Bringing the party’s first leader back to life – in a modern-day cause

Six years after his premature death at age 77, Paddy Ashdown is making a comeback in the interests of the party’s immediate future.

Well, not really. But Paddy’s name does adorn a new publication from the Yorkists, a group of party activists keen for the Lib Dems to have a stronger public identity. What would Paddy do? is ostensibly a submission to the party’s policy review, the one chaired by Ed Davey and Eleanor Kelly that will report later this spring and propose motions to federal conference in September. But it’s really a discussion paper about where the Lib Dems need to go, given that the run-in to the 2029 general election is likely to take place on various shifting sands.

Despite its formulation, the title of the Yorkists’ submission is not an attempt to second-guess what Paddy Ashdown would do in the current circumstances, but to invoke the spirit of a political colossus who understood the person-in-the-street and was willing to take bold and counterintuitive stances. His stand-out policy was a penny on income tax to fund a boost to education, the tax rise deliberately ring-fenced to make it more palatable to voters (if indigestible to Treasury mandarins), but he also went against the Zeitgeist in 1989 when he called for all Hong Kong citizens with British nationality to be allowed to live here.

Consequently, what the Yorkists are feeding into the policy review addresses nine policy areas, combining immediate pragmatic proposals with thinking outside the box and challenging today’s Zeitgeist. Defence is a fast-moving topic, but the main call in What would Paddy do? is for cooperation among Europe’s states so money spent on defence goes further. It also urges efforts to tackle housing shortages to focus not simply on new building targets but on a package of measures that includes stipulating the right kind of dwellings to be built and accompanying land and taxation measures to stop starter homes becoming boltholes for the urban rich.

Among the more challenging ideas, the paper calls for immigration to be celebrated: not more immigration, simply for the role played by people who aren’t British – or who are but weren’t born here – to be recognised for the vital contributions they make to British life. It also calls for education to be re-evaluated so it teaches critical thinking as a buttress against simplistic populist ideas. And it calls for the spirit of Keynes and Beveridge to be channelled into a new economic model that underpins liberal democracy, not undermines it.

If you haven’t heard of the Yorkists, you’re not alone. This is not an Affiliated Organisation, but a casual group of committed party members who found each other in early 2023 after wondering if they were the only ones to believe that a political party needs to outwardly stand for something rather than just be a local champion or a compromise between two main parties. The name comes from the group’s first meeting at spring conference in York (it has no wars-of-the-roses significance).

The Yorkists were behind the immensely popular fringe meeting ‘Shouldn’t we be doing better?’ at September 2023’s conference, featuring Layla Moran and John Curtice, and it coordinated the letter to The Guardian in November 2023 saying the party needed to push its messaging more strongly if it was to motivate voters and get activists out delivering.

As a group believing the party must stand for something, the Yorkists were always going to contribute to the policy review. But they want What would Paddy do? to be more than just input to an internal thinktank – they want to stir up discussion on establishing a truly Liberal identity for the Lib Dems in a way that can be a genuine bulwark against the rise of populism, and give British voters some reason for hope. The Yorkists will feature in the Social Liberal Forum’s fringe event ‘What’s the point of the Lib Dems?’ featuring Layla Moran and Chris Coghlan at spring conference on 22 March (13:00-14:00, King’s Suite, Harrogate Convention Centre).

What would Paddy do? has been submitted to the policy review working party, and is available to download free here and here  

* Chris Bowers is a two-term district councillor and four-time parliamentary candidate. He writes on cross-party cooperation, was the lead author of the New Liberal Manifesto, and is unofficial coordinator of the Yorkists.