At the start of this month, the proposals from the Liberal Democrats’ Trident policy group were published – just ahead of Tony Blair announcing his own proposals.
The Liberal Democrats’ Federal Policy Committee (FPC) will meet on 11th January for a substantive discussion about the proposals and – assuming the FPC decides to go ahead with having a motion on the proposals for our spring Harrogate conference – a motion will then be published in the agenda sent out to conference representatives and there will be a chance for people to submit amendments for debate.
It’s likely to be one of the liveliest debates at conference; signs so far (judging by responses via the party’s website, replies to emails etc) are that members support the working group proposals by about 60% (in favour of working group proposals) to 30% for scrapping Trident and 10% for keeping Trident in full.
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6 Comments
I have to say I am one of the apparent 30% – although I do hope that maybe the proposals are a holding tactic that allow us unilateralists to sneak up and win the debate.
Sorry, but one nuke is one nuke too many. Get rid.
I think members will want to debate this in private as well as in public. The reaction everywhere I’ve seen, though, is that there are a lot in that 30% and very few in the 60% Mark quotes 😉
What will happen well lots of MPs will stir up paronia that if we don’t vote for this ridiculous excuse for a policy and actually say we wont replace Trident we will be committing electoral suicide. Looking into my crystal ball I predict a lot of party high ups will also try and stir up old divisions from the Alliance on the issue and use that as a reason we should support there rather unispiring paper.
Recent polls which particularly pull out Lib Dem members/voters can be found here: http://www.populuslimited.com/ under latest poll.
And here: http://www.yougov.com/archives/pdf/IDE060101003_1.pdf which was undertaken at the time of the leadership election.
The first suggests Lib Dem voters/membership is pretty much in line with the overall picture across the country – pretty even between replace and rennounce but with replacers having about a 10% lead. The question is of course ‘support the decision to replace trident’ (ie the Labour Gov announcement) it may well be that a proportion of those who don’t, are happy with the working group position which is yes, retain a reduced nuclear weapons capacity for at least 5-10 years until we see how the Iran thing plays out and then make a final decision before we spend the big buck.
The other poll suggests even greater support among Lib Dem members for retaining some kind of Nuclear deterrent.
Presumably the You Gov poll of Party members is the one from the leadership election pruesuambly it is made up of those on the You Gov panel who have declared party membership will that mirror the make up of the party as a whole or crucially of conference?
Was that the YouGov poll that was convinced that Chris Huhne would win the leadership contest?
Too much spin here and not enough debate. The leader’s office not answering members’ letters on the subject shows a certain arrogance.