I’ll lightly skip over Clegg’s call for recall today (I’ve said what I have to say on that topic here) - I happen to question the practicalities but as an act of symbolism it is good politics. Instead I will concentrate on these paragraphs:

Clegg said Westminster should expect to see more protests from him - last week he staged a walkout from the Commons after he was denied his “in or out” vote.

“The kind of anger, noise, direct protest that you have seen from us recently - whether it is my stance on saying that I would prefer to go to court than give my data to a compulsory government ID card database or Vince Cable’s protest against the visit of the Saudi king, or our walkout of the Commons last week - far from seeing less of that, I think you will see more.”

Which is fine, but he should think about the purpose of all this is. The most dispiriting thing about Ed Davey’s walkout last week was his insistence it was a spontaneous thing. So does this mean the Lib Dem strategy is to just be spontaneous? And how does this square with insisting on having archaic debates over whether or not to have a debate?

By all means be anti-establishment, but that is not the same thing as the mindless activism that was on display last week. And it means no more lectures from front benchers about being against opportunism in future, thank you.

Share This

(sorry - picture simply too good to resist)

What is probably the most important article to appear in Lib Dem News for years was published in last week’s issue. Written by the party’s Chief Executive Chris Rennard, and entitled “Going Beyond Rennard”, the article concerns a debate which has apparently been going round “some of our MPs” about future party strategy and whether the one which has been championed by Chris for the best part of two decades has run out of steam.

What follows is a history lesson in which Chris explains the situation in the 80s when the party establishment didn’t believe in targeting, the subsequent dismal result of 1983 from which “we almost never recovered” and the renaissance led by him in the 90s starting with the 1990 Eastbourne by-election and culminating in the breakthrough success in 1997 when we got a record 46 MPs elected.

The reason for our success? Strict targeting and pushing issues that matter to people. In 1997, lest we forget, we fought the election on CHEESE (Crime, Health, Education, Economy, Sleaze and the Environment).

Chris concludes with the following two paragraphs:

“So what might ‘going beyond Rennard’ mean? A few people might say abandoning what we have learned in our time as Liberal Democrats. But I think that the consensus is based on building on it. If we could make our held seats more secure and more self-sufficient, we can invest in further gains. If we can raise substantially more funds, we can compete in many more areas and many more ways.

“But above all, we have to inspire the country with our vision and recognise that our message must be explained in terms of the tangible benefits of our policies to the people whose votes we seek.”

Why is this article significant? Two main reasons. First of all, this is the first time I for one have heard that there is widespread discussion within the parliamentary party about “going beyond Rennard”. This isn’t like the time when Chris responded (pdf) to an article I wrote (pdf) in Liberator last year. For Chris to write this article in the party newspaper is extraordinary because it suggests that he is feeling somewhat under threat. Whether that threat is real or imaginary remains to be seen. Either way, he feels the need to get his rebuttal in first.

The second significant point is that, if it is true that there are a few people in the party who believe in “abandoning what we have learned,” I’ve yet to meet them. If you ever did meet one, check their sleeves - my bet is they are made of straw.

I write this as someone who has regularly been accused by Chris as one of these flat earthers. Throughout my time on the party’s federal executive and subsequently finance and administration committee, I was constantly informed that I had an agenda to abandon the party’s target seat strategy.

It isn’t something I’ve personally ever advocated. What I have argued, and continue to argue, is that we need to build our capacity as an organisation, that training should be aimed at a much wider circle than it currently is, that certain organisations and projects within the party (the three I’ve most often championed at various times are LDYS, CGB and a more ambitious recruitment strategy) are worth investing in because the party gets more out of them than it puts in, and that ultimately you need to spend to gain. There is a danger in co-ordinating the parties operations as centrally as we do; successful businesses tend to have much less hierarchical models and we need to learn to embrace a more entrepreneurial, “can do” culture that this model oppresses. And yes, it is worth spending a bit less on our target seat operation now* if it increases our capacity in the longer term.

I’ve spelt this out to Chris in meetings until I was blue in the face, and each time been informed that I wanted to abandon targeting. I suspect the unnamed MPs this article is aimed at are in the same boat. What this article proves to me beyond all reasonable doubt is that Chris is still fighting the battles of the 1980s at a time when the rest of us have moved on. And that is a real problem for a party that needs to adapt to an ever changing political environment.

Chris’ genius for campaigning is unsurpassed. More than any other single individual he can rightly claim the credit for our renaissance in the 90s and beyond. He has been the true brains and in many ways the real leader of the party. But he is a tactician, not a strategist. And when someone has been in the position he has been for as long as he has been, there is always a danger of going stale.

If I was looking for signs that Chris is the right Chief Executive for the next phase in the party’s development, this article would not be where I would start.

* by which I have only ever discussed figures south of £100,000 and have always been keen to discuss ways in which that money could come from increased fundraising, eg. specific donor packages where half the money would go to the party and half to an associate organisation, thus locking AOs into a scheme that benefits both them and the target seat fund.

Share This

The Millennium Elephant has been trying to organise a bloggers’ hustings for the leadership candidates and he kindly invited his two Daddies (Richard and Alex), Mary Reid, Paul Walter, Jonny Wright, Jonathan Calder, Stephen Tall and myself to take part (the link is that all of us were either shortlisted for the Lib Dem Blog of the Year 2007 awards, won one of the subcategories or won the big prize in 2006).

Anyway, today we interviewed Chris Huhne (sadly Jonathan and Stephen couldn’t make it, but hopefully next time) and I think the general view was that a worthwhile time was had by all. Without further ado I will report what was asked, how Chris answered, and my own view on his response.

Party Organisation
Daddy Richard kicked off by asking Chris what he would be doing to get the party back in the 20s in the opinion polls.

Apart from a quick joke about the two candidates having a jobshare on the basis that our polls have actually gone up during the interregnum period, Chris very quickly declared a specific target, that of us beating our high watermark in the 1983 general election - 23 per cent - and indeed to aim for a vote in excess of 25 per cent.

The way he proposed doing this was as follows: the win the air war and being “sharp elbowed” in terms of getting the liberal view heard. He paid tribute to both David Laws today and more generally the “phenomenal” Norman Baker in terms of being able to set the media agenda by finding specific stories which resonate more widely.

But more fundamentally, he also outlined an approach that would have the party organising with a view to, over the course of two Parliaments, building up enough support and seats in the Commons so that it will be “impossible to form a government without the Lib Dems being part of that government”. He was vague on exactly how many seats we would need for such a situation to arise - he mentioned 150 but only in passing as it was a figure that he said that Nick Clegg has cited. His idea is to set that target and then develop, in effect, a business plan, establishing what those target seats should be, what they would need, and focusing the party on delivering that.

He also said that in his view the party’s “air war” needed to be much more professional about defining our key messages and being strict about repeating them again and again. Those messages would have to be rigourously market researched.

On money, and specifically how to pay for all this, he was somewhat vague beyond saying that he was confident we could raise it.

He contrasted his approach with the existing “incrementalist” approach by the party which is opportunistic, focused on byelections and target seats but ultimately is based on “hoping for the best”.

Throughout the answer to this question, Chris drew on his experience as a journalist. His final point was to emphasise the importance of imagery; “a picture is worth a thousand words”. He related his experience in 2005 of proposing to the Parliamentary Party that as an act of solidarity to Maya Evans, they should repeat he “crime” and read out the names of the UK soldiers who had been killed in Iraq. “Wiser heads” he said prevailed, but he argued that such actions would symbolise our opposition to specific illiberal pieces of legislation.

My view: I was very impressed with his answer here, which was specific and motivating as an activist. He did a very good job at selling to us his experience as a journalist and what that would bring to his role as leader.

I’m a little concerned about the party getting too specific in terms of numbers of target seats. We certainly can’t win them all and there is a danger in being too transparent. But his strategy does have the clear advantage of giving the targeting strategy a direction of travel and answers my previous complaint that we seem to be set on a goal of forming a government which will take us the best part of a century to reach on current performance. The aim to specifically go out to create a balanced Parliament is a compelling one, but it is one that would suggest mainly focusing on Labour-held seats.

Core message

Following on from Chris’s exhortation that we distill our campaigning down to a core message, Jonny Wright then asked Chris to complete the following sentence: “I should vote Liberal Democrat because…”

Chris’s answer was that the party stood for “a fairer society and a greener society where power is handed back to the communities around Britain.”

In terms of fairness, he defined that as “not being just about equality of opportunity,” suggesting that childhood poverty needed to be a priority.

On “green” he said he was proud of getting the party to sign up to the policy of a zero carbon Britain. He was keen to point out that according to Ipsos-MORI, the party has increased its lead over the other parties on this issue by 6 percentage points under his tenure as environment spokesperson. He said that he believed that “at some point” “the scales are going to fall from the public’s eyes on this issue” and it will leap up the political agenda (”like the Iraq moment”). Having a leader who is fully committed to this agenda would therefore be an advantage. In making this case he cited the examples of Australia and Canada where a bad drought and a mild winter have had a major effect on voting patterns and that PM John Howard - who opposed Kyoto - is now set to make Australia the first country in the world to ban the incandescent lightbulb.

My view: That’s certainly a list of priorities, but I’m not convinced that it is quite a core message for us on its own. His argument about there being a moment when the public will suddenly wake up to the importance of climate change as an issue may well be true, but it is a risk; it wasn’t clear what he was suggesting we should do in the meantime to ensure that this doesn’t become a damaging issue for us. Fundamentally, I don’t think he has satisfactorily answered Nick Clegg’s concerns which I believe are valid.

In terms of the polling evidence he cites, it is of course true. Up to a point. The flaw is that the 2006 data is from 31 August - 6 September while the 2007 data is from 20-26 September. The latter was immediately after the Lib Dem conference in which the environment was made a central issue. Nonetheless, it does undermine the Nicholas Blincoe argument that David Cameron is popularly regarded as the UK’s greenest politician and that this reflects badly on Huhne (incidently, I couldn’t resist looking at the equivalent law and order polling figures. According to these, the party has slipped 3 points under Clegg which when you consider this was also based on polling figures at the end of our party conference is not exactly stunning. Well, you started it Nick).

On equality, people will be unsurprised to learn that I approve of his position, but I have another article to write on that subject so I won’t go into it here. The localism agenda I also agree with.

It does leave one wondering where the freedom agenda lies however. If this is to be left off from our list of core priorities, and that we are to focus far more on our core priorities at the expense of other issues (including internationalism, Chris made explicit), where is the opening to do our tearing up of ID cards and protests about the DNA database? In retrospect this is a topic we should have probed him further on.

Communication Skills

Paul Walter pressed Chris on his reputation as being the less punchy of the two candidates and of, to use his memorable phrase “more sotto voce and approving of phrases like sotto voce“. As Paul pointed out, Chris’ first question when arriving and seeing Millennium Elephant was to ask where is emmanuensis was, a word so obscure that it defeats all the dictionaries I have to hand (including a two volume Oxford shorter) and even Google struggles to find more than two dozen references. The top result, it has to be pointed out, are the minutes of the Pembroke College Winnie the Pooh society (actually, it could be that the correct spelling is immanuensis, but that only gets four results - still at least they are about gods and not Pooh).

Chris’ answer was simply to “look at the Ipsos-MORI polling data”. He further pointed out that not only has David Cameron been concentrating on the environment as an issue but David Milliband, widely regarded as one of Labour’s greatest communicators, was also Environment Secretary until relatively recently and yet Huhne has managed to hold his own against both of them.

My view: I find Chris’ cerebral approach quite refreshing, and I also recall the Newsnight / Frank Luntz programme in the run up to the 2005 General Election which showed that Vince Cable polled incredibly well for the similar reason that he comes across as a big brain who knows what he’s talking about. The immanuensis/emmanuensis thing is a bit of a red herring as he didn’t even raise it in the interview itself.

With all that said, I still worry that he isn’t empathic enough. It still want to hear more from him about individuals daily lives. As leader he will need to reach that one step further and that means being both a big brain and someone with the common touch.

Local Government

Mary Reid asked what should Liberal Democrat-run councils do that is distinctively Liberal Democrat.

Chris started by contrasting the Lib Dem approach to localism and Labour’s: the Lib Dems were interested in devolving control while Labour are only interested in devolving management responsibilities. He emphasised that the alienation people feel about politics at the moment is not just about the quality of public services but because people need someone they know, from their locality who is their way into the political process and who is in a position to make a difference.

He also critiqued the way the party has forgotten the real philosophy behind community politics; that it has become an election campaign tool rather than a way of empowering people from the bottom up. He called on the party to go back to the ideas of people such as Bernard Greaves and others in the 70s and start empowering people once again.

From this he developed his arguments on public service provision, arguing for an emphasis on localism. His argument against market based solutions seemed to be not so much an objection to such solutions per se, but the idea that such policies should be wheeled out at a national level. Rather than risking what he calls a “nationwide balls up” he is calling for a system that allows for local experimentation.

My view: The way Chris expressed his position on public service reform here was better than the rather dogmatic way his manifesto came across. Of course, not having a single nationwide system in place will restrict the ability to deliver certain policies (I certainly think that health insurance proposals fall foul of this), but at least he is taking less of a “public-control good, market-based bad” approach.

On the other points I can merely agree. I am encouraged by his critique of the way the party has forgotten the meaning of community politics.

I’m not convinced he actually answered the question though.

The Monarchy Question

Alex Wilcock asked, in essence, that given that Chris is in favour of so much democratisation, what is his position on abolishing the monarchy.

Chris’ answer was that he doesn’t believe in “fighting battles that aren’t really going to change things.” He argued that as radicals we should choose our fights carefully and that getting dragged into the monarchy debate would confuse the issue. To round things off, he said that he thought that the institution of a constitutional monarch has many advantages. In short, he’s against it.

My view: I’m an apathetic republican. I’m opposed a monarch in principle, but I can think of so many other issues I’d rather concentrate on before considering the issue to be even a low priority.

What’s the point of leadership?

Alex also asked Chris to outline what he believed the purpose of a leader to be.

Chris began by emphasising his experience in managing a team both as a journalist and in working in the city (apparently economists are easier to manage than journalists). He said that in his experience a leader must have an honest assessment of his/her strengths and weaknesses and to build an appropriate team around them.

Fundamentally however, a leader must be able to represent the party well and convey the idea that they are someone that the public is likely to be comfortable with having to lead the country. Naming no names, he suggested that some of the party’s previous leaders, while likeable, did not convey that image.

Finally, he emphasised that the leader should be able to convey the idea that she/he would be a good pair of hands to entrust the economy with, quoting Bill Clinton.

My view: a difficult question to answer, but I think he did quite well. Good on emphasising experience and his other selling points, which is fair enough.

…at this point I’m going to take a short break, ‘cos summarising all this stuff is doing my head in. My question is yet to come, as are everyone else’s second bite of the cherry and last but not least my final conclusion. More on this tomorrow!

Share This

I thought I’d give Huhne’s manifesto the same treatment that I gave Clegg’s speech last week.

Once again, I’ll give each main section marks out of five for how much the section is in the party’s comfort zone, how much it is reaching out beyond our traditional supporter base and how much I personally agree with it. I realise the first two are tests which Nick Clegg first set, but they are valid ones.

Changing the system, not just the Government

Huhne starts off by talking about the electoral system, a matter close to Liberal Democrats’ hearts but not neccesarily the wider public. To be fair, it is the first matter of substance that Clegg referred to in his speech last week as well.

Not much I can add here. Obviously I agree with the policy. I’m not sure this is how I would articulate it, particularly if I had one eye on the wider public. I would want to emphasise the importance of choice and competition, not simply fairness.

Comfort rating: PR, nuff said. 5/5
Reaching out rating: he doesn’t mention “PR” explicitly, at least. 2/5
Personal rating: just to be picky, I’d have phrased it differently and find “fairness” a bit woolly. 4/5

Giving back power to people and communities

This is a radical vision of decentralisation which I think both the party and the public like the sound of. When Lib Dems talk of localism, we mean it, and this is a particularly well articulated section.

Comfort rating: localism is an easy sell internally. 5/5
Reaching out rating: well trod turf, but it is a message which I think is resonating increasingly. 4/5
Personal rating: sounds good to me. 5/5

Fixed term parliaments

This section is actually about more than that. Rather, it is a summary of issues relating to Parliament. I think fixed term parliaments resonate more widely at the moment because of the phoney election debacle, but that is quickly fading. The stuff that is of wider interest I think is the stuff about gender balance in the Lords, not because it will set the world on fire but because I think it shows an interest in how the party looks, which is important.

Comfort rating: some might shuffle their feet about gender balance in the elected Lords. 3/5.
Reaching out rating: some stuff of interest, but mostly the public won’t care about this section. The gender balance stuff gets a point for its long term boost to the party’s image though. 3/5.
Personal rating: if this gender balance stuff is a combination of existing party practice (the “one third” rule), training and mentoring and pro-activity, then great. 4/5.

The people’s veto

Yay! A constitutional reform which is not only truly democratic but is likely to resonate with the average Sun reader. Personally, as readers may have gathered, I’d go further, but a veto system such as this would be a powerful tool and would ensure that all laws had the assent - passive or otherwise - of the people.

Huhne doesn’t mention treaties here (can you say “Lisbon”?), but surely he wouldn’t make them exempt?

Comfort rating: I suspect many people in the party may be uncomfortable about this, but this limited form of participatory democracy will probably win them round in the end. 3/5
Reaching out rating: The public would love this. 5/5
Personal rating: I’d go further, but this is great progress. 5/5

A Freedom Bill to give back liberties

A Freedom Bill? That sounds a bit like a Nick Clegg idea! And Clegg was right - it is indicative of quite how scared he is of his own shadow that he didn’t mention it in his launch.

Is it good politics? Well, it is a great way to communicate our values - symbolism with substance attached. On the other hand it risks having us presented as the middle class liberati. On balance though, I think the consistency would be its own reward and would find its own audience. Not everyone will agree, but significant numbers on both the left and right will.

Comfort rating: can’t see the party having an issue with it. 5/5
Reaching out rating: it will find its own audience. 3/5 (I nearly gave it a 4)
Personal rating: sounds great to me. 5/5

Stopping money politics

This section is all very well as far as it goes, but is a little light on detail. What, for example, does Huhne propose to do about party funding? In fairness to him, he was probably simply being responsible given the Hayden Phillips talks and was not in a position to write his manifesto on the basis that they would collapse the day before.

On corruption, this section is stronger. The Saudi issue is good politics for us and Vince Cable has played it very well this week (maybe we should keep him…).

Comfort rating: not many people vote for corruption. 5/5
Reaching out rating: doesn’t exactly set the world on fire, but there is at least sympathy for our position. 3/5
Personal rating: would want more detail on party funding, notwithstanding the practicalities. 3/5

Markets in public services, or local control?

This section is very interesting. In short it is an argument for localism and against marketisation of public services. In doing so, he actually goes further than I would, dismissing school vouchers for example which is a policy which I have some sympathy for.

He does at least articulate a clear case however. You can agree with him or not, but you can’t accuse him of mincing his words in the way that Clegg was doing last week. This is a line that Steve Webb would have no difficulty with and David Laws would hate, but at least it is a line. I’ve been arguing for consistency in our policy, and this is certainly consistent.

On the down side, is it an issue which will resonate with the public? I think they are for localism, but this section doesn’t address how we will deal with the inevitable complaints about “postcode lotteries” and the like. While the internal conflict is certainly over the extent to which economic liberalism and social liberalism should hold sway in the public services debate, I think the wider public have other priorities that this section does not address.

Comfort rating: it’s broadly existing party policy, but a lot of people will be uncomfortable about going down on one side to such an extent. 2/5
Reaching out rating: this isn’t the debate the public particularly cares about, but at least it is a clear policy. 2/5
Personal rating: I broadly go along with it, but I think there are different balances to strike in health and education policies. 4/5

Solving the housing crisis

This is one of the issues I took Clegg to task for not mentioning last week. I still maintain that you can’t be serious about addressing social mobility without saying something about housing. So, full marks to Huhne for addressing precisely that, and indirectly my other issue - intergenerational equity.

Once again, Huhne here gives us a well argued case for the limits and strengths of council housing. He isn’t being prescriptive here but shows a depth of knowledge. He sits on the fence here to a certain extent, but it is certainly true that it is largely an issue that should be decided locally.

I’m not sure he satisfactorily addresses how he intends us to build 3 million homes over 10 years. There is no easy answer of course (unless you propose bankrupting the state by insisting the government should build every last one of them), but a bit more detail here - and less detail on the public services section - would have been welcome.

Comfort zone: he doesn’t mention anything like building on greenbelt land. 5/5
Reaching out zone: to both the young and the working class, this is one of the biggest issues. He should have made it more central in my view, and linked it to other issues such as immigration, but the fact that he mentioned it at all puts him light years ahead of his opponent. 4/5
Personal rating: he doesn’t mention anything truly radical that might interest me such as contemplating some building on the greenbelt. 3/5

No to Trident

I’ve already banged on about this enough.

Comfort rating: plays well with a certain cleavage but seems to have already backfired to an extent. 3/5
Reaching out rating: I just don’t see many people joining the throng. 1/5
Personal rating: good policy, wrong politics. 3/5

Rebalancing our foreign policy

Again, Iraq War aside, I can’t help but think this will largely leave the average person in the street cold. We’ve acquired a good reputation with regards to foreign policy in the past, but most of the people who support us on this issue have already come over to us. There is some anti-American sentiment out there, but there’s more anti-European sentiment.

None of which is to say that there is much here I would take issue with, although I’m curious why it mentions the English-speaking Commonwealth and not just the Commonwealth; are there not ties there which if anything will grow in importance over the next few decades? He deserves points for bravery for even mentioning the Euro, and has a clear answer for why joining is an option but certainly not yet.

In terms of low politics, it is also interesting that he appears to position himself as broadly more Euro-sceptic than Clegg, who was rather fulsome in his praise for the EU.

Comfort rating: some feathers might be ruffled by being rude about the EU and mentioning the Euro, but nothing to get in a lather over. 4/5
Reaching out rating: very mild Euro-scepticism and anti-Americanism reaches out of a certain extent, but this won’t get them talking at the Dog and Duck. 2/5
Personal rating: broadly fine but uninspired. 4/5

Fairness: a core belief for social liberals

Here Huhne firmly nails his colours to the mast and outs himself as a social liberal. Good. We have a real contest now as Clegg is clearly on the economic wing.

There is a lot here I can’t imagine Clegg saying, based on his speech last week. If I had a rather larger ego than I do, I might even think that this section was tailor-made to get my attention:

It is not enough to speak of equality of opportunity, aspiration and level playing fields. If ‘meritocracy’ means that individuals will receive the rewards their abilities and work deserve, it produces a very unattractive society in which complacently successful people constantly look down on their less able fellow citizens, whom they firmly believe to deserve less. We need more than that.

In truth, I suspect this section has rather more to do with Duncan Brack than it has to do with me.

For me, this is the most important section in the whole document. It is about our core beliefs and reclaiming equality at a time when so many Lib Dems seem keen to drop it as a priority altogether. It is clarity such as this section that recharges my political batteries and convinces me there is actually a point.

Comfort rating: actually, I think that much of this will cause the wider party difficulty. This is a debate we haven’t had in years and it is time we did so. 2/5
Reaching out rating: Will this resonate in the posh suburbs of Kensington? No. Will it resonate in the down-at-heel streets of Manchester where I cut my political teeth? Absolutely. 4/5
Personal rating: I need to hear this sort of thing from my leader, not bloodless exhortations for ‘meritocracy’. 5/5

Tall poppies and tall stories

I believe this is the section which opponents of Huhne may wish to caricature as ‘hammering the rich’. He doesn’t use that phrase, but if I have a criticism it is that he does very little to disabuse people of that notion.

There is an important issue to address in terms of company directors awarding themselves outrageous pay bonuses, but we need to be careful to avoid appearing to play the politics of jealousy. The language here could be more balanced and emollient.

That says, the underlying theme - that we should be concerned more about taxing wealth than incomes - is one of my pet hobby horses. Huhne is cagey about land value taxation but is warm about it in principle. In all honesty, that’s as good as I’m likely to get in this election.

Comfort rating: perhaps a little too much emphasis on bashing high earners. 4/5
Reaching out rating: we need to think about how we might sell this. The stuff about high earners will resonate with a few, but not enough. 2/5
Personal rating: as good as I’m going to get. 4/5

Talking straight on crime

An impeccably liberal approach, but not one that is likely to dispel any caricatures about woolly liberals sadly. It isn’t woolly - it is well argued and succinct - but for many acknowledging home truths such as the fact that fear of crime in this country is disproportionate to the level of actual crime will lead to them simply dismissing the whole argument.

This section presents to me a dilemma. I don’t disagree with any of it, but I know it is a hard sell. Huhne doesn’t give us much of an idea of how he plans to sell all this either.

How do we get this balance right? I have to admit I think Clegg does it better. Sometimes it is just a matter of not saying certain things that don’t need to be said. We can’t afford to alienate people; we have to talk in a language they understand.

Comfort rating: will ruffle quite a few feathers actually - Lib Dems can be quite reactionary at times. 3/5
Reaching out rating: I’d love it if people listened to common sense on crime, but they broadly don’t. We need to communicate this better. 1/5
Personal rating: I can’t deny it doesn’t appeal to me personally. 5/5

Sustainability: challenging on the environment

There’s a lot here that doesn’t need to be said. You’ve already won the argument Chris. Once again though, he doesn’t address how we engage with the public on this issue in a language they understand. Clegg’s critique that when we talk about green taxes, most people just hear ‘taxes’ is correct. Huhne needs to address that point. Calling for further cuts in the basic rate of income tax does that to an extent, but it doesn’t address Clegg’s other point about people being able to see their sacrifices making a difference.

In this respect, I would actually argue that Huhne is currently weaker than Clegg on the environment. Not because he’s wrong on policy but that he is wrong on emphasis. The next battle is on selling this policy, not simply entrenching it. Huhne needs to engage with that fact.

Comfort rating: broadly established party policy. 5/5
Reaching out rating: communication counts. 1/5
Personal rating: fine as far as it goes but barely moves us forward from 2 years ago. 3/5

Our party can win

Thus far, and point me to where if I’m wrong, but Clegg has barely addressed the issue of party organisation. Huhne therefore deserves credit for including this section.

The emphasis on local party development is important as is the emphasis on diversity. His approach on mentoring and training is welcome.

His point about constitutional change being a prerequisite to partnership government is vital. It addresses the Oaten lament that coalition is an issue that the party hasn’t been talking about enough but doesn’t get us distracted in self-defeating speculation about horse-trading.

Finally, the final paragraph succinctly sums up what the party is about. This is a strong section.

Comfort rating: the party will find little to disagree with here. Making it happen though is another matter. 5/5
Reaching out rating: a strong, better trained and more diverse-looking party across the country would inevitably reach out to more people. Simple, but true. 4/5
Personal rating: Again, my concern is making it happen. An uncharitable 3/5 (because I’ve been here before).

TOTAL COMFORT RATING: 59/75
TOTAL REACHING OUT RATING: 41/75
TOTAL PERSONAL RATING: 60/75

You can’t compare like with like with these scores and Clegg’s in my earlier article. Overall, in my view there is more meat here for the general public to grapple with than was in Clegg’s speech last week. There is also more for the party faithful to potentially object to. Interestingly, although I really liked certain bits, as an overall package I found myself less comfortable with it than with Clegg.

Huhne is clearly taking risks, and he should be congratulated for that. He has brought substance to a debate which until now has been distinctly wanting for it. On a number of issues however, he simply doesn’t seem to appreciate the communication issue. On the environment, on crime and on taxation it isn’t that he is wrong on detail, but that he hasn’t worked enough on communicating the message. This is at least a much bigger concern of Nick Clegg’s.

But on consistency, he wins hands down. You can’t fault him for not being prepared to answer difficult questions. This is an issue my scoring system doesn’t measure, yet it is important. Developing a clear Liberal Democrat identity is crucial. It gives us a brand - not something that 100% of the population will agree with, but something which a substantial minority certainly will. Longer term, such consistency will help us bridge the gap between the 10% of the public who identify as a big-el-Lib big-dee-Dem and the 50% of the public who identify as a small-el-liberal. It is not something that Clegg has begun to grapple with thus far, nor can he if he is afraid to reach out beyond existing party policy.

On balance then, this is definitely a stronger package than what I’ve seen from Clegg so far. It is however a package for long term growth - to what extent that is a luxury we can currently afford is not something I have formed a firm view on yet. It certainly isn’t the killing blow that Huhne needs to deliver to defeat his rival. Perhaps I should wait however until Clegg produces a comparable document.

Share This

Another article from the archives. This one was written in Summer 2006 for Community Politics Today, a collection of essays revisiting community politics. Again, I would encourage you to buy the full book and read all the other contributions.

The original Theory and Practice of Community Politics by Bernard Greaves and Gordon Lishman is available on Colin Rosenstiel’s website.

The party has failed to heed the principles underpinning community politics, both in the way it campaigns and the way it treats its own community. If we are to be more than “just another party” we will need to become the change we want to see.

Greaves and Lishman are quite explicit about what they think community politics is not: “Community Politics is not a technique for the winning of local government elections. It… is not a technique … not local … not government … not about elections.” It is clear that they were quite preoccupied with the sense that as Community Politics was being more widely adopted within the party, many of its proponents wildly misunderstood the principles that underpinned it.

Almost a quarter of a century on, it does seem as if this battle has been largely lost. While I have had the pleasure to get to know and work with dozens of gut community politicians over the past decade, the status of Community Politics as anything other than a means to winning elected office has diminished before my eyes. Focus leaflets have become ever more ubiquitous - but as marketing tools, not as community newsletters. Surveys are used not to learn about public opinion, but to harvest data that can be used for targeting and to come up with scare-statistics to suit the party’s agenda.

One politician I worked with once rebuked me for putting a helpline in a leaflet on the basis that “the public should come to me.” So much for helping people to take power for themselves. It is now standard practice in by-elections to send people out with disposable cameras to find “grotspots” in order to portray a totally distorted view of how run down the local area is. In the recent Bromley by-election, the candidate was prominently shown cleaning up graffiti on election material - only for it to be discovered that that graffiti was still in place on polling day. At its extreme, this ambulance chasing is just plain weird: one Lib Dem campaigner recently gleefully published page upon page of photos of rubbish on his website - it would have taken him just as much effort to pick the stuff up himself.

All of this is designed to portray the party as strong campaigners who take local issues seriously, but treats the public as passive consumers - choosing political parties as they might washing powder - not as active citizens. It is extremely effective marketing - particularly in target seats and by-elections when we have sufficient resources to overwhelm the public with our messages. But it is hard to see what it does to challenge power, which is at the heart of Community Politics.

However, what is Community Politics’ loss seems to have been the Liberal Democrats’ gain. What Greaves and Lishman disparage as the “ALC Method” has been refined and reproduced across the country and has gone on to inform Campaigns Department best practice that has seen us increase our number of Parliamentary seats by such a large degree over the past decade. It is a legitimate question, worthy of investigation, to ask whether Community Politics was all that important anyway?

We should ask ourselves two things however. Firstly, by abandoning Community Politics in this way, how do we respond to the charge that we are just another opportunist party concerned with gaining power at all cost?

This is not what many of us signed up for. We are expected to content ourselves with the notion that the more politicians we help get elected, the more we can get the body politic to work on our terms, but how much are we changing the body politic, and how much is the body politic changing us?

Secondly, is this actually getting us tangible power, or is it leading us into a cul-de-sac? Since 1992 we have gained 42 Parliamentary seats - roughly 14 per session. At that rate, we will gain a majority after 18 General Elections - roll on 2090. What is even more likely however - and I would suggest we started to see evidence of this in 2005 - is that we will start to spread ourselves too thinly and encounter diminishing returns or even go in reverse. Let us be clear: while this strategy may ensure we have significant representation in the Commons for years to come is not going to win us a general election.

If we are content with the prospect of being the junior partner in a coalition, that may be fine. Historically however, the party has not done well in a balance-of-power situation. There is also a democratic problem with us relying on horse-trading to push our agenda forward rather than public support, not to mention the fact that we would be expected to prop up a minority government on a whole range of issues that go against our principles.

With this in mind, I find it quite incredible at how the rhetoric within the party - even in confidential meetings at a senior level - remains along the lines of “one last heave.” We are wedded to the idea is that if only the party was more “professional” / had slightly more money / more active members / better market research then we would reach a critical mass and charge home. Yet this invariably leads to concentrating our resources even more on target seats and coming up with a basket of policy-bites that are designed to appeal to swing voters. The result is our public support is extraordinarily shallow with a large proportion of our vote backing us for tactical reasons or because of one or two policy commitments.

Greaves and Lishman’s vision was far wider. Inspired by Jo Grimond’s call for the establishment of “a coalition of different groups putting different emphases on different parts of the same basic idea,” they call on the party to dedicate itself to building a political movement, rather than solely concentrating on winning elections. For them, the goal of Community Politics was to create this movement by “stimulating action by communities to take and use power.”

We should not blind ourselves to the fact that this is exactly what New Labour achieved in the mid-nineties. Tony Blair and his allies recognised that the Labour Party itself couldn’t both win power and beat its opponents into submission long enough to implement a programme of action. They were extremely effective at getting a wide range of groups and communities to buy into their vision for change. The key difference between Tony Blair’s approach and the one spelled out by Greaves and Lishman is that for him building such a movement was first and foremost about getting him into Number 10 Downing Street; for Greaves and Lishman the creation of such a movement is an end in itself.

People are unlikely to be fooled twice however; if the Liberal Democrats were to go into the movement building business they would have to be able to demonstrate what Blair now demonstrably lacks: integrity. We would have to walk the talk. That would mean a major culture shift within the party. We would have to step back from focusing on becoming an election-winning machine and instead truly internalise the values of Community Politics.

How could we go about doing this? To start with, I believe we need to improve how the party itself functions as a community. Are we wolves or bees? Do we run together in packs as equals, or do we organise in hives - a strictly hierarchical structure with workers diligently serving the Queen? Many will look at our constitution and our famous rows on the conference floor and assume we must be wolves (or for that matter, cats, as in “herding…”).

But look deeper. Democratic constitutions are not the same thing as democratic cultures - ask anyone who has lived in a communist state. For all the rows we have at conference, the central party invariably manages to get its policy papers passed. The Conference Committee frequently complains that so few local parties actually submit conference motions. Meanwhile, the non-policy business of our conferences is rubber stamped by almost empty debating halls to the complete indifference of most conference representatives.

At a local level, the level of participation in the party is even lower. We do very little to help themselves in this respect. The New Politics Network surveyed the local parties of the three main parties this summer (now available as part of the Unlock Democracy publication Party Funding - Supporting the Grassroots). It found that the Lib Dem local parties held a fraction of the number of social and fundraising events that Conservative Associations did and significantly fewer policy discussion meetings than either the Conservatives or Labour. In short, our members have more rights than the members of our rival parties, yet aside from campaigning we have much lower levels of participation. Ours’ not to reason why, ours’ but to do and die.

The party needs to stop flattering itself that because we have a vibrant activist hierarchy, we are democratic. We should be worried about the stark distinction between activist and “armchair member” and set ourselves the task of doing something about it. For me, that means more informal meetings, from policy discussion (”pizza and politics”) through to simply inviting people to the pub. It was a desire to encourage such meetings that has driven Martin Tod and myself to develop the website Flock Together (http://www.flocktogether.org.uk) and its offshoot Liberal Drinks (http://theliberati.net/drink).

To maximise levels of participation however, we need to look to skilling our membership. Again, activists are already well served in this respect, with ever increasing numbers of training events taking place at conferences. This programme needs to be taken to a lower level however. Local and regional parties should start holding “welcome days” for new members designed to feed them with ideas about what sort of things they might want to do in the party, from coming to help in a by-election through to joining the Green Liberal Democrats. On and off, LDYS has for many years run similar events (including its residential “Activate!” weekends) and they have supplied us with a stream of involved and informed members (including at least one MP).

In his essay After Community Politics (Passports to Liberty IV, Liberator Publications, 2000), David Boyle takes this one step further and proposes local parties running self-help workshops on a wide range of areas from local campaigning through to changing your work-life balance. I strongly endorse this proposal and would love to see more experimentation in this area.

Indeed, everything we do should be concerned with providing people with a toolkit to challenge power themselves. Our national campaigns should be about more than “us too!” petitions - they should be concerned with reaching out to people who are directly affected and advising them on what to do themselves.

To take two recent examples, if we run a campaign on saving school bus services anyone interested could be able to download a campaign pack informing local people about what they can do about the issue. If we run a campaign against homophobic bullying, we should provide both information about the issue, but also meaningful advice for both parents and children about what to do about it. The party is getting very good at producing campaign packs for local parties; it should be equally concerned at providing detailed information for the target audience.

There are electoral gains to be made from such an approach. While it would be less effective than our target seat strategy in terms of maximising votes in the places where they can do the most good, this approach would win us more activists and the sort of goodwill that any party serious about government needs. But if we make New Labour’s mistake of simply co-opting such support for our own ends, then as has been their experience, it is likely to come back and bite us in the arse. The true value is not in simple electoral gain, but in improving the national polity as a whole.

Unless we become the change we want to see, we can’t hope to build the wider movement that we will need in order to truly challenge power, at all levels. If we fail to do this, our only course of action will be to ape our opponents, which will prove ultimately self-defeating.

Share This

Am I the only one who finds it quite confusing that LibDems4Chris is written by a guy called Nick?

For the record, I really am still genuinely undecided. My assessment is that Chris is the better strategist and Nick is the better communicator. Nick will win my vote if he can convince me he has some idea about how the party must organise and Chris will win my vote if he can overcome his seemingly poor reputation within certain parts of the media. The latter is important because certain journalists really do seem to have their knives out for him and viscerally dislike him in a way that could be quite damaging. Having seen what they did to Ming, that is currently toppermost on my mind.

Nick Clegg’s speech yesterday was interesting. Unlike Huhne, he made a point of paying tribute to Ming at the start. Unlike Huhne, he laid into Ming’s tenure. Despite crediting Ming for giving the party a clear sense of direction and purpose, he goes on to say that:

For two years now, the Liberal Democrats have been caught up in internal self-analysis. We cannot go on testing the patience of the British people.

I’m not sure these two conflicting statements make any sense together. Without the boring old navel-gazing that Clegg deplores, we would not have the sense of direction and purpose that he praises. And it was Ming, as Chair of the party’s policy, who oversaw that introspection, so it is he, by association, that Clegg is blaming for the party’s shortcomings. To paraphrase another Shakespeare play, is that a dagger I see before me?

The bottom line is that a bit of self-analysis was sorely needed after the 2005 General Election. The last Lib Dem General Election campaign was the least inward-looking we had ever fought; it was did the least to “stand up for the liberal instincts of the British people.”

I suspect that Clegg knows this. Rather, I suspect this is a pitch for that school of activist who has no time for the party’s policy development and prefers, to use Simon Titley’s words, “mindless activism“. This is a way of pushing people’s buttons, of posititioning himself as the blokey, action guy as opposed to the unforgiveably cerebral Huhne. Clearly Team Clegg have been reading The Political Brain during their summer holidays.

Fair play to them. It is something that Huhne can’t afford to be blind to. He needs to find a way of neutering this particular line of attack, and quickly. But by the same token, Clegg needs to be careful not to let himself become a prisoner of his own rhetoric. Despite our democratic structures, the research shows (my research in fact, hem hem), that the Liberal Democrats are in fact the least introspective of the three main parties. It hasn’t gained us electoral pre-eminence. There is virtue in a degree of introspection: I would argue that the “meeting the challenge” project launched by Charles Kennedy (and it is all too notable that I know it as the “meeting the challenge” project, not the allegedly “Trust in People: Make Britain free, fair and green“), has still not managed to give us anything like the sort of coherence that we need. As I wrote on Monday, until our long term aspirations are a closer fit with our short term commitments, we will continue to look opportunistic (because that is exactly what we are being). Nick can flutter his eyelashes at the media as much as he likes, but they’ll continue to give us a hard time if they continue to perceive us as little more than a bunch of chancers. In short, he is in danger of adopting a strategy that will neutralise his greatest single selling point.

Share This

Sort of an exclusive here as I think I may be the first to write up my account of the interview with Ming that the finalists for the Blog of the Year held on Sunday morning. Jonathan Calder actually beat me to it by about 12 hours but at the time of writing hadn’t given his full account. Either way it’s another opportunity to shamelessly use “EXCLUSIVE” in another blog title and we all know how much you crazy kids love your exclusives.

Okay. By dint of where I had seated myself, I found myself asking Ming the first question, which was about what the party’s narrative is. He both avoided answering my question and accidentally answering my question at the same time. Let me explain.

He failed to answer my question in that his pat answer was that it is being developed by the manifesto team and that Steve Webb is developing it. He went on to list a number of policy areas - particularly the environment - that we would be developing thematically. I have to say that my heard sank at this point. If we are to have a narrative - and I hear no-one suggesting that we shouldn’t - then we should have had it nailed down 12 months ago. As it stands, Ming seemed to be suggesting it would be unveiled along with the manifesto a few short weeks before the election (whenever that is).

But then, almost in spite of himself, he began to answer the question - at least partially. Throughout the interview he kept talking about how it is now “one-against-two” to contrast with the last few general elections which were “two-against-one”. What he went on to explain was that in the past, the Lib Dems and Labour teamed up against the Conservatives; now the Lib Dems are fighting against the “conservative consensus” of Labour and the Conservatives. This is partly because that Labour has become more conservative, but it is also because of the expected tightness of the next election which means that the Lib Dems are now being attacked in both directions.

The fact is, this is a narrative. It isn’t one that I think particularly resonates with the general public, but it does hit the right notes as far as activists are concerned. It makes it quite clear that we are sticking with equidistance. I expect to hear more of this in the speech.

It’s also - I think - possible to tweak to make it more appealing from a voter perspective. The fact is, in many cases we are the only serious alternative to a conservative consensus. We are the only party which is serious about decentralisation and giving away power and meaty policy which spells out how. For the Tories and Labour localism and renewing democracy remain little more than stock phrases. For such a message to resonate however, we need to have a much less managerialist approach to policy during the next election. If we end up with just another long list of policy bites which promise a change in spending here, the scrapping of a policy there, we’ll be stuck with the same sort of dispiriting campaign that we had in 2005.

(As an aside, sadly the feedback I’ve had from the “secret” candidate training sessions on Saturday was that this is not only precisely what the party mandarins have planned but that they’ve been conducting expensive polling that “proves” this is the case. A lot of internal polling I’ve seen in the past has been concerned with proving a point rather than genuine research - polls that prove that no-one is interested in electoral reform compared with crime, health and education for example as opposed to exploratory polls to see how we might better make the case for electoral reform. I have no doubt that a policy bite approach is useful for shoring up support in marginal seats, but it does nothing to reach out to our larger potential supporter base. It leaves us vulnerable to attack if the opposition parties run an effective air war against us if we aren’t taking to the skies at the same time. And you can’t run an effective air war if your “ammo” is ten disparate policy commitments).

Interestingly, Ming pointed out that the then-elections chief Lord Razzall was in constant talks with Labour regarding our targeting strategy and how we might both target the Conservatives. Although I’m not surprised, I have to say it is the first I’ve heard of this. It feels a little uncomfortable to learn that we were in strategic discussions with the war-mongers, but then the Tories were wannabe war-mongers and were running under the most rightwing manifesto in recent memory (written by David Cameron, lest we forget). Either way, if our strategy was to work with Labour to maximise the marginal Lib-Con seats that we won, it was a pretty poor one. Most of our significant gains were against Labour. I’m sure Labour supporters in places such as, say, Manchester Withington, will be delighted to learn that their defeat was pre-arranged with their own party).

Richard Flowers, demonstrating sub-Victorian parental values, kept the Millennium Elephant in a bag throughout the interview (I can EXCLUSIVELY reveal!). While the nominee himself was left to sulk, Daddy Richard asked Ming what we can do to engage with the 40% of the electorate that now doesn’t vote. This was an issue that Ming warmed to, pointing out that there are now more people on the internet in the UK than UK voters, and that the next election could be decided by as few as 800,000 - 1,000,000 voters (I have news for Ming - if the Tories got exactly the right votes in exactly the right places they’d need much less to swing it). I did sense a degree of hypocrisy though in a Lib Dem leader attacking the other parties for focussing on swing voters in marginal seats at the expense of everyone else: what have we been doing for the past decade-and-a-half if not that?

Accepted, our standard response to this is that we would change the electoral system that forces us into this position, but we should at least acknowledge that we are contributing to this disconnect ourselves. If we don’t, then it’s just words.

The two mediums Ming highlighted as tools for reengaging with the disenfranchised I don’t think are that effective. Political blogs like this for example tend to be read by other political bloggers, journalists and political obsessives. My extreme tracking site meter suggests that just 941 unique visitors read this blog on an average month and I could probably list at least 10% of them by name. I’m under no illusions about this blog’s power to engage with the disconnected. I’m rather more impressed by the potential of Facebook and MySpace in this respect.

His other example is literary festivals, which are growing in popularity and at which political meetings tend to be filled to the rafters. This is positive, but it doesn’t get us even close to the NEETs.

One thing the party might want to look at is to start going to places on the internet where there is a lot of activity. We probably won’t get very far by getting Ming on Britney Spears’ discussion forums, but there are issue-based campaigns out there which seem to genuinely reach out beyond the relatively well connected. As I’ve written before, one of those areas is first time buyers, who appear to be virtually fetching the torches and pitchforks as I type. But what have we as a party to say to them? At the moment, the only thing we seem to be saying is that under a Liberal Democrat government we guarantee to raise house prices by another £15,000.

Paul Walter would not, I’m sure, have trouble with my description of him as the loyalest of the shortlisted Lib Dem bloggers, so it is to his credit that he asked what Ming believes he has done wrong in his 18 months as leader. His answer is that he failed to recognise the extent to which the party leader gets engaged with the administration of the party, something which he is now planning to take a step backward from. Sensibly, I feel, he is appointing the manifesto chief Steve Webb to chair the Federal Policy Committee in his stead. I would demur somewhat with his insistence that the party’s press operation is the best its ever been (it might be, but that didn’t stop us from disappearing over the summer from the headlines during which time we launched 5 policy papers).

Alex Wilcock asked why Ming thought it was that despite the fact that internally the party is broadly with the direction he’s taking it doesn’t seem to be coming across to the public, and what he plans to do about it. Ming’s response was to make the very fair point that if you look at Ashdown and Kennedy at the same point in their respective leaderships, both of them we performing as poorly as he is currently in the opinion polls. The problem for Ming is that, since it is now one-against-two, he doesn’t have the luxury that they had to simply give it time. He went on to say that he wanted to avoided the situation under Kennedy and Ashdown whereby the party came across as a one-man-band and so he is keen to share the spotlight with our young “bright and sassy” intake. Much as I agree with him that we have a talented group of MPs these days, I’m not sure this is wise - or even practical. Stephen Tall’s chart of “media tarts” shows that according to Nexis Lexis, Nick Clegg is our next highest profile frontbencher after Ming with around a quarter of the leader’s press. After Nick, our next highest profile “bright young thing” is Sarah Teather with around a tenth of his coverage. So if there is a deliberate strategy to get them to share the spotlight, it isn’t working. And what have we to show for it?

This also rather conflicts with his later claim that if there were more people of his age sitting around the cabinet table, we would have been less likely to go into war. Not if they were all called John Prescott they wouldn’t. I’m not convinced that supineness is linked to age, but if it is, surely he ought to be kicking these young whippersnappers out of his front bench (in one case of course, he has, while the ability of Lembit Opik to demonstrate his maturity earned him a promotion).

Sensing a kill, Alex used this talk about sharing the limelight to ask Ming why he chose to announce policy on an EU referendum a week before conference instead of waiting for conference itself to take a considered view. Jonathan Calder followed this up by asking what point there is on having a referendum on membership of the EU when it was so ineffective in 1975.

I feel the need here to defend Ming, to some extent, on both counts. I’ve always been on the view that the party’s internal democracy (which I strongly defend) should not mean that the party leader should make Trappist vows of silence on topical issues of importance. Politics simply does not work like that; you have to trust - to some extent - the “guys in the room”. Furthermore, while I also disagree with Ming that a referendum on the treaty would be wholly sui generis to a referendum on EU membership, I disagree with Jonathan’s views here also.

My follow up to this - if he had not at this point ran out of time - would have been to observe that Ming appears to get it broadly right in terms of handling the feral beast of the media on the second attempt. I’d have liked to ask him why it is he feels that we have had these blunders - specifically the wobble over Ming’s speech at Harrogate, the delay in informing Gordon Brown that the party would not allow Lib Dem MPs to enter government and this latest EU debacle - and what will he be doing in future to avoid these. Instead, that question will have to hang (unless Ming - who admitted in the interview that his office pays close attention to these blogs - cares to answer it in the space below).

Overall this was a positive event, albeit one that was over before it got started. Ming expressed an interest in doing it more often and I feel we should take him at his word. A few months ago I suggested a similar meeting with his most outspoken critics such as Laurence Boyce and Nich Starling and I would repeat that suggestion here. Overall, Ming came across well as listening, engaged with the issues and generous in spirit. The more people we can convince of this over the next few months the better.

Share This

I attended a speech by Nick Clegg in the Commons this evening to a nascent group of thrusting young politicos. Mostly I tended to agree with him: the party is to focussed on the minutiae of policy and not enough on how it presents itself; the party does have to develop distinctive ’surprising’ positions on topical issues; we do need to have another look at how we run conferences; the party’s shameless pitch for the grey vote was both scandalous and dreadfully ineffective. Much of what he said has already been covered by the likes of Duncan Borrowman, Chris Keating and Rob Fenwick so I won’t repeat it here.

My big concern was that the party has been debating all of this since 2005 - we set up the Meeting the Challenge process, held a big one-day conference on it, passed a policy paper on the subject (pdf)… yet we are still asking the questions and not answering them. Like a lot else, Nick didn’t have answer for why this is either.

What he did say, and I agree with him up to the point, is that part of the problem is the party’s love of committees and internal democracy, which has got in the way. I agree that the party’s practice of having setting up a working group which has a year-long, genial deliberative discussion on the subject and then puts its findings up for approval by party conference lacks the urgency and the flexibility that we need in a lot of areas. The party simply doesn’t need the level of policy that it passes year after year and could put much of the space on the conference agenda to better use. The problem I have with what he had to say however was that to an extent he was encroaching onto the ‘blame the party’ territory that frontbenchers are prone to make in the party from time to time, most famously Charles Kennedy himself when he attacked the party for passing “specific and controversial policies on the basis of a brief, desultory debate in a largely empty hall“. To be clear, when I challenged on this, he did row back and accept the front bench has a responsibility to be pro-active, but with almost the same breath suggested that people like me were the problem because, and I’m paraphrasing here “if someone came out and made a big announcement like this, you’d be the first person to complain about it on your blog”. My answer to that is: try me.

Last year, when the leadership sought to get the party to drop the 50p rate, I not only agreed with the substance of the proposal, I supported the fact that the front bench took such an assertive lead on the issue. I wasn’t at Harrogate, and remain sceptical about Ming’s “wait-and-see” approach to Trident, but I am completely unfazed by the fact that the leadership so aggressively promoted its stance. This is what leaders do. Caricaturing this as “engineering Clause 4 moments” in the way that Liberator does is simply daft. Personally, I’m much less worried about what our elected politicians and elected leader does than what our unelected party bureaucracy gets up to. We suffer from too little leadership from the front, not too much. And I write that as someone who last week was saying leadership was a necessary evil.

None of that is to say that Lib Dem party democracy is a bad thing: indeed, the tax and Trident debates show what a valuable forum conference can be. I happen to think that Nick over-egged the pudding by suggesting that the Tories have made all the running on making their conferences more relevant to the public. A one week flash in the pan, maybe, but does anyone take “Dragon’s Den” style sessions with Ann Widdecombe seriously? I think the public knows when it is being patronised.

The trick for the party is to integrate campaigning and policy development better. We don’t need detailed policy to convey our principles. So long as the latter remains firmly under the control of the party, we should be less afraid at opening up our development of the former. I lobbied, and failed, to convince the party that the Meeting the Challenge exercise ought to borrow heavily from Labour’s experiences with the Big Conversation. Despite our much-vaunted democratic constitution, Lib Dem local parties generally take less of an active role in policy development than their Labour or Conservative counterparts (plug). I wanted to see us using the exercise to get local parties feeding into a national consultation via their focus leaflets and surveys. It could have been a fantastic opportunity for us to communicate our core values, while at the same time opening the door for people to join. We will have similar opportunities in the future and should take them. But such a system needs the membership, campaigns and policy departments working in unison. They require the Parliamentary Party to commit to going around the country encouraging it. We already have the core infrastructure for such an initiative, but it needs leadership to make it happen.

If Nick, or Ming for that matter, have better ideas, let’s see them. Using the excuse that nasty people like me might criticise them on our largely unread blogs is simply not good enough. My suspicion is that it is not me, or even the dreaded Federal Conference Committee that are preventing the party from the sort of radical rebranding exercise that it needs, but a lack of self-confidence which is stifling imagination.

Share This