelevance and as far as the people of Devon and Cornwall and the rest of our country are concerned, truly we will deserve to be ignored.
Clegg wasn’t punished. He went on to a very well paid and somewhat suspect gig with Facebook. The rest of the party, however, became almost unelectable. So he did really well out of almost destroying the party.
Continuing John’s re-routing of Mark’s post, I agree that abstention is the best route for our MPs.
Although remaining positively pro Europe (without refighting the arguments of 2016-19) and pro-internationalism is a positive value and principle for us to build our future narrative on. Alongside devolution.
We should have no part in voting for this morass of 19 subcomittees, exiting the Erasmus Scheme – it impoverishes us and ties us in bureaucracy. Far worse, predictably, than what we have enjoyed in the EU and Single Market.
And yet, the choice now is, as I understand it, between Johnson’s wretched deal; and no-deal at all – WTO rules and all that; even worse for us.
So a vote against is, in practical terms, a vote for the no-deal option.
While we cannot positively support Johnson’s deal, we should not be seen as actively trying to stop it and so sending us over the cliff into no deal. Abstention is the best route. Of course we will be accused of fence sitting etc. It doesn’t matter in the longterm.
In 2015, we rashly voted in favour of a decisive ‘in-out’ EU referendum, which made it nigh impossible for us to condemn the undemocracy of the 2016 plebisite. We shouldn’t repeat that error.
In abstaining we should condemn this government for reducing our options to ‘much worse’ and ‘even worse’. It is down to Johnson’s incompetence, self-importance and self-interest and blinkered ideology and we should spell that out very clearly.
In 5-10 years time, when some sort of re-entry to the EU is being pursued, we will need to refer back to the stance and the arguments we made in the fateful vote on Johnson’s half-baked (as opposed to over-ready) deal.
It seems possible the Fishing Industry are not too happy with the outcome. They may be small in number and output but critically are located in areas where we were once strong and now …………, say no more. Supporting the Trade Deal would be of no help to us in those localities. Therefore we oppose or abstain. Bit of a dilemma. How can we oopose free trade? Therefore abstain because we have certain doubts, mentioning fishing for one. Just a thought.
Thanks to John Marriott and in one sense I wouldn’t say his comment has ‘precious little’ to do with my piece. Lib Dems have fought hard to keep the UK in the EU; they have also fought to maintain the UK itself. They recognise that power needs to be shared and that applies both ‘upwards’ and ‘downwards’ (as Liberals have known since at least the time of Gladstone). Both the main parties tend to romanticise the House of Commons while forgetting that there are real questions about how the UK4 will now survive outside the EU27. I don’t want to threaten another article, but I believe that a major constitutional rethink could provide the basis for a distinctive Lib Dem position in the future.
If we vote against this deal how will we explain to farmers and exporters that no-deal was a better alternative.Abstain.
I am sorry but I dont see the point of this article, we are already talking about Federalism & Radical Devolution, the proposal for the Second Chamber/Lords is interesting but very Long-Term.
On the Comments, so far.
One distinctive/unique aspect of Liberal Politics is our “Niceness”, our refusal to destroy individuals we disagree with. Clegg was a Politician, his Career was destroyed, no-one has a good word to say for him & one of his Children nearly died. That seems like quite a lot of punishment for a Man who made mistakes which 95% + of his Party backed. Lets drop the personal abuse.
On the “Big” but entirely meaningless Vote on The Deal, I would rather we denounced the whole sham “Debate” & walked out. Failing that we should Vote Against if we can get all our MPs on side.
Abstention would be acceptable as a price for Unity. Labour will split 3 ways afterall.
@ Tim Roger
A vote against the deal isn’t the same thing as for do no deal, especially as the deal will pass the commons.
Abstaining will imply complicity and cause our support to implode in Scotland (Libs are LabCon-lite the SNP will say).
Justification of a no vote or abstaining requires you to indicate what you do not like or believe is defective . I would suggest our MPs table a series of amendments for example on Erasmus and off shore fishing for small boats . The need for a new treaty on services a large part of the British economy . If those amendments are not supported then not supporting the deal is justified.
Paul Barker:
This article is concerns a distinctive Liberal or Liberal Democrat identity, My problem with it is that it concerns but one aspect: bringing better democracy closer to people’s lives and where they live. This however is also part of a more overarching ideal, that of subsidiarity – governing and dealing with issues at the most immediate level that is appropriate to their practical resolution.
This does indeed bring us back to the EU, where the UK has spurned any say over the management of the market that it cannot afford to lose. The genius of the EU has been the creation of a democratic structure for the management of pan continental issues.
The article is right to identify a massive shift towards centralisation in the UK: local government neutered and democracy removed from international cooperation.
Nonetheless, I do not think this issue can be our hallmark identity. The Party needs to rediscover Liberalism, it needs to go back to our most important thinkers, particularly John Stuart Mill, to redevelop Liberalism for the 21st century; we need to assert the value of individuality and individuals’ contributions and redefine how to maximise the potential achievement of people regardless off their position and identity in society.
This article is concerns a distinctive Liberal or Liberal Democrat identity, My problem with it is that it concerns but one aspect: bringing better democracy closer to people’s lives and where they live. This however is also part of a more overarching ideal: that of subsidiarity – governing and dealing with issues at the most immediate level that is appropriate to their practical resolution.
This does indeed bring us back to the EU, where the UK has spurned any say over the management of the market that it cannot afford to lose. The genius of the EU has been the creation of a democratic structure for the management of pan continental issues.
The article is right to identify a massive shift towards centralisation in the UK: local government neutered and democracy removed from international cooperation.
Nonetheless, I do not think this issue can be our hallmark identity. The Party needs to rediscover Liberalism, it needs to go back to our most important thinkers, particularly John Stuart Mill, to redevelop Liberalism for the 21st century; we need to assert the value of individuality and individuals’ contributions and redefine how to maximise the potential achievement of people regardless of their position and identity in society.
@ Paul Barker “One distinctive/unique aspect of Liberal Politics is our “Niceness”.
There was nothing nice about the welfare cuts of 2010-15, Mr Barker, and there’s nothing nice in pretending that there was.
If the Liberal Democrats wish to be taken seriously as responsible politicians they will need, among other things, to respond to Nick Cohen’s article in yesterday’s “Observer”.
@theakes
Please let’s not get hooked on fish(ugh!). The fact is that, were the British fishing industry to have got 100% rights in British waters on 1 January, it just hasn’t got enough boats and personnel to bring home all the potential catch. Surely even its own spokespeople can see this. Now, in five years time……
However, if we waste the next five years as we did after original fishing quotas were first drawn up some forty or so years ago, when HM government, unlike its competitors across the channel, failed to help to modernise its fishing fleet and many trawler fleet owners therefore made a fast buck by flogging off their quotas to European fishermen, we shall end up again with egg on our face, or a load of rotten fish!
@Paul Barker. Agreed. Not sure what this article adds. The distinctive west country voice was not enough to save single MP in 2015. Any significantly distinct ‘county’ politics in the UK disappeared in the 20th C. This is a dead end.
“when it comes to caring and welfare they are in danger of seeming Labour-lite”
Not by anyone who knows what our respective welfare policies are. The problem here is that nobody is currently going out of their way to find out our policy and we are not going out of our way to tell them.
Many thanks for the comments, and I will think carefully about them. I’m not sure that niceness or even the value of individuality will provide a distinctive Lib Dem theme, since other parties will claim to be nice and to support individual freedom too. We have to bear in mind the danger of the UK threatening to unravel over the next few years, so I do think constitutional reform will be an important issue. My view would be that Liberal ‘niceness’ and ‘individuality’ can express themselves through respect for regional and national identities with effective devolution throughout the UK and a direct regional input into Westminster through a reformed House of Lords.
As I have said before, our problem is that as far as 90%+ of the British people are concerned we are totally irrelevant to their needs. The only way to make them realise we are relevant is to get out there is to get out there and show it.
Councillors and council candidates do it by representing their people better than the other parties and later by doing a better job of running councils. It is very hard work and takes a long time to just get the ball rolling – 5 to 10 years in most cases.
MPs do it by in the same way but at a constituency level, and in the same way as councillors later by doing a better job of running the country. Sadly the class of 2010 didn’t do that. It is even harder and takes even longer, except in a few seats where we still have a significant local presence.
There has only been one National issue we have been known favourably by a significant proportion of the population since 2015, and that is our stance on Brexit. It is the only one we have the remotest chance of getting any air time on national media and it has to come now and from the top. Every senior Lib Dem has to decry this deal as a bad deal for everyone from the very outset or we will be ignored as irrelevant for the final time on the one last issue we have.
It isn’t we want to remain, or are anti Brexit (all that is too late). It is that this so called deal is bad.
Abstention, and those promoting it, are choosing comforting irrelevance and total decline over the one, last hope of recovery we will have.
John, Keith, theaks, Tim, Paul – It really is time to choose. Do you want our party to have a future or not?
Mark Corner:
From your comment, I have the impression that you would do well to find out about the foundations of modern Liberalism. Do read Mill’s On Liberty, Jo Grimond advocated reading the essay afresh every year. If you did you would understand how the value of individual potential provides a very distinctive Liberal outlook.
You seem to assume that the issue of liberty is some kind of platitude, but in the hands of Mill, with his utilitarian approach to values, it becomes the bedrock for a critique of democracy, the state and other centres of power. You would understand that the authority of the state is contingent the state’s ability to justify its actions; very often justification makes more sense from a more local authority and that in any case a plurality of sufficiently empowered local authorities have more scope to experiment and learn from each other.
For those wanting something about Europe and the EU, Mill denying that Europeans were any better than other peoples, emphasised the value of the diversity of its states, from which each could learn from each other. He wrote “Europe is, in my judgment, wholly indebted to this plurality of paths for its progressive and many-sided development”. For EU states the fate of the UK has provided a salutary lesson that they are unlikely to emulate.
Will “the Deal” pass the Commons. Many Labour MPS are sniffing the air and wondering if the Government could be brought down, 60 Tories vote against, SNP, many from Ulster, Plaid as well. May find that Starmer’s three line whip changes over the next 36 hours. Yes the Government would win a subsequent Vote of Confidence, but the damage done would be immense. Johnson might have to consider his position. However still think we should abstain.
Then we must seriously ask ourselves about OUR future, 5% it don’t look good at the moment.
The LibDems need a radical reforming identity while rediscovering the principles of Liberalism.
Put down amendments to ditch the bureaucracy in the Brexit deal, by joining:
1) The customs union
2) The single market
Equality of opportunity, reinstating Erasmus, closing the tax gap, green economy and climate change, supporting business and tackling poverty.
Martin
Terse and flippant use of Mill and liberty by some unaware of him, should be met by more of this fine stuff from you. Thanks for this, I feel i am one of the few who even bother with the harm principle, greatest happiness one also. It is all there and timeless, and with Covid , timely, if ever we need to justify why the world and we as , yes, indeed, many individuals, must reduce trivial liberties for the freedom from the harm of this virus.
David Evans. I don’t think we can vote against the Deal, David, because a bad deal IS better than no deal, but we should abstain and point out the deficiencies of this deal. Since people will remember our opposition to Brexit, I think with the waste of time and cash there will be, the difficulties that will arise, the endless new bureaucracy for the entry and exit of goods, and the threat to services which are barely covered in the deal. people can be prompted to recall that We Wuz Right all along.
Peter Davies, you are right to call our caring and welfare policies different from Labour’s. If the Conference Committee will accept the proposed motion from Michael Berwick-Gooding and myself on a Beveridge-2 Plan and new Social Contract, we will have something distinctive to debate at March Conference and hopefully to tell the country about.
Mark Corner, thank you for your useful article and for joining in the discussion here. I agree with you that constitutional reform will be a vital step to a brighter future, with federalism and regionalism being important planks along with proportional voting and comprehensive House of Lords reform. I also hope we will speak out about civil liberties, much under threat these days with the continual governmental edicts barely challenged.
@ Peter Davies,
“Not by anyone who knows what our respective welfare policies are.”
Even within the Lib Dems, there can’t be many! The main problem is your inherent neoliberalism which leads most Lib Dems to believe that everything has to be ‘fully costed’. So we have to have a penny on income tax to pay for this and another penny to pay for that. So you either end up with too few pennies to pay for anything very much or too many pennies which puts off your income tax paying potential voters.
On the other hand we have a few Lib Dems who have latched on the the MMT message that a currency issuing government can never run out of money and can provide all the money we might need, in the form of a UBI, without anyone having to work for it. That can be left to the robots.
Sadly MMT does also say that it is nearly always the products of someone else’s labours which contributes to all our welfare and well being. Much as we’d all like to be taken out of poverty by not having to work that’s not actually possible.
So Lib Dems might want to look for a more sensible middle way. Lib Dems are supposed to be good at that.
@ Katharine Pindar,
“people can be prompted to recall that We Wuz Right all along.”
Right about what? That we did better in the EU than out in the post war period? That our economy prospered better once the Single Market and Customs Union was introduced?
The figures, if you care to look them up, tell a different story. We lost our fishing industry, our manufacturing, and came to be far too reliant, on mainly European, imports of food during our period of membership.
Lib Dems need to recognise that we’ve decided to leave the EU. There won’t be any votes in complaining “we wuz robbed” or that “things would be so much better if only we were still in the EU”. The voters won’t want to hear about the EU for quite a while. They will want to hear how the economy can be made to function in the interests of all without sacrificing environmental and other social standards. And that has to be possible without EU membership.
I’d like to see improvements in animal welfare such as the banning of live exports to countries where we know they will suffer a dreadful fate. I’d like to see imports of French Pate de fros Gras totally banned. Anyone who knows how ducks and geese are maltreated in its production surely can’t object to that.
Mark’s general thesis seems spot on. We need to be distinctive to get our voice across…too often we sound just like the other parties and that is not enough. Brexit is done and if we don’t want to lose more votes, we must stop going on about it. Give it a chance and then point out what can be changed for the better after 2/3 years.
I am not convinced regionalisation is the answer…it seems to have added nothing to the management of the pandemic and is simply leading to a disunited kingdom. A radical review of local government just might identify a proper role for regional decision making but simply adding another layer of decision making will not solve many problems or win many votes in large areas of the country.
So my votes for radical distinctive policies would be in the areas of social care and schools education. Social care: there is every chance the Tories will not solve this running sore; LDs need a costed implementable policy not simply another vague political promise. Our education system is (in general) not attractive relative to the private system, reinforces middle class privilege and does too little to progress social mobility. It is a tough not to crack, but we should not shy away from the problem…if the solution involves the closure of the grammar school system that would be a distinctive plus. The grammar sector has been so starved of opportunity that it is far from fulfilling its original laudable social purpose.
Electoral reform is where we should make ourselves distinctive. By being the only political party that understands how unfair the present system is. Of course that is also partly because we desperately need it though that is no reason to ignore it. If we can lead on it at the next General Election in our literature and dealings with the media we can carve out a position that will both benefit us and the country.
@Peter Hirst – Electoral reform isn’t going to resolve the fundamental undemocratic elements of our existing system; for example, it does zero to reign in the Executive and make them properly accountable – who are already elected…
It also doesn’t address another fundamental issue, is that in recent years the quality and ability of MP’s has in general declined and I suspect most whilst electable, don’t really have the skills necessary to actually perform the job of an MP/Minister – certainly from all the issues about the way they treat employees and members of the civil service, it is clear many don’t even have basic people skills.
One of the few benefits of Brexit is that it has already exposed Westminster’s and the Common’s weaknesses and in the coming years there won’t be an EU they can blame for all their mistakes…
I was disappointed to see Peter Martin (7.45am) using the word ‘Neoliberal’ in his piece. Our opponents on the left relish using this recently invented term to pin on us and I hope will not allow use allow it to become respectable by using it in our discourses. See Will Hutton’s Guardian piece below.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/29/neoliberal-is-unthinking-leftist-insult-all-it-does-it-stifle-debate
I take on board Martin’s strictures about needing to read Mill thoroughly, but I don’t see the distinctive policy proposal emerging at the end of what he says. I can see the point about electoral reform but it needs to be the right sort of reform, keeping links to constituencies and avoiding prescriptive lists controlled by ‘central management.’ The point about social care and education as a distinctive focus is an interesting one, but could that not itself be linked in with more control at the local/regional level?
I am glad to agree with Peter Hirst and others who see sensible Electoral Reform as a path to Party success. When there is no party in majority power there is a chance for other opinions, better debate and wiser decisions, Roland is right to comment on the quality of our professional MP,s and there would be a chance for more able MP to succeed.
For the Party to be more distinctive with a Lead Message, it should be getting a Fairer New Deal from our government by, to quote FDR, “Removing the Dictatorship of the Privileged”.
We should be making a serious attack on poor government as the root cause of all the problems of our country at every possible opportunity and explaining Proportional Representation as the best solution.
At present, we are seen as a mostly middle class party and unlikely to win a majority in the Commons, so the Party must work persistently, by any means, to find some way to create a majority in Parliament to abolish FPTP.
There is no way electoral reform is the route to our party’s success. Most people have no interest in it at all and never will have. We have to make ourselves relevant to what people want now, not persuade ourselves that what we want and wish they wanted is what will save us.
Electoral Reform will only come about when we win enough seats to change parliament, not the other way around.
Mark makes a good point in his article. We need to show we are a party that believes in localism as well as internationalism. As to the current issue, we should abstain and use the opportunity to pile on the detailed criticisms that people need to hear about both the deal and a no deal. By implication we can then show we are not the same as either Tory or Labour.
Mark is right to bring up local or regional government. We need to show people we believe in localism as well as internationalism, since people benefit from both. As to Brexit, we should abstain and point out in detail all that is wrong with both the deal and a no deal. We can also point out how there could have been a better deal by staying in the single market.
@ Peter Hirst, “Electoral reform is where we should make ourselves distinctive. By being the only political party that understands how unfair the present system is”.
I’m afraid that’s not true, Peter, and I don’t think the Lib Dems are “the only political party that understands how unfair the present system is”. Take a look at a lecture about Liberal history by Professor Vernon Bogdanor of Kings College London on You Tube.
The title ? : Video result for Vernon Bogdanor : the Liberal Party 1:01:25
The Liberal Party and the Liberal Democrats – Professor Vernon Bogdanor…
YouTube · Gresham College Lecture 13 Dec 2017
The worthy and erudite Prof demonstrates that Liberals (of assorted Asquith/Lloyd George varieties) opposed PR when in power before 1922 … but did a volte face and had a Damascene conversion to support it when they were out of power in the 1920’s.
LLG (as PM) could have insisted on it in the 1918 Representation of the People Act – but didn’t. Asquith strongly opposed it (and female suffrage) when in office but discovered an appetite for it when no longer in Downing Street.
A friend just asked me how I would be celebrating New Year’s Eve. I replied that I wouldn’t be celebrating December 31st 2020 at all, because it will record that we are finally out of the EU. It’s astonishing to read a Socialist, Peter Martin, blaming our membership for the failures of the Tory governments in for instance allowing the decline of British manufacturing, and actually supposing our economy ‘can be made to function without lessening of environmental and social standards’ without any recognition of how far those standards advanced because the EU advanced them. Get real, Peter. It is expected by economists that our economy will decline somewhat as a result of us leaving, as I am sure you actually understand yourself. Of course we weren’t robbed in leaving – we just engineered our own decline in allowing it.
I am sure that David Evans and David Raw are wrong about PR and I hope that they will live long enough to see the truth. PR is used in most educated and developed countries in the world successfully. FPTP exists in London because of our ancient anachronistic Parliament that began sitting on two sides of a hall and persists in old methods, especially by the Tories who are the United Right and must never face a United Left.
I began a close interest in Politics in 1945 Election and have seen many events expected by me come to pass eventually in Politics and my job. PR will come eventually and we should be leading. You say “people have no interest in it” but people can change in a day.
I may not see it, but I believe that one day my descendants will be living in a very large country called Europe, speaking English and voting by PR.
Katharine Pindar: Just in case you have not noticed, Peter Martin seldom fails to dress up a (markedly) right wing conclusion in a semblance of a socialist narrative. He would probably claim to be concerned for people’s jobs and living standards, but these claims would have very little substance.
Peter Martin. I thought the main reason many Conservatives and Brexit supporters wanted to leave the EU and regain our “sovereignty” was because they wanted to end the protection of workers’ rights to help increase the dividends on their shares or the profits of their business and bring in more non European immigrants to facilitate that. Other Brexiteers do not want that so they will be in for an unpleasant shock, especially in the Red Wall areas. Most Brexiteers are very right wing and not so covert racists in their attitude whatever party they support. I hear Conservative politicians attacking black lives matter but of course in the carefully modulated tones which their education has trained them to use. Sovereignty for them means confirming and/or reimposing the rule of the sort of people who ruled Britain before 1973.
@ Martin @ Katharine Pindar @ nvelope2003
Have you ever read Tony Benn on the downsides of the EU ? If I’m right wing then so was he! I don’t ever remember anyone ever saying that about him, though. The same goes for Jeremy Corbyn (pre 2015) and Dennis Skinner. Both very much on the left and both highly eurosceptic.
It is remarkable how the Labour Party which once campaigned to leave the EU/EEC, has been seduced by a few sweet words, mainly from Socialist politicians like Jacques Delors into changing to an almost completely Remain party at Parliamentary level. Incidentally, what happened to his party in France? Maybe he wasn’t giving the best of advice?
Not so much EU-ophilia at Labour grassroots level though. We may not be a majority but there are enough of us to make a difference. The Leave vote wouldn’t have been won on Tory votes alone.
Only a minority of Labour Leave voters switched to the Tories in subsequent elections. But just a small movement is enough to tilt the balance in many constituencies. If the Labour Party becomes more like old Labour they will return.
There is an open letter to Starmer by Lib Dem Stephen Dorrell in the Independent Newspaper asking him to lead a united opposition against the Tories to reform our constitution and particularly to introduce Proportional Representation and abolish FPTP.
A quote
“Describing first-past-the-post as “unfair to voters”, Mr Dorrell said, that it failed to express the balance of political opinion in the UK, suppressing the voice not only of supporters of smaller parties like the Lib Dems but also traditional Conservatives or backers of the left-wing Momentum movement, who currently feel unrepresented in parliament. ”
This seems logical before we all end up living in a Dictatorship run by Johnstone and his Cabinet Clique.