The analysis is good as well as some of the ideas you propsoe. But I think you could have gone further. Rather missing from your suggestions is the role of the parliamentarians as well. Don’t they have a part to play in this as well? If so, where?

The impression of the party is that there are two at work: the activists and the elected representatives. There is a disconnect between the two, especially at Westminster if you take policy-making for example. Yes, conference decides policies, but there is still considerable latitute for spokespeople to tailor and adjust policy – which is necessary given the changing policy environment from day to day.

How would you ensure that the two sides of the party are working together more closely? That surely needs to be addressed (and while I’ve been using the Westminster example, it can equally work for other elected Lib Dems, in the devolved assemblies or councils as well).

The problem was that the election-fighting mechanisms it introduced were TOO successful, and the result was that winning local elections became an end in itself rather than just a demonstration. Plus, as the idea was getting going, the SDP got formed, and most Liberals who were active in the community politics movement found their time swamped by having to explain carefully to naive SDP newbies just what they were doing, why it worked, and why it actually was going to pay off better than “We’ve got a shiny leader in Westminster saying inspirational things, so vote for us”. As a result we stopped thinking about what we were doing, and just git on with the mechanics.

It would be nice, wouldn’t it, if in the current leadership campaign we had a leadership candidate who was actually picking up on this and initiating a discussion on it, how we could more effectively apply the lessons we’ve learnt through community politics and its methodology and link them to the party’s national image.