Tag: Ed Davey

My life being what it is, my posting on this site will remain erratic. I do take time thinking about my posts and composing them – so I have to make time while juggling with other things. After an absence of over a month, I am planning to run a series of posts here on the British political parties after the election of July. We have entered a period of multi-party politics, with no less than six parties able to have a significant impact on the next General Election (Labour, Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, Reform UK, Greens and the Scottish National Party – I am perhaps being a bit dismissive of Plaid Cymru). I plan to have a look at each of these six.

I start with the Liberal Democrats, the party I know best. I joined its predecessor the SDP in 1981, and my membership has been continuous ever since. I have been active as a local party officer (Treasurer and Chair) and election agent. I have served as Treasurer of the London party, and on a couple of policy working groups. And I have attended many party conferences, though not this year. I am no longer very active locally, but I do belong to the party’s Federal Audit and Scrutiny Committee – so do regularly exchange with senior officials of the party, albeit only tangentially on the subject of political strategy. I gave the current leader, Ed Davey, his Chair’s reference so that he could stand as a parliamentary candidate in Kingston, before he first won the seat in 1997. I’m no outside observer, but I will try to comment as if I was – with a bit of inside knowledge. As a member of the family, though, I will refer to the main protagonists by the first names.

The party managed a superb result in July, with 72 MPS, the best result for it or predecessor parties since the days when the Liberals were a party of government a century ago. This was delivered on the basis of a relatively modest share of the vote (about 13%) that was actually a small decline on its previous performance. This has added immeasurably to its stature; it is taken much more seriously by the outside world, and its supporters are happy. It feels like a big moment for the party, which for the past five years has been teetering on the edge of extinction and irrelevance, and it poses the big question of who the party is and what it is for. It is worth looking at this in the context of the party’s history.

When the party was created in the aftermath of the 1987 election, from a merger of the Liberals with the SDP, the party was at a very low ebb. Its fortunes revived under the leadership of Paddy Ashdown. Paddy wanted the party to matter. It was his aim to enter government in coalition if he could, and to influence government even if that wasn’t feasible. As New Labour emerged under the leadership of Tony Blair he saw an opportunity to influence that party in a future government by working alongside it in opposition to the Conservatives. In the 1997 election Labour won a landslide, and needed the support of no other party. But it was a breakthrough election for the Lib Dems too (winning over 46 seats, up from 20 in 1992, although with a lower vote share). There continued to be a relationship with Labour, and it was possible to see Lib Dem influence, especially on constitutional matters. But the relationship was going nowhere. Labour did not see the need for it. Tony Blair was “unpersuaded” by the case for electoral reform for parliamentary elections, the Lib dems central objective. Paddy resigned and was replaced by Charles Kennedy.

Some people in the party look back on Charles’s leadership as a bit of a golden age. The Conservatives remained unpopular and the party was able to harvest disaffectedLabour voters. But there was muddle at the heart of it. This period peaked in the 2005 election, when the party won 65 seats, on the back of Labour unpopularity over the Gulf War in particular. With the third successive substantial result for the party, it seemed to be part of the Westminster furniture. And as MPs retired they were replaced, not by local activists as had been the way before, but by political professionals working internal politics, in the manner of the Labour and Conservative parties. There seemed to be (almost) such a thing as safe Lib Dem seats, not so attached to the personal local standing of the MP. These political professionals started to dominate the parliamentary party, and one of them, Nick Clegg, became its leader. The objective of these professionals was clear: to enter government in coalition, so that they could shape policy. This seemed like the natural next step in the party’s growth and maturity. But its offer to the public was not a clear one. To insiders the party was bound by its liberal and internationalist values, but this was less important to voters.

In 2010 the party did well to hold onto 57 seats in the face of a resurgent Conservative Party. With a hung parliament, this was the moment the professionals had been looking for: they entered coalition with David Cameron’s Conservatives. The party made a solid contribution to this government – it is striking how many successes over the 14 years of Conservative-led government have the party’s fingerprints (renewable power and gay marriage, for example), and how things went wrong after the party left (Brexit…). But the party’s left-leaning supporters felt bitterly betrayed. This was especially deep for three groups in particular: students, let down by the introduction of tuition fees in spite of promises made during the election; public and third-sector workers, who developed hostility to austerity, which threatened their jobs, into a near-religion; and working class voters, shocked at the party’s support for Tories. Nearly half the party’s support vanished almost overnight. Then the Conservatives, sensing weakness, pulled won over many of the rest by playing on the fear that the party would let Labour in. The 2015 election was a massacre – the party only just hung on to 8 seats. Third place in parliament went to the SNP. Like Icarus, the party had flown too close to the sun and were punished for their impudence.

The party managed something of a revival following Brexit, as the party most committed to opposing it, recovering to 12 seats in the 2017 election. New members flooded in. Under Jo Swinson, another of the 2005 intake, though somebody that had to win her seat from Labour rather than walking into a held seat, the party doubled down on its opposition to Brexit, while Labour vacillated and the Conservatives turned into hardline Brexiteers. The party launched a well-funded campaign in the December 2019 election suggesting that they might lead any government that emerged – as way of avoiding the question of which of the others they preferred. But they flew too close to the sun again, and support melted: they were limited to 11 seats, in spite of decent vote share by post-2015 standards. The high hopes of many members at the start of the campaign were crushed; quite apart from the party’s own poor performance, Boris Johnson’s victory meant that Brexit would indeed be “done” – something that they had become passionate about.

Ed Davey took over at this low point. It needs to be remembered that he has witnessed all this history first hand. I first remember him when he moved into our local party area in the late 1980s; for some reason I have it my mind that he was ex-SDP, though he must have moved in after the merger. He was working as an economist at the British computer company ICL (which was later subsumed into Fujitsu) but not long afterwards he took up a position as an economics researcher for the central party. He then became the parliamentary candidate in the Liberal council stronghold of Kingston, where he enthusiastically adopted the Liberal style of community politics, and won a striking victory in 1997, when his seat wasn’t one of the official targets (it didn’t stop me going to help…). He witnessed the evolution of the party in the period of its significant presence in opposition from 1997 to 2010, but he wasn’t part of the intake of 2005, who did so much to shape the culture of the parliamentary party. Nevertheless he became a minister in the Coalition, eventually at cabinet rank – and appeared to be having the time of his life. He took to being a minister like a duck to water. A lot of the credit for Britain’s remarkable progress on renewable energy is down to him, though he was building on groundwork laid by Chris Huhne. But he lost his seat in the 2015 massacre, though he won it back in 2017. I worked with him on fundraising for the Lib Dem London Assembly campaign of 2016, where his wife was a candidate.

Ed is not for flying close to the sun, unlike his predecessors Nick and Jo. The party reorganised with a highly professional Chief Executive, Mike Dixon, recruited from the charity sector (by Jo, to give credit where it is due). It focused on the mundane issues that were the primary concern of voters: health and social care, sewage pollution, and so on. It concentrated resources on areas where the party already showed strength – primarily in Conservative-held suburbia. Strong message discipline was developed; activists were encouraged to knock on doors to talk to voters. The reward, in July, was beyond all but the wildest dreams of activists (Lib Dems can dream wildly). This, of course, was a question of capitalising on the opportunities made by the other parties – especially the Conservatives and SNP, but Labour helped by not scaring voters. But experienced Lib Dems know all too well about having an opportunity and fluffing it during the campaign. Many of the victories were massive. In a parliament where there are an unusual number of close results, and MPs with under 40% vote share, the Lib Dems are in a relatively comfortable position (although there are a few close results, of course). They would have done extremely well even if Reform UK had not spit the Conservative vote. There are not many second-placed seats left, though I live in one of them. This sizeable number of MPs looks eminently defendable, though in some places campaign infrastructure needs to be built.

So, where on earth does the party go from here? The message from Ed is to show humility, and to keep working on the themes that party campaigned for – it is important to maintain the trust of the electorate. But how do you expand on such a good result, and what is the party building up its parliamentary presence for?

The party itself is more coherent than at its previous high of 2005. Its MPs look distinctly professional, and it draws a huge amount of its support from professional people. The working class supporters it used to attract have not returned, by and large. It is a party of middle class angst. When populists like Matt Goodwin rage against the “elite” and their “luxury beliefs”, they include people like Lib Dem supporters, who, in fact, are frustrated with their powerlessness. They want the country back in the European Union; they look sympathetically at the plight of refugees; they want to confront the black spots in British history; they wouldn’t mind a bit if an Indian or African family, or a gay one, moved in next door; they want state schools to promote these values. But these values do not have mass appeal. In polls the Lib Dem vote share hovers in the range of 10-15% and never beyond.

Still, there are two electoral opportunities. One is to keep mining from the seam that has already given so much: disaffected Conservatives. That party has to scratch the populist itch, and chase voters that supported Reform, the Lib Dems’ polar opposite. More liberal and pragmatic Conservatives will surely continue their exodus. And then there are disaffected Labour supporters. There are bound to be a number as the government faces grim choices on public spending, and the more liberal must choose between the Lib Dems and the Greens. There are very few Labour seats that are realistic targets for the Lib Dems, but attracting Labour supporters will help secure the Lib Dems’ existing gains, and even to pick off a few more Conservatives (for example in the seat where I live, East Grinstead and Uckfield, where Labour has a significant vote). In some relatively affluent middle class suburbs where the party is still third, they might be able to move to second place, to either party.

Some of the party’s members want to attack a distinctly conservative Labour government from the left – as they believe Charles Kennedy’s party did in the Blair years. But that risks putting off many of the voters that the party has drawn from the Conservatives. The party can push for closer integration with Europe, however – such as joining the Customs Union or even the Single Market. The party can’t afford to ignore people who voted for Brexit, but it is not nearly so much of a problem for them as it is for Labour. Brexit is widely seen as a disappointment, and the number of people who voted for it is in steady demographic decline. One day the party might even talk about rejoining the EU – but that remains a long way off. If there is an upwelling of support for electoral reform, the Lib Dems are ready to embrace it. Beyond that I don’t any big shifts in campaigning themes.

What’s it all for? The Liberal Democrats are a natural party of government, even if they so rarely exercise power. They are happy to engage in conversations about the sort of compromises needed to make things happen – it’s part of the mindset of a professional, perhaps. At conferences activists discuss detailed proposals for policy as if power was round the corner – to the incredulity of outsiders. And where the party controls councils, it is very pragmatic. For example, a neighbouring council to where I live is refusing planning permission for local housing developments regardless of their merit, and it is suffering fines as a result, because of implacable opposition by the Greens and Conservatives alike. Lib Dems protest that this is nonsense – the fines take away resources from desperately stretched public services. And they know that the shortage of housing is extreme. Instead they want to engage with the planning process and allow some developments and while opposing others. This pragmatism contrasts with the Conservatives, who gradually became a party of protest, even while in government.

That pragmatism will manifest itself with measured opposition at the national level, compared to hysteria from the Conservatives and Reform. But it only goes so far. The party is not engaging with the critical economic debate on how to balance taxes, public services and benefits. And how to balance the demographic need for immigration with the pressure it puts on infrastructure such as housing. Instead they complain about pressure on public services and cuts to benefits, while only suggesting half-baked gimmicks to raise extra taxes. This, of course, copies Labour strategy before the election – but the party shows no sign of engaging with the difficult policy choices that any government must face.

But the party now has an army of MPs, which will be supported by an even bigger army of paid researchers and the like. They will want something more than mere political survival. In my view the party needs to aim for working in coalition with Labour after the next election, if that party’s majority vanishes, as well it might. Perhaps it is still too early to think of such things, and the party needs to learn the lessons of the previous coalition episode. It would help if the party was on the up, and entering coalition from a position of strength.

Ultimately, if the party can’t fly close to the sun, it is unclear why it should exist. How far Ed recognises this I don’t know. But he does know how important it is to ascend with humility. And I am sure he is right there.

I haven’t posted for a month. I’ve been on holiday, and then last weekend I went to the Liberal Democrats conference in Bournemouth. This is the first in-person Autumn conference the party has had this parliament, since September 2019 in fact – and my first conference of any kind since then. It was lovely to catch up with friends and acquaintances, people-watch and sample some of the internal debates the party is having. But what did the event say about the health of the party?

Overall the party was in good heart after a series of spectacular by election wins and good local election results. This was widely expected to be the last Autumn conference before the next general election (a shorter Spring conference in March in York should go ahead) – which is expected next year in May or in September or October. It showed. Much passion was on display on the conference floor, and many excellent speeches – but little actual debate: few speaker’s cards were placed against motions or even amendments. It resembled the managed affairs of the Labour and Conservative parties. There was one notable exception, on housing, which I will come to.

The party leadership’s electoral strategy is clear: it is to increase the party’s representation in parliament to thirty or more seats (it is now 11 plus four by-election wins), almost entirely by winning seats currently held by the Conservatives (one or two SNP seats are in the sights, and perhaps the odd Labour one). The unspoken hope is that this will be enough to overtake the SNP as the third party in parliament, with a substantial increase in the party’s ability to influence the agenda there. It may also be enough to hold the balance of power, should Labour fail to secure a majority, and thus influence government policy in one way or another.

The contrast with 2019 could hardly be greater. The party then had momentum as a rallying point for those hoping to reverse the result of the Brexit referendum – and it talked of forming the largest party in parliament with its leader as prime minister. A lot of political capital was spent on the proposition that the party would not rerun the referendum if it won an overall majority. But the party was out-manoeuvred by Labour’s support for a second referendum (much good that it did them) and the bubble was burst in the December 2019. Following this debacle the party commissioned a post-election review by Baroness Thornhill, who, as mayor of Watford, was one of the party’s most successful politicians. Unlike most such reviews, which are generally discarded by the party managers before the next election arrives, this review has been taken to heart. Ambition has been lowered; the communications agenda is led by public opinion rather than activists’ priorities; efforts have been made to professionalise the party’s core workers and reduce staff turnover.

This gives a great deal of credibility to the party’s strategy. Early in the conference many activists were a bit glum after seeing a presentation by psephologist John Curtice that showed that the collapse in support for the Conservatives was benefiting Labour and not the Lib Dems. But what matters is what is happening in about fifty seats out of the 650, and national polls will not show this clearly. Another pollster, Rob Ford, showed that the party was doing well among better-off graduate voters, and that the numbers of these voters was increasing in the seats likely to be Lib Dem targets. The Tories’ courting of “petty bourgeois” voters by ditching green policies, and ratcheting up nasty rhetoric on immigrants, plays into Lib Dem hands here. In 2019, the Tory leader Boris Johnson was careful to nod to these voters; the current leadership knows no such subtlety. The Lib Dems should benefit from the collateral damage of the Labour-Tory contest for the petty bourgeois – rather as the Tories benefited from the collateral damage of the Labour-Lib Dem battle for the professional classes in 2019. The party’s prospects thus look good in a decent number of seats in the South-East commuter belt around London, and equivalent seats further north, such as Hazel Grove outside Manchester. The prospects are murkier in the party’s former heartlands in the west county, however, where the professional classes are much less in evidence – though with Labour relatively weak there, there must be some opportunities.

However this strategy is creating a lot of tension in the party. Listening to the electors and letting them set the agenda may be good for curbing arrogance and winning parliamentary seats, but party activists want something more ideological and radical. But the radicalism is being suppressed. The party will not explicitly campaign to rejoin the European Union, as many activists wish – a goodly proportion having joined the party in the first place because of support for EU membership. Rather like Labour, the leadership are sticking to a much vaguer line about better relations. A flirtation with Universal Basic Income (UBI) has been firmly squashed – though in general the party remains stronger on ideas for spending more public money that raising it or saving it. This conservatism led to the only serious, open conflict of the conference: on housing.

Housing developments are not generally popular in the rural and semi-rural areas that comprise the party’s best prospects. City-dwellers fume that this is “nimbyism”, but living in one such area (bordering decent Lib Dem prospect seats, though not actually in one) I can say that this is oversimplifying things bit. Many developments comprise mediocre-quality houses in environmentally sensitive areas, with inadequate plans for supporting infrastructure – because these are more profitable for developers. The Conservatives are in full retreat on their commitment to building more homes, and are attacking the Lib Dem national target of building over 300,000 houses a year (even if this commitment was in their 2019 manifesto too) – though this did not do the Tories any good in local elections here in Sussex. The Lib Dem leadership were worried enough about this to propose dropping this target in a new housing policy, while at the same time still committing to building roughly this number of homes, by increasing social housing, developing garden cities, and so on. But the Young Liberals organised a counter-attack. Younger voters feel as if they are the centre of a housing crisis, with increased rents and vanishing prospects of buying their own homes. The housing target has important symbolic value to them, and the policy looked like a retreat. The leadership tried to win by deploying heavyweight speakers, but their arguments were thin gruel. Former leader Tim Farron delivered a “barnstorming” speech in defence of the leadership position by shouting increasingly loudly that housing targets wee “Thatcherism” without explaining why. “Has he lost the plot?” my wife, next to me, asked. “Yes,” I said, and we both voted for the Young Liberal amendment, which was carried. That was the only act of defiance by the membership, however.

In the conference fringe, things were a lot more interesting. My especial interest was rural policy: how to turn around farming policy so that it helps restore wildlife and absorb carbon – without too much damage to productivity. For me this is a critical area: carbon policy will fail unless the land is made into an efficient carbon sink, and we end extractive farming practices – never mind ending the destruction of wildlife. I was encouraged by the party’s support for this, which is winning converts among many farmers. But hard choices beckon, as it is hard to see how this can work without a substantial reduction in the consumption of meat. I was also interested by the arguments made in favour of UBI at a couple of fringes. There is something deeply flawed in the conventional thinking about tax, benefits and public services – and UBI might be part of the solution. But if it is, it feels like only one leg of a three-legged stool and it will not work by itself. More on that on this blog later, as I gather my thoughts.

In his closing speech, the party leader, Ed Davey, harped on the familiar themes: outrage at water companies for dumping sewage into rivers and the sea, supporting Net Zero policies, and a new policy about health care and cancer treatment. What party activists were more interested in were his mentions of closer relations with Europe, advocacy of electoral and political reform and an attack on Labour for lacking ambition and caving in to Tory policies. He said about the minimum here, in comments that were not picked up by the media coverage. The attitude to Labour is interesting. There is no love lost between Labour and the Lib Dems. The two parties are battling against each other to win the Conservative held seat of Mid Bedfordshire in a by-election, in an interesting trial of strength. Activists were repeatedly called on the help there. The party needs Labour voters to come over to it in its key seats, and so is careful not to antagonise.

I think Ed is right in his overall approach. The next election will clear a lot of air, and hopefully the party can develop its more radical instincts afterwards. If Labour win, as seems likely, then the party will need to define itself clearly against it – and that will be a lot more interesting.

Conservative party members showed little self-awareness this summer. Under their party’s rules they had the final say on who was to be their party leader, and, as they never tired of telling us, the next prime minister. The rest of the country was appalled that such a small, self-selected body of people was playing such a pivotal role in the country’s constitution. The leadership candidates then vied for members’ support by offering ever more crackpot ideas to appeal to their prejudices. And when the winner, Liz Truss, took over as prime minister, she treated her promises made to this small body of people as more important than the manifesto on which her parliamentary majority was based in December 2019. But amid all this self-indulgence another British political party has been rowing hard in the opposite direction by trying to make itself more relevant to the public at large. It is time to talk of the Liberal Democrats.

This follows the party’s own moment of self-indulgence in 2019. It’s then newly selected leader, Jo Swinson, decided to make the party’s raison d’être to act as a rallying point for the overturning of the 2016 referendum on Brexit. This was very popular with party members, encouraging Jo to take ever more radical positions on the subject. The party’s poll ratings climbed; it outpolled the other established political parties in elections to the European Parliament (but not, significantly, Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party). It attracted defectors from both Conservative and Labour parties. At the 2019 election Jo delighted party members by suggesting that the party would win the election outright. But in the grim reality of a general election campaign, as voters confronted the awkward choices before them, this self-indulgence stuck in their throats. The party offered no reconciliation to the half of the country still determined to complete Brexit, and simply promised to keep stoking up a debate that was tearing the country apart. The party’s poll ratings sank, resources were deployed on an electoral strategy that was far too optimistic, and the end result was a dismal 11 MPs, a net loss of one on the poor 2017 result. Losses included Jo Swinson’s own seat in Scotland.

This disaster prompted much soul-searching. One of the party’s most successful politicians, Dorothy Thornhill (serially directly-elected mayor of Watford), was asked to head a review of the party. Disclosure: I am secretary of the party’s audit and scrutiny committee which sponsored this review, and which continues to monitor the party’s response to it – but the views expressed here are very much my personal ones. The review was unsparing int its criticism of many aspects of the party’s management. It’s leading recommendation was as follows:

Based on the lives of ordinary people in the country today, create an inspiring, over-arching and compelling vision which can guide the entire Liberal Democrats organisation for the duration of a parliament, ideally longer.

The party, under its new leader, Ed Davey, has taken this recommendation seriously, and especially that first phrase. Whether the party’s current vision is yet inspiring, over-arching and compelling is open to question. But that it is grounded on the lives of “ordinary” people is not in doubt. The policies that are promoted to the public reflect the concerns of general voters, and not those of activists: the energy crisis, the outflow of raw sewage in rivers and beaches, and many more specific, local concerns. To this Ed has now added the rising cost of mortgages, and the difficulty of seeing a doctor. It is, unfortunately, hard to meld such everyday concerns into something inspiring, over-arching and compelling, but the party is trying. This causes no little frustration to many of the party’s activists and members. They are dying to make a big fuss over the failures of Brexit, for example, and push radical proposals for political reform. But generally voters don’t want to reopen the wounds of Brexit, and have yet to translate their frustration with the political system into demands for reform. A further example of the party’s sensitivity to “ordinary” people was the cancellation of the party’s autumn conference, which had been scheduled for just before the Queen’s funeral. This infuriated many activists, who had booked hotel accommodation and were looking forward to the first in-person conference since covid-19. But it would not have been a good look to the public at large. The counter offered to this by some activists, that the public wouldn’t notice, was hardly an encouraging one.

This was the only party conference to be lost to the Queen’s death. Other parties, large and small, benefited from the traditional extra publicity that arises from such events (though in the case of the Conservatives “benefit” is a stretch). Last weekend the party attempted to make up for this with a set-piece leaders’ speech from Ed – which was dutifully covered by the BBC and the more respectable newspapers. The coverage mainly focused on his proposal of a fund to assist stretched families to manage higher mortgage costs. I didn’t find the speech especially uplifting, but that may be because I am on old cynic, and I was watching it on a Monday morning. But it was coherent and competent. Ed clearly focused the party’s political strategy on winning parliamentary seats from the Conservatives, implicitly part of a coalition to end their time in power. Ed only mentioned other political parties in the context of local elections – where he made an attack on the SNP, but he resisted the temptation to attack Labour. He did make time to advocate proportional representation, but that was the only political reform that got a look in. It did not beat raw sewage in its prominence. Since the Labour leadership isn’t even going that far with political reform, we’ll have to accept that.

Is the party’s new approach working? Membership has plummeted since the heady days of 2019 and the party’s prominence in the Brexit debate. Reduced means stretches the party’s infrastructure, both paid staff and volunteers. But the party is winning elections again, including three spectacular gains in parliamentary elections. It is slowly rebuilding a local government base – but it is very patchy. The party consistently polls around the 10% mark – better than it has been, but short of the party’s heyday in the years 1997 to 2010. This too was a time when local electoral pragmatism trumped ideological vision – only for the party to collapse once it tried to use its electoral mandate by joining a coalition government.

Political vision is a tricky thing, especially in a political system such as Britain’s. Too much and the electoral coalitions needed for success fragment; too little and the party loses its way at the grassroots, which is central to party’s electoral successes. Under Ed Davy the Liberal Democrats are attempting a balancing act. The party is basing its campaigns mainly on issues that resonate with voters, especially those in Conservative-held areas; at the same time it is trying to manage expectations about what it might do after the election (i.e. potentially support a Labour-led government). Meanwhile the party still holds to its core beliefs, on openness, on the environment, and on the need for political reform. This is a balancing act traditionally managed best by the Conservatives – until now.