Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 243rd weekly round-up from the Lib Dem blogosphere … Featuring the seven most popular stories beyond Lib Dem Voice according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (9-15 October, 2011), together with a hand-picked quintet, normally courtesy of LibDig, you might otherwise have missed.
Don’t forget: you can sign up to receive the Golden Dozen direct to your email inbox — just click here — ensuring you never miss out on the best of Lib Dem blogging.
As ever, let’s start with the most popular post, and work our way down:
1. A memo to Liberal England on the subject of Mr Farron by Caron Lindsay on Caron’s Musings.
Caron rates Farron: “…gobby, barnstorming, feel-good stuff, always delivered with a good kick up the backside.”
2. A letter to Labour by George Potter on The Potter Blogger.
George will never forgive Labour.
3. The Co-op party’s big mistake by George Potter on The Potter Blogger.
George argues in favour of the Co-op Party standing Lib Dem candidates.
4. Day 3934: Things Wot I Was Going to Write This Week by Richard Flowers on The Very Fluffy Diary of Millennium Dome, Elephant.
Millennium’s Conservative Conference Catchup.
5. Is the Coalition changing the Lib Dems? Polling data shows people more confused by the Lib Dems by Matthew Gibson on Solution Focused Politics.
“We need to stop talking about left/right/centre and more about values,” says Matthew.
6. Lesson1: Never defend Chris Huhne unless you have all the facts by Angela Harbutt on Liberal Vision.
Angela replies to Paul Walter’s LDV post.
7. My letter in today’s Guardian: Liberal Democrat conference on Mark Pack’s blog.
And now to the five blog-posts that come highly recommended, regardless of the number of Aggregator click-throughs they attracted. These are normally chosen using the LibDig bookmarking website for party members, the site where you can highlight blog-posts you want to share with your fellow Lib Dems. Remember, though, you’re still more than welcome to nominate for the Golden Dozen a Lib Dem blog article published in the past seven days – your own, or someone else’s – using the steam-powered method of e-mail … all you have to do is drop a line to [email protected].
8. #whatLDsstandfor by George Potter on The Potter Blogger.
“George Potter wants to start a trend where we all say why we’re a liberal democrat and what our three favourite coalition achievements are.” (Submitted by Caron via LibDig.)
9. Taking a photo of your wee girl? That’s terrorism, sir! by Andrew Page on A Scottish Liberal.
“Professional photographer Andrew takes up the case of the father threatened with Anti-Terrorism Act while taking pictures of his own daughter enjoying an ice-cream while out shopping at Braehead Shopping Centre.” (Submitted by Stephen Glenn via LibDig.)
10. Southend-on-Sea schools to get £2,072,000 in Pupil Premium – Lib Dem Win! on the Rambles of Neil Monnery.
“A story to shout about!” (Submitted by oneexwidow via LibDig.)
11. Why is Chris Huhne hitting the nuclear button? on Hoping For More Than Slogans.
“Good summary of an interesting speech, with more analysis to boot.” (Submitted by niles via LibDig.)
12. Why don’t we set up system to cover PPCs who need to take leave? by Caron Lindsay on Caron’s Musings.
“Excellent piece by Caron on how we should treat PPCs” (Submitted by oneexwidow via LibDig.)
And that’s it for another week. Happy blogging ‘n’ reading ‘n’ nominating.
<a href="https://www.libdemvoice.org/top-of-the-blogs-the-lib-dem-golden-dozen-243-25622.html"><img src="https://www.libdemvoice.org/images/golden-dozen.png" width="200" height="57" alt="Featured on Liberal Democrat Voice" title="Featured on Liberal Democrat Voice" /></a>
11 Comments
So after many many articles accusing Labour supporters of being too tribal, the official Lib Dem stamp of approval goes to a blogger (Mr Potter) who ends his rant with a closing sentence with language that I doubt would be allowed on this site?
There’s nothing wrong with Lib Dems deciding that they can’t work with the Labour Party, but if that’s the case why not stop the wounded expression when Labour supporters aren’t keen to work with Lib Dems?
Getting into Top of the Blogs constitutes a seal of approval, as opposed to signalling what readers of LibDemBlogs have been clicking through to. What is the alternative? Censoring the blogposts before compiling the list? Hardly the liberal approach.
Having said that, I agree there is a strand of tribalism abroad in the Lib Dem blogosphere that is unhelpful. If we are serious about coalition politics then we need to be able to get over it, whatever it is and whether it originates with Labour, Conservatives or anyone else.
Sorry that should have said
*doesn’t constitute* a seal of approval
Do Liberal Democrats oppose ‘tribalism’ because it makes it difficult to pull votes from traditionally Labour and Conservative voters? Or because they’ve had difficulty forming a tribal identity for themselves?
Perhaps, in the abstract, voting on the basis of a traditional affiliation is unwise. It is also very normal and human, and merely ranting against it won’t make it go away; not least when it’s so apparent that ‘tribal’ parties do so much better than ‘non-tribal’ ones. The fact that the Liberal Democrats have lost about 60% of their support since the election is hardly going to encourage the other parties to reject ‘tribalism’; a Liberal Democrat party that had been a bit more tribal might have avoided such severe losses of support.
What exactly is the model for a ‘non-tribal’ electorate anyway? Can anybody name a single country where there is little no ‘tribal’ voting? Does the ideal electorate that carefully considers platforms and programmes and votes for the best one really exist anywhere? Is there any convincing programme for bringing it into existence?
It seems to me that by being reduced to a rump or core of 10% of the voters, the Liberal Democrats have little choice but to become more ‘tribal’, and this will happen whether members like it or not, whether they admit that it is happening or try to cover it up. But the party will continue to do poorly unless someone admits that the real task is not denouncing ‘tribalism’, but increasing the size of the Liberal Democrat tribe. Pursuing a narrow group of dissatisfied but ideologically unaffiliated voters will simply produce unreliable bubbles like ‘Cleggmania’; it’s not a recipe for long-term success.
@Andy
1. This is not an official stamp of approval, it is simply a list of the most read Lib Dem blogposts.
2. A big part of my complaints about Labour are the way that they remain tribal and accuse us of betrayal when they have done far, far worse themselves.
3. I use language appropriate to my feelings and the setting. The language I choose to use on my own blog is subject to the editorial policy of no one but me.
4. I will never forgive Labour, as an institution, for what it has done but that does not mean I’m unwilling to work with them in future where our interests align – in much the same way that I dislike the tories but can tolerate us being in government with them.
5. I am in fact currently working with an acquaintance of mine in Labour on writing a joint essay on potential areas of potential Lib-Lab cooperation.
Also, I’m afraid that number 3 on the list, another of my blog posts, wasn’t at all about getting the Coop party to stand Lib Dem candidates, it was about getting them to end their Labour only policy when it comes to allowing people to join. In fact, the only specific example I mentioned was Caroline Lucas for the Greens. Any chance of Helen correcting that?
Andy: Both the first and the third paragraphs of the post explain the first part of the list are those blog posts which got the most readership via the aggregator. How is saying “these were the most read” giving them, as you put it “the official Lib Dem stamp of approval”? After all, how do you know if it was even Lib Dems who were clicking through to read the stories?
@David
When people refer to tribalism they are usually referring to the attitudes where people utterly refuse to even consider the possibility of anyone other than their own tribe might be correct. Pluralism is where you think that your tribe is best but that other tribes might be right on some things and that your tribe might be wrong on some things.
Alex says “there is a strand of tribalism abroad in the Lib Dem blogosphere that is unhelpful”. He may be right. I am featured at number 9 this week, but would hope that, as someone who considers themselves a genuine pluralist, I am not contributing to propagating tribalism, unhelpful or otherwise. I also think there are many more of us in the blogosphere who think similarly.
There is a problem I have detected along these lines, but this seems to be in respect to internal tribalism accompanied by particularly “unhelpful” assumptions of intellectual superiority. But that is among a very small minority of Lib Dem bloggers and wouldn’t constitute a serious problem. What is happening – and being referred to above – is that many of us are rethinking our historical and previously natural sympathies towards the Labour Party, which is inevitable given current political reality. I for one valued our relationship with Labour in Scotland, but that is now a chapter in our past and we can not afford to define ourselves by it.
Would I work with the Labour party given the opportunity? Yes. Would I necessarily choose them as political partners in preference to other options? No. That’s not tribalism – just common sense.
I don’t really see ‘refusing to admit the other tribe might be correct’; what I see is standard oppositional politics, where a party in opposition cherry-picks everything that can be disagreed with, exaggerates the negatives and minimises the positives; and the party (or in this case, parties) in power circle the wagons and refuse to admit that they could be in the wrong — at least until either (a) the opposition no longer seem to gain advantage by it or (b) the error is so gross and obvious that it can no longer be denied.
And that’s how politics has been for a very long time. Would it be better to have a politics in which each party was open and forthright about its shortcomings, where the opposition was fair, never took advantage, and only argued over robust factual issues and philosophical differences? Where everybody was out for the common good and shared their best ideas in hope of improving the country, regardless of who was in power? I think so. But I think that kind of politics is a long, long way away, if attainable at all. Can you really say that the Liberal Democrats have never unfairly bashed the party in power over things that were beyond its control, or that they have never attempted to defend the indefensible simply because their name tag was stuck on it?
@David
We probably have, on occasion, criticised the government for things they could not avoid. I can’t recall anything off the top of my head but it is probable. In contrast, I can’t think of a single time when we have defended the indefensible. That’s the advantage of being a democratic party, members make the policy and therefore every policy has a reasoned argument behind it.