Lib Dems – Page 13 – thinking liberal

What is the core Liberal Democrat identity?

One thing that most people who take an interest in the Liberal Democrats agree on is that the party needs to develop a clearer identity and, to use the popular marketing speak, a clear “brand”. This has characterised much of the coverage of the conference, such as this from the Economist, showing not a particularly good understanding of the party, and this from Michael Meadowcroft, who has an excellent understanding, but does less well in explaining what the party actually needs to do. Unfortunately these articles are all too characteristic of the debate. On the one side outsiders, including recently recruited party staffers, who simply assume the whole thing is about deciding on a politically convenient position and then moving the party to it, and on the other by insiders who fail to articulate exactly what they mean by the clear liberal (or Liberal) principles they want the party to espouse. Let me try to pick a way through.

First: does the party really need to worry about this? Just because all the pundits agree doesn’t make it true. The answer is yes. There are two problems with the party’s current standing, or lack of it. The first is that it struggles with a “core vote” strategy. This is particularly important for elections fought under proportional representation. The ones we fought in London earlier this year were a disaster; party campaigning was directed to floating voters who had long since floated away, and bringing out the vote people who supported the party in other elections for largely tactical or local reasons, and who large did not vote for it on this mandate. Contrast this with Greens, who for much less money and effort got out a similar vote based purely on setting out who they were and what they stood for. This matters because a disaster beckons for the party in the 2014 Euro elections, fought under PR, unless this changes.

The second reason is that there is the perpetual danger of policy confusion. This has been clearly on display in the debate on NHS policy. Do we want to follow the Liberal idea of a service with strong accountability to local communities, but flexibility on who actually delivers it? Or do we want a Social Democratic service which is pretty much the same throughout the country, provided by a single organisation? With the help of Lib Dem ministers, the government started off with something that looked a bit like the former, only for activists to reject it for the latter. This confusion matters when you are an aspiring party of government rather than one simply of protest and opposition, and a party of government is what the party aspires to be.

But a word of warning: you can overdo the clear identity. Successful political parties are coalitions, combining both a sense of common identity and a high spectrum of disagreement. The Conservatives, for example, identify with the rich and those who aspire to be rich: but this brings together social conservatives with those who just want to cut taxes.

It is instructive to consider the two attempts to rebrand political parties that have shaped British politics in the last couple of decades. The first was Tony Blair’s New Labour project, and the second David Cameron’s attempt to de-toxify the Conservative brand. Both involved challenging some deeply held beliefs, and have left a deep sense of betrayal in their parties. In Mr Blair’s case the effort has not been unsuccessful. The party won three elections and even in opposition is cohering much better that the Conservatives have in a similar position. I think that is for two reasons, one intended by Mr Blair, and the other not. The intentional part was the illiberal, strong government aspect, clamping down on civil liberties. This has played well with the working class communities that are the core of the party’s identity – and has also helped forge bonds with paternalistic ethnic minority communities. When Mr Blair assiduously wooed liberals in the 1990s, he never really meant it. The unintentional part of Labour’s rebranding is its identification with public sector workers, expanding their numbers and protecting their interests. A modern economy requires a large state, and appealing to these workers is a powerful political strategy – but one that Mr Blair tried to resist, unlike his successors Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband.

The Conservative rebranding, five years or so on, looks a lot less happy. What quickens the pulse of most young Tory activists seems to be an entirely different agenda from Mr Cameron’s, reminiscent of US Republicans: lower taxes, smaller state, escape from the EU, climate change scepticism and an outmoded idea of “competitiveness”. While some of this chimes with public sentiments at large, as a package it it is not a winner. Combine that with an electoral system that is tilted against them, and the project is likely to be a failure. The Coalition with the Lib Dems, as Mr Cameron clearly saw, was an opportunity to consolidate this rebranding, but the price stuck in the throat of his party and he was unable to follow through. The lesson there is don’t try to take a party to a place that it will not stay.

So what of the Lib Dems? Firstly the party needs a core identity which is able to withstand a large diversity of views. This is both easy, and tricky. The easy bit is that the party stands for openness, freedom for individuals to choose the life they want, all underpinned by a sense of social responsibility and compassion. All Lib Dems, pretty much, will identify with this, and they will think that the other parties do not. The first difficulty is that this identity is an anti-identity: an identity that rejects, or downplays, the usual identities of class, nationality and race. That is a difficult trick to pull off. The second difficulty is that each of the other main parties (and the Greens for that matter) will think that such nice and inoffensive people can be appropriated into their own coalitions with a few warm words. And indeed, many people with these values work for these other parties. It is not quite enough.

But it has two important advantages. First is that it is a natural second choice: not the most liked position, but not the most hated either. Second is that the forces of history are with it. The old identities of social class, nationality and the rest are gradually being eroded – and to the extent that the other parties lean on them, it makes them unattractive.

This is enough for one post. What will count is not this sort of abstract speculation, but the practical steps that follow from them to create a successful political movement. That, I will return to.

The Liberal Democrat conference: life outside the bubble

The “Westminster bubble” is a useful expression. It refers to an ecosystem of politicians, journalists, think tankers and numerous hangers on based Westminster who have there own version of reality. The Liberal Democrat conference in Brighton, which ended yesterday was firmly outside that bubble. Lib Dem conferences tend to inhabit their own bubble, of course. But after two years of appalling local election results, the complacency that characterises that bubble world was largely absent. Liberal Democrats are coming to terms pragmatically with a very uncomfortable reality.

Westminster bubble types expected the party to be obsessed, as they are, with the leadership, and mobilising to ditch Nick Clegg, whose personal ratings with the public at large are miserable. But that was not so; the party maintained admirable cohesion on the matter. It’s not that members don’t think that Mr Clegg’s standing is problem, but they recognise that there are no easy solutions and that public agitation would be unhelpful. The whole issue has in effect been outsourced to the parliamentary party, who were making no attempt to stir things up.

For me that party’s mood is best caught by three debates. On Tuesday on local pay in the public sector and the Justice and Security Bill, and yesterday on housing. On local pay (sometimes wrongly referred to as regional pay, which would be a non-starter as we do not have recognisable regional economies) the party resisted attempts by the Chancellor, George Osborne, to abolish national pay agreements and let local bodies, including hospitals, schools and local governments, to set their own pay rates. The interesting thing about this is that localism, delegating responsibility to local authority level, at least, is supposed to be a key part of the party’s ideology. But the party’s politicians and activists are acutely aware of the fear felt by many in their communities that this would simply mean lower pay, which would not be compensated for by a private sector revival. Local pay does not have to mean lower pay, and often doesn’t – but it is an understandable fear, since, after all, that is why Mr Osborne supports it. For me though, principle trumped pragmatism and I was one of a small number of people who voted for the motion. I hold the deeply unfashionable view that the purpose of national pay agreements is for the Treasury to hold public sector pay down, not keep it at artificially high levels, and that unions only go along with it because it gives their national leaders a raison d’etre. And as for national pay being simpler, any idea of that has been shaken by the encyclopedic size and complexity of the national agreement on teachers’ pay that occasionally lands on my desk. Still, the party’s mood was a reflection of the feelings in their communities, and not the theoretical arguments so characteristic of the Westminster bubble. The concluding speech by John Pugh, Southport’s MP, was a ruthless and effective hatchet job, in which people like me were characterised as having a fetish for markets against all evidence and reason. I am trying to work out how to get revenge.

Funnily enough, though, on the Justice and Security Bill it was the pragmatists that were drowned out. At issue was the possibility of allowing secret evidence in cases of national security, where, for example, intelligence sources might be compromised. No matter the impressive unity of parliamentarians to support this idea, the party emphatically rejected this attack on natural justice. There were a number of stirring speeches including many from people like London’s MEP Sarah Ludford, who are usually rather disappointing public speakers. On an issue that is not widely talked about on doorsteps, the party allowed itself the luxury of the moral high ground.

And then there was housing. There is a clear feeling in the party that housing should be a top priority. More homes should be built; developers resisting the supply of affordable homes, while sitting on “land banks” of property with planning permission, should be faced up to; private sector lettings should be regulated more strongly. Once again the debate was characterised stories from the front line; this was one topic in which the principled and pragmatic converged – but the voice of local communities came through the loudest. Simon Hughes, deputy leader of the parliamentary party, another speaker who usually disappoints, delivered a barnstormer in favour of the motion.

The strongest set-piece speech that I saw came from Sharon Bowles, an MEP who delivered a powerful attack on critics of the EU and business leaders who were keeping quiet instead of speaking out. She got a standing ovation. So did new minister Jo Swinson, though her speech was nothing very special – it was the person they were applauding (mind you she delivered an excellent speech in the conference rally on Saturday night).

I missed Mr Clegg’s speech – though I’m not really a fan of the leader’s speech since Paddy Ashdown. From reports it sounded as if he struck more or less the right tone. I don’t think his attempt to portray the party as a natural one of government was all that wise. There is a tendency for Westminster bubble types to assume that things will carry on as they are – but it is most unlikely that the Lib Dems will be in government after the next general election. It all gives the impression that he enjoys being in government too much. Still, he is right that government is what the party should aspire to, rather than being a constant party of protest. And if the party can survive the next few years, then a return to government is very much on the cards.

The Lib Dems struggle with education policy

Saturday was education day at the Lib Dem conference. Education is dear to the hearts of most Lib Dems, but the party struggles to come up with a clear party line beyond the important policy of Pupil Premium, where state funding of schools is uplifted for those with poorer pupils. This drift was on show yesterday.

There were two motions, one on early years and the other on schools. Both came over as worthy but wishy washy wish lists, with a rather nanny state tendency on show. The most contentious point on the early years motion was support for increasing professionalisation of nursery and childminding provision. This all feels a bit New Labour and not particularly liberal. The idea that this might be a source of jobs for non graduates doesn’t seem to have taken hold, which is a pity. It would be nice to think that more jobs would be available to single mothers who have had a disadvantaged start in life. But the focus seems be on pushing graduates into those roles.

There was more contention around the schools motion. There is a body of activists who are upset by the way the party has been handling education policy in government, with very little consultation of the party at large, and seemingly tagging along to a Tory agenda. This boiled over a bit with the recently proposed reform to the GCSE exams, which was presented to the world as the result of negotiations between the Lib Dems and Conservatives. But work done by activists on the subject was ignored. The motion was not about this issue, but there was an attempt to spatula it in, rejected by the Conference Committee, which caused tempers to fray.

The motion itself was the usual worthy fare. An amendment on governance was passed which sought to ensure that no interest group had a majority on state school boards…something which would be an issue for faith schools and sponsored academies. It also had some nanny state stuff about training governors. Interestingly the conference also passed an amendment rejecting the proposal to abolish mandatory external tests at the end of children’s primary school careers – SATS. This clearly took the motion’s movers quite by surprise, and showed that the conference was taking bit of trouble over the policies it was passing. I supported this amendment, as a school governor I find these tests invaluable as a means of holding the school to account.

But it would be nice if the party could develop something more radical and interesting, to contrast with the emerging Tory/Labour consensus. This will require some strong leadership. David Laws, the new education minister, is the man who should provide it. But though he is widely respected, he does not seem to be good with the gruelling process of consultation and bringing the activists on side. We shall see.

What do they really mean? Conference euphemisms

I love the Lib Dem conference, which starts next Saturday in Brighton. But sometimes I tire of the antics of those getting up to make speeches in the conference hall. There are several sources of my irritation. One is speakers who take part only to talk about some hobbyhorse issue, taking no other interest in the issue at hand. Another is speakers who seem to genuinely think they are radical, challenging politicians, but who in fact oppose anything controversial. And then there are the self-congratulatory, who simply can’t see how the party and its deliberations look from the outside.

So to get these irritations out of my ststem, I have produced the following table of pet hates from the conference floor:

The curious case of Heathrow’s third runway

Why did senior Tory MP Tim Yeo make such a conspicuous bid to support Heathrow’s third runway? The idea is ruled out in the Coalition Agreement, and it is politically impossible for the government to take forward. Such a bid can only weaken the government and David Cameron, the Tory Prime Minister. Rather than indulge in conspiracy theories, I prefer to think it is because most MPs, who are elected in safe seats, and the business lobby advisers, don’t understand how elections are won and lost.

Mr Yeo made his bid in an article in the Telegragh. After going through the familar arguments put forward by lobbyists, he appealled to Mr Cameron to change the government’s stance, by asking himself “whether he is a man or a mouse”. The change could be a turning point for the government, he said, giving it a sense of mission amidst a lacklustre economy.

Heathrow’s operator, BAA, and principal user, British Airways, have been campaigning for Heathrrow’s expansion for many years, trench by trench. It seemed that they had lost this latest bid when the Coalition was formed in 2010. But they didn’t give up, and have kept their lobby efforts going. The results are quite impressive. Grudgingly, general public opinion seems to be coming their way, amid a deluge of supportive newspaper stories. It has become a totem issue for the political right, desperate for ideas that will both expand the economy and keep public expenditure down. Mr Yeo is one of a series of Tory MPs that have publically come out in favour.

But scepticism runs very deep here in west and southwest London, where we endure continuous intrusion from air traffic. Each victory won by BAA (to date mainly over new terminal buildings) has been bitterly contested. We have seen the smooth reassurances offered in one bid quietly buried in the next. There is no trust left in BAA and BA. And amid the swathe of hotly contested marginal constituencies in the airport’s shadow, the importance of the issue has only risen. This is what forced the Conservatives to oppose the new runway before the 2010 election. The area is also a stronghold for the Liberal Democrats, who have picked up on local opposition to Heathrow expansion from the start.

It is this last that is the political key for the government. Liberal Democrats are a beleaguered species since they joined the Coalition. Hopes that being in government would add to the party’s credibility are fading fast, as local election results show a grim picture. A very difficult election is coming up. Here the party’s objectives will be to hang on to what they have as best they can. Those local lection results show that the party can still benefit from an incumbency effect. South west London is one of the key battlegrounds, with four Lib Dem seats to defend, and a fifth Tory seat, Richmond Park, a marginal that the Lib Dems could win back. The party simply cannot afford to support Heathrow expansion. What’s more, the evident Tory backsliding on the issue is one of the very few shafts of light for Lib Dem campaigners locally. If the Tories drop their opposition to it in their next manifesto they will be bring out the champagne in Lib Dem HQ.

Which makes the fact that Mr Yeo and others are upping the ante very curious. This is an existential issue for the Lib Dems, so they will veto any change of government policy – never mind that the Tory Transport Secretary Justine Greening also has a seat under the Heathrow flightpath and has campaigned vigorously locally against expansion. Politics is supposed to be about the art of the possible.

What might the explanation be? One popular theory is that it is about Mr Cameron’s leadership of the Tory party. The Tory right are fed up with him, and would like him to be replaced. But to do it like this is surely suicidal – we only have to see what happened to John Major, the last Tory Prime Minister, who also had to deal with backbench discontent. The result was 13 years of uninterrupted Labour rule.

It may simply be a long term plan to ensure that Heathrow expansion goes ahead. This is surely what BAA and their advisers have in mind. If they can get the Tory party to change its mind at the top, and the Tories win the election without a few of those London seats, then bingo! They had already persuaded the last Labour government to press ahead. But this is a herding cats strategy. If they persuade the Tories to change their mind, the chances are that Labour will come out against, so that they can win back a few of those marginals in south and west London. The result of the that election could be very tight, so you don’t just wish away a few seats here and there for the sake of a project like this.

Personally I think it is naivity. Some on the Tory benches have spotted that if the Conservative backbenchers are behind a government policy, and you add in the Lib Dem payroll vote, who are bound to support any Coalition compromise, then it is enough for legislation to pass, even if all the Lib Dem backbenchers rebel. So all you have to do is ram a policy past the top Coalition policy process, and you’ve won. This strategy worked for George Osborne when he wanted to reduce the top rate of income tax – which he did in this year’s Budget in exchange for a series of policy concessions, now long since forgotten. He had similarly been told this was politically impossible. This is reinforced by the belief that the Lib Dems will not bring the show down because they are afraid of an election.

But that ended badly. Mr Osborne’s Budget, including reducing the top rate of tax, is now seen as a politcal distaster. It did nothing to boost investment and growth, as the Tory rhetoric and “Business” claimed it would. And as the next election looms Lib Dems are increasingly focusing on how to hold onto their parliamentary seats. It’s one reason why they jumped at the chance that Tory backsliding on Lords reform gave them to ditch the new constituency boundaries – which they had come to realise would make things very difficult for them. Heathrow is a similar existential issue, worth leaving the government for. No less than two Lib Dem cabinet members have seats near the airport.

But Mr Yeo, like most Tory and Labour MPs, represents a safe seat. He seems to have little comprehension on how elections in marginal seats work. The same seems to be true of BAA and their advisers, who probably like to look at national opinion polls and the big picture. Surprisingly few of the community of advisers, lobbyists and polical professionals that inhabit Westminster have a good understanding of the graft needed to win real elections; even less have any comprehension of how Lib Dem MPs win and hold their seats. So they make silly mistakes like this.

And what of the the case for expanding Heathrow? This deserves a blog in its own right. The case is stronger that my instinctive distrust of BAA, BA and anything calling itself a “business case”, or any group purporting to represent “Business”, would normally allow. But that is irrelevant in the rough and tumble of winning marginal votes.

Lords reform: the real loser is David Cameron’s project

Today Nick Clegg, Deputy Prime Minister and leader of the Liberal Democrats, announced that Britain’s Coalition government would end its attempt to make the country’s upper house, The House of Lords, mostly elected. It is a bitter blow for Lib Dems, but not unexpected. What does this say about the state of British politics?

The problem was that the plans did not command sufficient support on the Conservative benches. There were 90 or so rebels at an earlier vote, and this is enough to kill the bill if Labour oppose it. Labour had supported the reforms in principle, but said that, as a constitutional measure, it needed more time for debate in the Commons, so opposed the critical timetable motion. This argument is entirely specious. Debate on the floor of the Commons is an exercise in farce; it has to be time-limited or else it degenerates into filibuster. The cynicism of Labour’s position is made plain by the fact that they would not be drawn on the amount of time they thought the bill actually needed. But there was in any case a more substantive argument from the Labour side: in their manifesto they had said that reform should be made subject to a referendum, which the government side did not want to do. We can argue about the logic of Labour’s position on the referendum, but a manifesto is a manifesto.

So Mr Clegg was quite right to abandon his attempt at reform. There was very little credit in the wider world to be had for a fight to the death on this issue. While the public is broadly sympathetic to the idea, they don’t care very much about it. Mos readily agree to the trump card argument of British constitutional conservatives: that there are more important things to be doing.

Just about the only way of getting the reform through would have been to accept a referendum. Although the current polls are favourable, it would be a difficult referendum to win – a bit like Australia becoming a republic. Australians favour a republic in principle, but the never the particular structure of republic that is on offer. It was easy to pick holes in the specifics of the proposals – but that would be true of any proposal born of attempts to create consensus. The risk/reward ratio just didn’t stack.

Lib Dems are very bitter, since they see this as a breach of faith, as Andrew Rawnsley has explained in the Observer. They have knuckled down to vote for a number of proposals that they really hated, such as tuition fees for universities (though to be fair some high-up Lib Dems secretly liked the idea), and elected police commissioners, as well as immigration limits. Of course Tories have voted for Lib Dem policies too, but these are mostly quite popular in the country at large, such as raising tax thresholds. Although the Tories let them have a referendum on AV, their campaign to oppose this modest and sensible reform was so vitriolic and irrational as to come over as a breach of faith, especially when they attacked Mr Clegg personally on the basis that you couldn’t trust him because he entered into coalition with them!

But the public indifference left Mr Clegg with a problem. Why bring the government down over this, and not tuition fees, or many other things which are currently unpopular with the public at large? So the breach is not enough to end the Coalition. Instead Mr Clegg has decided to withdraw the party’s support to boundary changes to Westminster constituencies. This reform would equalise their size, to the benefit, so the conventional wisdom goes, of the Tories.

Here it is Mr Clegg’s turn to be politically calculating. I have heard his supporters make the argument that since there will be no elected upper chamber, we need to retain a bigger Commons – an argument that I struggle to understand. To be fair Mr Clegg does not use this argument in his email to members – where it comes over as a more straightforward tit-for-tat. The Tory sophists argue that the Coalition agreement did not actually say that they would vote for the Lords reforms – just to bring forward proposals. But the same can be said of the boundary changes.

And as things have turned out, the boundary changes are a real problem for the Lib Dems. In ordinary times they would have been much more relaxed, as they have shown an ability to move out of their strongholds in held seats to win over adjacent areas. The London MP Sarah Teather won her seat in 2010 in spite of major changes to the boundaries. But the Lib Dem activist base has suffered with the coalition, and the campaigning environment is much tougher. They have shown an ability to hold on where the party and its candidates are locally well know, but not elsewhere. There are no reserves with which to flood new areas. The boundary changes are a major headache. Neither are the changes partilcualry popular amongst the general public, whatever the intellectual case. To get equally sized seats they have run roughshod over traditional local sensibilities. In Wales the impact is particularly severe. Even may Tory MPs will be relieved if the reforms died a death.

But it will create an awkward moment in 2013 when the vote is due to take place, unless the proposal is abandoned. To defeat the changes Lib Dem government ministers would have to vote against or abstain – this would be new territory for the government and could easily bring it down.

So who gains from this sorry saga? The first winners are Labour, where their cynical manoeuvring have bought rich rewards. First they have made the Coalition look weak and incompetent. But best of all they should now be able to defeat the boundary changes, which they hate. Ed Milliband’s leadership can chalk up another success after his inauspicious start.

The second winners are the grumpy Tory backbenchers. They genuinely hated the Lords reform, and will be glad to kill it. They are also pretty relaxed about idea of the coalition failing. And as individuals the defeat of the boundary changes makes their lives easier.

For the Lib Dems the outcome is mixed. It’s a policy failure but it is very clear who is to blame: the Tory backbenchers and the scheming Labour politicians – unlike the AV referendum. This fiasco is out of the way a long time before the next election is due – and defeating the boundary changes will give their campaigners the best possible chance of hanging on to the 40-50 seats needed for the party to survive as a political force.

The big loser is the Tory leader and Prime Minister David Cameron, and his project of turning his party into a credible one of government. For all the soft soap he puts into the Party’s manifesto, it is clear that he can’t carry his party with him. He took on his backbenchers and came out second. His party can unite around a right-wing Eurosceptic platform, but winning a General Election, especially on the old boundaries, looks impossible. A centrist Tory manifesto will not be credible. His plan to use the coalition with the Lib Dems to de-toxifiy the Tory brand has come completely unstuck.

And the country remains stuck with an antiquated system of government that increasingly loses the respect of both the public and the world at large. The public is paying a big price for its indifference.

The Tories are living up to their “Stupid Party” label.

As I posted yesterday, the recent local elections were bad for the Liberal Democrats, the party for whom I am an activist. But if there’s any cheer to be had, it comes from looking at the behaviour of the other parties.

Labour have reason to be cheerful, but the results contain a trap. Their party has lurched to the left, going back on Tony Blair’s legacy. They want more spending, and more taxes to pay for them. This is a good line for motivating activists, many incandescent over the Coalition’s cuts, which they consider to be unnecessary and ideologically motivated. This is great for getting the turnout up in local elections. But it’s not enough for them to win in 2015 – and the weakness was evident in their failure to capture the mayoralty in an essentially Labour London. Liberal Democrats must hope that they keep reading their Polly Toynbee and let their anger trump their strategic sense.

But what is even more remarkable is the response of the Tories, to judge from the weekend’s press and backbenchers popping up on the radio. It echoes my advice yesterday to the Lib Dems in London yesterday – to shore up their core vote. They think the party will fail because it isn’t right wing enough, and that they should go back to being “the Nasty Party” to fit the nation’s sour mood. This is sheer panic, and befits the party’s other nickname: “the Stupid Party”.

They do have a problem, and one that I predicted over a year ago before the referendum on the Alternative Vote. There is a resurgent UK Independence Party (UKIP) chipping away at their core vote, while the Lib Dems find it easier to convince soft Tories to vote for them than soft Labour voters – and so they are going after them. That is why they should have supported a Yes vote in the referendum last year – or at least not fought too hard for a No vote. The more they go after the UKIP vote, the easier the Lib Dems wll find it to pick their centrist supporters off; the more they shore up the centre, the easier it is for UKIP to continue their progress.

But the correct answer to this problem is “don’t panic”. They should endure a few difficulties in local council elections and the Euro elections in 2014 – because the real prize they are aiming for is outright victory in the General Election in 2015. In this election they should have no difficulty in crushing UKIP, by painting the real enemy as Labour and the Lib Dems. They will then use Labour’s lurch to the left to scare Lib Dem inclined voters into supporting them too, while reassuring them that they are quite nice and liberal really. It’s the latter task that is by far the trickiest, so they shouldn’t jeopardise it by lurching to the right.

David Cameron knows this perfectly well, and his continued leadership represents the party’s best chance of outright victory in 2015. But if the right openly rebels, the party will both make itself look divided, and retoxify the Tory brand. The rebels should shut up and wait for 2015 – much as the Labour left did before 1997, and indeed 2001, before that party lurched to the left with its big spending expansion of government in the 2000s.

Labour lurching to the left. The Tories to the right. This makes life a lot easier for us beleaguered Lib Dems. Please let it continue.

London elections – the Libs Dems need to rally the base

After the Lib Dems shocked the world by going into coalition with the Conservatives in 2010, plenty of commentators threatened the party with oblivion. At first glance this week’s results in the local and London elections show this prediction to be comfortably on course. In fact the Lib Dem vote held up well in the party’s strongholds (including in their vilified leader Nick Clegg’s Sheffield constituency), so extinction is not beckoning. Some very challenging questions are being posed for the party’s leaders and campaigners, though, especially here in London.

The London results look particularly bad. Brian Paddick, the mayoral candidate, managed a deposit-losing 4%, and was behind Jenny Jones of the Green party, and only just beat the independent Siobhan Benita, advocating a new runway for Heathrow. In the Assembly the party mustered a mere 6.8%, leaving it with just two Assembly seats: the peerless Caroline Pidgeon and newcomer Stephen Knight. These results represent a big fall in the results achieved in 2008, which was already a very bad year for the party.

But it gets worse. This time the party had the best funded and best organised campaign it had ever put up across the capital. The results acheived did not match the Greens, who who were barely funded and organised at all, having a much smaller base of activists and donors to draw from. It wasn’t that the Greens did particularly well – the Lib Dems did very badly. A repeat performance would mean that the party will lose its London MEP at the Euro elections in 2014.

The London elections are an awkward challenge for the party. It’s entire campaigning wisdom is based on going after floating voters to win first past the post elections. This already makes the party vulnerable in proportional representation systems, such as that used for the Assembly. And yet the attention of the electorate is drawn to the parallel mayoral race (rightly, in view of the office’s powers), which is (near enough) first past the post. This draws the party in a floating voter campaign for Mayor, that fails either to attract floating voters (because the party is not amongst the front runners) or to rally the core vote, the “base” in political jargon. The party gave a lot of prominence to tough-sounding slogans like “you break, you fix” to reassure the floaters about the party’s stance on crime, but this left more liberal voters (like me) cold. The party’s literature consisted of a lot of tabloid newspapers which neither worked as sources of local news to draw people in, nor to rally wavering loyalists.

And the base seems to be disappearing. Surely metropolitan London is the most liberal part of the country? And yet the overall results must be amongst the worst in the country.

So the lesson for the party must be to spend more time rallying the base. It needs to be spell out what the party stands for, liberal values above all, and less defensively justifying the coalition, and not trying to appeal floating voters in areas where the party isn’t strong anyway. The requires a completely new mindset from the party’s campaigners. Even when they promise to do this (I remember last time’s Euros particularly well), they tend to get the same old rubbishy tabloids, positioned messages, and so so on. The next Euros will be an important test. I’m not holding my breath.

That applies especially to London. The party still needs to hang on to its MPs and councils, which takes relentless floating voter persuasion – but the party surely can’t afford to disappear into nothingness outside its bastions. The party needs activists, donors and the moral authority that come with a genuine nationwide base.

The Coalition – there’s a narrative, but the right doesn’t like it. Time for Lib Dems to make the case.

Since the budget in March, the British Conservative-Lib Dem Coalition government has been having a rough ride in the media. This is showing up in its poll ratings, with Labour romping ahead. Mostly this is Westminster bubble nonsense, but Liberal Democrats, in particular, need to ponder what is happening – and do more to lift the government’s PR performance.

The list of issues that the government is said to have handled badly grows. It started with taxing pensioners, takeaway food, and charitable donations, which arose from the Budget. This week the issues have been queues at Immigration at airports, poor GDP figures for the British economy, and revelations that the Culture Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, was a bit to close to Rupert Murdoch’s News International media group.

Mostly these are either non-stories stoked up by the opposition, or quite sensible policy decisions that are attracting opposition from vested interests. The Jeremy Hunt problem is the only one that looks a bit more serious, but it is part of a much more complex story that sits rather outside the government’s main purpose. The GDP figures do relate to an important issue, the economy, but were of little significance in their own right, and told us nothing that was actually new.

So why can’t the Government get on the front foot and just swat this stuff away? There is some nostalgia for “big hitter” government spokesmen that previous governments have been able to trot out to do just that: Labour’s John Reid, or the Conservatives’ Ken Clarke (in another era – he’s older and off-message now). There was a rather interesting discussion on BBC Radio 4 yesterday morning on this, featuring Mr Reid and Norman Tebbit, who has also performed such a role. These spokesmen blamed the government’s lack of narrative. Lord Tebbit scoffed at Lords Reform and gay marriage as ideas too small to make a compelling story. Both added that the fact that the government is a coalition made this very difficult. These creatures of the old politics would say that of course, but it’s worth trying to tackle the argument rather than the man on this one.

First there’s the rather complacent point that all governments suffer from mid-term blues, and can get bogged with apparently trivial news issues at round about this time. It’s not clear that the big hitters helped much this. Things get better in the natural cycle.

Secondly the lack of a clear narrative is hardly new either. Mrs Thatcher was clear enough – though that did not stop very poor mid-term poll ratings. And as for John Major, Tony Blair, and Gordon Brown – none of these governments had a clear mission, beyond being competent managers. Mr Major was lampooned for his “cones hotline” as being his biggest idea – beside which gay marriage and House of Lords are clearly a big deal. But Mr Blair’s main thrust in the 1990s boiled down to “the same, only different”. He was elected in 1997 with a huge majority and little mandate beyond introducing devolution in Scotland and Wales, ideas that were evidently forced on him from outside. Mr Brown’s lack of clear narrative is the stuff of legend. This is what modern managerial politics has become.

But actually there IS a perfectly good narrative, if only you look for it. First is the economy: Labour left a horrible mess, which went beyond trashed government finances to a highly unbalanced economy. The Labour economy was built on massively unsustainable levels of government expenditure, both for services and benefits. Painful though this is, they have to be cut back, and there’s never a good time to do that. But it wasn’t just the government being too big, there were too many of the wrong sorts of services, and not enough things we can export. All this means that you can’t just stimulate the economy back to growth – because as soon as the stimulus ends the economy sinks back to where it was before, with even more debt. This is a long haul – let’s be thankful that unemployment is at lower levels than in earlier recessions. What is really needed to get us moving is more investment by business – but that’s difficult in the current world climate. Now just what is it in the message “this is a long haul” that do you not understand when carping about 0.2% in GDP figures that are going to be revised in a month or so’s time?

But the narrative has to go further – Lord Tebbit conceded that there was a reasonably clear narrative on the economy. And this is the Big Society/Localism/Community Politics agenda. We need to make central government smaller so that people can be empowered locally to change things to the way they want them. That means reforming the whole shape of government – including the NHS. We’ve been so addicted to the old centralist ways that it is bound to take time for these things to work themselves out and there will a lot of protest on the way. And finally we need to clean up politics. This involves tightening up the electoral system (equal constituencies) and reducing the number of MPs. It means tackling that out of control and ineffective patronage factory called the House of Lords. Of course people are squealing. There are no omelettes without broken eggs.

I could go on to bring in Europe (not the time for radical changes in the UK relationship with the economy so delicate), and immigration (this is something most of the electorate agreed on at the last election and the Lib Dems promised to grit their teeth). This narrative is surely no worse that Tony Blair’s government that got re-elected twice.

The first problem is that the government is not clearly articulating this narrative. They are doing quite well on the economy, though could do better. But not the bigger picture. The problem is lack of narrative itself, it is that the Tory right, and their friends in the press, don’t like it.

Of course there are tensions in the government – between parties and within them. But that’s not new. Mrs Thatcher had her “wets” on the Tory left. Mr Blair had both the Labour left, who felt utterly betrayed, and the brooding presence of Mr Brown to deal with.

There’s no excuse for the government not to be trying harder to present a more coherent case for what it is doing. The Prime Minister David cameron should be leading from the front here, but seems strangely absent. But I think the Liberal Democrats should be doing more too.

For the Lib Dems the position is rather intriguing. The party took a huge hit in the Coalition’s first year, while the Tory standing increased, if anything. Now it is the Tories that are taking the main pounding. But there is little comfort for the Lib Dems here. They may not be heading for the opt-predicted wipe-out. But for them to advance beyond their current reduced poll ratings, the Government as a whole has to be seen to do better. And if the party fails to advance from its current standing, it will not play a major part in the next government, even if there is a hung parliament. The first lesson for the Lib Dems from the Coalition was to show differentiation. Now they must understand that it has limits.

Earthquake in Bradford. Not many dead.

“The most sensational by election victory in history”. For once it is difficult to argue with George Galloway’s comment on his stunning win over Labour in yesterday’s Bradford West by election. But as the dust settles, has anything changed?

The Coalition parties did badly in this election, but can be forgiven for having a chuckle. Labour’s loss was spectacular, and it has been a tough week for the government. For whatever reason, the media had turned on them over a series quite sensible moves (pensioners’ tax allowances, VAT on takeaway food, preparing for a potential strike by tanker drivers), which were admittedly exacerbated by some presentational gaffes. Labour had been taking some undeserved credit for this; and now they’ve been shown to be as out of touch with the real world as they allege the coalition parties to have been.

But Labour’s big problem is that they are seen as a party of government rather than one of protest. This leaves them vulnerable in by elections like this to candidates that seem to embody anger and frustration more. But it is a good thing if they actually want to win a General Election. In the narcissistic game of trivia played out by politicians and political correspondents this is a reverse. But no reason to panic.

Mr Galloway’s Respect party is a personal vehicle, not a convincing political movement. It attempts the feat of allying left-wing (“Old Labour”) ideas with cultivating the Muslim vote; this difficult reconciliation seems only to be feasible through Mr Galloway’s self-obsessed personality. He has tried and failed to broaden his appeal.

For the Lib Dems (not so implicated in the week’s gaffes, but having to share responsibility) the result is not a big deal either. They lost their deposit in a seat where they were already weak; the decline in vote was not quite as spectacular as for Labour and the Conservatives, and they comfortably saw off the Greens and UKIP. But it offers no particular hope of the party digging its way out of its poor standing in most of northern England, to say nothing of elsewhere.

By far the most interesting feature of this election has been the behaviour of the Muslim community – which seems to have been the main factor behind Mr Galloway’s success, harnessed by some very astute campaigning. According to Nasser Butt, a former Lib Dem parliamentary candidate in Tooting, who spent the last week in Bradford, the charge was led by younger members of the community, who persuaded their elders to rebel. This was reversal of the normally paternalistic way that politics is done in these communities.

This is an exciting development, even if it causes liberals some angst. Muslim communities (in this case mainly Pakistani derived) have a strong sense of grievance. This seems to be shaped by two things: the West’s ill-judged military campaigns in the War on Terror, and the generally liberal ways of the society that they inhabit, which runs roughshod over their conservative sensibilities. The latter’s flashpoints are the toleration of gays, perceived insults to their religion from a free-speaking public, and the modesty of women’s dress.

If the Bradford dynamic can be repeated elsewhere, it means that the Muslim vote is much more in play, instead of being stitched up with elders in little local deals, or not voting at all. The liberal fear is that it will put pressure on politicians in the wrong direction on issues like gay rights and freedom of speech. Maybe so, but I think it is a price worth paying. As the communities become more involved in mainstream politics, they will come to understand the need for compromise and building coalitions. And they will feel listened too. They may also come to understand that liberal views are held with passion and principle, and are not merely the signs of decadent society. In the long run this is good.

Meanwhile yesterday also saw a local by election in Southfields, in Wandsworth. There was no earthquake here. The Tories held off a strong Labour campaign, taking nearly half the votes cast. The Lib Dems, who did not put in a major effort, were pushed back to under 6%, but beat the Greens (under 3%) – something that did not usually happen in Wandsworth before 2010. Unlike last year’s Thamesfield by election, when the Lib Dems fought at full throttle to get 17%, Labour can’t blame their defeat on them this time. The Tory one-party state moves on unruffled. There was a Muslim independent candidate, but he made little impact, with 38 votes (1%), two less than UKIP.