Members are sovereign in the Liberal Democrat party. Members will be consulted on the overall party strategy at the next Federal Conference, prior to a motion being passed. Yet the party leader is expected, both by the membership and by the country, somehow to embody the image of the party. He or she is identified with its perceived success or failure by the media, regardless of how much control they may actually have had.
So what do we members think the first duty of the Liberal Democrat leader should be?
Surely he must show in outlining his political priorities that he is true to the party’s principles and values. This Tim Farron did, when elected in 2015. He said, for example,
We see people as individuals. The Liberal mission is to help us to be the best we can be. Standing up for the individual is not what we do – it’s what we are.
However, we surely also expect each new leader to offer a strong new focus which will both inspire the party activists and gain the attention of the public. Tim, coming in as leader after the devastation the party suffered in the May 2015 general election, declared,
I am fed up to the back teeth of being right and losing elections.
He demanded that. step by step, we should build change from the bottom up.
Pick a ward – any ward… we want councillors first. It’s time for the Liberal Democrats to win again.
He spoke stirring words in effective speeches to the membership.
Vince Cable starts in 2017 in a better situation, since under Tim’s leadership the party membership doubled and many council seats were won back. But at only 7% in the national polls and just 12 MPs, the party is still far from becoming the main opposition party that Tim had sought.
Vince appears to take the party’s principles and values for granted – wanting to make the country ‘more liberal and more democratic’. With Tim as leader the party’s aim was summarised as to make ‘a Britain that is open, tolerant and united’. For Vince the key impact words are apparently to be ‘fair, free and open’. That suggests a continuation of values, though perhaps acknowledging that the country may not be as tolerant or as united as Lib Dems would wish.
What is Vince’s strong new focus? He declares himself ambitious for the country and for the party.
We need to give people powers over the decisions that affect their lives, including Brexit.
And,
I want the Liberal Democrats to be at the centre of political life – a credible effective party of national and local government.
Recognising the size of the struggle ahead for every vote and every seat, he asserts ‘It can be done.’ There is ‘enormous energy’ in the thousands of new members, and:
I have the ability to give that energy a lead – to hit the headlines and put our party in the centre of political debate.
It’s a strong beginning, and with Vince’s gift for the memorable phrase and his caustic wit, bound to catch the media’s attention.
The next vital question for us is: What do we expect of our leader during his time in office?
There is tension between the dynamism of our democratic party and its tacit acceptance that a leader – even the leader of this collection of individuals – has to lead. The drive which we all share to attain effective power means we need to win the country’s liking and trust enough for us to win contests. The media-focused concentration on the party leader suggests he must be given some leeway.
It is the sudden demand, the unexpected event, which forces an immediate response from the leader on behalf of the party, Tim Farron rose successfully to the challenge of the Referendum result, asserting our commitment to Europe and carrying the party with him.
His predecessor Nick Clegg accepted the challenge for the party to share power. The party’s control over the leader then lessened, and the divisions in the broad church that we inevitably are became apparent. As Vince Cable prepares us to take power in the future, our expectation sof him will have to be worked out.
* Katharine Pindar is a long-standing member of the Cumberland Lib Dems
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86 Comments
Katherine,
you make some good points. One of Vince’s first interviews in the Guardian is headlined
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jul/22/vince-cable-wealth-taxes-win-back-labour-voters Vince Cable plans wealth taxes to win back Labour voters and sub-titled
Scandinavian-style policies could counter Labour’s ‘cult’, the new Liberal Democrat leader believes.
That gives a good indication of the economic approach and is consistent with long standing libdem policy.
He said the idea of an annual land value tax, in place of business rates in the first instance, could be something he would look at.
“A good place to start is by replacing the system of commercial rates with something based on land values,” he said. “That would be a good place to try it out, experiment, see what the valuation problems are, if any. So let’s try it out. The principle is a good one.
“The Tories are very clever in using it to wind people up, to say this is a Labour or Lib Dem tax on people’s back gardens, which of course is nonsense because you’d exempt smallholdings.” .
I think ultimately, as Tim Farron said, “you can only get stuff done if you win.” The compromises this involves are uncomfortable for some as no one is wholly satisfied, but dogmatism and ideological stubborness doesn’t bring power – making common cause with the great mass of centre ground voters does.
OK then, folks, are you only radical on line then, and content now to sit back and leave our future to Vince Cable? ‘Cable plans wealth taxes to woo Corbyn backers’, ran the Observer headline. telling us that ‘he will examine radical new taxes on wealth to ease inequality in Britain’ . Great that he should – and bring his ideas to Bournemouth. There have been extensive consultations by the Economy Working Group, not that I have had any answer from Zoe O’Connell to my enquiry as to what happened to the plan to bring the resulting motion to Bournemouth, and lots of intelligent suggestions on LDV threads on industrial and economic development. Don’t just roll over now and ask Vince, for all his experience and knowledge, to tickle your tummies!
There have been plenty of comments on LDV recently about the distant policy-making processes of the party. These have been made more democratic but not got over yet the difficulty of only those of us able to go to Federal Conference making the decisions. Don’t make it worse by surrendering to popular (and marketing!) thinking that it’s best to leave it to the leader now. Vince has been something of a loner, seemingly, but now he’s our leader let’s demand he be collegiate and participative with us all.
This little article is just attempting to start a debate about the place of leadership in our party. It seemed to work well under Tim Farron, until we got too superior and not supportive enough of him. It didn’t work so well, in terms of outcome certainly, with Nick Clegg. All leaders have their own virtues, but let’s consider now how we can best integrate Vince’s – when we know more about them for ourselves.
Katharine ,
I was glad to meet Sir Vince a few months ago , and am going to be keen to make us get the most out of his leadership, trust that some who are worried on the EU , as you have now seemed to be less so, and who supported Tim, can relax a bit on his views.
You are so positive it surprises me as it does you when you say it to me, when not so positive. As a result , just say something positive yet again as you do here and things are going swimingly again…!
Thanks, Joe, just read your comment. Yes, I saw the Guardian article too, and it was well worth quoting, as you have. And I welcome such radical thinking, especially having read on LDV all about the virtues of land-value taxation. But I want Vince to be working with us, not flying off on the little yellow bird with the rest of us just craning our necks and clapping below. (Wonder what certain of our more right-wing Newbies will make of Vince’s reported sayings so far? !}
People like a more equal world but don’t want to pay for it. We live in a world in which we think we can get something for nothing, we can’t and until as a country we realise that we will fail. Hopefully we will realise that before hard times teach us that, but many still believe in fairies and other beings that will bring us easy times and wealth.
I should point out many Brexiteers now put all their faith in the seventeenth century Reece Mogga leprucorn with his sack of gold to bring us unearned wealth, sad but true 😉
Hi, Frankie, I thought you believed in faeries (sic) yourself! 🙂 Not of course in your leprechaun Reece Mogga, of which I hadn’t heard, but he seems appropriate to the Brexiteers. There will be no sacks of gold, obviously. Not sure what that has to do with the theme here, but I’m glad Vince is committed to the party policy on Europe, and you’ve nicely defused my cross mood, which was partly the result of technical difficulties which delayed the publication of the little piece in a readable form.
Lorenzo, thank you. I don’t always understand your comments, but I almost always feel they are in the spirit with which I agree.
Might we help our leadership and ourselves if we had discussions about some fundamentals such as the creation, storage and distribution of money and our relationships with the alleged or real American empire?
Policies have to emphasize the real interests of the individual over both large companies and the still massive bureaucratic complex that passes for government, I suspect that Vince has the grit to get the message over in a way that ridicules Labour and kneecaps the Conservatives… but there needs to be a unique selling point for the party that is so compulsive it breaks through to the voters.
Unique selling points are difficult for Liberal Democrats. Open-minded, nonconformists drawing on strong values will inevitably struggle to express themselves with integrity to a nationwide audience. Simple messages are more difficult than the USB’s of the populists!
The above quote from Tim may be helpful. “We see people as individuals. The Liberal mission is to help us to be the best we can be. Standing up for the individual is not what we do – it’s what we are.”
Note the sequence – seeing, standing, being.
The stance we take on specific issues helps people see what we are. They do not all have currency as long as invading Iraq or resisting leaving the EU ! But how we behave either on the streets on in Parliament can get powerful messages across, answering the Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid question “Who are those guys?”
Katharine, Your article raises some important questions. As a party, we do need to have a debate about what the role of the leader should be.
In our party, policy is made by the members, through conference. So the role of the leader is to be the public face of the party, and its spokesperson, but not to make policy. That is the theory, but in practice, leaders have sometimes seemed to announce policy which has not yet been voted for by conference, or ignored policy passed by the members.
I am not quite sure that I understand what you feel the role of the leader should be. You seem to be concerned that Vince may try to present ideas of his own as if they were party policy. But Tim, immediately after the referendum result, did appear to be unilaterally creating policy that had not yet been voted for by the members – and you seem to applaud this.
Immediately after the referendum result, Tim stated that the party would fight for Britain to remain in the EU – basically saying that he wished to ignore the result, although at the same time he claimed to “respect” it. After a while, he began to say that there should be a referendum on the final deal, with an option to remain in the EU, which seemed rather more democratic than his earlier statements. But none of this had yet been voted for by Conference. Nevertheless, the majority of members seemed to accept Tim’s statements as if they were party policy. The policy that members were eventually given to vote on at Autumn Conference was basically the policy that Tim had already been presenting in the media as party policy. It was passed overwhelmingly – but I feel that this was because Tim had already publicly committed the party to this policy.
If Tim had said, on June 24, something like “We very much regret this result, but of course we accept it. We are leaving the EU, but we are not leaving Europe. As a party, we want the closest possible friendship with the rest of Europe after we leave, and the most liberal possible Brexit, and we will fight for this.”, then I think most members would have accepted this approach, and a very different motion would have been passed at Autumn Conference.
CJC:
If Farron had done as you suggested the Liberal Democrats would have been about a quarter its present membership. The Party would not have won the Richmond by-election. Perhaps the Scottish MPs would still have won, but more would have lost in England, because for many more voters they would justifiably have seen less point in voting for Lib Dems.
But then is it your idea that the best thing a Lib Dem leader can do is not to lead?
Is it such a good idea that a conference attended by about 0.1% of the membership should prescribe the leader and other parliamentarians until the next conference? – Do you not think it might be a bit embarrassing when there are events to respond to?
Martin, We can never know what would have happened. But my feeling is that we would probably still have won the Richmond by-election. People voted for Sarah Olney, and against Zac, for a number of reasons, not just because of brexit. And Sarah would not have been forced to delete a blog she had written a few weeks earlier, in which she had said something like “I get it. We’re leaving the EU…lets have for a brexit that works for everyone”. She would not have been forced publicly to say things that she probably did not feel comfortable with.
The statement I suggested Tim could have made would still have been a positive one calling for a close friendship with Europe, and a liberal brexit. I think we still would have had new members joining the party. And we would not have lost the votes of people who had voted Lib Dem in the past, and also voted Leave. We would probably have had a considerably larger vote share in the recent election.
Martin, Yes, of course there are times when the leader does need to respond to events, rather than waiting for the next Conference.
Obviously Tim Farron could not have remained completely silent about Brexit until Autumn Conference. If he had made the sort of statement I suggested he could have made, then in a way that also would have been deciding party policy without the members voting.
My first comment, which you replied to, was originally intended to be longer, but it turned out to exceed the word limit for a comment. I had to delete a part of the comment in which I mentioned that of course Tim had to respond in some way to the Bexit result, and continued some thing along the lines of : Perhaps there could have been an emergency conference immediately after the referendum result, to decide what the party’s response should be. But it would surely have been better if a conference *before* the referendum had decided what the party’s approach would be, in the event of a Leave vote. After all, we had known that there would be a referendum, since the 2015 election, so there was no excuse for being unprepared.
There will of course be times when the leader will have to respond to unexpected events. But the leader should try to respond in a way that is consistent with party policy, and avoid creating policy before Conference has had a chance to vote.
Catherine, thank you for engaging with the theme I raised, the role of the leader when policy is made by Conference. I think Martin is right when he suggests the milder response you would have liked Tim to make would not have had the impact, publicity and consequent growth in the party that his actual response did. But the answer to your question is suggested in my article – ‘It is the sudden demand, the unexpected event, which forces the immediate response from the leader on behalf of the party.’ On June 24 last year Tim had to begin to make a party policy where we hadn’t got one. If the leader is called on to give an immediate response to an event where there is already some related party policy, yes I would hope he would answer in keeping with that policy.
And yes, I do wonder if Vince may come to present ideas of his own as if they were already party policy – hence really my rant of last night demanding that members stand up for the democratic processes already in place which are formulating our economic policy. They need developing further, but there have been extensive consultations on this as I have observed and taken part in, and I do wonder if the lack of any resulting policy proposal that I can see for the next Federal Conference in September is a foretaste of an undemocratic slide towards ‘Leave it to Vince’.
Katharine, thank you for your reply. But the referendum result was not exactly an “unexpected event”. As I said in my comment at 11.22, the party should really have given some thought in advance on how to respond if the vote was to Leave. Conference could have voted on this before the referendum.
Does ‘getting stuff done’ include the shameful introduction of Employment Tribunal fees resulting in a 70% reduction in ET applications? Another staggering LibDem in Coalition success.
And yet Jo Swinson now attacks the Tories for defending the High Court case clearly forgetting the Hansard extracts where she spoke in favour of their introduction and widely circulated on twitter.
Meanwhile Vince Cable has the audacity to criticise Corbyn over a dishonest lie that Corbyn promised to wipe clear all student debt. I mean Vince Cable attacking Corbyn on Student Fees. You just can’t make this stuff up.
Goodness me what has become of the LibDems
Katharine, I do hope you don’t mind me asking this , and I’m only asking this because I have followed your posts with interest, and would be genuinely interested to hear your reply – I know that you were initially dismayed by the approach that Tim was taking after the result, considering it undemocratic, but later you seemed to become an enthusiastic supporter of Tim’s policy. Could I ask how it was that you changed your mind on this?
@ Steve Trevethan. Steve, I have to admit I didn’t understand your comment above, but I would welcome further debate on the question you raised elsewhere, reconsideration of alternatives to the neoliberal agenda, which has bearing on how we develop our economic policy now, when we have acquired an economist as our new leader.
You helpfully posted an article from the IMF journal Finance & Development, which showed me how neoliberal thinking is based on increased competition through deregulation and a smaller role for the state, and that some neoliberal policies have increased inequality instead of delivering growth. The question of what policies our party advances in opposition to the neoliberal agenda seems to be undetermined, yet entirely relevant and necessary now.
Catherine, you are very observant, and that is a fair question. You are right, I did fear in the first instance that, as you have maintained all along, Tim’s response might be undemocratic. But I have realised since that accepting the result of the Referendum does not mean that you have no right to campaign against it.
Katharine
Thank you for that Katharine, I , as with many of us, think aloud on here, probably more than I should , but with people in person I do it a lot and it is both style and substance people relate to. As a seminar leader , coming out of drama and comedy and musical improvisation, it is the way I am, so thanks for going with it in the spirit it is meant.
The article is important . It is one in which we need the thinking I refer to, to be seen or felt as that, not a conclusion drawn too soon.
Catherine
This brings me to you , from one to the other , same names , different spelling, similar level of exactly what we need, thinking!
Your comments , as ever , say a great deal, in a moderate tone of questioning and wondering, in a way I find always helpful and thought provoking. You prove the view I have , that radical and moderate are brothers and sisters not enemies.
I believe in leaders leading and doing so in consort. On a few issues they should get carte blanche because we trust them. But on most we must be involved.
What I do not want is to turn parliamentarians into delegates, anymore than I want to turn party members into sheep !
Katharine – thanks for raising this crucial issue.
“Members are sovereign in the Liberal Democrat party.”
In theory – yes. In reality – not so much.
In theory, workers were sovereign in the Soviet Union but the high ideals of the revolution (such as they were) came unstuck when power was refracted through multiple process-driven committees all with their own internal politics and agendas. So, in practice, workers were powerless and the nomenklatura ruled the roost.
Similarly, the Co-op failed because of its unworkable (but theoretically democratic) management structure of multi-layered committees. Eventually they managed to elect a crystal meth user with absolutely no knowledge of banking as chairman of the Co-Op Bank. It didn’t survive the experience!
One consequence of our bureaucracy-based approach is that party HQ has a poor sense of the situation on the ground resulting a political ‘cloth ear’ (see Nick Harvey on hiding manifestos under the stairs). Related consequences include that policy-making is ponderous in a world of fast-moving events while fresh thinking and accurate information struggle to reach the top because they can’t penetrate the committee maze. Innovation comes from the ‘margin’ which we have sidelined.
https://liberatormagazine.org.uk/en/document/liberator-issues-2017/liberator-382#document
The party leader (and MPs) are obviously well placed to influence policy but, as Catherine JC says, they are, strictly speaking, only the public face of the party, spokesmen for policies made by others and, I would add, rubber-stamped at conference. How many proposed policies has it ever overturned? How much power does it really have?
This constitutional idiocy puts our leaders in an impossible position; the result is 7%.
In short, the issue is governance. Its failings may show up most clearly in poor policy-making but it is flawed party governance that is our key strategic weaknesses and that is why we do so poorly in Westminster elections. In local elections, where governance is done differently, we succeed.
We should learn how to do party governance from the John Lewis Partnership. It’s a staff-owned business, but one with a very different model of democratic control from the Co-Op or Lib Dems – one that actually works.
Their principle is that management should manage – but be accountable to the staff who can fire them if/when they do a bad job. This constrains the management to keep their eye on the ball and look out for the staff’s long-term interests.
And that’s as it should be. Democracy isn’t about committees and processes; it exists when – and only when – the people have the power to fire the [expletive deleted]. I for one have no problem with some sitting on high branches – provided that they are breezy branches from which they can easily be blown down. I DO have a problem with an impenetrable bureaucracy.
So, I would give the MPs formal responsibility for policy with the leader as first-among-equals to coordinate their work. At a stroke the party would become more transparent, responsive to events, its policies closer to the electorate and its MPs *liberated* to lead. But, crucially, MPs as a group should have the power to fire the leader so he is incentivised to work in a collegiate way and not get dictatorial.
However, this does NOT mean that leaders/MPs could do as they liked. They should have to present substantive policy developments to conference for approval and woe betide them if conference dislikes what it hears – that should be a career-limiting experience. Meanwhile they would learn to keep an ear to the ground for party and public sentiment. This small change would enhance policy debate and democracy in the party far beyond conference.
In developing policy MPs should primarily be driven by what matters to people. As Bill le Breton wrote of local government experience recently, “Our communications were all action based. Identifying an issue, stating what we knew about the issue. Asking others to contribute to our knowledge, sharing the mounting information. Sketching a solution and asking for reactions … and involving others”
That works for me; we know it works locally, we should do it nationally.
@ Gordon. Hiding manifestos under the stairs is not greatly to be recommended, of course! – though I do sympathise with Nick Harvey, coming myself from a rural constituency and having gone to lend him a hand in North Devon for a few days in the GE campaign. You are right yourself in pointing out that ‘policy-making is ponderous in a world of fast-moving events’ if you are thinking as ever of the necessary top committee system and the twice-yearly Federal Conferences. Yet I am not sure that it is true that ‘fast thinking and accurate information struggle to reach the top’. We can do better, as my own unanswered request for information on the proposed motion from the Economy Working Group might suggest – on the other hand I emailed our President to check a fact before writing my piece, and Sal replied next day. I have suggested that there should be a dedicated private email address for our councillors to write to the chair of the Federal Policy Committee, conveying the needs and wants of their constituents, and no doubt there can be some development of Facebook to concur. I guess we may need more staff, or more staff briefing – getting info out of HQ unless you have the name of the policy staff member or an email address for committee heads (which I don’t) is difficult.
I don’t quite follow what you mean about ‘policies made by others’ or ‘conference rubber-stamping’, though. I haven’t seen that. I think Lorenzo is right that on most issues ‘we must be involved’, with the leader working ‘in consort’. The trouble is, Lorenzo, that giving our leaders carte blanche on certain issues because we trust them, raises the question of how much we know them, and whether they may change their minds (again, perhaps!).
@ Katherine Pindar. Thank you for thinking about my comment on your most important article.
I hope that the following might help.
A general point is that it seems likely that the better informed the membership/citizenry is the more likely the leadership is to be of a higher quality and more realistic responsiveness.
To achieve this we need to check out what we think we know and to look at alternatives and consider and discuss them. L D Voice offers an excellent tool for this if we are willing to be tolerant and quote sources where we possibly can. Sometimes it is uncomfortable to check out a long held belief but that is a fair price for greater/better knowledge and/or the verification of currently held knowledge/assumptions.
For alternatives to neo-liberal economic theory you might look at the work of Steve Keen, Michael Hudson and Ellen Brown.
Keen makes the point that the current dominant economic theory seriously misleads with its metaphor of household management. When a government, which is the creator of money, does not spend more than it gets back in taxation how is there going to be money in circulation so that the private sector can function?
http://debunking.podbean.com/e/53-why-we-shouldnt-worry-too-much-about-government-debt-preview-1499771432/
More generally!
If, as may be the case, we are not part of the American Empire, why did we go to war over the invasion of the Falkland Islands and not over the invasion of Grenada?
Might we do better if we consulted, but did not rely upon, what we are told and not told by the Main Stream Media? Iraq?
I think it was Tony Benn, speaking about Harold Wilson’s election success and his efforts to hold the warring sides of the labour party together after the death of Hugh Gaitskell, that said (echoing the Buddha) “…a bird needs two wings to fly – a right wing and a left wing.”
Vince will no doubt need to do the same. Managing the balance between economic and social liberalism as the party reestablishes its credentials as a movement with the capacity to develop a credible alternative government with the general public.
The leader should promote party policy where it exists and not push ideas of his/her own. If the leader wants policy changed he/she should bring it to conference and argue for it. Too often in the past (notably on nuclear weapons) the leader has ‘let it be known’ that a particular line was preferred. I am for open debate and decision making, not pronouncements from on high. It wouldn’t hurt for our leader to say that the party hasn’t set our policy on x but that in the interim here’s my opinion.
CJC, you and I have argued the toss about the referendum. The leavers never accepted the overwhelming result in 1975 (2/3 vote in favour) and I see no reason to accept a much smaller result the other way. We all know that leaving is lunacy and we should keep on saying so and seek to get the Brexit vote reversed, by democratic means.
Katharine, thank you for your reply. I would be interested to know more about how and why you came to accept this policy, but of course it’s none of my business really, and you do not need to share any more if you do not wish to.
I would agree that it is not undemocratic to disagree with the result of a referendum, nor is it undemocratic to hope to reverse it at some point in the future. I would consider that it would be completely democratic to have a long term policy of trying to rejoin the EU at some point in the future, after we have left, although realistically this could not happen for several years. But it cannot be democratic to prevent the referendum result from being implemented.
With a general election, we may regret the result, but we would never suggest that the newly elected MPs should not be allowed to take up their seats in Parliament, or that the party with the largest number of MPs should not be allowed to form a government. So it cannot be democratic to suggest that the referendum result should not be implemented by leaving the EU.
Tim’s response to the result seemed especially unacceptable in view of the fact that he had voted for the referendum to be held, and had never said anything previously to suggest that the result should not be honoured. The Lib Dems had called for an in out referendum on the EU, before the Conservatives did.
Sorry to go over all this again!
But in the context of your article, the point is that Tim was announcing party policy without members having any say in the matter, which is not how party democracy is supposed to work.
Gordon,
the 2016 conference passed a motion on governance following a consultation that received over 5,000 responses https://www.libdems.org.uk/conference-autumn-16-f13-effective-party-governance
The motion passed resolved:
1.The party’s priorities will be laid out in a Federal Party Strategy, including the Leader’s political strategy; at least once per Parliament an outline strategic document will be submitted to Conference for debate.
2.The Federal Executive should be replaced by a Federal Board, becoming a strategic body monitoring the delivery of the party’s Federal strategy, assessing that strategy’s impact on equality; the Federal Committees, working with senior staff, will deliver their part of the Federal strategy through their work plans.
3.The Federal Policy Committee and Federal Conference Committee will continue to report directly to Conference, but will also report to the Federal Board on their implementation of their part of the Federal Strategy.
4. A new Federal Communications and Elections Committee should take on the work of the current Campaigns and Communications Sub Committee and the Joint States Candidates Committee, to ensure co-ordination between elections and the strategic overview of candidate preparedness.
5. A new Federal People Development committee should take on the work of the current Diversity Engagement Group, Training Task Force and Joint State Members Committee.
6. No member shall be directly elected on to more than one Federal committee each, but may, by election or appointment of that Committee, become a representative on another.
7. There shall be a Deputy Leader either (a) elected on a joint ticket with the election of a Leader of the party OR (b) elected by parliamentarians.
Vince is already getting more articles in the papers than Tim did at the beginning:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/27/brexit-corbyn-hard-right-progressive-labour-europe
Unfortunately, The Guardian headline writers have made it sound as if he is calling Corbyn right-wing, rather than he is supporting the hard Brexit that Tory right-wingers also want, which is what he actually says in the article.
I think that between now and Conference is a good time for Vince to stake out his position based on existing Party policy; there was a great deal that was never publicised during the election because the media were either concentrating on Tim’s attitude towards gays or on legalising cannabis (it’s not a bad policy, it’s just not a vote-winning policy like scrapping tuition fees). We are not going to go backwards on 1p on income tax for the NHS, but Vince is much better placed to make the case for it than Tim was, because he is already respected on economics.
@ Mick Taylor “The leader should promote party policy where it exists and not push ideas of his/her own”.
You couldn’t do it that way if Vince (by some earthquake) became Prime Minister. What you advocate is the procedures for a minority party…… and as you say there has been much sleight of hand on nuclear weapons. Tuition fees is another example.
@Catherine Jane Crosland
“But it cannot be democratic to prevent the referendum result from being implemented.”
Disagree. The referendum was not binding and if we think implementing it would be bad for the country and its citizens it would be dereliction of duty not to oppose it as vigorously as possible.
Lorenzo, thank you for your kind remarks.
I don’t think it can be acceptable to give the leader carte blanche on any issue, even if we do trust them. Which issues did you have in mind?
But I wouldn’t want Parliamentarians to become mere delegates. I think it is quite acceptable for any MP, including the leader, to disagree with party policy on a particular issue, and even to vote against party policy if they feel it to be a matter of conscience. The leader should be free to say publicly that they disagree with party policy on a certain issue, but they should make it clear when they are expressing their own personal views rather than party policy.
“What should we expect of The Leader?”
First, that they get us noticed, Vince seems to be doing a good job of that so far. One good way of getting attention is to announce “New” policies. I dont think it matters if The leader makes up policy as long as its in line with Liberal values. We have to keep reminding ourselves that voters dont usually remeber policies, what they pick up, if anything is a flavour of what a Party “Stands For”.
Second, that they make us feel optimistic & energised, we probably need to wait for Conference to see how well Vince does that.
@ Paul Barker: ‘ I don’t think it matters if the leader makes up policy as long as its (sic) in line with Liberal values … voters don’t usually remember policies…’ NO, NO,NO, Paul. Are you joking? That would be no way to win back voters’ trust, but more importantly it’s just morally wrong. We try to be honest. ‘The truth will make us free’ . There will be times when we will be evasive, times when we will avoid a direct answer and change the subject, but let us be as truthful as we can. I have been disgusted with the dishonesty of many of the government ministers, such as Johnson and Gove, and the way they shaft each other (let us not even look at Osborne now), and they are deservedly despised, and on the way out finally. We can do better than that lot: we must. (And let us not slide into untruth about Corbyn – he said he would look at the problem of student debt – unwisely – but did not promise to get rid of it.)
Great to read Vince’s expert opinions on the yin and the yang of the EU positioning on the single market, etc. – I guess the problems of the eurozone will continue, not to mention the management of refugees – but that is all for future threads. Thanks, Laurence Cox, for posting the Guardian link, and I agree with your comment that Vince can stake out his position based on existing party policy between now and Conference.
Our reformed governance, with the strategy supremacy of the elected Federal Board yet its need to heed Conference motions, is helpfully set out by Joseph Bourke, and I couldn’t prefer your idea of giving policy development to the MPs, sorry, Gordon (having read your second comment). But by all means let us continue to improve the systems, to allow more rapid and useful communication into and from our leading figures. Not like John Lewis Partnership, though, in my view. I’ve yet to see a comparison with running businesses that seems feasible.
CJC
“With a general election, we may regret the result, but we would never suggest that the newly elected MPs should not be allowed to take up their seats in Parliament, or that the party with the largest number of MPs should not be allowed to form a government. So it cannot be democratic to suggest that the referendum result should not be implemented by leaving the EU.”
People seem to be perfectly OK with the idea that Theresa May can call a General Election less than 2 years after winning one (with a bigger margin that 4%), let alone having a hung parliament… And there must by law be another General Election within 5 years.
Leaving the EU is a once in a generation action that will affect people who are not even born yet, let alone the 16 and 17 year olds that could have been enfranchised, or the EU citizens living in the UK who could have been given the same rights as Australians. Are we going to have another referendum in 5 years, after we have left? No – that would be ridiculous, the process of either leaving OR joining is very expensive and will occupy the Civil Service for a decade or more.
The Liberal Democrats have not proposed to overturn the result of the referendum, but to allow the British people to confirm their decision once they see exactly where they are going. You can accuse that policy of many things (for example it may be impractical), but “undemocratic” is not one of them!
In my area we have been doing a lot of surveys recently. A majority of people do not want another referendum at this point in time… But a significant number of people who voted Leave and would still vote Leave are in favour of another referendum
Katharine,
It is a worthy aim to think that conference should decide policy. However there are many practical and some moral problems with this.
Firstly, Conference is not particularly democratic in reality. I work for a living and also go away a lot as part of my job. I don’t have time to go the Conference, and have only been to one. Having every policy voted on by the entire membership would be the only truly democratic way, and in the future may be easy enough via online voting (but significant numbers of members are still not online).
Secondly, political reality means that Parties reveal their policies during the election campaign via a manifesto, and it is important both to keep some things up your sleeve and be able to react to events.
Thirdly, conference is NOT actually discussing the critical things which people are most interested in. For example, tuition fees and University funding do not appear to have been discussed for many years (correct me if I am wrong! I was not a member from 2010 to 2015 and deliberately ignored what the Liberal Democrats were doing for the most part..), and will not be discussed this autumn. In 2015 the manifesto was silent on tuition fees, and in 2017 we went with the status quo. I am told that the last conference vote was still to abolish them. In fact, conference can only possibly discuss a minority of the things that need to go in a manifesto, and cannot control the date of general elections.
I agree with Paul Barker in many ways,
Vince cannot only make policy announcements every 6 months , and he has to react to events. If the Tories announce a new policy, Liberal Democrat MPs have to decide whether to vote in favour, against, or abstain. In so doing they are setting policy. It is impractical to consult the membership every time, and what is more MP’s are elected by constituents, not Lib Dem members.
In this case, most people said “we want a Leadership contest so we know what policies the Leader is going to promote”. Sensibly, Vince has produced a manifesto with some interesting ideas which mostly I quite like. Much of it is a reaction to Labour’s rather amazing “manifesto for opposition” which has caught the public mood
On the other hand, the time MPs SHOULD have listened was when the Special Conference in 2010 resolved the following:
“Conference notes that many Liberal Democrat MPs signed the NUS ‘vote for students’ pledge against any real terms rise in the tuition fee cap. Conference calls upon Liberal Democrat ministers and MPs to ensure that on any decision made on Lord Browne’s report on higher education funding, they above all else take into account the impact on student debt. Conference affirms the Liberal Democrat objective of scrapping tuition fees.”
A Special conference cannot be called every time a new policy is needed however…
Catherine
You said it , like it should be said, in fact the only carte blanche acceptable is those few conscience matters, so yes, worth clarifying.
I am not worried about the views of our leaders but about any coalition policies that are not theirs or ours but another parties altogether !
I think Katharine is doing what I think is necessary, recognising the Democrat as well as Liberal in our name.
Please don’t make the leader the only spokesman. Was there a reshuffle of parliamentary spokesmen and women? The government have waited until the recess to make a series of important announcements without the risk of urgent notice questions being authorised by the Speaker. Will Ed Davey be commenting on the electric cars and the effect on the national grid? Let’s not leave it all to the Greens.
The Home Secretary “found her voice” on 27/7/2017 in the Financial Times (£) promising business that they will be allowed to have skilled employees after Brexit, but saying nothing about the speed of decision making in the Home Office. She might be allowed some sympathy because the previous Home Secretary was Theresa May and her junior minister has been doing interviews. The use of the MAC looks like long grass, so there will probably be a denunciation in todays Telegraph. Will we have an economic spokesman under the leader? or will Vince Cable do that job himself (Paddy Ashdown MP was Northern Ireland spokesman while leader). The Irish government want the border to be the sea.
@ Andrew McCaig. It is not ‘a worthy aim that Conference should decide policy’, Andrew, it is the fact of how we operate. But you make some good points. I am increasingly uneasy myself about the fact that many activists can’t get to Conference, and perhaps there should be some supplementary on-line voting; on the other hand there are the regional and perhaps state conferences which members may be more able to attend. That leads to the question of whether or how policy decisions made by the local conferences are fed into the central policy-making system – we do have a policy department to back up the elected Board, so supposedly staff there could take and pass on the information (like the good housing policy that was passed at the North-West Regional Conference last autumn, for instance). I don’t know if it happens. I suppose Federal Policy Committee should keep a check on whether policies passed are still relevant, or need updating – what about the tuition fees policy, as you remark?
I share your unease, too, that Conference does not seem to be discussing some critical things that people are concerned with, to which I think the answer from FPC would be that members have not submitted the policy suggestions for them to consider. There is of course also the time-lag. We have emergency motions at Conference, but debate only one. It may well be that there should be some system developed for later motions to be debated.
The difficulties of the system may well lead to people wanting to fall back on leaving policy decisions to the MPs, as Gordon advocated! But I disagree when you say, ‘Vince can’t only make policy announcements every six months’ – he shouldn’t be making ‘policy announcements’ at all, nor is he; he is feeding in ideas, and what we need is his interaction with (for instance) the Economy Working Group chair person, because the consultations and deliberations of the working groups are one of the ways in which members CAN participate in the democratic system.
Just a wee comment, Katharine.
You make some good points, but right at the outset, you wrote along the lines of
‘What do we Liberal Democrats expect of our leader? Well, HE should …..’
I rather thought our party was pretty hot on supporting women MPs and other post holders!
Perhaps, ‘ What do … our leader? He or she should …’
Or perhaps, ‘S/he should …’
Any thoughts?
Joyce,
Can make a plea for the use of gender-neutral “they should” rather than he/she?
But if we are talking about Vince specifically anything other than “he” would look a bit daft..
I have to confess, the first thing I expected of a Ieader when I joined was to be elected… Failing that, I’d expect them to work to raise a new generation of electable leaders, rather than pick a de-facto successor. We’ll all have our own views, so, purely personally speaking, I’d expect the leader to embody LibDems’ shared beliefs and values, to stick to them; to wisely listen to both members and to the national mood before voicing opinions that become associated with the party; to acknowledge and learn from experience, and to not rely on collective amnesia over past errors of judgement. We are led to believe that LibDem policy-making is bottom-up and not passed from the leader down. So I’d like to see members enabled to contribute to and vote on policies without the exclusive luxury of being able to spend half a week in Bournemouth, when we live in an internet age.
I expect our leaders to provide.. Leadership. We must not forget that both Charles and Tim were both forced out by the Westminster clique. That must not happen in future and Vince must take steps to ensure that it doesn’t.
Finally, Vince needs to sort out our campaigns and our election strategy. It’s time to bite the bullet and bring back Chris Rennard.
Maybe someone can go through the manifesto and tell me how many of the proposals in it had been voted on in Conference.. I suspect no more than 50% but I would be happy to be proved wrong! My impression is that with the expectation of an election in 2020, many policy areas were very much in development and little had been agreed. Despite this I did not find many things I disagreed with other than tuition fees and some other aspects of education policy (which probably had been passed by Conference).
We were seriously wrong footed on schools funding however when that website said our proposals would lead to substantial cuts, just not as big as the Tory ones. That contributed to defeat in places like Leeds NW where Labour made great play of it..
Joe Bourke – comment: 27th @ 5:33
Yes, there were two consultation papers in 2015, one on the policy-making process which was rather good in that it identified many deficiencies in the approach and one on governance the first paragraph of the introduction to which reads:
”Over the last two years members have made it clear that they feels that the party is out of touch, often unaccountable and our complex structures unintelligible to all but those heavily involved in them. Reform was a key issue raised by members in the Presidential campaign in 2014 and again in the Leadership campaign earlier this year.”
That’s exactly right. Party governance needs to be SIMPLER, IN TOUCH and ACCOUNTABLE. Unfortunately, the governance consultation paper lost its way after that so the outcome, as summarised in the motion you quote was basically to rearrange the deck chairs and promise to try harder. That’s not going to work.
To be clear: the issue is NOT the people who work hard to run the key committees, it’s the organisational structure they are trapped in. It’s inherited from when the “entire party could go to conference in a mini”. But organisation isn’t scale-invariant, a bigger party HAS to undergo a quantum change if it wants to outgrow its small beginnings; in gardening terms it’s now hopelessly pot-bound.
Turning to just the first point the motion you quote:
There is a “Leader’s political strategy” which is included in a “Federal Party Strategy”. Does this mean two overlapping strategies? Who, precisely, is responsible for the Federal version? And what happens if “events” force changes happen between conferences? Also, it seems that no-one has told the FCC this; I was told quasi-officially earlier *this* year that, “Federal Policy Committee decides which policy papers need writing and when, so they’re the ones setting the strategic policy direction rather than the Federal Board”. So, is strategy set by the Leader, the FB or perhaps the FPC? Does Vince know?
In short, this is organisational spaghetti. Don’t hold your breath waiting for anything good to come from it.
I could go on with the other points but… word limits!
@ Joyce – hang on, I was there, Joyce. In the fourth line of my piece I wrote, He or she is identified with its perceived success or failure … After that I assumed everyone would realise that I accepted there could be a woman leader (as indeed there well may be), but was dealing with the immediate reality of a new male leader and his two predecessors. Please, let’s concentrate on the important questions again.
@ Steve Trevethan: thank you for pointing me to Steve Keen for an alternative to neo-liberal economic policy, and sorry for taking so long to get back to you. What I was really wanting to know, in the light of Matthew Huntbach’s asking this on the other thread, was what Lib Dem policy is or should be in opposition to neo-liberal economic policy. The reason for seeking this information here is for three reasons: a) we have a highly experienced economist new leader, so members may be assuming we should leave that particular policy formulation to him and I don’t think we should – b) we have an Economy Working Group who should by now have come up with a policy motion – and c) we were identified with Tory, ie neo-liberal , economic policy in the Coalition Government, so it seems, and now we have these newbies from the Tory fold, but don’t want (surely) to be Tory-lite stooges any more. I would conclude we need to get our heads round what we want Lib Dem economic policy to be now, and interact with Vince on this. Let our economic experts (and I’ve read lots of good ideas on LDV) put into practice the better communications that are generally being asked for on here.
@ Gordon, I love the idea of our system being pot-bound, but if so the organisational-spaghetti image doesn’t work! I too had wondered about the Federal Party Strategy ‘including the Leader’s political strategy’, but had concluded that was to do with the leader needing to react faster than the Federal Board. Also I don’t see a contradiction in FB setting the overall strategy (after consultation and a motion at Federal Conference) but FPC getting down to particular policies, creation of and hopefully development of.
I noticed for the first time the Campaigns and Communications sub-committee has now become the Communications and Elections committee (I hope you’re still in charge, James, and thank you for your successful GE campaigning), which maybe suggests leaving campaigning to the MPs now? I like your comment, Linni. And am intrigued by Martin Land’s, that Tim was forced out by ‘the Westminster clique’ – who, Martin?
I don’t understand why any party member would want an elected dictatorship of the leader. The experience of the Coalition was that MPs should not be given responsibility for policy. One of our selling points for new members is that the membership makes policy at conference. There is nothing to stop MPs presenting policy papers and motions for discussion at conference as they did before 2010.
It is not the leader’s role to make policy up on the hoof. It is the role of the Federal Policy Committee to make interim policy [see Article 10.1 (d)] and it has to be reported on and a motion agreed at the next Federal Conference for it to continue as party policy.
I think there needs to much greater involvement of the membership in Policy Paper production and maybe alternatives need to be set out for voting on at conference as happened in the past (especially when there is support among members for an alternative policy {Citizens Income is a recent example where the Policy group rejected it without putting it to a vote at conference}). The Policy Paper needs to include a summary of the answers given in the membership survey and issues raised at consultation sessions held across the UK.
@ Katharine Pindar
Where did you find an email address for our President?
@ Andrew McCaig
We did discuss tuition fees between 2011 and 2015 and our policy is to abolish them when we can afford it. I think this was agreed with some resistance from the leadership.
Vince cable outlines his key priorities for economic policy on the Libdem site https://www.libdems.org.uk/economy
He highlight three major issues:
1. The danger of reliance on consumer credit and high house prices to keep the economy going.
2. The need for business Investment and investment in skills training
3. The dangers of an extreme brexit.
Steve Keen is a proponent of Modern Monetary Theory and argues for a debt jubilee to reduce the mountain of personal debt that poses a serious threat of economic collapse.
High house prices and associated mortgage debt are both a source of instability and inequality in the economy. Georgism put into practice by way of a Land Value Tax to slow the inflation of land values and invest the proceeds of land value increases in needed infrastructure (that increases land values in turn), is a socio-economic alternative that combines the insights of capitalism and socialism in an alternative economic system to that of neo-liberalism.
Brexit – to implement the above the UK’s relationship with the EU needs to be as an outer-tier member i.e. on a semi-detached basis outside of the EuroZone.
Katherine – Thanks for responding. Let me clarify what I meant by “policies made by others” (my comment of 27th @ 2:59 pm).
As Catherine JC correctly says (her comment of 27th @ 9:52 am) “So the role of the leader is to be the public face of the party, and its spokesperson, but NOT TO MAKE POLICY. (emphasis added).
So when a leader makes policy (and all have) he (never yet ‘she’) is acting unconstitutionally – he is only supposed to be a front-man. How crazy is that!!! We have a constitution so unworkable that the party leader has to ignore it on a routine basis (rightly in my view) to get anything done. (To be fair, that was slightly modified at the 2016 conference so now the leader (but NOT other spokespeople) has a limited input into the Federal Board’s strategy – see my previous comment.)
So who does make policy? Officially the members at conference. But in practice most can’t go and also the platform almost always gets its way, minor amendments apart (hence ‘rubber stamping’). So really it’s the tiny number who beaver away in the party’s policy engine room, serve on the key federal committees and policy working groups plus a very few local from parties etc. who contribute formal policy proposals. Collectively, these are the “others” I referred to earlier. However, the process is so complex it’s unintelligible to most so numbers are tiny – see the introduction to the governance paper in my previous comment.
And here’s the thing. An MP will have well over 20,000 votes plus the strong support of many activists while the party leader will normally have been elected by 10s of thousands of members. Conversely, the members of the relevant federal committees have negligible support. For example on the Federal Board the average is under 300 votes (excluding Mark Pack who got nearly 20% of all 1st preferences) – and that was a big increase from the previous committee!
So how on earth is it democratic or sensible to put people with negligible support in charge of developing policy and exclude the MPs who are our public representatives?
@ Michael BG I agree with the vast majority of your post, Michael, but it begs one enormous question.
If we ever form a Government with Vince or someone as PM, do you expect to hold a plebiscite of all party members to discuss line 3, para 4, section 32 of the Bill for the Reform of Whatever-You-Fancy ? The British Constitution doesn’t work like that and what you’re championing are the house rules for a pressure group not a party of government in a parliamentary democracy.
@ Katharine Pindar My pleasure! Here are some further bits and pieces:
We would serve our fellow citizens and party well if we could spread the acceptance of the reality that there are many economic theories.
Ditto that economics is most real when it serves society and not the other way round.
Crucial to an honest economic theory is a clear and general understanding of money and debt creation and management. When Chancellors of the Exchequer do not, or pretend not to, understand these matters there is much to do! But it can be done!
Austerity aka fiscal consolidation is an impoverishment for the many and more money for the few. It has been bad for our country and our party.
As economic policies possibly comprise the most powerful set of policies, they must never be left to any one person.
The better informed the membership is, the better the economic policies and the monitoring are likely to be. Education/knowledge is as important for democracy as systems.
Perhaps HQ could undertake innovative and objective learning on these matters. Perhaps, as you suggest, LD Voice could undertake some distance learning and knowledge sharing activities.
Thank you again for a crucial article!
Many thanks, chaps, for further interesting comments, but I have to go out, so I can’t deal with them properly till later. But one point, Gordon, I must make – I think it’s false logic to compare the votes that elected MPs and the votes electing Federal Board members, because the two groups have completely different functions, and are voted on by entirely different and numerically vastly different sets of voters. (Oh, and by the way, KathArine is the spelling please.) Au ‘voir!
On leadership: I guess there are two extreme approaches, which are both a problem. The “Stalinist” approach is for a leader to ignore the party and do and say what he likes. The “Anarchist” approach is for a leader to adopt without protest whatever policy the party votes for as it goes along – which in practice is likely to be just as bad as “Stalinism”. A party will sometimes vote for unfeasible dream policies, will often vote for more spending on every good cause coupled with tax cuts and a balanced budget, and may very well chop and change what it thinks it believes in. All of these things will destroy the credibility of an “Anarchist” leader.
This creates a technical challenge for any leader. How can a leader be both a listener and a persuader? How can a leader avoid the twin pitfalls of being too strong and inflexible, and being too open-minded and weak?
The T May solution to the conundrum is to give a robotic non-answer to all questions. The D Trump solution is to distract with rude one-liners and boorish pugnacity. The A J Blair solution was to pretend to listen while not doing so. None of these approaches is entirely without merit, since after all, the circle must somehow be squared. But none of them, of course, inspires!
The general V Cable approach, I would suggest, is to spray around a lot of seemingly clear policy statements, but stop short of turning them into definite commitments, and be prepared to modify them as events progress. This is a kind of listening-a-bit while not making that fact very obvious. It has the merit that if you are good at the striking turn of phrase, as Vince is, you can produce striking phrases rather often, and get yourself in the media. It has the merit of enabling a bit of flexibility without sounding too indecisive. It has the possible demerits which concern Katherine, that it might presage a drift toward “Stalinism”*, especially as a leader gets his feet under the table and begins to gain confidence, possibly too much confidence.
This does need some watching. I’m inclined to believe, however, that it is a valid strategy, that V Cable knows what he’s doing, and that he stands a good chance of going places. Let’s hope so!
* – Stupid digression, but I can’t resist adding here (with reference to Vince) “and away from MrBeanism”!)
Michael BG – ”I don’t understand why any party member would want an elected dictatorship of the leader.”
That don’t – and I think you draw the wrong conclusion from the Coalition experience. My argument earlier (comment: 27th @ 3:15 pm) was that democracy exists ONLY when we, the people, have the power to fire a leader who loses the confidence of MPs and/or members. The Coalition disaster was under the system you apparently approve; far from avoiding elective dictatorship, it enabled Clegg to take the party in a direction not spelled out in his leadership campaign nor supported by most members. That’s not democratic.
Also, political leaders rarely know when they pass their sell-by date so there must be a clinically efficient mechanism for deposing them when they do. The Tories do this well and it’s a major reason they are frequently in government and we aren’t; even the Blessed Margaret was kicked out when MPs realised the poll tax was about to cost them their jobs. We must therefore avoid at all costs regarding the leadership as a sinecure – in other words that the party exists to promote the leader’s career – it’s his ONLY as long as he’s the best man (or woman) for it.
Then if, as you say, MPS should not be given responsibility for policy how on earth could they ever be ministers? I suspect some Coalition snafus were because MPs lacked adequate prior experience.
”It is not the leader’s role to make policy up on the hoof.
I’ve not heard anyone suggesting that should be. However, I would like spokespeople to be in charge of developing policy in their area of responsibility. The existing process is too ponderous, looks like a black hole and creates a policy monoculture. We need more debate, more diversity and, above all, visibility to and involvement of members.
We have by some way the worst government in living memory yet are flat lining in the polls which is the public’s damming verdict. The only sensible conclusion is that the existing party governance has failed big time. So the inevitable question now is what precisely should replace it.
@ David Raw
“The British Constitution doesn’t work like that”
And nor does the Party. Party Policy is not specific enough for a minister to draft the whole of the majority of acts from it. Therefore to answer your specific question I do NOT expect the party to hold a plebiscite of party members on each clause of Liberal Democrat bills if there is a Liberal Democrat government.
Governments have in the past written and passed Acts not specified in their manifesto to “sort out” a problem. I think there is evidence that these knee-jerk Acts are not well written or good laws and would have been improved by having a longer discussion and consultation phrase. Therefore to have the Federal Policy Committee discuss and agree an interim policy should help improve the quality of the bill that ends up being enacted and might ensure that the mistakes of the coalition government where the government passed Acts and policies which brought the Party into disrepute do not happen. (Perhaps supporting and voting for employee fees to take cases to an Employment Tribunal is an example [there are others]).
That seems a pretty shrewd analysis, David Allen, of what Vince may be doing – thank you – and if you’re right this bodes quite well for him working with our committees and Conference. But as Steve says (thanks, Steve) economic policies are too important to be left to one person, and we need to spread economic knowledge – which isn’t going to be easy, evidently, if ‘there are many economic theories’. I feel none the wiser myself, much in need of further economic education! I gaze at the GE Manifesto and try without success to work out how much Vince may now be tweaking the economic policies set out there, so David’s analysis is comforting. I wonder, by the way, who wrote the Manifesto? Policy staff under the guidance of our president, party leader, FPC chair, and the campaigns director? We should be told, I think, for future reference.
@ David Raw – I think the present rules, with ongoing improvements, aren’t bad for a minority party, and realistically unless we get PR we are only going to be part of a coalition again. But then our leader jumped ship, put co-operation with our traditional opponents first, and has been fiercely denounced ever since, understandably given the dire results for the party. So how could we collectively prevent that happening again? Or do we just accept that these are interim arrangements after all?
I suppose as our party is based on the value of individuals and empowering them we have to learn to manage our democratic commitment (thank you for your kind comment, by the way, Lorenzo), and face its difficulties. But I see nothing amiss, unlike Gordon, in the fact that only a few hundred members ‘beaver away’ to keep our show on the road – good for them, and for us too, committed activists! You are one too, Gordon, in contributing here – one of the ‘others’ – ie.,us! And we welcome of course more aboard.
A great deal of Gordons comments above resonate with my views, and I’m particularly interested in Gordons’ Co-op to LibDem comparison. The big issue regarding leadership in a Co-op, is that the leader is (or should be), no more than a conduit for its entire membership. Is this Co-op comparison, a valid reason why LD’s can’t quite decide if a leader is a leader, or merely a ‘Conference spokesperson’?
I Googled ‘why co-ops fail’, to see if I could find parallels to the present angst with a confused liberal identity, and the future direction of travel. I won’t provide links but I recommend research in that direction. Try to import ‘liberal’ into these brief excerpts:
‘That movement broke up for many reasons, not the least of which was its immature understanding of social change.’
‘To survive, and indeed prosper, they need to acknowledge reality and to work creatively with the changing environment, rather than fight stubbornly and blindly against it.’
‘The real decisions were no longer made by the management, the board, or even the membership. The market dictated the decisions.’
‘In all the discussion about failed vision, unachieved goals and reduced social motivation, the amazing thing to me is how the most basic and most important element of cooperatives is completely passed over — member ownership.’
So is the tug-o-war between ‘member-ownership’ and leadership, the eventual obstruction to success? Members (of any Co-op), only remain as members, because of a perceived ‘added value’ of being a member. Once you can buy cheap, ethically processed fair-trade wholesome food, everywhere, what is the ‘added value’ to walking into a Co-Operative shop? Thus with so many other political outlets selling the same ‘wholesome preamble’ of fairness, ethics, justice and individual freedom, what exactly is the additional ‘added value’, which might entice the consumer/voter, to enter the store marked ‘Liberal Democrats’?
@ Gordon
I am not defending the process to remove a leader or to initialise a leadership election because there is no way to remove the Party leader. However there is now [17.2 (e)] and was in 2014 [10.2 (e)] a process to force a leadership election by the MPs passing a vote of no confidence in the Leader. The process for the membership to initialise a leadership election [17.2 (f)] was attempted in 2014 and was not successful.
Perhaps Leadership Election rule 7 should be used as a basis for amending our initialising a leadership election, so it can be done by 10% of the MPs and 200 party members from at least 20 Local Parties. And that Article 17.2 (f) is amended from at least 75 to at least 20 Local Parties.
(If there are members here who support these ideas and who are going to attend the next Spring Federal Conference I would be happy to draft the necessary constitutional amendments for them to try to get enough support for submitting to that Conference. I think all constitutional amendments have to be put on the Conference agenda.)
On other threads I have pointed out that before 2010 our “shadow” spokespeople have presented policy papers and motions to Federal Conference and I think this is a legitimate way for MPs to suggest Party policy.
@ Sheila Gee. The trouble is, Sheila, I don’t see any other ‘political outlets selling’ the same values! Fairness and standing up for individuals and real community, where but in the Liberal Democrats can you find these aspirations, unimpeded by interest groups?
@Michael BG. I think it’s a good idea to try to amend the Constitution to give members better chance of starting a leadership election, but I am writing to reply tangentially to a previous question from you, how did I find out the President’s email address? It was a useful question, not least because it reminded me of how difficult it is for ordinary members like us to contact very significant people like the chairs of the important committees – and I am seeking answers on that.
But in sifting papers to try to answer your direct question, I came across my notes of the Strategy Consultation paper. Remember that? I’d forgotten about it myself, yet there was an on-line survey about it emailed to all party members earlier this year by our finely democratiically-tuned President. I don’t know what was processed from the survey, which was probably overtaken by election concerns such as the Manifesto, but it is full of important suggestions, such as ‘Help people take power by creating powerful communities’. Perhaps this is the document, presumably updated, which we are to be consulted on at the September Conference; and at least the on-line survey showed that it is not only at Conference that members are consulted.
The notes I put down end, recommending the on-line survey, with the words, or
email [email protected].
I think the Swiss style electronic voting to allow the actual people to vote for many referendum for serious issues would be the most democratic way to go… it is quite dangerous for MPs to be forced in a certain direction by a small group of party members rather than following the wishes of the people who elected them. The latter though is often quite fickle and changeable, as Mrs May just found out.
“The trouble is, Sheila, I don’t see any other ‘political outlets selling’ the same values!”
But the last election proves otherwise Katherine:
43% walked into the shop marked ‘Conservative’
40% walked into the shop marked ‘Labour’
7.4% walked into the shop marked ‘Liberal Democrats’
Much like the declining Co-operative Society movement, the Liberal Democrats are not selling a unique ethical ‘value added’ set of policies anymore. So even if you can’t see it, the above figures prove that voters are finding what they want in those other outlets and ‘footfall’ in the shop marked ‘Lib Dems’ is in terminal decline.
I sense that this liberal movement which once had a unique place in the political arena has now lost its way and fallen into the very same trap of denial, which has sadly befallen the Co-operative movement for probably the last two decades? Does not the dearth of leadership enthusiasm also prove this very point? Vince was the only leadership contender simply because all other ‘potentials’, wisely backed off, from the impossible task of trying to sell an unsalable LD political product rejected by all, but the 7.4%.
Sorry, Sheila, but I think you are showing your shop analysis to be nonsense. The voters who voted Conservative or Labour will have had many reasons to do so, but very few of them are likely to have checked out LD values and thought ‘Oh dear but my favoured party has those same values so I’ll go on voting for them.’ The values aren’t the same, and basic principles aren’t likely to be top of voters’ minds anyway. You’re also making a wild leap of speculation by suggesting none of the other MPs wanted the leadership job: what if the other ten eligible just thought he was the best person to do it just now?
I am finding this discussion very interesting. in terms of shopping, many customers will pay a premium for quality and trust and values. For instance, I will pay more for John Lewis because it has excellent customer service, after-sales care, invests in its workforce and shares its profits among the staff. Lib Dems used to occupy the ” trusted brand” and ” values” box up until 201, in that sense it was the John Lewis of politics. After that, it’s more reminiscent of Gerald Ratner in terms of the disrespect the party leadership showed towards its loyal ‘ customers’ (‘go away and vote Labour you left-wing voters who voted for us up to now’)
So, what should we have expected of Tim Farron’s leadership, were we right to expect that, and did he fulfil our expectations?
We should have expected, and we did expect, in my opinion, that he would lead the party out of the dire straits we found ourselves in in May 2015. That he could do so would depend on the reassertion of our Lib Dem identity, and better development of policies perhaps distorted under the Coalition, in accordance with our values and principles. But we surely hoped and expected that he would build on them, and (as I suggested above) ‘offer a strong new focus to inspire the party activists and gain the attention of the public’.
Why would we not be wary of his taking too much power for himself? Why did we feel the necessary trust to exert ourselves again for our cause under his leadership? Was it because he had kept his promise to vote against the tuition fees increase, and perhaps sacrificed the chance to be a Coalition minister as a result? At any rate he had been president instead of in the government, so could not have been responsible for the dissociation between our ministers and the party outside.
So we backed him, and he spoke brilliantly to us at Conference, and he instructed us to build up the party gradually from the bottom again, as we have done with considerable success. Then on June 24 last year he gave us the brilliant new focus of remaining in Europe. After that there was no doubt of our identity, or lack of publicity for it, and he kept the party united in major support of the strategy as it developed.
Our expectations then were surely fulfilled, except in one respect. He, and we with him, could not convince the country in time of the harm of Brexit, and of the democratic rightness of giving the country a second referendum when the terms are fully grasped. So our election campaigns this summer did not work as well as we hoped and expected. In the glare of the General Election spotlight the leader becomes the fall-guy for the party. But in my opinion Tim did not fail us.
Katharine, We have to agree to disagree on Tim’s approach to the referendum result. But would you at least agree that he made the mistake since the result of presenting the party as a one issue party? Of being a pro EU party rather than a liberal party?
Our USP should be liberalism. But liberalism seems to be forgotten with all the focus on the EU. After all, being pro EU is not in itself necessarily liberal.
Before the referendum result, Tim had focused on issues like support for refugees, and the plight of homeless people. I’m not saying that he forgot about these issues altogether after the referendum result – he did still speak of them from time to time. But the EU seemed to become more important to him than caring for the most disadvantaged in society, and sadly the party seemed to follow his lead in this.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jul/20/are-you-happy-with-vince-cable-as-leader-of-the-lib-dems
There is a question form
@ Katharine Pindar
I found the same email address on the web page for the consultation on the Party’s Strategy that you give. (I do remember it and emailed Mark Pack to ask for an update, and he made a post on his site afterwards.) Thanks for that. It is not clear if you used this email address to email Sal or if you were looking afresh for an email address to assist me. Please could you check your sent items in your email account to check if that was the email address you used? I sent an email to it on Saturday night / early Sunday morning and didn’t receive either an automated reply or a reply from Sal. You were lucky to get a response the next day. I wonder if she is on holiday.
Tim never presented the party as a having only one issue of great concern, Catherine. But leaving the EU became the chief political concern of the country, and still is, so it was right for Tim and the party to focus on it . At the same time we had to fight the associated issues of May’s undemocratic attempt to use executive power to avoid parliamentary scrutiny of the terms of the deal, and the forcing through of the passage of Article 50 by the alliance of both the governing and the main opposition parties.
@ John Littler. Thank you John, I had missed that interesting Guardian initiative, which seems extraordinary. I would still appreciate further comments by members here on this thread, because the issue of how well or otherwise we think Tim did has been tiptoed round till now, and the question does arise naturally from this article .
@ Michael BG. I honestly can’t remember how I came by Sal’s email address (or one of them), Michael, but you are right to assume I didn’t use the official one. The fact is that I have been bending Sal’s ear ever since I went to the 2015 Conference and bearded her in a discussion session there, afterwards meeting her during the Witney by-election and up here in the north-west, marvelling always at her dedication and hard work, and following her revisions to our governance with interest. But I don’t know if I am free to pass that email address on, and indeed I didn’t get an answer myself on it yesterday, so assume she is taking a well-deserved holiday. Perhaps you could email one of the LDV editors by Christian name at this site’s address instead? Three of them are on the major committees.
@ Katharine Pindar
Thank you for stating that the email address you gave earlier was not the one from which you contacted Sal Brinton our President and received an answer the next day. I accept your reluctance to publish the one you used here. Perhaps next time you email her you can add a PS asking if you can post on the LDV members only forum the email address you use so other members can communicate with her.
I have kept the email addresses of those who put them on their election address and were elected to the Federal Committees (hence why it was easy to email Mark Pact about what was happening with the Party Strategy motion due at this Autumn’s conference). I think it is odd that members do not have an email addresses to send emails to our President and Leader (and as I live in England, the Chair of the English Party). We are not very good at being open.
Phyllis 29th Jul ’17 – 1:32pm: Lib Dems used to occupy the ” trusted brand” and ” values” box up until 201, in that sense it was the John Lewis of politics.
Never knowingly understood?
Katharine, you said you would welcome more discussion on this thread about Tim’s leadership. I realise that the earlier comments I made about his leadership sounded negative. But I want to make it clear that I like Tim, and I think that he did say and do some wonderful things as leader.
In my view, the best thing he did was to speak out about the plight of refugees, and about our responsibility and duty, as a nation, to welcome them. It was wonderful to see him going to the refugee camp at Calais, talking to the people there, and more importantly, actually listening to them. It was clear that this was something that he cared genuinely and passionately about. There has been a lot of talk about whether Tim let his faith influence him, and too often people have spoken as if letting his faith influence him would be bound to be negative. But I would say that Tim’s support for refugees was an example of being influenced by his faith in a wonderful and positive way.
But I was very disappointed by Tim’s decision that he and other Lib Dem MPs would vote for bombing raids on Syria. He said that it was his experience of meeting Syrian refugees that had made him feel that bombing raids were necessary. But I could not understand how he could be prepared to risk the lives of innocent civilians in Syria – people just like the people he had met at the refugee camps, except that they had not been lucky enough to be able to escape from Syria.
I was also very disappointed by the way Tim put pressure on party members not to vote for amendments which would have made the party’s policy one of support for unilateral nuclear disarmament. This happened twice – with amendments to motions for Autumn Conference 2015, then again at Spring Conference 2017. On both these occasions Tim wrote articles for Lib Dem Voice urging members not to vote for the unilateralist amendments. If members are supposed to make policy, it did not seem appropriate for the leader to try to influence the vote in this way.
Our leader has the right to be heard by the party, to set out his own ideas on what our strategy and policy priorities should be, and to take a lead in speaking publicly and encouraging his appointed spokespeople to comment, as political events occur and change.
That is how it appears to me, at least, and so, Catherine, I see no reason why he should not try to influence policy development by writing articles, or speaking at Federal Conference and the regional conferences, as Tim in fact did. It is one of the questions I asked myself in preparing this article, whether the leader should take a full part in inter-party deliberations or stand aside from them, and I thought the former was correct. It is surely his (or her) entitlement, as a member and chosen leader? But thank you for your thoughtful response on here, and perhaps others may like to contribute further.
@ Michael B.G. Glad to read you ably battling the Tory-lite policies being advocated on another thread, Michael. Very important that we don’t slip backwards but go forward, on policy as in our systems, as you argue. I hope you are able to come to Bournemouth.
As to contacts – promoting openness, which of course I also want to advance – you are way ahead of me, having astutely gathered email addresses at internal election-time. I have just had to write to Zoe O’Connell, vice-chair of the FPC, to ask her about the missing economic policy motion I queried on her thread without getting an answer, via the kind offices of an LDV editor. And I don’t have even have an email address for Tim Farron other than the official party one – I just write letters to his constituency office and hope for a response, which is always a long time coming. As for our devoted president, who is so responsive, yes, it is confirmed she has taken a – weekend! – off: bless her.
I have been wondering if the September Conference agenda should be scrapped, and motions submitted in the next month be debated instead, because of two major events – the unexpected General Election which has prevented the completion of policy motions
meant for this conference, and the arrival of our dynamic new leader who is telling us the economic policy options he would like. Just a thought.
I think the two tremendous contributors of the same name do Tim a service here , he deserves, and one I acknowledge.
I favour the view of Katherine on leaders getting involved and even trying to really set a policy agenda on a trajectory they care about strongly and have a very clear stance on.
I agreed with Tim on all three of the areas, refugees, Syria and disarmament, so it pleased me he set out his stall .
In general leaders who listen , lead well, but they should listen to the voice of their own conscience first and always.
Dear Lorenzo,
You have created a composite of two ladies you like, called Katherine! It this a product of your fertile creative mind, not to be understood by less artistic folk? Bless you anyway!
I am really writing because of the conundrum that this is still said to be one of the most-read current pieces, but people stopped adding comments days ago. Not sure if this indicates satiety, nodding acceptance, or weary wishing away!
A cheerful goodnight, Lorenzo, and thanks to all who cast their eyes this way, whether you were just looking or dipping into this little stream.
Lorenzo – you say “In general leaders who listen , lead well, but they should listen to the voice of their own conscience first and always.”
The problem is that most leaders do what they like (i.e. listen to their own thoughts/conscience first and always.) That is what undermines democracy. Take our vote on bombing Syria. Our MPs set out five tests before they would support it. We trusted them on that. By the time they voted in favour of bombing about one and a half had been satisfied and such childish playing with words came out such as ‘The Conservative position has moved on this’ (re child refugees). Our tests said 5,000. By the time the Conservatives shut the scheme it was less than 400.
That was not the behaviour of Liberal Democrats where you accept the wisdom of the group is greater than that of a few individuals, but of (at best) Liberal Independents who consult, but then do what they wanted to anyway. It is the philosophy of “I know best” and as most of us know, but few are prepared to admit, usually we don’t.
David Evans
I do not agree. In general there is valid reason to support some of the comments you assert to be so.But not as a point of individual conscience vs what would be group think, very unlike us as a party or Liberal Democracy as philosophy or practice.
On the issue you mention, or any related, if it is not a conscience vote, I want no party to it, for a democracy needs individuality.
The situation in Venezuala , shows how you start with mandates and end with menace.
Lorenzo, I wonder if you really have read what I said rather than just replied. I didn’t refer to anything even remotely like groupthink, and so it is impossible to reconcile your reply with anything I said. As for your comment on Venuzuela, I think you haven’t thought it through at all. After all it is in Venuzuela, where a leader was so sure of himself and his need to remain in power, that he followed his own conscience and not democracy, but he did what he wanted, and actually subverted a ballot with an extra million votes!
Your own most recent sentence not only undermines everything else you have said, it provides a clincher in favour of my point. Thank you.