WHAT IS THE POINT OF THE LIB DEMS
Back when this blog started Jim Jepps was one of the founding contributors, before he set up his own highly succesful web-site, Daily(Maybe). Jim now has a regular column at the Morning Star, and his latest article about the Lib Dems is well worth reproducing.
At last the Liberal Democrats have answered the question that someone, somewhere may well have been asking. Who would they favour if they held the balance of power in a hung Parliament?
It turns out that the answer is anyone who will let them sit at the big table and is willing to sign Nick Clegg’s autograph book.
There’s been a certain amount of straw-clutching in the last few days because one poll has suggested that the gap between Labour and the Tories is narrowing, which would increase the chances of neither party commanding a majority in the House of Commons.
The poll has been built up into far more than it really is with those who see what they want to see, forgetting that one extremely unlikely swallow does not make a spring.
At the weekend Clegg announced that “whichever party have the strongest mandate from the British people, it seems to me that they have the first right to try and govern.”
While he was right to point out that in a democracy it should be the people who decide who governs, it does rather ignore the fact that those who vote for Clegg’s party are making a political decision which should count for something.
In effect Clegg has decided to cast his party in the mould of a neutral referee without philosophical allegiance or strong opinions either way.
He may as well have indicated that if you want to decide who runs the country after the election, don’t vote Lib Dem because they’ll take their lead from everyone else anyway.
What makes it even more bizarre is that this damp cloth of an announcement is seen as the strongest statement Clegg has ever made on the subject and, as such, is news.
Just don’t ask him what his favourite biscuit is for heaven’s sake or we’ll be here all day.
Tony Benn often remarks that politicians are either weathercocks or sign posts - that is, those who point whichever way they are blown and those who stick to their principles no matter what.
However, it appears he left out the category of limp knitted windsock, which is where Clegg is building his electoral niche.
Just because someone’s in an organisation that has more in common with uncultured yoghurt than a political party, that doesn’t mean they should be demonised.
There are good people in campaigns to defend council housing, against various wars and to protect particular public services who also happen to be members of the Lib Dems.
When Lib Dem Cambridge MP David Howarth attended the G20 protests as a legal observer and eloquently spoke out against the behaviour of the police, I don’t have the slightest inclination to moderate my praise with a “yeah, but…”
There’s no question that some of the vote the Lib Dems receive is to the left of new Labour.
Those whose progressive instincts are repelled by Trident, ID cards, the Iraq occupation and a host of other monstrosities that I don’t need to go into here have often lent their vote to the Lib Dems.
What these people rarely do though is begin to see themselves as “Lib Dem voters” and, as such, that vote is extremely soft and vulnerable.
In recent times we’ve seen the new Lib Dem leadership begin to shift the party towards a more Cameron-lite style of politics - which is no mean feat when you consider that helium has difficulty being lighter than Cameron.
Clegg’s announcement at conference that he was for savage cuts and was ditching the commitment to scrapping tuition fees was an attempt to look more substantial in an era of financial crisis.
But for many this simply came across like the sidekick of an Eton bully egging on the violence without the clout to actually join in themselves.
When Clegg surprised his party’s policy-making body on the abolition of tuition fees he hoped to signal that he was up to the task of handling the recession, but he ended up showing that he was just an identikit politician, as undemocratic and cynical as other party leaders but less influential.
A party without an identity is hardly up to the task of tackling global problems like climate change, the financial collapse or war.
If you don’t believe in anything you’re not fit to govern.
Currently the Lib Dems’ local campaigns even seem to be pushing the party towards a kind of “patriotic” pro-war position and they are making more than clear that the one area of spending they won’t be trying to make cuts in is the armed forces.
The leaflet that came through my door this weekend focused solely on the local candidate’s loyalty to the troops in Afghanistan.
This isn’t just unconvincing - it means that none of the three largest parties is even trying to represent public opinion on ending the occupation.
The nation’s forgotten third party seems to be on a mission to become completely indistinguishable from the very worst parts of the stifling consensus at the heart of so-called respectable politics.
Clegg’s announcement that he’d just go with the flow after the next election and isn’t bothered either way is hardly inspiring.
Partly because it emphasises that his party is always “the would-be king-maker,” never the “would-be king,” but mainly because it demonstrates how alien conviction politics is to the leadership.
Judging from the early reaction from Lib Dem blogs even their activists aren’t too impressed with the new announcement.
This may partly be due to the way they get to act as spectators to major decisions made by their party rather than actual participants.
Some thought they’d already ruled out a coalition with Labour, others that they’d taken a vow against the Tories, but no-one seemed astonished that the actual position was a rather feeble “whoever.”
There’s no doubt the Lib Dems will swing left again when the wind blows them that way. But whether leaning to the left or the right, without a philosophical anchor there’s nothing much to get excited about.
the more interesting bits of the radical liberal tradition have gone, the YLS used to be well to the left and strong anti-apartheid campaigners, seems a long time ago. The SDP merger moved the whole party to the right.
Comment by Derek Wall — 26 November, 2009 @ 1:27 pm
“The SDP merger moved the whole party to the right.”
I am not sure I agree with that judgement, on social issues the SPD were certainly a centre-left party, inhereting the very genuione radicalism against inequality from the labour party revisionists, and in my judgement those from the SPD tradition have been the more left inclined anchor in the Lib Dems.
i think the right wing part of the Lib Dems either comes from the old Liberals, or has had plenty of time to devlop in the now quite substantial life as a new party with ts own traditions since the merger.
The young liberals were indeed very radical, but their realtionship with the mother-party was always strained, and of course the most famous of all thr Younf Liberals ended up as a New Labour cabinent minister!
Comment by Andy Newman — 26 November, 2009 @ 1:31 pm
An analysis of the Liberal vote in the 1970s concluded there were three types of Liberal voter: “core” (committed to “Liberal values”, whatever those are, and including a remnant of the old Liberal Party’s vote, often living in the Scottish Borders, Highlands, West Country or parts of Wales), “centrist”, who liked the Liberals because they were supposedly not “extreme”, and “anti-system”, seeing the Liberals as being outside the Lab-Con consensus, and also being inclined to the NF or even the Marxist left, if offered either in the polling station.
I don’t know how valid this assessment is for the LDs of today but it might explain the instability of their vote, as some of these voting categories are mutually incompatible.
Comment by Mark Victorystooge — 26 November, 2009 @ 1:45 pm
#2 “..and of course the most famous of all thr Younf Liberals ended up as a New Labour cabinent minister!”
More smearing of the SWP.
Paul Foot was never a New Labour Cabinet Minister
:)
Comment by aarghh — 26 November, 2009 @ 1:49 pm
Peter Hain?
Not that I would defend Andy!
Comment by Derek Wall — 26 November, 2009 @ 1:51 pm
Ever since the Orange Book tendency took over the Liberals have become another conservative party, which is sad since we’ve got two already and don’t need another.
lib dems = yellow tories
Comment by attila — 26 November, 2009 @ 2:09 pm
They’ve picked up a lot of traditionally Tory seats in the South & South west in the last 12 years, taking them up to a record 63 Westminster seats - many more than the teens/twenties they were stuck on throughout the 70s/80s (even though their percentage support nationwide was higher than it is now).
I’ve got no time to check the data to back this up, but using Mark Victorystooge’s categories in #3 above, I’d guess that they’ve got about a dozen “core” seats (eg Shetland), a dozen seats won on “anti-system” votes (eg Hornsey & Wood Green) and therefore about 40 won on “centrist” votes (eg Romsey).
Now the Tories are resurgent, they are looking down the barrel of a big wipeout in those Southern seats. So the numbers game points them down the path of tacking towards the right.
But Calamity Clegg is also a factor - really useless, clueless, not even delivering on the “seems like a nice boy” factor that got him the job. Huhne, who I reckon has substance, would have been a completely different kettle of fish - although he could have therefore been lacerated by the Murdoch papers.
Comment by Strategist — 26 November, 2009 @ 2:33 pm
#7
“traditionally Tory seats in the South & South west in the last 12 years”
To be more accurate, some of those traditional Tory seats in the West Country were probably (going back a few more years) traditional Liberal seats.
They can still safely expect to wn seats accross Cornwall, and maybe Devon, where they are definietly a Conservative party (perhaps the only parts of the country where you come across anti-EU Lib Dems)
Comment by Andy Newman — 26 November, 2009 @ 2:54 pm
As a LibDem, I will tell you what the point is, to the best of my ability. I am sure all those of you who are members among the alphabet soup of the split and fractured Left must be pretty jealous of a radical alternative actually making a different in the lives of people on both a local and national basis, but there you go…
We are the only credible alternative to the cosy blue/red consensus in British politics. We were the leading national voice against the illegal invasion of Iraq; yes, working with STWC and others in the fight against Blair’s attempts to invade Iraq hand-in-hand with Bush, but while Respect and others fell apart soon after through lack of anything else to campaign upon, the LibDems kept going.
On the economy, tax reform, the environment, and local democracy, there is only one credible alterative to the same-old old man consensus in Town Halls and parliaments across the nation. And we are that party. I am proud to be a Liberal Democrat as much today as I was when I joined 10 years ago; on the choices needed to turn the country around, on the internationaist co-operation we need on climate change, improving employment rights for the most vulnerable, the LibDems are far more clear and united than anyone on either the far-Left or Right.
I welcome any co-operation with Left/socialist campaigners. This year we have worked as hard as possible in the NW against the threat of the BNP and continue to do so. But with the LibDems in power from the very smallest parish council to the corridors of Brussels, the smaller (and often beset by infighting) far-left cannot provide a real alternative to voters or potential voters.
There is no greater sign of the navel-gazing and introspection of the far left than the fact, so clearly shown, of there being in existance no single credible party for voters to choose at a time when people are crying out for somebody other than Cameron or Brown. The cliché is to go on about “Judean Peoples Fronts”, and there’s a lot of truth in jest.
What’s the point of the LibDems? If you want a country that is different, vote for the Party that is different.
Comment by Passing Leftie — 26 November, 2009 @ 3:09 pm
Pssing Leftie
the Lib Dens are in power n town halls acroos the country, and we can see that they are no different.
It is a Lib Dem/Tory coalition in Leeds who hit upon the idea of reducing bin workers wages by £6000 (from around £18000) to meet single status; and the Lib Dems within that coalition the most enthusisastic proponents of the idea.
Comment by Andy Newman — 26 November, 2009 @ 3:18 pm
Passing Leftie - You forget to mention that the minute the first bomb dropped the Lib Dems lined up behind the war and haven’t said a word against it since.
Jim quite aptly rips apart Clegg for basically saying we are despertate for any sense of power so we won’t give our posistion now - if you were trully different why would you not set out your stall now?
They may be left of centre nationally ( just..) but here in Birmingham you really can’t tell them apart from the tories who they share power with. When you hear the head honchos from the Lib Dems speak I assume they are tories and I am always have a little shock when I see they are Lib Dems.
In my less political days I used to be a member of the Lib Dems, I then decided to educate myself on what was really going on in this country and the wider world and went through a period of critical assessment of my views I then asked myself the question “what are the Lib Dems all about?” - I could not answer it and hence left. I have so little respect for the Lib Dems I am actually a little embarassed at admitting I used to be a member.
I also have real problems with the lies that the Lib Dems put out on their leaflets.
Apolagies for this coming across as a bit of an attack but you may have guessed I am really not a fan of the Lib Dems.
Comment by ben — 26 November, 2009 @ 3:56 pm
“I also have real problems with the lies that the Lib Dems put out on their leaflets. “
This is indeed one of the problems.
Recent lies in Swindon Lib Dems leaflets.
Included a falsified quote from the local catholic priest saying he supported the candidate. this was a lie and an official complaint to the standards board led to an offiical reprimand of the Lib Dem leader.
Claimed that a local candidate “not only supports the Save Coate campiagn she is the leader of it”. {this was a local environmentalist campaign). She was in fact completely unknown to the cmapign and had no involvement with it. An offficial complaint was made, and an article appeared i local paper exposing Lib Dem lies, but standards board this time did not uphold complaint.
Claiming in leaflets that their coucillors were leading the opposition to building at Coate on the council, when council records show they had never attanded a single relevant committee meeting.
Pictures of local candiadte standing in front of landmarks in the ward with claims that they are a prominent community activist, when in fact they are a paper candidate who has never set foot in the place except fot the photo op.
And when I was in Bristol, I remember a leaflet with a white Lib Dem and an Asian labour candidate. the Lib Dem leaflet had pictures of both, with the headline - “vote for the LOCAL candidate”.
Comment by Andy Newman — 26 November, 2009 @ 4:16 pm
The LDs do better in seats when the Tories are weak than when Labour is. So they have done far better in seats since 1997 than they did in the 1980s, when the Lib-SDP Alliance actually had a higher level of support than the LDs now.
With a revived Tory party, the LDs could actually be looking at a massacre next year, esp. in the “centrist” seats.
I expect they will be opportunist as hell in an attempt to hang on, and might even try out a bit of racism in some seats.
Comment by Mark Victorystooge — 26 November, 2009 @ 4:42 pm
The LDs are the main rivals to the Tories in quite a few south west seats because they’ve garnered the working class vote rather than Labour. I suspect this is because even reformism largely fell on stony ground when it was powerful in other parts of the country that experienced collective struggles. Deference and passive acceptance of whatever the bosses decide is I’m afraid widespread even where there is poverty and all the other ills asosciated with the consequences of neoliberalism.
Comment by Doug — 26 November, 2009 @ 4:49 pm
Agree with Strategist that Huhne would have been much better than Clegg. They are both conservatives but Huhne is roughly equivalent to a one nation Tory whereas Clegg is a full on market fundamentalist.
Comment by attila — 26 November, 2009 @ 4:55 pm
That said passing leftie is right about one thing - where is the serious left party?
Comment by attila — 26 November, 2009 @ 4:58 pm
Well, it is not the LDs.
There was a famous cartoon of Asquith being torn apart, more or less, as he is gripped by one arm by “socialism” (Labour) and on the other by “rich radicalism” (Tories, or a strand of them at least), rushing off in different directions. This was later used to illustrate a book called “The Strange Death of Liberal England”, charting the fall of the old Liberal Party. The LDs have never escaped this legacy. They are leftish, mushy centrist, Tory or even Poujadist-fascistic, depending on what serves their interests - inevitably opportunist, because they have next to no firm electorate.
Comment by Mark Victorystooge — 26 November, 2009 @ 6:12 pm
I also have real problems with the lies that the Lib Dems put out on their leaflets.
My other half put this point to John Leech when he pitched up on the doorstep a while back, albeit without using the word ‘lies’.
She: …and I don’t like the Lib Dem campaign literature we’ve been getting.
He (truculently): Why? What’s wrong with it?
She: Well, it’s all so… negative.
He: No it isn’t!
He went on to explain that the other parties campaign negatively as well, and in fact they’re *more* negative than the Lib Dems, so there.
I haven’t voted Labour since 1992, but I’ve always had the luxury of being in a safe Labour seat (Tony Lloyd, who’s not the worst Labour MP). Thanks to the Boundary Commission I’m going to be in the seat Leech took from Keith Bradley next time out - an anti-Leech Labour vote is going to be very tempting.
Comment by Phil — 26 November, 2009 @ 7:42 pm
Good to get a politico on the doorstep once in a while. But you’ve a way to go to beat my friend who said to Gerry “No thanks, we’re republicans”.
Comment by Splintered Sunrise — 26 November, 2009 @ 10:05 pm
Andy - how about adding Jim’s blog to your blogroll? It is an excellent blog full of interesting and thought provoking articles like this one.
Comment by Steve — 26 November, 2009 @ 10:07 pm
#18 Keith Bradley was the last Labour MP I voted for- I also campaigned for him and was a delegate to Withington GMC. The euphoria at him winning the seat from the Tories in 1987 contrasted with the satisfaction at him losing it to the Lib Dems on what was to some extent an anti-war protest vote kind of summed up my feelings about the degeneration of Labour under Blair.
I remember sitting in the pub the night Bradley lost his seat with three people with broadly similar politics to mine- one voted with gritted teeth for Bradley, one for the Greens and one Lib Dem. All three were adamant they made the right decision.
Comment by Armchair — 26 November, 2009 @ 10:22 pm
Incidently
talking of lies, look at the two graphs, both genuinely taken from Lib Dem leaflets.
The scale of the columns is clearly completely falsified to make it look like the Lib Dems are closer to the winners vote than they really are.
Comment by Andy Newman — 26 November, 2009 @ 11:41 pm
#21 The handful of successful defeats of pro-war New Labour MPs and candidates by LibDems were among the highlights of the 2005 election - thinking of Tariq Ali announcing “I’m voting LibDem” and Barbara Roche duly falling in Hornsey & Wood Green. Or the LibDems holding Ken Livingstone’s old seat of Brent East against a New Labour candidate who claimed privately to be against the war, but didn’t wish to say so.
I don’t foresee any such excitement from the LibDems in the 2010 election.
Comment by Strategist — 26 November, 2009 @ 11:47 pm
The Lib Dems in Cardiff have acted just like New Labour and the Tories. Cuts, privatisation, tearing up parkland, selling out the city to corporate interests…
Also, the Lib Dems are knowingly circulating a lie. In the big “10 reasons to vote Lib Dem” list the Lib Dems’ bloggers keep parroting, they say: “2. We are the only party to oppose tuition fees”.
That’s a lying lie you lying liars. I mean, hell, even if you don’t count us dirty commies, what about the Greens?
Comment by ERS — 27 November, 2009 @ 2:14 am
The article is long on very general points, and short on the very specific nature of the Liberals, in whatever guise: they have a consistent strategy to get elected. To this end they will try to appeal to anyone, they are the true ‘people’s’ party (even more than the non-class Greens). The means in local elections is usually pavement politics - in by-elections they have a massive professional machine that turns out and trawls in all directions (I know, at one point is was at the end of my road). It is, for electoral politics, an awsome sight.
Jim seems not to have much direct experience of mass politics, because if he had, one thing he would write about is the way the Liberals always put out leaflets just before elections of a highly misleading nature. Claiming, usually, that they are just about to win (so that a vote for, say Labour, is wasted if you want to ‘beat the Tories’), or simple lies (totting up surveys - doorstep - that say they are poised to make a breakthrough in local politics when they are not). Or raising a ‘campaign’ on something they alone claim to care about (say a new supermarket).
They have a very solid anchor: getting their candidates in.
One of the reasons for their present problems is that the Tories have overhauled their own machinery and are now using the same tactics. Welcome to John Gummer’s son, Ben, who’s standing in Ipswich.
Many of Jim’s articles in the Morning Star are good. They’re an enouraging sign about the way the Star is going. I would recommend reading them (nothing on HOPI though eh Jim?). But this is not the only one to lack specificity, the recent one on Welfare reform was even more general.
For a serious article on Welfare Reform published in this month’s Labour Briefing:
http://tendancecoatesy.wordpress.com/2009/11/27/work-for-benefit-labours-new-helots/
Comment by Andrew Coates — 27 November, 2009 @ 9:58 am
Traditionally, they were screwed by first past the post, one reason for being enthusiastic about electoral reform. But in the absence of it, they have also tried to build a base in local government to start with, through “pavement politics”. In some cases this meant that eventually, parliamentary seats became winnable, though there are apparently quite a few people who will vote Liberal/Lib-Dem in a local election but not a national one.
Other parties have copied their techniques, including the BNP.
Comment by Mark Victorystooge — 27 November, 2009 @ 12:58 pm