Could the Greens ever overtake the Lib Dems?

It’s election year and it’s no great surprise to see a number of hatchet jobs on the Lib Dems across the print media, especially the right wing tax exiled/foreign owned press. Part of the reason I write blogs is to be a (low circulation) liberal counterblast to the partisan media that generally does us no favours. Some of the stories lately have been trumped up and specious attacks that I won’t dignify with a response. One piece however, by George Eaton in the New Statesman, hypes up the Greens prospects in Bristol, and asks a serious question – Can the Greens ever overtake the Lib Dems? My short answer to this is that it’s possible, it’s happened in other Anglo-Saxon countries, but it’s unlikely in Britain in the foreseeable future. Let’s get into it . . .

Goldilocks scenario for the Greens – a warning from Australia
The 1973 oil shock reverberated around the industrial world, causing social and economic problems for a decade or more, and reset politics in a few countries, in both Britain and Australia it benefited the third force, eating away at a post-war two party status quo. For Britain that was the Liberals, for Australia it was the Democrats. The Democrats were led by the charismatic Don Chipp who was known for the phrase ‘Keep the bastards honest’ – acceptable as part of mainstream discourse because bastard is not an offensive term in Australia and the level of cynicism towards the political elite is particularly high there.
People were comfortable with the Democrats offering competition to the two major parties and keeping them on their toes. The Democrats then blotted their copybook hugely when holding the balance of power in the upper house, they voted with the Liberal Party (equivalent to our Conservatives) in the late-90s several times, thus acquiescing to a number of right wing measures including the highly controversial and regressive Goods and Services Tax (a version of VAT). In the 2004 and 2007 elections the Democrats collapsed, following what is now a familiar dynamic of the public giving the junior partner in any power sharing agreement (especially a liberal left one) a really good kicking.

Don Chipp of the Australian Democrats – very self-aware of his role in his country’s politics

Throughout the 2000s the Democrats were overtaken by the Greens as the third force in Australian politics. Australia’s political culture and electoral system allows for minor parties and independents to be a permanent fixture in parliament. Unfortunately for the Democrats, when people are looking for an alternative they no longer look in their direction. Thus in the 2022 Federal Election there was a massive upswing in independents, some of them dubbed the Teals, with centrist views similar to the Democrats, but not running on a Democrat ticket.
Is there a way back for the Australian Democrats? I wouldn’t count them out but they have to fight their way past assorted Indies and the Greens to regain their former position. It’s a distant prospect at the moment. The harsh lesson dealt to the Aussie Demos was actually a major spur for me to join the Lib Dems, because in 2015 we bombed out just like our Antipodean cousins had a few years beforehand, and I didn’t want to stand idly by while the party I loved atrophied away and was consigned to the margins. Thankfully I wasn’t alone in thinking that way.

Green growth in Britain – starting to triangulate
Not unlike their Aussie counterparts, Greens in Britain have been on a slow march to electoral success. Their big breakthrough at the Euro elections in 1989, when they finished 3rd on 14.5% proved to be a false dawn – the Lib Dems were just getting their act together as a merged party and sudden scrutiny of the Greens ended in tears with a notorious appearance by David Icke on the Wogan show where he revealed himself to be a nut job (he had recently resigned from the party but it remained tainted by association for some time).
You don’t need me to tell you that the party has been gaining momentum in the last 15 years in Britain, often people compare this to the rise of the Greens in Germany and how this signals a form of post-materialist politics – the most affluent no longer chase more money at all costs as this conflicts with a good quality of life.

Petra Kelly, leader of Die Grünen in Germany, a pioneer of environmental politics

It must be an immense source of frustration for the Greens that they are now in a range of 750,000 to 1,250,000 votes at General Elections but they can’t get beyond wining a solitary seat in Brighton – they get the rawest deal from First Past the Post out of everyone. When people are being optimistic they ask where the Greens might win their second, third, fourth etc seats. The speculation about Bristol strikes me as a bit bizarre, for the Greens to win a second seat there they’d have to leapfrog past Labour’s Thangam Debbonaire who’s polled 47,000 at the last two elections – that’s close to an all-time British record. Taking a closer look at their prospects in places like Bristol and other progressive university towns is fair, however as there are plenty of crossover Green/Labour voters.
George Eaton poses an interesting question of the Greens – they’re now moving on from being a niche urban hipster party or having a fringe presence in the Home Counties ‘muesli belt’ to taking on a number of rural councils such as Mid Suffolk and Forest of Dean. Can they triangulate and offer a radically different agenda to people in small towns and the countryside compared to the big cities? In my experience rural Greens are being voted in on an ultra-NIMBY ticket that actually means they’re closely aligned to the Conservatives they’re unseating.
In practice what happens when the Greens unseat Tories in the countryside? I’m well placed to answer that as it happened my ward last year. There has been an improvement by default – i.e. the Tory councillors did precisely nothing for the local community, the Greens have been active with organised litter picks in my village, but the monitoring and reporting side of things haven’t changed. Drains are still blocked, street signs are still dirty, road markings are faded, country lanes are still caked in litter. As for anything major like tree planting, more wild flowers or dew ponds to help insects – the Greens didn’t aim for any of that, so it hasn’t happened.
Will small changes be enough to satisfy people long term? That could be difficult for the Greens, often people don’t notice the voluntary work you’re doing, or don’t know who’s doing it unless you ram it down their throat.

The Greens like to do things differently – Jonathan Bartley and Siân Berry were their first co-leaders. Figures like Dale Vince keep the Green movement in the public eye. The Green Party has gained strength in Bristol – but the Labour MP in their target seat is hugely popular

Potential pitfalls for the Greens
When the Greens started out as the Ecology Party in the 1970s they offered a genuine point of difference to the political mainstream. It didn’t take long for many environmental policies to be adopted, in the 1980s we saw the removal of lead from petrol, the desulphurisation of coal-fired power plants to deal with acid rain, global agreements to phase out CFCs to protect the Ozone layer and end commercial whaling. All with Reagan and Thatcher in power on both sides of the Atlantic.
Those were great wins for the Green movement, we’ve moved on with the current agenda around climate change, net zero, habitat loss, biodiversity etc. Politically there is always the risk that the Greens become victims of their own success. At present there’s not a huge difference between the Greens’ environmental agenda and that of Labour and the Lib Dems. There’s some important differences with the Conservatives, especially with Sunak in change, and Reform is a genuine antithesis, albeit a fringe one.
Around the turn of the decade the Greens could be in the invidious position of trumpeting progress on renewables, insulation, heat pumps, electric cars and habitat restoration that’s largely been implemented by Labour in central government and assorted non-Green councils at a local level.
As the Greens lack distinctive or popular policies in other areas – healthcare, education, children’s services, social care etc – there is always a danger of other parties parking their tanks on the Green lawn and the party having nothing else to offer. Certainly its recent messaging about Israel/Gaza, essentially lecturing Israel for existing at all, shows a complete lack of nous about foreign policy (amplifying a long term naivety demonstrated by wanting to leave NATO until Russia attacked Ukraine).

Future competition in prospect
So, could the Greens overtake the Lib Dems? Certainly they’ve converged in the polls and they’ve ticked up at council level, they’re right to be optimistic about their immediate future. As a Lib Dem, however, I’d point out that our party is likely to make bigger gains in the Local Elections, may overtake the Greens in London (both in the Mayor vote and assembly members), and will make more seat gains at the General Election.
First Past the Post is not fair, it warps outcomes and we want to ditch it, but primacy does matter. The four parliamentary by election wins this term shows the Lib Dems are still the go-to as an alternative to the two main parties. The Greens were hugely talked up as a prospect in Chesham and Amersham on an anti-HS2 ticket. That the Lib Dems won instead is testament to the effectiveness and intensity of campaigning that the Greens are yet to match.

The Lib Dems General Election strategy may not be particularly revolutionary, it may not generate a huge amount of press coverage, but if we go from 15 to 40 seats it will be optimal

There was a possibility of the Lib Dems/Greens pecking order being upturned in 2015 and immediately after, but for now that window of opportunity is closed. The long term rise of the Greens is a game-changer, however. During the coalition years the Lib Dems lost 2,200 council seats, mostly though not exclusively to Labour. Since 2015 the Lib Dems have regained 1,600 seats, mostly but not exclusively from the Tories.
If there’s a Labour government the Lib Dems will be looking to make further gains, but from Labour, especially in places we’ve had success in before – Liverpool, Manchester, inner London boroughs. In doing so they will be in a dogfight with the Greens, the like of which we’ve not seen before. We’re in for interesting times.

Success City – London elections preview 2024

2024 is a massive year for elections in the UK, not least because on May 2 London – the most important city in Europe – goes to the polls. Our capital city has been electing a City Mayor and an assembly since 2000. In the past the political agenda for London hasn’t changed greatly between one election and the next. Despite the fact that the last election happened only three years ago (thanks to a pandemic-related delay), 2024 feels really different from the last one with several new talking points. Let me take you through them . . .

London’s blue light services
I don’t think anyone pretends that being a Police Officer in London is an easy job, however people who are willing to be critical of public services have long recognised that problems with the Met Police stretch further than a few bad apples. In 1992 there was a question on an LSE politics exam I took (presumably recycled for many years) ‘Are the police institutionally sexist, racist and homophobic?’ – in 32 years what’s changed?
That academics were willing to ask such a question, rather than a drug dealer on a sink estate should worry everyone who wants high quality law enforcement. I’ve known people in London who’ve been victims of crime subjected to insensitive lines of questioning playing on stereotypes just because they were a student. Heaven knows how bad it is if you’re not a white British middle-class male.
Has long-running dissatisfaction with the Police gone from fringe to mainstream? Look at America – from time to time there’s an outrage surrounding a Police Brutality incident – Rodney King or George Floyd – that precipitates a riot, the police back off for a bit, then things regress to a dysfunctional norm. Mainstream US politicians aren’t prepared to challenge the police strongly enough and for long enough to effect significant change.
Could the UK be any different? Rob Blackie, the Lib Dem candidate for Mayor is making history by being the first ever mainstream politician to run for major office on a ticket of Police reform, his most prominent slogan is ‘fix the Met’.
I must stress that as Liberals the Lib Dems aren’t an anti-Police party, one of our former London Mayor candidates Brian Paddick was a deputy assistant commissioner in the Met. We are willing to admit that institutions aren’t perfect and that the culture and quality of recruits in forces could be a lot better, however.
Which brings me to the Fire Brigade. When I first visited City Hall in October 2022 I got wind of a report being drafted about London Fire Brigade by Nazir Afzal. Afzal is former chief Crown Prosecutor for North West England, whenever he appears on broadcast media I think ‘that guy has a brain the size of a planet’, to my mind he’s one of the most impressive figures in British public life. A very authoritative voice, therefore.
The report he helmed is ‘Independent Culture Review’, this was produced in response to the suicide of trainee fireman Jaden Francois-Esprit in August 2020. At the time Afzal’s report was damning, The Guardian commented thus, “The independent report into the London Fire Brigade includes the anonymous accounts of more than 2,000 staff members detailing abuse by co-workers, including from a black firefighter who had a noose placed above his locker and a Muslim colleague who had bacon and sausages stuffed in his pockets. Female firefighters reported being groped, beaten and having their helmets filled with urine.”
In the two years since the report came out we’ve heard platitudes from senior management at London Fire Brigade, but not a great deal of response from the Mayor about precisely how to tackle the alpha male wannabe culture within the organisation. Is Sadiq Khan the right person to take on a hitherto respected and trusted institution like the Fire Brigade? He has the mandate to get tough with any institution under his wing, but does he have the appetite and nous to bring about any culture change? We haven’t seen the change we need yet . . .

The Lib Dems vision for London, Rob Blackie Lib Dems mayor candidate, all four major candidates at a Jewish Community hustings

London’s night time economy

We’ve had declarations of emergencies in the last few years – climate and cost-of-living – now I’m calling it – we have a night time economy emergency. Pubs, restaurants, night clubs, all forms of night time entertainment – comedy, cinema, theatre, are in crisis. This isn’t an overnight sensation though recent events such as Brexit and the spike in energy costs have made things a lot worse. This is a long term structural problem, in between 2010 and 2017 London lost half of all its night clubs, as documented by Vice magazine. The night club sector is particularly dynamic, but what happened is that a load of clubs shuttered after the global financial crisis and nothing came along to take their place when the economy started to recover.
Brexit has hit the restaurant sector hard – it has pushed up the price of many foodstuffs sourced from the EU and many Europeans that were working front and back of house have gone home since 2016.
All restaurants serving European style cuisine have had to jack up their prices and many have had to shorten their opening hours due to staff shortages. It’s not clear how these problems are resolved without the UK joining the Single Market/Customs Union or full Rejoin. As that’s not on the table for now, the UK government and Mayor need to look at other measures, most obviously support for energy costs and perhaps business rate relief or tax breaks on alcohol sold in restaurants. Without serious intervention pubs, clubs, nightclubs, cinemas, all entertainment venues will continue to wither and perish in London.
What of the Mayor’s record on hospitality and culture? I like to give credit where credit is due and the Mayor set up a new body called the Creative Land Trust in 2019. Its mission is to establish more studio space for artists – this is an important intervention because usually such space is less profitable than mainstream commercial, retail or residential space so it has been declining and crowded out over time.
I’d like to see the CLT given a bigger budget and its remit widened to provide rehearsal space for musicians and performance arts space for dance and drama.
By contrast, one of the Mayor’s most high-profile employees is the Night Czar Amy Lamé. After several years it’s extremely difficult to know what the Night Czar does and what her achievements are – she’s had a hand in stopping the closure of one high profile night club, that’s about it. This is a role that needs to be given meaningful powers or abolished.
What other pro-entertainment policies are out there? The Lib Dems have adopted the Music Venues Trust policy of a levy on large venue revenues to be redistributed to smaller venues. For context the stadium concert end of the market is booming – Wembley stadium has a record 12 gigs this summer, beating the previous record in 1988 when Michael Jackson did eight gigs as part of his Bad tour. If only a couple of % of that revenue could be trickled down to the 50 – 200 capacity venues throughout the capital, what a shot in the arm that would be (a 3.5% levy exists in France).

We need more support for entertainment venues so characters like Alex Lowe’s Barry from Watford can survive and flourish

London transport – in recovery mode
The last time I campaigned in London was for the 2022 borough council elections and it was clear that immediately post-covid that London transport was in poor shape, even in relatively central areas. People told me unprompted in Blackheath that they were suffering from both bus cuts and train cuts. Since then Crossrail has opened, its passenger numbers are stellar and in general tube, rail and bus user numbers are crawling back to their pre-pandemic levels. This has made several right-wing newspapers that take a lot of advertising from Big Auto who predicted the end of public transport look rather stupid.
On the one hand we can now be optimistic about a sustained post-pandemic recovery in London’s public transport, on the other there are no substantial capital projects being built or signed off for the foreseeable future. The West London Orbital, Bakerloo Line Extension, DLR Extension to Abbey Wood, Tramlink extension to Sutton, splitting the Northern Line in two – we have no clear idea as to if or when any of these would happen.
Transport policy discussions have evolved to address the damage that the pandemic has done to London transport, there are calls to reverse the bus and train cuts, and to address the growing maintenance backlog that is starting to affect services such as the Central Line.
In a world of lowered horizons the Lib Dems have quite rightly called for more of the smaller scale projects to be advanced – TfL has a long-term programme to make all tube stations step-free, for instance. This has advanced at glacial pace for some time. After Silvertown tunnel is completed next year, where will the capital projects budget go? At the very least we could speed up the step-free programme, it’s a poor lookout that we are a long way from completing this in 2024.
When it comes to transport, to a large extent London is hamstrung by a hostile Tory government that is trying its best to hang the capital out to dry. That does not mean that the Mayor has no discretion with the resources at his disposal however. If I’m going to be critical, I believe the Mayor has forsaken a lot of revenue via a multi-year fares freeze, and that the Friday fare cut exacerbates that. Along with the £2.2Bn spent on the Silvertown tunnel, there’s a number of executive decisions made that one could take issue with.
For what it’s worth, I’m in favour of more river crossings East of Tower Bridge in principle. When you look at Silvertown in detail however – it’s only a few hundred metres down river of the Blackwall Tunnel, there’s no separate provision for cycling/pedestrians, it extends tolling for crossings East of central London (users of the Dartford crossings were lied to about them going toll free, they have to retain a charge because there will be a toll on the future Gravesend – Tilbury Lower Thames Crossing) – it makes less and less sense.
While it can’t be rowed back on now, it’s a huge shame that directly after completing Crossrail we didn’t maintain that momentum and crack on with other smaller and easier rail and tube projects around the capital instead of TfL’s budget being blown on Silvertown. Somehow the next Mayor needs to come up with a funding model for new lines, because we now know there is an appetite for them.

The central section of Crossrail, now wildly popular with usership often reaching 700,000 a day

Housing – staying safe and avoiding rip offs
Traditionally the debate around housing in London was a bit of a pantomime, a Mayor would set an ambitious housing target of 50,000 a year and achieve 20 – 25,000 instead. Rinse and repeat. Now we have a regularly updated London Plan bursting with ‘opportunity areas’ which should in the long term lead to a much more permissive planning environment. Whether that will make much difference to numbers overall in the long run we’ll just have to wait and see.
Unfortunately for London the debate on housing has moved onto much darker areas. London’s social housing and high-rise sector is still reeling from the Grenfell Tower disaster. This flagged up fire safety issues as a result of construction industry short cuts that were going to haunt us at one time or another. It’s also in turn shone a light on the iniquities of leasehold, and the folly of shared ownership. This is something flagged up by George Orwell as effectively a scam as far back as the 1930s, but because our political culture supports major landowners so much nothing has been done about it.
Thousands of leasehold flat-owners and renters across London are now being gouged by service charge hikes. These are due to a number of reasons – post-Grenfell safety remediation measures, rises in energy costs, passing on mortgage rate costs etc.
Even council house rents have gone up far above the rate of inflation, sometimes with virtually no notice. One way or another Londoners are being ripped off by property costs in unprecedented ways, a major headache when the average rent in London is £1200 a month, that’s £200 above the national average.
How would the Lib Dems accelerate house building activity? The 2021 manifesto floated the idea of a London Housing Development Corporation. At the time this was to enable more conversions to residential schemes, many of which have been developer-led and of poor quality. Lots of opportunity and room for improvement there.
The London-wide developer is an idea that’s been carried forward to this year’s manifesto but with a greater emphasis on taking closer control of brownfield sites that could be developed, in partnership with public bodies such as TfL or the borough councils.
London is a part of the country where private developers wanting to build mid-market or luxury housing need no encouragement so I’m pleased to see the Lib Dems housing policy concentrates on social housing, and establishing a legal fighting fund so that tenants can take on ALMOs, Housing Associations, and Peter Rachman style landlords that are mismanaging properties. Low quality social housing and bottom-of-the-market private housing has always existed, it’s just a question of how much the political class acknowledges it and tackles the problem.

Peter Barber-designed Hannibal Road Gardens in Stepney Green – London needs a lot more of this!

Lib Dem stars of stage and screen, Part 1

It’s election year, and I’m sure we’re going to see some ostentatious victory stunts from the Lib Dems, in the past we’ve injected razzmatazz into politics by involving showbiz stars, drawing on our strong links with the entertainment world. This reached a zenith in 2010 when the likes of Colin Firth, JK Rowling, Armando Iannucci, Daniel Radcliffe and Professor Richard Dawkins were on a list of high profile backers published by the party. For many their enthusiasm cooled when we entered government, enacted gay marriage, brought UK aid to the UN level, raised the income tax threshold and brought in automatic pension enrolment. I thought I’d take a look at a few famous Lib Dem supporters, some of whom you’ll know all about, some you won’t.

Brian Eno
Brian Eno first came to prominence as keyboard player for Roxy Music, then invented ambient music, produced David Bowie’s best albums and went onto work with U2 and Coldplay. For my money he’s in the all-time top five list of best rock and pop producers alongside Norman Whitfield, Nile Rodgers, John Leckie and George Martin. Eno has worked within the Lib Dems from top to bottom, happily delivering Focus leaflets in his local ward and was appointed as a Youth Advisor on the first day of Nick Clegg’s leadership in 2007. In 2010 Eno contributed to a pre-election book Why Vote Liberal Democrat (which included input from an electric mix including former DPP Sir Ken MacDonald KC and ex Gurkha Madan Kumar Gurung).
Outside party politics Eno has been a longtime supporter of charity War Child, which has delivered humanitarian aid to war zones since the Bosnian war in 1993, and a dogged anti-censorship campaigner.

Brian Eno from the 1970s through to present day, an avant garde innovator and contributor to pop culture, and a champion for free expression and human rights

Barry Norman
Film critic Barry Norman appeared on our screens as a film critic for 26 years. Like many with a long term career at the BBC Norman was very discreet about his political affiliations but switched allegiance from the Labour Party to the SDP at the point of its foundation in 1981, and remained loyal after our merger in 1988. He explained that Shirley Williams was his favourite politician. Aside from culture, Norman had a great interest in current affairs and technology, presenting Radio 4’s Today programme in the 1970s and The Chip Shop, a programme about home computers in the early 1980s.
Norman would weave references to cricket into his Film shows at every available opportunity and spent much of his free time watching games at Lord’s – my kind of guy.

Barry Norman, like most Englishmen of his generation would wear cable knit at the drop of hat

Ludovic Kennedy
Always a deep thinker, Kennedy had a brief foray into representative politics as Liberal candidate for Rochdale, first at a by election in 1957, then the general election in 1959, he didn’t succeed but increased the Liberal vote share and joined an illustrious list of notable figures to stand and fail to get elected for us that includes the likes of CB Fry. Kennedy was a broadcaster and author and got involved in a wide range of campaigns during his life, such as opposition to the death penalty and later in life voluntary euthanasia. Kennedy wrote several books about miscarriages of justice, the most famous being The Airman and The Carpenter, in which he contended that Richard Hauptmann did not kidnap and murder Charles Lindbergh’s baby, a crime for which he was executed in 1936. The book was made into a 1996 HBO film Crime of the Century, starring Stephen Rea and Isabella Rossellini.
Kennedy felt so strongly about voluntary euthanasia he resigned from the Lib Dems as Charles Kennedy was reluctant to adopt the policy, he stood as an independent Devizes in 2001, got 2% of the vote and subsequently rejoined the party.

Ludovic Kennedy, a leading campaigner against the death penalty

Helena Bonham-Carter
The Bonham-Carter family has been associated with Liberal politics since John Bonham-Carter became a Whig MP in 1816. Other major figures in the dynasty include Violet, daughter of H.H. Asquith and president of the party 1945-47 (known as an opponent of appeasement and supporter of family allowances), and her son Mark, victor in the 1958 Torrington by election, a landmark moment in the party’s post war revival (known as the first chairman of the Race Relations Board and a campaigner for granting British citizenship to ethnic minorities in Hong Kong). Mark is Helena’s uncle, throughout her career Helena has been tight-lipped about her political connections, perhaps not wanting to be defined by her family history but sometimes you can’t shake us Liberals off. Apart from roles in Howard’s End, Harry Potter, Alice in Wonderland, Helena is also known for sharing a school stage with Nick Clegg at Westminster in the Jacobean play called The Changeling. At one stage, she had to kick Clegg between the legs, making him collapse in agony.
‘We got it down to a fairly fine art of her missing the crown jewels, so to speak,’ Clegg recalled in an interview with the Mail, ‘But, once, she got it spot-on, and no acting was required.’
While Helena is busy acting let me assure that the Bonham-Carter political dynasty lives on, Jane Bonham-Carter is Baroness of Yarnbury, who is, fittingly enough, Lib Dem spokesperson for Culture in the House of Lords.

Helena Bonham-Carter in Howard’s End, she’s said Howard’s End is ‘absorbed into her life’, small wonder, her Grandmother was close friends with E.M. Forster and her Great-Grandfather H.H. Asquith was Prime Minister when it was set (1910)

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.

Licence Revoked – House of Lords Reform

Regular readers of my blog know I like to talk about policy a lot. This week’s offering will be slightly misleading departure as it’s inspired by a James Bond film. I’m sorry to disappoint but I won’t be putting forward policy proposals in the future inspired by Lethal Weapon, Death Wish, McBain or Die Hard. Constitutional reform – there’s a simple question you’d ask about the House of Lords – do you reform it, or do you abolish it and replace it with something else?
In Lib Dem circles the abolition debate is mature and many people have wrestled with the conundrum of creating a second chamber that is democratic, but dovetails with the commons well at the same time. I don’t have too much to add to that debate so if we were to reform the Lords I have a few ideas. One of them is giving the Government the power to revoke.

If a secret agent goes rogue, he can be revoked, why not a Lord?

On that bombshell
When I first put the idea of revoke out on twitter as a one liner it caused a lot of consternation so I feel minded to explain myself in more detail, though set in the context of the fact so many Lib Dems would indeed abolish the House of Lords, I think this proposal amounts to pretty modest change. One of the current problems of the House of Lords is that there are simply too many bad apples, and either mechanisms to remove them don’t exist or they’re not used. The most egregious example of this is disgraced former press baron Conrad Black.
In 2012 Black boasted that he couldn’t be kicked out of the House, even though he was a convicted criminal. This changed with the 2014 House of Lords Reform Act, which allows for expulsion in event of a conviction. It’s never been used, however, many assume Black has been expelled, he hasn’t, he’s just on an extended ‘leave of absence’.
Controversial opinion: Conrad Black committed the white collar crime of fraud so he’s been cut some slack. If he’d glassed someone in a pub brawl or tried to mug someone in the street he probably would no longer be a peer of the realm. I think it’s fundamentally wrong that Black is still a Lord. I think it’s wrong that Evgeny Lebedev, whose father worked for the security services of a hostile foreign power, is a Lord. I think it’s wrong that someone like Claire Fox, who was involved in a pop up political party, the Brexit Party, can legislate for the rest of her life. I think it’s wrong that Charlotte Owen, who worked as junior assistant for various government ministers, can be appointed as a peer aged only 30.
So many bad, inappropriate, divisive appointments who are untouchable under the current rules. This is why I propose the power of revoke. A government would be able to revoke 15 peers per parliamentary term, this would be neutral in terms of the partisan balance of the chamber, they’d have to be replaced by an equal number with the same affiliation. In practice this power would be used sparingly as it would set a precedent, if an incoming Labour government revoked 10 Tories, it’s likely the next Conservative admin would revoke exactly the same number.

Conrad Black – widely assumed to no longer be a peer, but technically he still is

Mission creep with the Upper House
Reforming the House of Lords needs to be seen in the context of the previous reform and how we’re starting to drift away from the status quo ante. In 1999 the House of Lords Act drastically reduced the number of peers from 1,330 to 669 by removing the vast majority of hereditary peers. The Labour government of the time quite rightly objected to a permanent majority of Conservative peers in the upper house, blocking and delaying progressive legislation.
Wikipedia sums up the background thus, “During the 20th century, Liberal and Labour governments proposed many bills that were opposed by the House of Lords, which had been dominated by Conservatives since the 1890s, leading to some delay and, where proposed before elections, their dropping from the legislative agenda. In the first year of the Blair government, the Lords passed back Government bills 38 times.
The rejection considered the most contentious was that of the European Elections Bill, against which the Lords voted five times. Blair stated that the Conservatives were using the hereditary peers to ‘frustrate’ and ‘overturn’ the will of the democratically elected House of Commons.”
The 1999 Act created a mechanism to retain 92 hereditary peers that would be elected internally, but it massively shifted the effective balance of power to life peers that now outnumber them. Since then the overall number of peers has increased from 669 to 784. Assuming that the number of Bishops has remained roughly the same, only 67 Crossbench peers have joined the Lords since 2000, so there’s been a steady increase in the number of politically-affiliated life peers. This means that overall the UK has 1,434 members of parliament across both chambers, by far the most in Europe, and it has more peers than it has MPs. I propose that there should always been fewer peers than MPs, this would be achieved by both increasing the number of MPs but also reducing the number of peers. In practice this would involve fewer appointments for a while. Slimming down the upper house would mean fewer peers, but crucially fewer controversial and divisive appointments that devalue the status of peerage. Obviously in theory a government would still have the power to put forward very partisan actors that would not have universal acceptance, but hopefully reform would also amount to a reset, where a culture of personal patronage and cronyism that taints the Lords ushered in by Boris Johnson would be nipped in the bud.

Lib Dems review of the year – 2023

I’m sure in years to come we’ll look back at 2023 as a very difficult year for Britain, but the calm before the storm as many important events, a UK general election and a US presidential election, will take place next year. How have things worked out for the Lib Dems? We’ve continued to rebuild our presence in Local Government, and cement ourselves as challengers to the Tories across the South of England. These are positives, on the downside we continue to oscillate in a low range in the opinion polls despite the unpopularity of the government, and the timidity of the opposition. Many of the structural weaknesses of the party – not having big money donors, not having a media home, not having a nationwide club/office network, not having substantial real life social networks – remain unaddressed, though of course it would take a huge amount of time and effort to work on these away from campaigning. Anyway, here’s my take on 2023 from a Lib Dems perspective.

Our victory stunt in Somerton and Frome, because everyone involved in politics has an impeccable sense of humour and a keen eye for perspective, this was met with universal acclaim

Key moment of the year
What’s that sound? It’s the sonic boom from a Lib Dems victory cannon signalling our intent to ‘get these clowns out of No. 10!’. Somerton and Frome was another emphatic by election victory. Sarah Dyke regained the seat for us, overturning a 19,213 majority with a 28.4% swing after previous MP David Warburton got embroiled in a sexual harassment and cocaine scandal. Having racked up spectacular victories in other parts of the country in previous years, Somerton and Frome was a test for the party in the South West. The pressure was on and they delivered. There are many points to make about this win, firstly in Sarah Dyke the seat now has an MP who genuinely understands the area and will go out to bat for the rural economy – something Tories in safe shire seats can’t be bothered to do. Secondly the huge swing is a function of establishing primacy and reaching out to all voters, who were open to the idea of tactical voting in significant numbers.
Our win was quite a contrast with the other by election on the same day – a shock hold for the Tories in Uxbridge and South Ruislip. Ultimately this could come back to haunt the Government as they played anti-ULEZ and ‘war-on-the-motorist’ cards, getting people with ULEZ-compliant cars, even zero-emissions electric cars to vote for them. This is a deception they can’t get away with for any length of time and have regressed to a low level in the polls since.

The launch of Dartford food bank – one big joke for the local Conservatives present, having three million people have to avail themselves of charity for essentials because welfare payments are too low is of course hilarious. Only the Lib Dems have a plan to make food banks history

Best policy of the year
So the Lib Dems had a major overhaul of their policy offering this year in the pre-manifesto document For a Fair Deal. In the past we’ve had a bold, transformative suite of measures for tax and benefits, indeed the IFS calculated in 2017 that our tax and benefits policies were more redistributive than Labour’s. That’s Corbyn’s Labour, one of the most left-wing iterations of Labour since 1945. This is something that we Lib Dems only mention in passing, but we need to talk this up a whole lot more, and it’s never been more important in this age of economic hardship. As it stands we’re the only party willing to lift the two-child cap on benefits (both tax credit and universal credit), and we’re the only party that has committed to raising Universal Credit above inflation, as a means of reducing poverty.
These generous benefits policies go hand-in-hand with a set of tax policies that include a windfall tax on oil and gas, reversing tax cuts on the banks and capital gains, and closing the tax gap via better enforcement of existing tax laws. These measures would bring far more revenue than Labour’s proposals, and though practical measures like closing the tax gap don’t grab headlines (they’re not popular with who owns the media), they would effect a multi-billion £ difference to our finances. So I commend our tax and benefits policies, and if you’re a wholehearted Lib Dem, you should too.

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold – our Arts policy came in from the cold too

Most important policy of the year
As Lib Dem voters go beyond a broad church – they’re more of a really loose coalition, often we give up on playing to the base, as the base is so disparate. That means we risk losing sight of who votes for us and why. In the last few years we’ve not played to the base well at all. There is a straw in the wind though, it’s our Arts & Entertainment policy. This covers off the wants and needs of two million people in the creative industries sector and millions more that enjoy TV, gigs, films, art galleries, stand up comedy, reading books, even playing computer games. For years we barely had a policy, when major developments happened, like the threats to Channel 4 and BBC 4 we were pretty mute – certainly not leading the conversation.
Now we have a new Arts & Entertainment policy that recognises the value of the TV status quo, the ongoing threat to the music industry caused by Brexit effectively destroying European touring, and the need for more funding at a time when a significant number of arts venues – theatres, pubs, specialist small music and comedy venues – are under threat of closure. Often Arts & Entertainment are seen as ephemeral in the public affairs sphere, certainly not as important as education, healthcare or defence. However, if the Lib Dems want a decent number of members in the future it has to appeal to bases – arts is one, science is another, and public sector senior managers have been loyal to us for years. Those who’ve backed us from Creative Industries have done so in spite of our support for their sector, not because of it. It’s time they were allowed in from the cold.

Biggest own-goal of the year
Until the week of our conference the party had pumped out more tweets this year about puppy smuggling than it had about Europe in 2023. Ed Davey’s speech included a short section about repairing our broken relationship with Europe. It got a standing ovation, I’m told that’s extremely rare. It’s pretty obvious that we have a substantial hardcore of Europhiles in the party who are frustrated by the party hierarchy putting our EU policy on the back burner. Internal emails explain and justify this, saying the EU has been overtaken by cost-of-living, the pandemic and the Ukraine/Russia war in terms of voter salience.
While that may be true, it’s not hard to critique Brexit, we’re now in the real world outcomes phase. It’s pretty straightforward to point out the shortcomings, and if possible, what we’d do about them, as well as being sensible enough to say certain things are a long way off. This is something I explored in my ‘Let’s look at Rejoin’ blog earlier this year – the standard accession timeline is now between eight to 10 years. If no fasttrack rejoin is on offer, then yes we need to be honest and upfront about how time consuming the process is. At the moment we have a sensible, realistic policy, but it’s not being explained, or articulated – that’s a whole set of opportunities that are going a begging.

Best local groups of the year

Mid Devon
If the Tories thought they could make any headway in Crediton or Cullumpton this year they were spectacularly wide of the mark. Mid Devon pulled off the biggest numeral gain in the Local Elections, up by 21 seats taking outright control of the council. This was part of a pattern of success all across Devon, with the exception of Torbay where the Tories only gained the council because we stood aside for independents that saw their vote collapse.

Mid Devon Lib Dems – smashed it

Stratford-on-Avon

The party is reluctant to expand its list of target seats, but surely it will have to make an exception for this part of Warwickshire where the local group took control of the council with a net gain of 15. In Manuela Perteghella the local group has a great figurehead to rally around for what would be a totemic win – turfing out Nadim ‘my tax affairs are complicated’ Zahawi.

Lincolnshire
So many great things happened in Lincolnshire this year – regaining control of West Lindsey council, joining a NOC coalition in South Kesteven, winning seats in Lincoln city and even in the Brexit citadel of Boston. The local group topped off the year with one of our best by election wins in North Kesteven. With the exception of the by election they did all this with no outside help. As Lincolnshire is one of the heaviest leave voting areas in England, along with South Essex, all of these were massively against-the-odds wins.

Surrey Heath
The local government map of Surrey is largely amber with the odd fleck of blue or indie grey. Surrey Heath is part of our success there, but it’s no ordinary success. Back in 2014 the British Electoral Survey deemed Surrey Heath to be the most right wing constituency in the country. Years of austerity, mismanagement and Brexit disappointment has put paid to that. Surrey Heath Lib Dems stormed the council, taking control with 14 gains. It’s achieved this with an extremely active local membership that is present at every by election across the country and has one of the biggest twitter following of any local group. There’s a lot to admire about how they operate.

East Riding of Yorkshire
This is the one group I’d like to highlight that didn’t flip the status of a council. Nevertheless the local group can be very pleased with themselves this year, turning a safe Tory council into a minority one. East Riding Lib Dems gained 14 seats, leaving the Tories to rely on the kindness of independents. As in many councils where we didn’t quite get over the line, we’re now the main challengers and have a realistic chance of becoming the largest single party next time.

East Riding Lib Dems celebrate massive gains in May

Lessons of the year
Campaigning contrasts: I went into the main town of my district on polling day – Sevenoaks. I was shocked to hear that the local Conservatives had done hardly any campaigning, to the point where they’d paid for postal deliveries because they couldn’t get any activists to do it for them. Unsurprisingly Sevenoaks Lib Dems swept the board in Sevenoaks town and there’s a pathway to flipping the council outright next time. Tory motivation and organisation is collapsing in some very True Blue parts of the country – something we can really exploit next year.
At the other end of the spectrum we got a rude awakening in Mid Bedfordshire, again I came to this campaign late on. I had people pushing our leaflets back out through the letterbox literally seconds after I’d put them in. People were sick and tired of the campaign – not entirely our fault as Nadine Dorries’ choices created a four-month long by election. Campaign fatigue among the public was pretty obvious, however. This shows us that the sheer volume and intensity of campaigning doesn’t always work, although we’ll never have another by election like Mid Beds. I hope at least what we learn from Mid Beds is to be a bit more relaxed about short timelines for elections, because five weeks is enough for most people to make their mind up.

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.

A Liberal vision for Urban Britain

We’re sure to have a General Election in 2024, the next most important elections will be for London Mayor and the Greater London Assembly. I think now Is a good time to reflect on the Lib Dems platform for London last time around and how it is likely to change, a lot has happened in just three years! I’ll be touching on points that are relevant for all of urban Britain, not just London, the quality of life in all our cities has lots of room for improvement.

Our manifesto for London 2020 2021
The last London Mayor and GLA elections took place in exceptional circumstances, delayed for a year with very limited campaigning allowed due to Covid 19. This hit us Lib Dems really hard. We lost an outstanding and experienced candidate in Siobhan Benita who decided, not unreasonably, that she couldn’t campaign for 18 months. If we don’t campaign we don’t win, so not being able to go door knocking had a greater impact on us, compared to the big two parties buoyed by money and media support.

Rob Blackie is going with a distinctive platform for his 2024 Mayoral campaign

Nevertheless there was a lot to admire in the manifesto, and in our ultimate candidate, ex-MEP Luisa Porritt. The best bits of the 2021 manifesto were holistic, quality-of-life measures that you’d hope and expect the Lib Dems to be putting forward. For me the highlights were:

• Create a London Housing Company to aid residential development
• Increase green space via a green roof programme
• Adopt best practice in office and retail to resi conversions from other European cities
• Develop the 15 minute cities agenda, especially walkable neighbourhoods
• Create a London Youth Service to provide after-school activities to prevent crime

My one bugbear was that, while there is plenty in the manifesto about transport, we could and should be much more demanding about new infrastructure. The Green Party specifically backed all the post-Crossrail schemes that are on TfL’s drawing board – Bakerloo Line Extension, DLR to Abbey Wood, Tramlink to Sutton, West London Orbital, Crossrail 2 – and we didn’t. While Crossrail 2 is a £40Bn megaproject unlikely to make progress soon we’re now in a vacuum in terms of the next new line for London and there is some low-hanging, under a £1Bn fruit out there. Furthermore, even if it’s not in our gift to sign off on these projects, it can’t hurt to back them. If the party, for example, backs DLR to Abbey Wood, or Crossrail to Ebbsfleet, it makes people in Greenwich and Bexley feel important – boroughs where we have very little traction at the moment (A DLR connection to the Abbey Wood area has been discussed and not delivered since the late 1990s).
It should be noted that our GLA member Caroline Pidgeon has been a tireless campaigner for public transport in South London. She has been a lone voice in backing the extension of the Victoria Line south of Brixton, unfortunately this is barely known about beyond the corridors of City Hall. Public transport infrastructure is a baton we need to pick up and run with in the future.

The contents of our last manifesto for London in 2021

What’s new for 2024?
When I visited City Hall last year I was given a heads up about the report soon to emerge about London Fire Brigade in the wake of Jaden Francois-Esprit’s suicide in 2021. The report, Independent Culture Review, chaired by Nazir Afzal OBE, turned out to be worse than I thought, and a lot of disciplinary action is ongoing. There is a feeling in London Lib Dems that pillars of our blue light services – the Met and the London Fire Brigade – are either flawed or fundamentally rotten. The two major parties might pussyfoot around this issue, but very strong words and strong action is needed. In 1992 while doing a politics degree one of my first year exam questions was ‘Are the Police institutionally sexist, racist and homophobic?’ In 31 years what’s changed?
Obviously we’ve always stood against bullying in the workplace and for racial equality, especially in major arms of the state like the Police, Fire Brigade, Prison Service, NHS etc, what’s new is that it’s so obvious due to detailed internal testimony that fundamental culture change is needed, and lip service is not enough. This narrative is being taken forward by our Mayoral candidate, Rob Blackie – there is a very fine line to tread here, it’s not easy to be a critical friend of the Police, but so far he’s got the balance right. It’s a bold and differentiated agenda.
You know we’ve declared climate and cost-of-living emergencies, well let me be the first to call an entertainment emergency. We’ve got to a point where leisure and entertainment in London needs electrodes to stop it from flatlining. You don’t need to live in a big city to know that the number of pubs in Britain has declined hugely this century, we’ve seen a net loss of 13,000 or 25% of the total. The pandemic has been terrible for municipal facilities too – England has lost 400 swimming pools since 2010 and industry body Community Leisure UK said half of pools could be closed or offer reduced services due to high energy costs (the average 25 metre pool uses the same amount of heating as 75 houses).
A study of 100 venues revealed this summer that 27% of theatre and music venues feared they may have to close soon with a further 40% expecting to make cut backs to staff. This was before public buildings were hit with the RAAC crisis. CEO and Founder of the Music Venue Trust, Mark Davyd said, “The current situation is really on a knife edge, with venues essentially clinging on to the end of existing fixed-term energy contracts and any new tariff effectively immediately creating a venue under threat of permanent closure.”
Even before Covid and the cost-of-living crisis, swathes of the nighttime economy were hit by austerity. London lost half of its nightclubs between 2010 and 2017. Perhaps the demise of nightclubs is a sign of youth culture moving on, but it still signals a sudden lack of choice, they’ve not been replaced by anything else yet. Pioneer of club culture, Joe Wieczorek, founder of the Labyrinth Club in Dalston, told VICE magazine, “I’m very fortunate. I was a little sort of herbert when I was young, I copped the skinhead times of ’69 and ’70 and ’71, and I went to Tamla Motown and Trojan clubs and places like that, and I’ve seen two or three changes of culture. I’ve got to be honest with you, this one [rave] really has lasted longer than all of the others put together. But the one downside is now, after all these years, it’s taken a massive step backwards, clubs are returning to the sort of era of carpet and chrome, where Sharon and Tracy dance round their handbags.”
Of course political party activists aren’t the best people to get a party started in an underground club, but we need to be aware of just how bad the decline is in London’s night time economy and what policy devices we can put in place to help. Either we’re at the bottom of a cycle, or things will get even worse and London will be a pretty boring, unsociable place to grow up in, compared to the ‘90s and the ‘00s. Surely Liberals are the best people to deal with this, if anyone intervenes from the public affairs realm. The workforce of every major city includes a higher percentage of leisure, hospitality and creative industries workers than the rest of the country so this really is an agenda that applies to Birmingham, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Leeds, Nottingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Bristol and Sheffield too.

Summed up as a new agenda, I am proposing:

• As a party we need to have detailed policies for new public transport infrastructure, housing and urban regeneration
• There is an excellent symbiosis between new public transport and housing – make the most of it
• Urban regeneration masterplans should focus on small affordable workshops and studios for local SMEs start ups not big retail. (Affordable space is reduced since Network Rail sold its under-the-arches estate)
• Be prepared to be candid about the public sector workforce that operates in your city, if you have jurisdiction as in London
• Now is the time for a major intervention to reverse the decline in hospitality, leisure and entertainment in urban Britain
• Have a narrative about people that is inclusive of racial minorities, religious minorities, Europeans and Anglo-Europeans as possible

Bristol – an early adopter of Smart Cities technology

Smart Cities – the future for policy making
My university library’s corridors were packed with the analogue precursor to the Smart City – colour-coded street by street maps classifying the socio-economic status of London – the world’s first ever detailed social survey from the 1880s. Now you can have dozens of different datasets, even live up-to-the-minute, on noise levels, particulate pollution levels, access to public transport, traffic congestion levels, even odour levels. In Sheffield laser technology is being used to monitor levels of waste in litter bins several times a day. This micro-management means that bins aren’t left overflowing and no wasted journeys are made to collect from bins only half full.

London Lib Dems – looking to make the most multicultural city in the world work for you

The Smart Cities concept has been around for around 10 years now and has been applied to some extent or another in every major British city. One of the major reasons I’m a Lib Dem is our policy making methodology, it’s evidence-based and we take soundings from experts, hopefully starting out with few, or no pre-conceptions. It’s a bit of a surprise that Smart Cities, and the profusion of data that comes with the concept, are not discussed more internally. The notion of a London Youth Service, for example, comes from Smart Cities data which told us when and where teenagers were most at risk of being a victim of violent crime – immediately after school. So we want to divert and decant school pupils as much as possible into after-school clubs to make their lives more fulfilling and a lot less dangerous. That’s just one application, Big Data could be used in hundreds of ways.
One of the pioneers of the Smart Cities concept was Mark Wright, a longstanding Lib Dem councillor in Bristol and head of IT the last time we were in power there. He was ahead of the curve in terms of realising that local authorities had a lot of data and it was extremely useful to the public and commercial enterprises. I hope in the future we have more people in positions of responsibility like Mark who had a great handle on how data capture technology was developing, and just how we could harness it – produce a lot of open source data without being intrusive to the individual.
There is a Liberal future for Britain’s cities that harnesses technology in a way that liberates, rather than constrains, and where we help people to be who they want to be in a safe but vibrant urban realm. Let’s make it happen.

Further reading:

Find more about Sheffield’s smart bins here:

https://www.ice.org.uk/news-insight/news-and-blogs/ice-blogs/ice-community-blog/how-sheffield-city-council-are-integrating-smart-city-technology

Find out more about London’s underground club culture here:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/8x9ndz/labyrinth-dalston-feature

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.

1997 all over again

In 1997 mediocre Beatles tribute act Oasis released the woeful Be Here Now album, at least the title was taken from a George Harrison song, so they were honest about their influences. Fast forward to 2023 and there’s a universal outpouring of love for the Real Thing©, the final ever Beatles song Now and Then, a fitting farewell and a dignified lament for John Lennon’s mother Julia.
50,000 comments in 24 hours on the Beatles YouTube channel says it’s brought tears to many an eye, just the sentimental diversion we need in this world with multiple conflicts raging.
If we have reasons to be cheerful in the UK it’s the knowledge that we’re reaching the end of a political era, it would take a wholly improbable turn of events for the Tories to win the next election and even black swans like the Israel/Palestine conflict aren’t moving the needle on the polling dial. The Conservatives have been behind in the polls for two years now, and looking at aggregate polling Labour’s lead varies between 15 – 20%.

John Major – now remembered with affection but that didn’t stop one of the heaviest Conservative defeats in history

Heading for a wipeout – Sunak’s shortcomings
The ruling party has an unelected leader who has never really been tested in life and shows all the worst qualities of a public school boy. So out of touch he thinks homeless queuing up at a soup kitchen have a chance of getting a job in the city, so clueless in the real world he doesn’t know how to pay for things with a contactless card, so oblivious to economic reality he thinks people aren’t bothering to start businesses because a regular paycheque is a ‘comfort zone’ (Sunak himself has worked for his father-in-law’s firm Catamaran Ventures – massive personal risk he took there).
Either Sunak suffers from a massive lack of self-awareness or he’s surrounded by yes-men that leave him completely unequipped for any serious critique, because with his family connections he’s in no position to lecture people about the sharp end of capitalist risk and reward.
Sunak is lacking for many things and his contrived energy and enthusiasm doesn’t compensate, he doesn’t resonate with the C1 and C2 social groups in the same way Boris Johnson did. In a strange historical parallel, John Major managed briefly to tap into Middle England thanks to his rejection of foreign food in the Treasury canteen and modest beginnings.
By 1997 the same C1 and C2 groups had abandoned John Major too – for years the Conservatives had sold the masses a share owning and property owning dream. They were indifferent about the first, and suffered because of the latter. Years of high property costs eventually did for Major and the cost of living crisis will no doubt topple Sunak too – and maybe the reckoning will be even worse for Sunak as he would appear not to understand the basic pocketbook issues afflicting millions.
His ministers and backbenchers aren’t helping either, giving unwanted poverty cope advice about avoiding branded products in the supermarket or believing it’s possible to make a square meal for 30p (spending only 30p on a meal would bring you down to the UN definition of absolute poverty – $2 a day, maybe go to somewhere like Rwanda with that budgetary advice).
What has the Sunak administration got? Either it’s barefaced lies about 15 minute cities and enforced car sharing or trivial nonsense about things no one was asking for like alcohol duty restructuring, forced academisation of schools, or an NHS workforce plan. Either way it’s a chronic failure to effect any positive change for long in people’s lives – there’s the brief flowering of a progressive policy in the £20 Universal Credit uplift, only for it to be snatched away in an instant.

Since I’m celebrating The Beatles – There’s an orchestral breakdown in the middle of Band On The Run that feels like the mists clearing, a sense of liberation and relief the country will feel when the Tories are finally gone

The contrast with 1997
By the Spring of 1997 it’s fair to say that John Major developed a relaxed fatalistic attitude towards his electoral prospects, he’d actually presided over falling inflation, interest rates, and unemployment and living standards were on the rise. This didn’t matter to the millions who voted him out – they still remembered eye-popping interest rates and negative equity in the housing market, and continued public sector austerity.
In 1996 the Conservatives spent only £700m on school buildings, in 2009 – 2010 Labour spent £10Bn, the massive uplift in part to compensate with the neglect shown in the 1979 – 1997 period. If we’re being generous to Major, what were the other positives? Progress with Northern Ireland, getting close to the Good Friday agreement that was eventually signed off in 1998. The National Lottery was introduced in 1994, with a remit of distributing a lot of the profits into sporting and cultural infrastructure and activities. It’s fair to say that National Lottery money has given a shot into the arm of the British film industry and elite sports, though these days we do have a multi billion £ maintenance backlog in municipal leisure centres and playing fields.
Tasked with looking for the positives in the 2019 – 2024 parliament and I’m really wracking my brains. Living in a safe Conservative seat I know why people voted for them in 2015/2017/2019 – frozen council tax, low income tax, low inflation, low interest rates, rising house prices and frozen fuel duties. Now most of those don’t apply.

Olympic hero Joanna Rowsell – lottery money for elite sport a rare policy win

There is no positive economic legacy to speak of, I’m sure Conservatives will point to the vaccine roll and and furlough but the record on Covid is poor: we spent the most money, our economy went down the most and we ended up with one of the worst records in terms of excess deaths and long Covid in Europe. When it comes to long term ramifications this might be crucial, Labour picked up the ball in 1997 and ran with it, that meant the 2001 result was almost the same, an even bigger achievement than winning in the first place. Whoever wins next year – a majority Labour government or a Lab/Lib coalition will have to do a phenomenal turnaround job to generate much of a feel good factor in 2029.
At the moment Labour is in the business of disappointing progressives, this is down to the fundamentals of our economic situation – no significant or long lasting growth, our public sector deficit is £137Bn and our debt interest repayments are £111Bn p.a., these payments will continue to weigh us down without credit rating upgrades and interest rate cuts – neither are on the horizon. At some point, however, Labour will have to pull some rabbits out the hat that are vaguely equivalent to the minimum wage, sure start nurseries, the hospital building programme, or the £22.5Bn phone licence auction windfall.

Liberal aspirations – a coalition deal or a voice of conscience
What of my party, the Lib Dems in all of this? Current polling suggests a Labour landslide, what mitigates against this is a relative lack of enthusiasm for Labour beyond voting intention and still a relatively high number of don’t knows. So let’s assume there are two options on the table – either a strong Labour majority or a hung parliament with Labour as the largest single party. The Lib Dem aspiration for the next election is clear, win as many seats as possible, and that almost all of these will be gains from the Tories.
Realistically we’re looking to progress from 15 seats to 40 seats and to make that net gain of 25 seats we’ll probably target 50. While many in the Labour movement remain hostile to our coalition legacy the fact is we can play a useful role knocking Tory MPs out of power in places Labour can’t touch such as Esher & Walton, Winchester, Cheltenham and Wokingham.
If Labour wins a strong working majority and has no need of collaboration what role should the Lib Dems play? It can afford to be bold and point out how it would go further than what is a very timid and cautious brand of Labour. It hardly needs to change tack, we’re already ahead of Labour in calling for HS2 to be built in full, saying we’d end the two-child benefit cap, repeal the Voter ID law (for which Labour failed to turn up in the House of Lords), and scrap the shameful repressive Public Order Act (2023) and Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act (2022) which restrict peaceful protest in the UK.
Occasionally Labour has been good enough to adopt Lib Dems policies on issues such as school meals and the Windfall Tax. With more MPs we’ll be in a position to be more vocal and more vigorous in our campaigning, which is how, despite being in opposition, MPs such as Wera Hobhouse can get legislation through parliament on issues such as workplace harassment and protection from invasive digital devices in the public realm.

I was at this Refugee Rights march earlier this year in Parliament Square, the Lib Dems and Socialist Worker Party turned up, mainstream Labour, Greens and Conservatives didn’t – indicative of the differences between us

Is there an opportunity that didn’t exist before? Certainly in the Home Counties there is a constituency of senior managers and small business owners who would be receptive to the Lib Dems message who would otherwise be natural Conservatives – these are the people frustrated and alienated by Partygate and the ongoing shambolic nature of Sunak’s administration that have to perform to a much higher standard in their own working lives. As cliched as it might sound, emphasising basic competence, moderation and a grown up style of politics appeals to this group now more than ever.

Apres Sunak, la deluge
William Hague, Iain Duncan Smith and Michael Howard are rare examples of Tory party leaders who never became Prime Minister. After 1997 the Conservatives spent quite some time flailing around looking for the next leader who might have the right stuff to lead the country. They eventually found him, but they had to lose three elections in the process. If the number of Tory MPs dips well below 200 then it’s possible that the talent pool will be limited and someone unsuited to the role will be chosen by default.

Sunak and Johnson – handing over a toxic social and economic legacy to the next Prime Minister

Considering that we’ve seen five Conservative leaders in eight years there is a danger for the party that 1) They pick a new leader popular with the members like Truss but a liability in the country, and 2) They stick with that leader because they have to show some commitment and stability after all the chaos we’ve endured.
Those of us watching the Tories know that as long as they indulge in identity politics their own internal workings will be very volatile because Brexit isn’t delivering positive real world outcomes and that the nationalism involved in a policy like Brexit is actually very divisive. It’s led a number of high profile figures to leave the party who you’d assume would be carrying it forward – Stewart, Soubry, Grieve, Gymiah, Hammond etc. That bloodletting and instability will probably continue until the Conservatives stop being a Europhobic party.
I know a few people are fearful of a more long term turn to the right within the Conservatives, but if they fail to rediscover their free enterprise, competition, pro-business mojo that will rebound more on them than anything else. The type of figure currently being touted as a leader after Sunak – Braverman, Badenoch, Mordaunt or Patel – how much cross-over appeal do they really have? None of us have perfect foresight, if the Tories do indeed lose the next election it’s hard to know what happens next but I’d be surprised if they regained a sense of direction and purpose that would resonate with enough voters to precipitate a quick bounce back. In that, at least, we’d be going right back to 1997.