Bye bye Benton, Bone and Bridgen

He jumped before he was pushed, Blackpool South MP Scott Benton resigned yesterday meaning he won’t be ejected from the House of Commons by a recall petition. Who says there’s no good news? In a crowded field Benton was one of the most abrasive and obnoxious MPs on the Government benches. This is the latest step in a long process of detoxifying parliament that will involve the ejection of a lot more Tory MPs later this year, hopefully.
What we already know about the General Election is a large number of Tory MPs are set to stand down, on top of several that have already been ejected due to by elections – Warburton, Paterson, Johnson, Parish etc.
I know it’s ungracious of me to celebrate the departure of Benton, Bone and Bridgen (not gone yet, but he has more chance of being the next James Bond than being re-elected), but they are part of a particularly boorish cohort of Conservative MPs that won’t be lamented. What informs their behaviour? Having the first significant majority since 1987 probably created a lot of hubris among Conservative ranks and quite frankly I expected them to become arrogant because of it. It’s also the case that we’ve been infected with identity politics since UKIP’s breakthrough in 2014 and that goes hand in hand with a populist mode that is confrontational, aggressive and vulgar.
This has been really obvious in the media – for months on end during Johnson’s Premiership ministers simply didn’t turn up to TV interview requests.
When the polls started going against the Tories they reappeared, either with a superior air (Adam Holloway, MP for Gravesham giving Newsnight unwanted advice on how to handle government ministers – Newsnight’s been on air since 1980, I think they’ve got the hang of it by now), or took part in car crash interviews (hello Matt Hancock, Liz Truss, Laura Trott, Michelle Donelan).

David Cameron on the day he’s elected leader of the Conservatives in 2005, part of an ongoing renewal process that right now involves bad apples being kicked out or voted out

Return to politics as normal?
Whoever forms the next government, and it’s safe to assume it won’t be the Tories, will be faced by a huge set of economic and social problems. It won’t be possible to wave a magic wand over anything, however the change in the dramatis personae does matter. As I pointed out in my blog about Rejoining the EU last year, for any change in that relationship we need a wholesale change in our political elite and media landscape. The architects, instigators and implementors of Brexit need to be out of the picture, never to return, otherwise the EU will be very wary of any attempt to Rejoin, even if elements of the British public and our political class are keen. That process won’t be completed by the next election but if we want a new relationship with Europe it will be helped by the likes of Dominic Raab and Bill Cash standing down, and John Redwood and Elliot Colburn being voted out.
Personally I’d prefer to live in a world where the increase in child poverty is much more important than a redesign of the England football kit. Will the shallow, superficial mindset of our popular press change after the next election? Almost certainly not, but hopefully cranks that are fixated on weights and measures will be banished to internet-only Talk TV or low-ratings big money loser GB News. There will always be a fervently Europhobic strain to British politics, however it could go from mainstream to fringe if the likes of Benton, Bone and Bridgen are not replaced.

Benton, Bone and Bridgen: not a provincial Solicitor’s firm, but a rogue’s gallery of where modern day Conservatism has gone spectacularly wrong

A lost weekend for the Tories
Prior to Brexit, the last time the Conservatives had a major reset was during the Thatcher era, when the post-war political consensus and Keynesian economics were ditched for rampant free markets and monetarism. After Thatcher the party tacked away from her agenda but at a glacial pace under John Major. When the public made it clear they were sick of Thatcherism and Thatcherism lite under Major the Tories had a lost weekend with several leaders obviously not equipped to become Prime Minister – having a talent pool of under 200 MPs really did seem to make a difference.
Hague, Duncan Smith and Howard were never going to win against Blair, it took the Tories a good eight years to get back on their feet again with David Cameron. We’ve seen a similar dynamic recently with five different Tory leaders in nine years, though this time they’ve been in power. Can the Tories afford to spin the leadership wheel several times in the next Parliament? They know if they make the wrong choice from a small talent pool they have no chance of winning in 2029. While I have no desire to see a Conservative revival, the party’s capacity for renewal is unmatched in the industrial world, which is partly why it’s in power 2/3rds of the time in Britain. Everyone on the progressive liberal left needs to be ready for it. A rebrand of the party will be much easier with the likes of Benton, Bone, Bridgen, and indeed Jenkinson, Gullis and Anderson out of the picture.

A young Iain Duncan Smith – signs that the Tory cupboard was bare in 2001

If the Tories are smart enough to move back towards the centre from next year onwards that will involve a new leader, a new shadow cabinet, and a slimmed down parliamentary party bereft of populists who are great at playing to three-pint heroes in Weatherspoons but little else. How that plays out is for us to be mindful of in 2025 and beyond, for now let’s celebrate a changing of the guard and maximise our opportunities in elections this year.

Rochdale preview: A No Dickheads Policy

Apologies for the fruity language in the heading, but don’t blame me, I’m simply referring to the customs and habits of one of global sport’s most successful teams – the New Zealand rugby team. It adopted the policy in 2014, it’s discussed so frequently it’s often shortened to NDH. For professional rugby players, not being a dickhead entails avoiding night club brawls, drink driving and extra marital affairs. The New Zealand team is so exclusive and special you’re all disposable, we’ll find someone as good as you that doesn’t debase our image and dilute our aura. The whole country is proud of us, don’t let us down.

Rogue’s gallery
Up until this week the Rochdale by election garnered virtually no press interest. It was widely assumed the contest would be a walk over for Labour, in light of the fact that the former MP, Tony Lloyd was a really well-loved and well-respected figure. Now it’s generating plenty of column inches as Labour has withdrawn support for its official candidate Azhar Ali. The same has happened with Green candidate Guy Otten, Reform UK is knowingly fielding disgraced former MP Simon Danczuk, and guttersnipe fruit loop George Galloway is also standing. Suddenly Rochdale is dickhead central and the result is wide open.
While the misdemeanours of the Green and Reform UK candidates are not excusable, it is understandable that minor parties might field candidates with questionable backgrounds considering a limited capacity for oversight and sometimes the competition to become a candidate is almost non existent.
It’s less excusable with the two major parties – figures putting themselves forward as a parliamentary candidate should be a visible entity via the party’s club/office network. You really should need to build up social capital with local party figures and via a process of structured or informal debates and discussions the suitability of candidates should be well known by the time they put themselves forward. Indeed in many cases people stand for election because they’ve been scouted by people within the party hierarchy.
For Labour in the past this would’ve been a straightforward process as the Trade Union movement would provide the organisation and platform for would-be politicians to develop core skills such as debating, giving speeches, campaigning and negotiating. Now the traditional pathway of plucking a shop steward off the factory floor no longer exists, different pathways exist (particularly for public sector managers), but clearly with less scrutiny and oversight than before.

Azhar Ali, no longer Labour’s official candidate

Those digital age banana skins
Azhar Ali’s downfall came via a real life event, he made some ill-judged and offensive remarks about the Israel/Gaza conflict at a public meeting, however the digital world played a part – he’d been suckered by a baseless theory about Israel aiding and abetting Hamas floating round the internet.
You’ll probably have already noticed that this has become pretty normal fare, there’s a seemingly endless carousel of politicians, including really minor ones, that have their careers ended by off-colour remarks on social media. To be frank it’s become an extreme situation, there have been council candidates that have made the national press, despite deleting and apologising for statements they’ve made. Three men and a dog saw your original comments, no one noticed, but the press will blow them up anyway. It doesn’t matter if you said something foolish nearly 10 years ago, the internet is forever.
National newspapers are incredibly enthusiastic about reporting on social media indiscretions because it’s an effort free story. Virtually no time or money is involved. You can screen grab a tweet and cobble up a story within a few minutes, maybe a few hours if you actually wanted to get a comment from the person in question or their local party chairperson.
Apart from Ali’s downfall Otten is also reported to have fallen foul of social media etiquette. He’s stood down from campaigning (will be on the ballot paper as it’s too late to withdraw) though he himself and the Green Party haven’t expanded on the nature of his messages. This has become so commonplace the press and public have accepted Otten’s departure with virtually no curiosity.

George Galloway – has absolutely nothing to offer the local people of Rochdale and won’t bring peace to the Middle East, amazingly enough

How not to be dickhead
One wonders what Jo Grimond would make of political culture in the 21st century, he called on Liberals to be brave and run towards the sound of gunfire. This was set in the context of the press cutting our party a fair bit of slack as an underdog throughout the ‘50s and ‘60s. Now it’s very difficult to court controversy and be provocative as a centrist or mainstream politician, only populists and extremists have that licence. A few ‘strongmen’ like Trump and Johnson have a teflon quality that means using racial slurs or mocking disabled people is not career ending for them, though they’ve made enough enemies so that they’re not in power and may never be again.
Looking at what causes problems for candidates in elections often it’s roughly the same issues, you’d think people would learn from what happens to others, or would be challenged as part of their social circle deliberations.
It’s well-known that Israel/Palestine generates the most toxic and abusive reactions online, it’s an extremely divisive subject. I would say to would-be politicians ‘What do you hope to achieve by talking about it?’, everyone who’s politically engaged already has an opinion, Britain has no leverage over the destiny of the conflict, greater minds than me or you have tried to solve the conflict to no avail. If you want to make the world a better place, consciously try to be a scrupulously even handed humanitarian.
That means being concerned with gang violence in Central America (hello El Salvador, Haiti, Guatemala), with conflicts across Africa (hello Sudan, Ethiopia, CAR, Mali), with repressive regimes and poverty across the Far East (hello Indonesia, North Korea, Myanmar, Laos). You can do some research and shine a light on obscure issues such as independence for Somaliland, or stay in a comfort zone and encourage people to give money to Oxfam, Cafod, Christian Aid, Water Aid, Action Aid and MSF.
It’s possible to say a lot, scratch an itch in terms of campaigning to change the world and avoid being incredibly polarising and divisive at the same time. Calling for solar panels and water purification treatment in Sierra Leone shouldn’t land you in hot water.
To this end, it’s important that Lib Dems don’t let go of our commitment to the UN level of international aid. That 0.7% of GDP saves lives, lifts people out of poverty, gives them a basic education and cuts out hours of brainless manual tasks dominating their lives.
I’m pleased that the party has chosen Iain Donaldson as our candidate for Rochdale. He is standing on a platform of bread-and-butter issues that affect everyone – crumbling public services and the cost of living crisis, and issues that need constant advocacy, such as climate change. In these serious times it’s good to focus on the issues where realistically you can make a difference and not waste time tilting at windmills.
It’s not complicated, to quote Lutheran theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, ‘God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.’ Not as direct as a New Zealand rugby coach, but it works for me.

Due diligence – Lib Dems formula for success

I never saw the point of management consultants. Then I met one and he explained what he did – it set me straight. Part of his modus operandi was to go into organisation, talk to everyone and ask them some fundamental questions about their employment experience and see if he could make their lives easier. He gave me an example, he sat down with an accountant and said, “What’s the hardest part of your job?”. He guy replied, “So I have to put together a set of figures for my boss on Thursday morning but one dept sends them over on Wednesday afternoon, so I’m really up against it, with the deadline.” The management consultant puts in a call to the dept, “Hey I’m overseeing the company reorganisation, you know you send over those figures to Timmy on Wednesday afternoon? Could you send them on Wednesday morning instead?” A rescheduling is agreed, one happy accountant.
The more I thought about consultants on reflection, the more I understood it, companies take a lot of short cuts these days, except they call them ‘efficiencies’. Big companies have cut right back on admin staff – you all use Microsoft Office instead, HR depts are non-existent or skeletal, there is very little genuine man-management, just good practitioners who’ve been promoted to be responsible for a small team who just muddle through with no quality management training. This leads to poor morale, high staff turnover and generally sub-optimal working practices which is why consultants are needed to smooth out all the rough edges.

No substitute for hard work
When it comes to elections the two big parties take short cuts too – they’re happy to spend years not campaigning, being invisible in their local areas and where seats are safe, they’re voted in on autopilot – the mainstream media and trade union/hedge fund/Russian oligarch money does their job for them. The Lib Dems can’t afford to take such short cuts – we either campaign ourselves into the ground or we don’t win.
I’ll let others argue about the single best Lib Dems by election win in 2023 (apart from Somerton & Frome obviously), but last week we enjoyed an against-all-odds win in the Lincolnshire ward of Billinghay Rural – massive congratulations to Adrian Whittle and North Kesteven Lib Dems – that was textbook Lib Dems. Generally rural Lincolnshire has not been fertile ground for us, with the exception of West Lindsey, where we now have a minority administration. Indeed you’d expect it to be particularly stony ground as several parts of Lincolnshire recorded the highest leave votes in the 2016 referendum and attitudes haven’t shifted hugely since.

They won here! Adrian Whittle flanked by members of the Smalley family

Local elections: straws in the wind
Our victory in Billinghay Rural means we now have one councillor on North Kesteven District Council, this is as a result of a herculean effort from Lib Dems from around the rest of Lincolnshire, and the rest of the country. Why did we think we could win and why does this matter to us? In a previous blog I classified countryside into four types – rugged + remote, big city hinterland, university town hinterland and middle England. Rural Lincolnshire is far away enough from London and the big cities of the East Midlands to have a remote feel to it – look at a map and the density of A roads is noticeably lower. While it is not identical, this means Lincolnshire has vague parallels with other remote parts of the UK where we do well, or have in the past, such as Cumbria, Cornwall, North Norfolk, Shropshire, Brecon & Radnorshire and the North of Scotland.
The terrible state of the Conservatives locally and nationally have provided opportunities for us in the county – that’s included us flipping the status of West Lindsey, winning seats and joining an NOC coalition in South Kesteven, and making gains in Lincoln and Boston. For context, when we won in Boston one Lib Dems with good knowledge of that town said, “Wow I thought you’d be more likely to come across a lingerie shop in Riyadh.” Trust me, if we can win in Boston, we can win anywhere, these results suggests our ceiling in the East Midlands is far higher than we thought, which is why Billinghay matters.

Billinghay – England’s big sky country

What I’ve noticed long term in North and South Kesteven (I take a special interest in South Kesteven as my mum is from Grantham), is a long term challenge to Conservative dominance. At first that manifested itself in the rise of the independents, these are often people whose face doesn’t fit within the Conservatives and are unhappy at the inertia and complacency displayed by administrations that are old and tired. So you have a group of people that have a non-ideological objection to the Conservatives and probably assume they wouldn’t get very far on an official Lib Dems, Labour or Greens ticket.
The independents have done the area a service – providing meaningful scrutiny, oversight and competition, it’s also laid the foundations for people to deviate away from voting Conservative on autopilot for the whole of their lives. That’s where we come in . . .

Take a look at me now – an against all odds victory

Farmers and Airmen: tell us what you want
In a fantastic and illuminating twitter thread after our win, Darryl Smalley explained how we’d won over several hundred voters in Billinghay Rural who had never voted Lib Dem before (Billinghay Rural returned Conservatives unopposed in 2023 and 2019, we stood six candidates in 43 seats across the district in May). If the scepticism of lifelong Conservatives was understandable in an area we’d never paid attention to, the sustained high engagement, with the right sort of consultative approach – ‘what’s important to you, what can we help you with?’ won people over – just like a consultant asking someone what would make their job easier for the first time in their life.
The political history of Billinghay is very familiar to me – Conservatives love standing candidates and often will win by default in sparsely populated areas where they can always tap into the landowning class. Standing as a candidate and being an effective, hard-working councillor are two different things, however.
Seeing how people in Billinghay regarded engagement as a novelty, and sometimes struggled to understand why they were being asked about local services, amenities and infrastructure shows how conditioned people in remote rural areas are to effectively no local government. No one is on their side, no one is doing casework, no one is volunteering – but no one kicks up a stink, it’s always been that way and they’ve learnt to be self-reliant – this is festering sustained mediocrity, you can have it so much better!
Roads are covered in pot holes, street signs are covered with algae and lichen, roadsides flood because there are no drains, or they’re silted up. This is all very different from the urban liberal agenda of trans rights and fighting for more light rail, but let’s face it, we’re obsessed with the quality of road surfaces and road markings. The roads in and around Billinghay are terrible, without knowing it before the election this put us in a massive comfort zone. I’m sure Adrian Whittle is filling in council highways repair application forms as I write this. I’m so happy for our local group there – this is the latest in a long line of election successes this year but it’s the first to be achieved with any outside help. There are so many lessons to be learned from Billinghay, one of them is that if you earn your stripes people will take notice. This was built off the back of a lot of hard work by Lincolnshire Lib Dems in Gainsborough, Stamford, Lincoln, Market Rasen, Boston and Grimsby. These are not places that are prominent in any internal Lib Dems dialogue, but after Billinghay, maybe just maybe, they will be.

Being bold: Lib Dems election strategy

The Liberal Democrats are the only major party pledging to raise Universal Credit repeatedly to lift people out of poverty.

THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS ARE THE ONLY MAJOR PARTY PLEDGING TO RAISE UNIVERSAL CREDIT REPEATEDLY TO LIFT PEOPLE OUT OF POVERTY.

THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS ARE THE ONLY MAJOR PARTY PLEDGING TO RAISE UNIVERSAL CREDIT REPEATEDLY TO LIFT PEOPLE OUT OF POVERTY.

I thought I’d start this blog with one of our bolder policies – one that only I seem to be interested in, I don’t see anyone else mention this across social media or in face to face meetings with fellow activists, I guess you’re all too middle class for it to affect you. Yes, I’m being provocative to get a reaction from you.

Ed Davey – 700 council seat gains and 4 Westminster by election victories under his watch. We’ve returned to being a formidible force in elections, do we need more radicalism to cut through?

A smarter comms policy for the media
I write this blog in the aftermath of a letter to The Guardian this week that caused a few ripples in our Liberal pond. It was signed by several senior party members calling on the leadership to be bolder. The rationale behind the letter is perfectly sound – we have a government fundamentally failing to produce positive outcomes in our every day lives, and an opposition acquiescing to a lot of government policy, if I were a Labour member I’d be screaming milquetoast at Keir Starmer. In that context why aren’t we Lib Dems doing better? We should be back to polling 20% given the vacuum created by Conservative failure and Labour timidity.
My initial response to the letter was negative, I said it missed the mark – I’d like to point out I didn’t think it was wrong in principle to write such a letter, or that the content is problematic – none of the policies mentioned contradict what the party stands for. It’s my contention from a comms perspective it will have fallen flat. The letter mentions our pro-EU stance and support for HS2 Northern, I believe Guardian readers already know we’re a pro European party, and as for HS2, I’ve been reading the Guardian since 1980, it’s taken a hysterical anti-HS2 position more vehement than its opposition to any other infrastructure project. You want to impress readers and writers of a news brand take that to the more Europhile Independent or the pro-development Financial Times instead.
Yes we should absolutely engage with the broadsheet newspapers, but to do that more effectively far more thought needs to go into what would impress the readers and the writers of that newspaper – I didn’t see that in the boldness letter. You need a tailored message that would be different for the Guardian, the Independent, the Times and the Financial Times. (I wouldn’t bother writing to the Telegraph, its circulation is down 70% this century and has fallen down a far-right, conspiracy theory rabbit hole).

Lib Dems: bolder in supporting the Welfare State, compared to Labour

Our current platform – where’s the boldness?
If you take our For a Fair Deal pre-manifesto document there are bold, differentiated, quintessentially liberal policies in there if you care to look. Having pored over every Lib Dems manifesto since 1992 I know that we don’t make wholesale changes from one election to the next, but our next manifesto will contain far more detailed policies on Housing and Education compared to 2019. We’ve been pretty radical in terms of the Welfare State, social justice and redistribution for a while now, the IFS calculated that our tax and benefits policies were more redistributive than Labour’s in 2017 (the IFS didn’t do a comparison in 2019), that’s Corbyn’s Labour, one of the most left wing versions of Labour since 1945. Lib Dems activists mention this occasionally in passing – the lack of emphasis on this astounds me. I really wonder, if we are going to wear boldness on our sleeves what definition of boldness works best? As free-thinking individuals getting universal agreement among Lib Dem activists is like herding cats. Perhaps that’s not necessary, maybe there are 10 versions of boldness all bound up within our current policy platform, pick the one that works for you, or you think will play well in your area. Just don’t rely on the leadership to articulate your personal agenda, we’re a ground-up organisation, you’re free to articulate our boldness on your terms any time. Do take the time to think about what is salient and what is original for maximum impact. In the lead up to the next election my focus will be cost-of-living issues and our arts and entertainment policy. Cost-of-living because it’s important and will remain super-relevant up to election day . . . arts and entertainment because we’re reiterating an arts policy after a long period of not having one and it should play well with our key demographics in London and the Home Counties where I will be campaigning.

Pete Tong used to DJ at a hotel a mile away from my primary school. I will be going out to bat for entertainment – London has lost half its nightclubs in the last decade – because no one else will

Going beyond the manifesto
Beyond questions of how should portray ourselves as a radical, differentiated party that resonates with voters, there is the issue of whether our policies are bold enough. I’ll delve into one policy area to highlight the dilemmas in getting the balance right.

To be fair to the party, in government we’d improve Local Government finances with a bigger central government grant funded by taxing corporations and closing the tax gap (enforcing existing tax laws more rigorously). Not changing Council Tax structure at all is popular in affluent target seats such as Esher & Walton, Winchester, Cheltenham and Ash & Godalming.
Why do I call LVT foolhardy? I’m not opposed to LVT, but it’s much talked about, rarely delivered, and represents a radical departure that needs to be explained to voters in the UK. If you were given a mandate to be a radical transforming government perhaps you’d go for it and revolutionise property taxes, but just remember how unpopular the poll tax was and all the unintended consequences when it was implemented.
Can we afford to take such a risk? I feel strongly Local Government should be funded more, a debate will run and run about the best and fairest way of delivering that, it’s possible to improve funding through boring, dry measures like hiring a lot more HMRC officers and it’s possible to try something completely untested at a national level in G7 economies around the world, like LVT.

The comms challenge for Lib Dems – it’s a thankless task for Layla Moran to be the voice of moderate, intelligent grown up politics when mainstream media political forums have been reduced to a Punch-and-Judy show, like Question Time

From underdogs to rabble rousers
The example of property tax is very deliberate. During the coalition years we really bombed out at council level, losing 2200 seats, mostly to Labour. Since 2015 we have regained 1500 seats, mostly from the Conservatives. In terms of our 2024 election strategy, the party is likely to focus on 50 – 60 target seats in order to effect a net gain of 25 seats. All but two of these seats, Sheffield Hallam and Mid Dunbartonshire, are held by the Conservatives. Whether we like it or not, the main opportunity lies in chasing Conservatives and floating voters in Chelmsford, Harrogate, St Ives, Eastbourne and Dorking. The fact is we’re a Conservative-facing party at the moment – in that we’ve won lots of councils from the Tories and our immediate future is winning more Westminster and council seats from them. That, to an extent, informs our official comms strategy right now, but it doesn’t always have to be that way.
If we return to the giddy heights of 40 seats or more, we’ll attract more media coverage, more donors, we’ll earn more respect, we can afford to walk taller and, yes, we can be bolder in our approach to politics in general. We have to earn our stripes, though.

My version of boldness
I love my country, but I’m not happy with the status quo, I’d love Britain to be a fairer, more equal society with higher standards of living and a better quality of life. Everyone passionate about politics should’ve thought deeply enough about policy to come up with their own ideas, or be comfortable with unfashionable, unpopular positions. To make the tax system fairer and more redistributive, I’d go a bit further than the current Lib Dems position and deploy a suite of taxes on luxury lifestyle choices.
This means raising revenue from things like 5* hotel rooms, hyper cars, luxury perfumes and private jets. From watching Dragon’s Den I know the margin on a lot of luxury items is huge, that end of the market can afford to absorb more tax. If you can afford £2.8m on a Gordon Murray hyper car, you’re not price sensitive, you’ve almost certainly paid an accountant to minimise your lax liability elsewhere, and you can afford to pay a super tax on it. Luxury lifestyle taxes are so niche in terms of who they apply to, you’re not risking losing 10,000s of votes from a socially liberal yet stinking rich demographic.
We’d all like to see more boldness in politics after 13 years of sustained mediocrity. There is an empty-headed insincere boldness vested within populism that offers simple yet unworkable solutions to really complex problems. There is the boldness that involves creativity and originality and a departure from the status quo. It is true that the Lib Dems leadership could flag up our bolder policies more, but with a tired ineffective government, and an opposition that wants to win by default it’s still my contention that the Lib Dems are the boldest and the brightest force in British politics.