On the Social Liberal Forum website, David Howarth (who was MP in Cambridge before Julian Huppert) has been telling us five things that we should never do again:
- We must never again accept coalition with the Tories
- We must never again promote coalitionism
- We must never again push centrism
- We must never again ignore evidence
- We must never again fail to have the will to change
and three things we should do now:
- Clarify our values
- Find new ways of promoting our values
- Rebuild a core vote
You can read his justifications in the article but we will just quote from two sections.
We must never again accept coalition with the Tories – Every time the party has entered into a coalition with the Tories it has come out seriously damaged. The one in the 1930s ended in a three way split and national irrelevance. This one might be worse. It is a near-death experience. We must never do this again. Why does this happen? Largely because we are a party built on values, not on protecting interests, and coalition with the Tories obscures the public’s view of our values. We end up looking like a party of manoeuvre, caring only about holding office.
Find new ways of promoting our values – Many people are now saying that we have to rebuild the party from local level, and especially through local government. But that is not enough. … My suggestion is that we need to organise the party in a new way, around campaigns that flow from our values, campaigns in which members can actively participate both at local and national levels. These shouldn’t just be clicktivism or public relations exercises. As in a local campaign to get something done, we should set out to make a real difference in the world.
An immediate example is that we should organise our members to put pressure on MPs and ministers on the snooper’s charter, an issue on which the government’s small majority might easily fall apart. Similarly we will need campaigns to save the Human Rights Act, to preserve Britain’s place in Europe and, though it might be hard to win an anti-NIMBY campaign, against banning new onshore wind farms. We should also be campaigning against the forthcoming £12 billion benefit cuts and more broadly against state bullying of the vulnerable (something we seemed to have stopped doing recently).
* Mary Reid is a contributing editor on Lib Dem Voice. She was a councillor in Kingston upon Thames and is a member of Federal Conference Committee.
