Since I was eligible to vote, I have voted for the Conservative Party. Local elections, by-elections, General Elections; I’ve always “voted blue, no matter who”. Part of the reason, I’m sure, is the influence of my grandparents who have always voted Conservative. The other reason is easier to identify; as someone always interested – and now working in – law, the fact that the Conservative Party has always been identified as the “party of law and order” naturally drew me to them.
I won’t lie. I have never delved too deeply into the individual policies of the party. I started voting Conservative and didn’t stop. I followed Conservative MPs on Twitter and Facebook, I read “right leaning” newspapers and, for a period of time, I joined the local party association and gave my support as a local activist. I was even asked, where I used to live, to consider standing for the council (albeit as a paper candidate).
In 2022, something happened. I took on a role which meant I was limited in the political activity I could engage in, and, with that limitation, I had more time to spend looking into the Conservative Party’s policies. I immediately took a step backwards. It was around the time that senior members of government began calling lawyers supporting immigrants “lefty lawyers” and allowed themselves to be quoted attacking the judiciary for decisions they didn’t like. My political instincts immediately began to shift and the more I read, the more I felt pushed out and excluded from the party I had spent nearly fifteen years supporting.
I quit.
Not only did I quit, I joined the Liberal Democrats. Not officially – not at first – but reading their policies on justice, I immediately felt at home. It took a lot for me to consider voting for the Liberal Democrats – I still found myself falling into defending the Tories when someone attacked them – but the local parliamentary candidate was welcoming and supportive (despite me having been publicly opposed to him only months earlier) and when I found Rights Liberties Justice, I knew I was sold. Here was a party genuinely committed to the rule of law, to the independence of the judiciary and which understood the role of a lawyer in defending their client (or prosecuting, if that is their chosen profession) regardless of whether the party supported their position.
I submitted my postal vote with three ticks against the candidates running as Liberal Democrats, and never felt better.
The people of the constituency I live in clearly felt as ashamed and dismayed by the Conservative Party as I have come to feel; the majority of the constituency voted Liberal Democrat and for the first time, our local council has no Conservative councillors. It gives me hope for the next General Election; that we can return MPs who genuinely believe in democracy, civil liberties and the rule of law. After all, without those bedrocks, what chance does society have?
* Daniel is a party member from Cheadle
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Thanks Daniel. Inspiring stuff.
Welcome, Daniel. And thank you.
Tremendous to hear of former Conservatives coming over to LDs for principled reasons.
Thank you both. I am hopeful a lot more Tory/Labour voters, or those undecided, will think carefully over the period between now and the next GE and find themselves able to put a tick on the LD box! It helps that we have a fantastic parliamentary candidate in my constituency too.
Interesting and informative, but I wonder if Daniel could be persuaded to write a few more words about what prevented him from voting Lib Dem in the past? What was it about us that turned him off? Many Conservatives are driven by hostility to the Labour Party (and vice versa), but what was it about us that he didn’t like? That’s not to say that we should change – just that it would be interesting to know.
There’s a difference between between the party if “law and order” and being the “party of the rule of law” – which should include being a party of law and order.
It takes a lot to change who you vote for after fifteen years and stop supporting the party your parents/grandparents have always voted for. Thank you for sharing your story and hat tip to the local parliamentary candidate who was welcoming and supportive.
I can well understand the LD vote in the local elections, but as a voter I wd want to know first and foremost , in the event of a hung Parliament, with which of the major parties wd the LDs become a junior partner. X % of the electorate don’t want another Con Government, and Y % likewise a Labour Government. In FPTP the voter is entitled to know if his/her party can’t form a government, with which party will it join in a hung Parliament. Some wd say the unpleasant huckstering in 2010 put off the LD voter in 2015. The voter is entitled to a clear lead from each political leader. If he/she lives in an ‘impossible’ constituency ( LD no chance), then the voter shd know who the leader thinks might form a better government and vote accordingly – and that’s not a ‘wasted vote’.
@richard malim. Talk of coalitions is premature and simply wrong. That tories are even considering going over that tired old argument again is proof that they have run out of fresh ideas and know they’ve lost the next election already- the tories are the coalition of chaos. Labour should be focused on winning and lib dems on getting as many liberal democrat MPs in Parliament as possible to hold a minority or majority Labour government to account. I’d like to see the party come out and say we’ll work with any party on a case by case basis to pass legislation that improves people’s lives and repeal legislation that in incompatible with our values.
Thank you for all your comments.
@Tristan, you’re quite right and that is something I’ve come to realise, albeit belatedly (but hopefully not too late!)
@David, it’s a good question and to be honest it’s something I haven’t really explored with myself! I looked at the Liberal Democrats recently and found myself drawn by the inherently positive and earnest policies and the feasibility of them but I haven’t actually examined why I never thought to vote for them before (aside from having always “voted blue no matter who”).
It’s a really good question and one I’ll definitely have a think on – and hopefully write something about it soon!
Richard Malim – https://www.itv.com/news/2023-05-07/liberal-democrat-leader-rules-out-a-coalition-with-conservatives
@RichardMalim Ed Davey has made it clear that there are no circumstances in which we would form a coalition with or prop up a Tory government. I can see no prospect of a deal with labour either. I don’t think the party would wear it. The most likely arrangement is likely to be consideration on an item by item basis and support for those policies that mirror ours. Any coalition or confidence and supply arrangement would be entirely dependent on getting proportional representation for future elections. The party cannot take the risk of being wiped out or nearly wiped out after a coalition agreement. So I suggest you look at the policies on which we will fight the election because that will tell you what policies of a minority government we might be likely to support.
Not only has Ed Davey stated clearly that the Party would not enter into any kind of arrangement with the Conservatives, it would be impossible anyway because any formal arrangement would have to be ratified by Liberal Democrat members.
Under what circumstances the Party might accept a deal with Labour is a puzzle. A scenario in which Labour had included electoral reform in its manifesto and would work with Liberal Democrats for change looks very unlikely at the moment. More likely, would be an attempt by Labour to run as a minority government, for which case we should be working to improve relations with the SNP, otherwise Labour would play our party and the SNP against each other.
It’s interesting to get such a totally skewed view of coalition negotiations from richard malim. Going into government is a very serious task and especially so when an indecisive result means trying to form a consensus of ideas.
I think richard forgets the total lack of clarity that most parties put into their manifestos (Remember the Conservatives’ “Fair Corporate Pay” in 2017 or Labour’s “Introduce ID Cards” in 2005. Then if you add in then the flexibility of interpretation they apply after being elected so they can totally ignore the bits they never really meant, you can see the absurdity of richard’s proposition is clear. Quite simply, insisting upon an absolute answer to a question when no-one knows the facts that will face us after the next election is a foolish premise.
He may choose to portray it as “unpleasant huckstering” but it is actually a start to grown up government. As for “the voter shd know who the leader thinks might form a better government and vote accordingly,” well, bearing in mind the Johnson purge of the pro europeans in 2019 and the Starmer purges of the left in 2023, I think having faith in local voters to know which of their candidates are extremists or careerists and who would be a good representative of their community is a sensible approach based on sound Lib Dem principle.
A problem with coalitions is Cabinet Responsibility. The upside is that the minority party is “allowed” some policies, e.g. raising the starting point of income tax and pump-priming renewable energy, which the majority party claims for themselves in due course, unchallenged by the right-wing media . The downside is that the minority party is required to keep quiet about the majority party’s policies with which they disagree, and for which they are then blamed.
@David Evans: you are right about the last coalition the big mistake being the signing of a pledge which we then broke; that was not only a political mistake it was immoral. So we must be very careful what we say about our red lines in the GE campaign.
@ Jim Dapre: one of the big mistakes during the last coalition was not to change the way we do politics by saying when due to Tory insistence, the government had made decisions we would not have taken if we had been governing on our own. If such behaviour is not acceptable to the public then that means they do not want coalitions. The other mistake was 2 years into it, when we should have rocked the boat much more even though that risked the continuation of the coalition; another reason probably to avoid coalition anyway.
@ Nigel Jones
In my view the big mistake of 2010 was not getting PR (though I agree the tuition fee pledge was a stupid self inflicted wound.)
I very much hope we will not go into coalition with anyone unless that party whips its MPs to provide PR after the first Queen’ Speech. Of we thinkthat is not deliverable we should refuse coalition. My view is that coalition with either Tories or Labour wod be deeply damaging, and there is only one prize worth the damage.
To counteract the coalition of chaos line we can point to the stability of the 2010-5 coalition compared to everything post 2015. That might even appeal to the soft Tory voters that we need to persuade to vote for us.
Nigel, Tristan, All in all it wasn’t the signing of the pledge that was stupid – it was astonishingly close to party policy anyway – the problem was Nick and his negotiators agreeing to renege on it, immediately after running a party political broadcast on “Say Goodbye to Broken Promises.”
We know Nick and others were against the policy before then (see attempts to change it which conference rebuffed), but the problem was his belief he could get away with just dumping it.
It was easy to abide by the pledge – all that was lacking was belief and courage – but in the end it came very close to “An end to the Liberal Democrats.”
Jim, actually Cabinet Collective Responsibility does not have to be as big a deal as we make it to be. The Civil Service like it, it leads to predictable outcomes at all times.
Authoritarian leaders like it, they can dump their enemies when they like. However, the Conservatives have had no Collective Responsibility for years now, just numerous factions fighting it all out, resignations and rebellions all over the place but they have remained in power.
The problem for Lib Dems is that our leaders fell for CCR – hook, line and sinker. They were ultra loyal to David Cameron, indeed more loyal to him that to Liberal Democracy quite often. As a result, he could totally ignore the ERG problem and instead concentrated on undermining us – which he did. When all of a sudden his prop had disappeared, he was defenceless.
Also the ERG could ignore him and strengthen their combined purpose, which led to victory in the Referendum, triggering Cameron’s resignation and then focus on undermining Teresa May, throwing out the sensible part of the party and driving through Johnson’s half baked deal. All of which got us to where our country is now.
Ultimately those who took a flexible approach to it prospered. The Lib Dems who supported it on principle were massacred.
@ David E
Yes either the pledge should never have been signed or it should have been delivered (Willian Hague has said the Tories expected it to be a Lib Dem red line).
I would have preferred it to have been made and honoured myself- education and all that, as well as demonstrating a party that kept its promises.
But I don’t think it was the pledge that caused the crash in 2015. I think it was the fact that so many of our voters couldn’t stomach our being in coalition with the Tories, even though they had been told it was a possibility.
I think the same think would happen if we went into coalition with Labour; and so I urge we do not, unless we are cast iron certain PR comes out of that deal.
The signing of the NUS pledge was indeed stupid, we should not put ourselves into the hock of others’ pledges, but more stupid and thoroughly counter to modern Liberalism were the increases in tuition charges. Tuition charges are effectively a virtue tax and make as much sense as a tax on renewable energy. If education was some kind of anti-social vice, only then would it make sense to tax it.
Our people were suckered into believing the NUS’s advocacy of a graduate tax, so concocted a system that acts like a tax and were then surprised that very few supported it. Worse the arrangements were always prone to being made more regressive, which is what has happened. The threshold has been decreased and the time of application extended.
Now, whether we like it or not, we are stuck with it; the best we could advocate as a policy would be to increase the payment threshold to £35 000.
@David Evans “it wasn’t the signing of the pledge that was stupid – it was astonishingly close to party policy anyway – the problem was Nick and his negotiators agreeing to renege on it, immediately after running a party political broadcast on “Say Goodbye to Broken Promises.”
Yes, yes, yes!
Having made “trust” a big part of the party’s pitch, negotiating away a high-profile promise immediately after the election was [EXPLETIVES DELETED]!
It even made the Lib Dems and their leader the best weapon of the anti-AV campaign, setting back the sort of electoral reform that had been a priority for the party and its predecessors for as long as I can remember. 🙁
Though It was a couple of years later (letting Jeremy Hunt of the hook AFAIR) that I gave up and stopped referring to the Lib Dems as “we”.
@David Evans: A “sound” MP candidate should be able to tell the voter where he/she would stand in the event of a hung Parliament. After all no LD wd view with favour a Con/Lab coalition, and otherwise secret “grown-up government” and secret “unpleasant huckstering” are two sides of the same coin. How can the voter trust the candidate who does not commit in advance? No one will blame the newly elected MP if his/her party ‘joins’ elsewhere, or expect the MP to oppose the party’s new policy. If either of the big parties fails by a whisker to win outright then LD as the next largest National party would have to spin that metaphorical coin, rather than have a second immediate GE forced upon a fed-up electorate
Tristan Ward and others. Yes, the problem with the tuition fees issues was the uncritical endorsement of the policy of an external organision. We are quite good at policy formulation and should beware of anything that smells of opportunism vis-a-vis a specific segment of the electorate. It could be argued that those involved in higher education should be seen as a natural component of a core vote but that is something else.
richard, I’m afraid you are confusing yourself with your new point. As I am sure you know, partly because I specifically quoted you in my post, you said “the voter shd know who the leader thinks might form a better government and vote accordingly.” This clearly refers to the leader. Now you have totally changed your stance by referring to individual MPs or MP candidates, with no explanation as to how this is reledvant. I’m sad to have to tell you, but my response still clearly stands, while your is mired in total confusion.
It is disappointing to see how some people have completely forgotten the key facts about our party’s stance on tuition fees up to 2010, in their eagerness to portray the pledge as a fundamental mistake, when in fact the pledge was fully in accord with our agreed policy and manifesto position at that time.
Our 2010 manifesto clearly stated
1) We will scrap unfair university tuition fees for all students taking their first degree,
2) We have a financially responsible plan to phase fees out over six years,
3) We will immediately scrap fees for final year students.
The Pledge simply said “I pledge to vote against any increase in fees in the next parliament and to pressure the government to introduce a fairer alternative.”
Unless someone is prepared to argue that we could agree to scrap them over a six year period starting immediately, but still agree to increase them in the interim, there really is no traction in the view that agreeing to the NUS pledge was in any way a mistake.
David Evans:
Unfortunately the claim was that the previous system was scrapped and replaced by a mechanism that was basically a (fairer – supposedly) graduate tax (as advocated by the NUS at that time).
More unfortunately the whole conception was wrong headed. No one has been able to implement a graduate tax anywhere, so anyone who wants one has to find a work around, which is what was introduced. It really should not have taken that much consideration by people who think of themselves as Liberals to conclude that a graduate tax (or substitute) is a thoroughly bad and illiberal idea.
As a pretext, it was claimed that graduates earn more, but if that were really the reason then the obvious solution should have been to increase taxes on all higher earners. After all, I think it would be hard for a higher earner to be able to claim that his or her earnings did not benefit from a better educated workforce and population.
Hello Martin,
Largely I agree with you. When I graduated and possibly you as well, degree students had tuition fees paid and received grants towards their living costs at university, all paid for out of general taxation. In those days basic rate income tax was 30% and higher rates went up to 80%. It was part of a social contract that understood that well educated graduates were essential for a thriving economy from which the whole country benefited. The usually earned more and so paid more in tax personally as did other highly paid individuals. It worked. Then came Thatcher with her low tax and privatisation share giveaways etc and the consensus was undermined.
Truly a Graduate tax was and remains bad idea. I remember when some enthusiastic, graduate educated Lib Dems were debating the possibility graduate tax at a fringe meeting, until I pointed out
1) Their proposal didn’t include people like me (and by implication them) paying the graduate tax, and
2) It would involve newer graduates (i.e. those with loans) paying it and loan repayments unless a new, complex and expensive system was set up to handle it exceptions.
Things went rather quiet after that.
The only bit I don’t understand is where you begin “Unfortunately the claim was that the previous system was scrapped …” I’m not sure what claim you are referring to, nor its relevance. Can you clarify?
Thanks
David Evans:
Your paraphrase of the 2010 manifesto is essentially right (I looked it up this morning, but really don’t want to look at it again). The claim by those who should have known better is that they did scrap the existing (described as “unfair”) arrangement and relaced it with a mechanism that according to them was a “fairer alternative”.
I think it was the case that at the time payments started when salaries were little over £15 000, so I guess that raising the threshold was part of the ‘fairer’ bit. The relevance is that with suitably wonky thinking, it could be claimed that the new system complied with the manifesto and the NUS pledge. The NUS in theory were in favour of a graduate tax, which I do not think our Party had agreed upon (I could be corrected on this). Those proposing the new system claimed (with some justification) that the new system was in effect a graduate tax. This is one reason why our MPs should not have signed up to the NUS pledge.
Actually I do not think the NUS were ever serious about a graduate tax and included it for convenience while arguing that tuition fees should be scrapped.
You are right tuition fees did not exist for me; I cannot remember how the grant worked out; I know my parents had to contribute but I am not sure now whether the grant went directly to me or via my parents. Whatever, I had a few holiday jobs and never once went overdrawn.
Thank you Martin,
You have added to my knowledge as well. I hadn’t realised that some (who as you say should have known better, I might say did know better but chose to construct a fig leaf of an excuse to hide their culpability) had the audacity to claim that they had abolished the system when they clearly hadn’t.
As for the pledge, all they had to do was vote against the increase, but instead Nick chose to abandon it in the coalition negotiations and present it as a fait accompli to the party and its MPs – a matter of Cabinet collective responsibility and of party loyalty. That was where not only did he betray students, but he betrayed the values and trust our party stands on.
In one fell swoop, he undermined trust in our party and demonstrated a total disregard for all the decades of hard work so many of our councillors and activists had put in to get him to a position where he was in government. In addition he also laid bare his total weakness to David Cameron, and emboldened the Conservatives to believe they could actually destroy us while we were in government. This set in train five years of catastrophic decline which our councillors and activists are now, once again having to repair, rebuilding our party from the bottom up.
They are the true heroes of Liberal Democracy.
David Evans:
I have the strong impression that a group at the top, including Nick Clegg, but others as well really thought they had found a cunning wheeze for inventing a workable graduate tax, without properly questioning whether such a tax would be in any way desirable, moreover, I think they had kidded themselves into believing that a graduate tax might command wide support.
Nor did it properly occur to them that formally tripling the fees would inevitably be seen as emblematic.
Despite this, it needs to be understood that a coalition inescapably leads to a collapse of support and any number of issues could be presented as emblematic of perfidy: the Liberal Democrat vote consists of four elements – committed Liberals, whose default is to vote for us, two sets of rational tactical voters who are principally anti Conservative or anti Labour and, possibly less now than previously, protest voters. With a coalition two of these groups are immediately turned off, but the drop in support then creates a feedback loop that exaggerates the collapse in support. The data from 2010/2011 shows this and that the drop in support predates the tuition fees debacle. However, although the tuition fees may not have been the immediate cause of a precipitous drop in support, I do think they have greatly impeded prospects for a recovery.
Thank you Martin,
It is amazing how groupthink can overcome all the benefits of a good education and knowledge.
The old saying “It’s not the facts. It’s the name you give to the facts,” certainly passed them by. The number of times I heard the appeal “It’s really a tax” as a desperate excuse for the fiasco from otherwise good, sound Lib Dems, who just so wanted believe the emperor had some clothes on – well if I had a quid for each of them, I’d be a very rich man.
“It’s a loan.” “It says so on the application form”. “It says so on every annual statement”. “Nick called it a loan in the debates”.
But no, they were right and all the students were wrong. The students just needed it explaining to them. “Good luck there,” I said.
Sometimes smart people really can’t accept they were totally wrong.
But we are where we are, and it’s the poor, bl**dy infantry that is once again building up our party from the bottom up.
Thank goodness for each and every one of them.
@Martin “tuition fees may not have been the immediate cause of a precipitous drop in support”
Possibly not, but it certainly contributed as an important issue within days of the election result when it became clear in the Coalition Agreement that Lib Dems would abstain in any vote on Lord Browne’s report, despite having claimed before the election that it was a cynical way for Labour and Tories to avoid talking about increasing tuition fees until after the election. Subsequently, an unclear and inconsistent approach to tuition fees meant that the issue became emblematic of the damage to the party’s reputation for integrity and competence, an unfortunate double whammy!
Tuition fees are here to stay now. “Currently almost £20 billion is loaned to around 1.5 million students in England each year. The value of outstanding loans at the end of March 2022 reached £182 billion. The Government forecasts the value of outstanding loans to be around £460 billion (2021‑22 prices) by the mid-2040s.”Student loan statistics
“The forecast average debt among the cohort of borrowers who started their course in 2021/22 is £45,800 when they complete their course. Forecast debt is expected to be lower for those starting in the reformed system from 2023/24 at £43,400. The Government expected that around 20% of full-time undergraduates starting in 2021/22 would repay them in full. They forecast that after the 2022 reforms this would increase to 55% among new students from 2023/24.”
A major problem, however, with post 2012 student loans is the rate of interest – RPI + 3%. Rates have been capped at 7.3% until August 2023 but with RPI running at 13% to 14%, expiry of the cap would have a dramatic effect on student debt.
With an aging demographic, shrinking workforce and subdued prospects for economic growth these debt and interest issues are likely to get worse in the coming years (even as RPI inflation reduces to lower levels) rather than better.