Without fail at every council meeting, well, at every opportunity they can, my local Labour Party will bring up the Coalition.
They wheel out the same line, each and every time. For them it’s entirely the Lib Dems fault that austerity happened, even more than that each of our members bear a personal burden for cuts made. But they will gladly sidestep the impact of Labour Mayor Joe Anderson – whose legacy is alleged corruption, poor governance, wasted millions and Tory commissioners we’ve just gotten shot off.
Now let me get this out of the way – I’m not an apologist for the coalition, it got some things right, but it got a lot of things wrong. The most lasting damage is that the coalition broke the trust that voters had in the Liberal Democrats, and we’ve lost our status as the non-establishment party, the Greens are mopping up that vote in many of the urban cities in England. We must work on that as a priority.
At my last council meeting, we moved my group’s motion on scrapping the two-child benefit cap. I was on the end of a condescending lecture from the Deputy Leader about “political choice”, she was referencing the coalition. But I fired back on this because, let’s be honest, now that the Labour Party are in Government they are going to learn a lot about “political choices”.
What was their first political choice? To keep the two-child benefit cap, a decision that Newham Labour Councillor Joshua Garfield celebrated as “Country before Party”. The most bizarre thing is that the King’s speech isn’t a binding commitment anyway – the Conservatives have demonstrated that multiple times – it’s simply an indication of a government’s aims for that coming parliament.
So, what happened with our motion? Labour did their best to water it down, blame the coalition, and take out the urgency that we had in our motion. But we got them to commit, in principle, to scrapping the two-child benefit cap.
We backed Labour into a corner where they had two choices – they could either vote down our motion and it would go on every focus leaflet that “Labour votes to keep 36,840 children in Liverpool in poverty” or vote for scrapping the cap, which means we won the argument.
Now in the debate, Labour called it “gesture politics” – if gesture politics is standing by your principles, then fine by me. I know the motion isn’t going to change the government’s direction alone but it sends a clear message to the public that the Liberal Democrats are the real opposition to Labour.
Now, being the Leader of the Opposition, with a group of 15, up against 61 Labour councillors (and the 9 others from smaller parties) can be a tough affair. Labour applauds their leader, votes without question or conscience, every time I speak I feel their piercing hatred – I’d say the council chamber is like a pantomime but it’s more like Punch and Judy.
But I take heart in the fact that they only do this because they are scared of the Liberal Democrats. Liverpool Labour is stuck in the past. They won’t move past it – they can’t move past it. That’s why we all need to keep taking the fight to Labour, holding their feet to the fire and holding them to account in Liverpool and beyond.
* Cllr Carl Cashman is the Leader of the Opposition Liberal Democrats on Liverpool City Council.
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30 Comments
Might it help if our party were to publicly and prominently denounce Neoliberal austerity and all its works?
In which ways has Neoliberal austerity brought actual benefits to the whole of our society?i
This sounds very familiar from our experience in Manchester! Although we didn’t even manage to get Labour to accept in principle any idea of scrapping the cap, so wedded are they to defending Starmer over standing up for our city
You might remind the Labour Party in your debates that the total amount of public spending actually delivered by the Coalition was
(i) more than promised by the Tories in the run up to the 2015 election and
ii) about the same as promised by Labour in the run up to the 2015 election.
So had Labour won the 2015 election either your Labour councillors would be defending Labour’s rec9rd in delivering austerity equivilent to that delivered by th colaition, or expaling why Labour had broken their promises by spending more that they said they would.
And money doesn’t grow on (magic money) trees. We have to be careful that Liberal Democrats don’t give the impression think it does. In a world where loads of one time conservative liberals are looking for someone to vote for who are not the current incompetent, discredited Conservative party to become known as later day Corbyns would be a disaster.
We have to think of liberal things to say that interest such voters: Labour and the Green party have the left of centre sown up.
Tristan: they don’t have the left of centre “sewn up”.
That claim echoes the claims by some on here before the General Election that Labour had health “sewn up” and it was utterly mistaken to campaign on the issue.
@Chris Moore
[Labour and The Green Party] don’t have the left of centre “sewn up”
I think they do.
If you want to vote for the left of centre party that is/is mostly likely to be in power. you vote Labour (tactical voting aside). If you want a (more) left of centre party and don’t want to accept the constraints of power or want something wacky, you vote for the Green Party.
You don’t vote Lib Dem because of what you see as the nasty compromise with the Tories that was the Coalition and/or because Lib Dems are not going to win (held and a few second place seats aside). Look at the vast range of seats where Lib Dems came 4th or worse behind Tories, Labour and the Greens.
It needs to be pointed out whenever labour brings up the coalition over child benefit, is that the Tories were only able to introduce the cap after they’d won a majority. Which means that the labour party is not only more right wing than we’ve ever been but they’re also to the right of the coalition.
Same thing with tuition fees, not only have labour kept fees where they are but they’re also maintaining the regressive loan system that the Tories introduced in 2023 which according to the IFS sees the poorest graduates pay back more of their lifetime earnings than the richest, the opposite of the system we introduced!
I also don’t hear any talk of labour reversing any of the coalition’s other cuts. Rather they are doubling down on things like welfare cuts.
That labour are to the right of the coalition is something they should be repeatedly shamed for until there isn’t a voter left who can be deluded into thinking that they should vote for them if they want a progressive government!
@Tristan Ward
The reason we can 4th or worse in so many places is mainly that we didn’t campaigning in them. It followed the same pattern as local election results, where in urban wards the greens automatically come ahead of us where we don’t campaign usually on 10-20% of the vote. In my city when we did target a couple of labour wards this year the green vote collapsed and we won one seat and got a respectable third in the other.
The seat we won incidentally was the more left wing of the two, we won it because that was where we’d campaigned the hardest.
@ Tristan Ward: we are already to the left of Labout. And we got a good result because of our policies, not in spite of them.
In most of the Tory seats we targetted, we won close to all or the lion’s share of left-wing voters.
So your statement that Labour and Greens have the left-wing sewn up is simply false.
We will be back in those cities, where we have active local parties. Carl’s Liverpool is a good example, with very young dauntless leadership and activists. There can be no no go areas. No defeatism – “Labour has the left-wing sewn up”
If we put in resources and energy on targetting Labour areas, we will make progress against Labout
We have to recognise that there are many factors which contribute to the money available.
One of them is of course our non membership of the European Union. I suggest that a strong campaign on this would help.
“[Labour and The Green Party] don’t have the left of centre “sewn up”…….I think they do
So you’re saying Labour are left-of-centre?
Let’s take a look at where Political Compass place them!
https://www.politicalcompass.org/uk2024
Labour have conned the electorate. We have got to hope hope that it’s middle east policy splits the party in two and the Liberal Democrats can put together some sort of National government with moderate Tories and Labour centre left.
Why do people say “gotten” nowadays? That’s American English not British English.
@Ambighter
Personally, as a Brit, I don’t say ‘gotten’ and have no intention of ever doing so.
@ Nonconformistradical,
So you’ve never used the phrase “ill gotten gains” ? Shakespeare considered it good enough to be included in Hamlet but you’d prefer to avoid it.
OK fair enough.
There’s a fair bit of snobbery about the use and spelling of English words. Shakespeare even spelled the word “Labor” the American way. What was he thinking about? 🙂
@Peter Martin
I rather like to think that we Brits have moved on from the days of the Tudors and Stuarts even if the Americans haven’t. There’s nothing sacrosanct about the language of Shakespeare’s time; they were comfortable with slavery too and used to justify it with the language of the Bible!
“Gotten” is indeed the original past participle of “get”. A lot of Americanisms are actually retained forms from earlier English (“snuck” as the pt/pp of “sneak” is another; perhaps spellings as well, the British English spellings of words like “labour” seem to be Frenchified affectations).
@Christopher Haigh. I’ve seen some pretty silly comments on LDV over the years, but yours takes the biscuit. The Labour Party has stuck together through thick and thin, surviving all sorts of turmoil, including the formation of the SDP. Do you seriously think that having been out of power for 14 years they are somehow, after a huge – if FPTP distorted – win they are going to split? Get real.
As for your idea of a National Government? Coalitions of any sort are almost always disastrous for the smaller party under FPTP. The last, non wartime, National Government in 1931 split the Liberals (and indeed the Labour Party) and it has taken until 2024, 93 years later, for the LibDems to win a greater number of seats seats than they held in 2024 and 2029. The national Liberals were swallowed up by the Tory Party.
Without PR, coalition will doom us like it did in 2015 to near annihilation and this LibDem, 60 years a member this year, will have nothing to do with such a bonkers idea.
@Mick Taylor, cheers Mick. Well just have to hope for the best with five years of Starmer and Reeves !
@ Christopher Haigh, “We’ll just have to hope for the best with five years of Starmer and Reeves !”……. “Some sort of National government with moderate Tories and Labour centre left”.
Well, well. With an over all majority in excess of 170, Christopher, it’s a case of you’re going to have to and you’d better get used to it. When Uncle Harold from Hudders of blessed memory was PM, he used to say, “A week is a long time in politics”. It’s going to be a tad bit longer than that now.
It ought to be time when the Lib Dems spared a bit of thought and attention to all those lost deposit derelict Lib Dem constituencies throughout the rest of the UK outside the comfy cosy leafy South East of England. If they don’t they’re going to get known as the Home Counties National Party.
Mick’s right about the so-called National Government of the 1930’s. A three way Lib split and a rush to the Tories.
@David Raw, I liked the days when Richard Wainwright was our Liberal MP for Clone Valley. He probably relied on Conservative tactical voting but he was very popular and worked hard for the community. He once narrated a performance of Peter and the Wolf by our Slaithwaite Philharmonic Society and he used to come to our annual dinners and concerts as President of the Society. I also remember Harold Wilson attending at the annual outdoor Longwood Sing. No mean effort for him climbing up all those steps to get to it !
Sorry meant Colne Valley.
@ Christopher Haigh. Yes, completely agree with you about my late old friend, Richard Wainwright. Sad to see what has happened to what he built up (along with my other old friend Edward Dunford).
Hail Smiling Morn takes a bit of beating.
I am totally in favour of scrapping the 2 child benefit cap and I agree that we are right to be critical of Labour for not doing so. It has greatly increased child poverty and if our priority is to eliminate it – as it should be as a left of centre political party – then you should want to scrap it straight away.
That all said, we should acknowlege 2 reasons why Labour won’t do it now. One of the financial cost of it, and more significantly the other is that the policy of scrapping it is unpopular.
The argument that “Why should my taxes fund those couples who decide to have more children than they can afford to look after?” I hear this all the time from my relatives. What if a woman is raped I reply? What if a family suddenly hits hard times? And why should the children suffer for the choices their parents make? To no avail, they want to blame the mother regardless.
I’m in favour of scrapping child benefit!
It is clear in the current climate (of nonsensical riots) scrapping the 2 child limit plays directly into the right wing playbook, given it mostly benefits certain immigrant communities.
Firstly, lets look at child Benefit: currently it is £25.60 p/week for first child and £16.95 p/week for additional children. Additionally, as it is now means tested, it counts towards the benefit cap. Also, there is no statutory uplifting.
Whilst any monies would be welcome by those least well off, we have to ask if whether this is the best use of these monies in achieving positive outcomes. I suggest not and instead suggest the monies would be better targeted by going wholly to the provision of universal free school breakfast and dinners in state pre, infants and junior schools; which just so happens to be a Libdem policy…
@ Geoffrey,
You’re right about the depressingly reactionary arguments we commonly hear about benefits directed towards children. “I’m not paying for other people’s children..” etc
Whenever I hear these coming from other males I’ll ask how they are totally sure they are all other people’s.
That usually shuts them up!
@ Roland You’d scrap child benefits because “it mostly benefits certain immigrant communities”.
Very liberal on a Lib Dem site. Not.
@David Raw – You (perhaps deliberately?) misconstrue what I said.
The link between the 2 child cap and certain communities was referenced in this LDV article “The Nasty Side of Labour and the Two Child Benefit Cap”
The points I was making were, firstly how some would perceive the LibDem action and would readily use soundbites to dismiss the LibDems… and secondly whether Child Benefit in its current form is actually delivering any meaningful benefit to the Child.
My suggestion of redirecting Child Benefit to free school meals for all (in state schools) would mean Children would directly benefit – from the meals, and as the evidence (supporting free school meals for all) shows improves outcomes for all children. It doesn’t matter if you can and do feed your children, their education will suffer if there are children in their class who are hungry (and who’s parents would be getting full Child Benefit) and thus causing problems – whether that be disruption or slowing down the rate of progress.
Interestingly, those families with more than 2 children would benefit as they would still be entitled to the full set of benefits up to the benefit cap, plus all their children would get free school meals.
The arguments against free school meals are well known and more easily to counter than those which draw attention to specific communities. Plus getting Labour to agree to free school meals for all is a LibDem policy win!
I think a better idea would be to have a bonus for smaller families rather than an arbitrary cap.
@ Roland. I’m sorry, there’s no way I would deliberately misconstrue what you said. End of.
@David Raw – I appreciate that you do tend to not be afraid to speak out and in this case challenge. I hope the explanation your comment caused me to write, clarifies my thinking and the point I was trying to make.