Love and Liberty

Time for another video…

Here’s what I say in it:






So there’s going to be another General Election. Maybe you’re not that excited. Maybe you’re still disappointed by the last one.

In a democracy, you get choices. So you expect the people who made a different choice to be disappointed.

But the great about democracy is that if you wanted something different, you can always keep putting another point of view, and there will always be another vote.

Wanting to silence dissent or saying one vote counts for ever is sticking a knife in democracy.

We’ve had two really big votes in two years, the General Election, then the referendum. Now we’re to have another one, think about something that’s strange about them.

It’s not just the losers who’ve been disappointed. Even the winners aren’t happy. What happened?

The Conservative Party

At least usually if you voted for the winning party, you’re satisfied for a bit. And the winning party’s quite happy for a bit.

Well, it didn’t happen this time.

Even though most people voted against them, two years ago the Conservatives won by that much. But they’ve been behaving as if they rule the world ever since.

That’s disappointed a lot of people who voted for them last time.

Because a lot of people said they liked David Cameron. He seemed like a moderate and not the nasty, arrogant sort of Tory.

And the Conservative Party promised that voting Tory meant two things above all: stable government and economic success.

That’s all gone, never to return.

Literally the day after the last election, they shut down support from disabled people getting into work. Just because they could. Nasty.

All the way up to today, with the Tories hell-bent on inflicting the most damaging hard Brexit they can. Arrogant.

In between, they’ve messed around with our schools. They put the NHS in crisis. Because their far right hate the environment, they’ve cut green energy so the Tories went from hugging a husky to tilting at windmills.

But above all, this Tory Government has meant utter political chaos and instability, and economic disaster.

The worst of it’s in one word: Brexit.

First the Prime Minister went.

Then none of them had a clue what happened next.

But they’re still behaving as if they rule little England.

Now inflation’s rising, jobs are falling, companies are moving out of Britain, they’re throwing away the biggest Single Market in the history of the world. And Britain is getting smaller, meaner and nastier. A terrible disappointment to everyone who believes in British values.

And still no-one has a clue what happens next.

I bet one person does. Because in Britain we have General Elections every five years. The only reason not to is if a weak Prime Minister is in a total panic and does a massive U-turn. Theresa May has called an election before it’s even half-way time. It must be because she’s panicking. She’s seen some secret figures of how bad it’s going to be and is making a run for it before total disaster.

The most unstable government in decades. The economy thrown in the bin. Now there’s only chaos. Mayhem.

What can the Tories say to the voters they’ve let down? All the Tories stand for now is hating foreigners and bossing people about.

And it’s not just Tory voters who are disappointed.

Tory MPs have actually resigned from Parliament and left politics because they’re so fed up.

Even David Cameron did it! How much of a disappointment do you have to be for the guy who’s just been Prime Minister to say, that’s it, I’m sodding off?

And since the local elections a year ago, in the by-elections every week where people vote for new councillors – the Tories have lost 21. They must be disappointed with that.

The Labour Party

Now, I’ve never been a Labour supporter either. But even I can see that you need a strong opposition to hold the Government to account when they’re in such a mess. Well, there’s no such luck. If you voted Labour last time, well, you’d have been very disappointed they didn’t get in. But they failed by a mile. And since then, they’ve just got worse.

The one reason the Tories look like grown-ups after all their Mayhem is – the Labour Party.

Corbyn and Labour MPs and members who are even more at war with each other than the Tories are. When the country really needs someone to force the Tories to account, all you’re getting is the worst opposition in living memory, who are only interested in fighting themselves.

But the thing that’s really disappointed people is the one you’d never expect.

The most far left Labour leader ever votes with the Tories on everything – he’s given the Tories a blank cheque to do whatever they want on Brexit in every single vote in Parliament. And Labour are boasting they want a harder Brexit than the Tories. A harder Brexit than UKIP!

So there are Labour MPs who’ve resigned from Parliament too, and left politics too, because they’re so disappointed.

And since the local elections a year ago, in the by-elections every week where people vote for new councillors – Labour have lost 13. What a disappointment for what a let-down of an opposition.

UKIP

Then there’s UKIP. At the last election they got one MP. Just one MP.

Guess what happened?

He’s left the party because they all spent so much time fighting him.

Since they got their dream result in the referendum they’ve gone through four leaders. One of them twice. All they ever had was hate, and now they’ve got no-one else to hate but each other. They’re just falling apart.

No MPs. Very few councillors. And you can guess what’s been happening since the local elections a year ago, in the by-elections every week where people vote for new councillors – they’ve lost another 7, probably all they were defending. They must be disappointed with that. But nobody’s even paying any attention any more.

The Liberal Democrats

And then there’s the Liberal Democrats.

Everybody knows at the last General Election we had a terrible result. The worst since I’ve been alive. We all worked hard, we were all disappointed, and our voters were disappointed.

But that’s not where it finishes.

Two years ago we had over forty thousand people still working hard as Lib Dem members. And we didn’t give up.

We went up.

Within a week of the last election, we had more than fifty thousand members.

And still more people joined.

And when the referendum went Leave by that much, more people joined.

By a couple of weeks ago we’d doubled our membership to eighty-five thousand.

On the day Theresa May panicked and ran for an election, Lib Dems surged to more than ninety thousand members.

We’re still growing every day.

Because Britain is better than this, and there is only one party that is fighting against the disappointment.

Because standing up for a better future inspires people. Being a proper opposition. Standing up for working together. For trade and peace and prosperity and the environment and education and our NHS.

And our MPs have actually gone up instead of quitting. One of those brand-new Lib Dem members was determined to make a difference, and she did. She won voters over and overturned a huge Tory majority when she was elected MP for Richmond Park in December.

And since the local elections a year ago, in the by-elections every week where people vote for new councillors – Tories down 21, Labour down 13, UKIP down 7.

People have voted in 33 new Lib Dem councillors.

You don’t have to give up.

You do have a choice. You can change direction. You don’t have to live with disappointment.

There is always a new day.

We’re in league with the future. Join us.

If you want the choice to stop Brexit, if you want Britain to be the open, tolerant, outward-looking country we can be proud of again, if you believe in freedom, fairness and a better future, join the Liberal Democrats.

Theresa May has called a panic election at a time she thinks is best for her to fix the result. But we have a choice.

Mrs Mayhem – prepare to be disappointed.



*Local by-elections results May 2016 to April 2017 from Political Betting, April 8th 2017

Labels: Brexit, British Politics, Conservatives, General Election, Labour, Liberal Democrats, UKIP, Video

The People’s Flag is purple now

It’s to Farage that they kowtow

Now Labour’s values are unknown

Except the mugs with ‘Send them home’

The People’s Flag has changed its spots

For fear of UKIP’s ballot box

Those mugs keep lowering the tone

Their banner reading ‘Send them home’

I like to think that I’d instinctively be a Liberal and not a racist opportunist even if I wasn’t the son of an immigrant. After all, Ed Miliband’s the son of an immigrant too, so there doesn’t seem to be any correlation.

Thanks to Nick Barlow for eternal vigilance and #whynotjointhelabourparty, and to Richard Flowers for everything, always, but this time in particular for kicking off the lyrics. And a damned good kicking is in order (even from Labour MPs).

Labels: Bigotry, Labour, Music, UKIP

One:

So he can disenfranchise all the people on holiday in [shudder] Europe

Two:

So he can cut off any campaigning period in which people might ask questions and get themselves informed rather than just voting with years of newspaper prejudices

Three:

So he can promise to prop up a Tory Government of the far right… Then drop it after two months and run away laughing while Mr Cameron implodes

Four:

So he can exploit what he assumes’ll be the public mood at the highest high water-mark of his populist Party’s popularity before the inevitable consequences of failure to deliver or (worse) compromise with another party or (worse) with reality by having to make a single difficult decision prove he’s just the same as all the other politicians

Five:

…Er, that’s it.

Labels: Coalition, Conservatives, Referendum, The Golden Dozen, UKIP

A micro-guide to the parties! What UKIP and Lib Dems do when they lose! When Lib Dems can expect to get over 50% in the Euros! What I thought of the BBC election coverage! And a cheery song! All this and more in short form from before, after and during the May elections. Most of us had a pretty rough time; everyone has their own worst story to tell, but I’d rather not think about my being ill, with Richard away, Elections of Doom looming, and bereavement. Instead, some of my coping mechanism: posting on Twitter like there’s no tomorrow.

• Parties in full: UKIP hate everyone; Con fear everyone; #LibDems love everyone; Labour too scared you’ll hate them to say (but hate Con!)

• Positive reasons to vote #LibDems: my own personal story of Why I’m a Lib Dem http://bit.ly/LDValues5 #LibDemValues

• Best of luck to all #LibDems standing tomorrow. Even if polls right & we’re ****ed, better to go down standing up for beliefs than Lab’s "__"

• An MEP says what she’s actually done in EU! It’ll never catch on. ‏@catherinemep Vote #LibDems to keep up action pic.twitter.com/mkAydrpQNM

• Hate Europe, immigrants, gays? UKIP. Pro-modern UK & EU? Vote #LibDems. Want UKIP-lite? Tory. Can’t decide if racism’s good or bad? Labour.

• A “No” to Labour, then RT @ThePoke Unintentionally brilliant Polling Station of the day #Elections2014 pic.twitter.com/texs1cn1Hv

• Vote #LibDems to be IN Europe for a stronger economy and fairer society. UKIP would knacker economy & want an unfair fantasy 1950s.

• UKIP in their own words http://bit.ly/1mY9qpB For a party that likes 21stC Britain as it actually is & isn’t afraid of others vote #LibDems

• Farage backs Putin over Royals. He’s not really got the hang of this ‘nationalism’ stuff, has he? Just a bully and suckup to bigger bully.

• BTW, my choice between Putin, Farage, Prince Charles? None of the above, thanks, I’m a Liberal Democrat & they’re all neither.

• Rarely say this, but well done @ITV for showing #HotFuzz, a topical cautionary tale of what happens when UKIP comes to power in your town!

• One hour left to vote. Use it. Mine’s for #LibDems both for practical action pic.twitter.com/mkAydrpQNM & for principle http://bit.ly/LDValues4

• Yay! Richard’s home. This means 1/Kissing 2/ Voting 3/ Eating. Go and 2 before 10pm! You have all night to 1 and 3.

• It’s just not proper BBC election night any more without starting with the theme from Hordes of the Things. #EP2014 #Vote2014

• Jeremy Vine says voting system too complex to explain. Is BBC lobotomised? Sack this moron and do your job, BBC. #EP2014 #Vote2014

• BBC news coverage sunk to ‘We pretend everything’s too difficult then say, oh, goodness, why are people disengaged?’ Do your job, BBC!

• Arrogant Tory Phil Hammond: ‘People just lend their votes to UKIP.’ People only EVER lend their votes to ANY party! They’re never ‘yours’!

• Hopeful news! #LibDems almost certain to make MEP gains in 2019! #100YearsOfLosingAndLiberalsStillNeverSayDie

• The first Euro-elections the #LibDems stood in, we got just 4% of the vote. At this rate, we’ll be over 50% by 2389! A triumph ;)

• If UKIP loses: execute traitor voters! http://bit.ly/1pfKYBy (genuine!) #LibDems lose: oh well, we’ll give you another leaflet next month.

• Labour post-election: ‘Oh no! UKIP!’ Labour pre-election: scared to debate UKIP / says UKIP not racist / panders to anti-immigration

• Cllrs elected last week: #LibDems 427, UKIP only 163. UKIP now 162, as had to expel one in under a week. Below 100 Kippers by next election?

• I’ve been singing a song this afternoon with a discreetly modified chorus. http://bit.ly/FuckUKIP

Labels: Best of Love and Liberty, British Politics, Conservatives, European Politics, Labour, Liberal Democrats, Nationalism, Twitter, UKIP

With less than an hour to go before the second debate between Euro-realist Nick Clegg and Europhobe Nigel Farage, people all over Britain are asking: what’s on the other side? But some are also asking, will Mr Farage succeed this week in his attempt to make his face go not just pale, red and purple but the full red, white and blue he was aiming for? Will he be wrapped in a Russian flag as part of a new Putin-funded UKIP war chest? And will he find the same ten things – or more – to hate as last week?

Do you remember he had a little list, if you were watching or listening this time last Wednesday?

1 – Europe

Obviously.

2 – Immigrants

In his opening statement, Mr Farage attacked the EU mainly because – 485 million people had the right to come over here, and that terrified him!

Even though it’s not true, because there is no “open door” right.

Even though that counts everyone born and bred in Britain, because Mr Farage is actually terrified of the sixty-odd million of us who aren’t him.

Even though that includes every child in the EU, suggesting that as well as all the safety and unfair dismissal and environmental and all the other common regulations that Mr Farage said in passing he hates, he’d get rid of all the child labour laws too and get over the problem of lost British jobs by making us the world’s magnet for underage wage slaves. Result!

3 – Immigrants

In his answer to the third question, Mr Farage again raised the spectre of millions of British people staying in Britain, and millions of European babies coming over to steal the jobs he wants to inflict on British babies.

And he defended the UKIP leaflets that said that 29 million people were poised to invade from Romania and Bulgaria, even though that’s actually more Romanians and Bulgarians than there are.

4 – British Industry

In his answer to the seventh question, Mr Farage said that actually we would have more negotiating clout on our own than as part of the world’s most powerful trading bloc, because they need us more than we need them – they make things that people want to buy, so they need us to buy them, whereas nobody wants to buy our stuff because it’s shit. Of course they’ll accept any terms we want, because we’re so rubbish that we can only be passive consumers!

“We sell a million cars a year to the European Union, but they sell us 1.8 million cars a year of much higher quality… The German car market needs the British far more.”

5 – Human Rights and Everything About Britain Since the Thirteenth Century

In his eleventh answer, the most recent human rights legislation Mr Farage was prepared to accept was the Magna Carta – in the Thirteenth Century. Just so you got the point, he talked about “Common Law for 800 years” and “forget all these human rights”.

He said that all the politicians – especially, we have to conclude, Winston Churchill, who ordered the British lawyers to draw up the European Convention on Human Rights, and who signed us up to it – should be saying “I am very sorry”.

6 – The European Arrest Warrant

Mr Farage went on to say in his desperate dogma that he was 100% against the European Arrest Warrant.

He’d rather every type of criminal went free than ever pool our law-enforcing resources with the hated Europe.

7 – British Tourists

Mr Farage went on to say in his desperate dogma that he was 100% against British tourists locked up in EU countries getting the right to legal and translation help.

He’d rather every innocent Briton was banged up – by going to Europe, they’re damned anyway, aren’t they? – than ever make sure everyone has the same basic legal rights across the hated Europe.

“I’ve been in the European Parliament for 15 years and I have never once voted”

As Mr Farage admitted, he has one of the worst voting records of any elected European politician. He’s taken more than £2 million of our money in those 15 years, but he never turns up.

8 – Happy Gays

In his twelfth answer, Mr Farage was given the opportunity to clear up his position on same-sex marriage. Did he think it brought about floods and the end of civilisation, as UKIP spokespeople have said? Did he still oppose it tooth and nail, as he did when it was being voted on? Was he now in favour of it, as his spokesperson said last week and then hurried said, ‘Kidding!’?

Mr Farage said that he was absolutely dead against Richard and me getting married on our twentieth anniversary this year – perhaps he’s frightened that because we want to get married once, and he’s been married twice to show how much he believes in it, there may be a finite number of marriages to be had and he might not be entitled to a third one.

Well, he didn’t mention Richard and me by name, but it’s hard not to take it personally.

So was he against, dead against, against for fear of the gaypocalypse, or in favour for another two minutes before changing his mind again?

Mr Farage said that even the years of negotiations that would involve leaving the EU wouldn’t be enough – no, we’d have to leave Winston Churchill’s European Court of Human Rights, too, “then we’d look at it again.”

‘Leave the EU and all our international agreements – or your marriage gets it!’
‘I want to roll back all our freedoms to the Thirteenth Century and “forget all these human rights” and then, all you gay and lesbian and bisexual people, you can trust me with your interests even though I won’t commit…’

Thanks, Mr Farage, but fuck right off and die no thanks.

Nick Clegg, by contrast, the first Leader who supported equal marriage from the first party that supported equal marriage, doesn’t have the same maniac anti-EU dogma or closet homophobia about two people who love each other, so simply said:

“It’s just unalloyed great news that love and marriage will be recognised, a great step forward.”

And got the biggest cheer of the night.

9 – To Be Honest I Don’t Want To Sully A Headline With This One

In his thirteenth answer, Mr Farage attacked everyone who wasn’t “Anglo-Saxon” for not believing in the rule of (Thirteenth Century Barons’) law, and sneered by name at everyone from the “south of Europe” and “Mediterranean” people who never follow the rules.

Well, no wonder the racist gobshite boasted this week that he’s taken all the BNP’s votes. I wonder how that could be?

10 – Immigrants

In his summing-up at the end, Mr Farage spent his entire time on a completely new subject – immigrants.

In case you missed it.

485 million potential child labourers, including British ones, to threaten our British child labour! Many of them poor people (who he also hates)!

Again. In case you missed it.

He also mentioned immigration briefly in several other answers, but I’ve only mentioned the major ones.



It’s pretty clear that the other thing Mr Farage hates is Number 11 – FACTS.


But Mr Farage doesn’t hate everything.

Not Vladimir Putin. Ukraine provoked him by liking the EU.

‘WTF, Ukraine? I hate the EU! You provoke me too! How dare you like the EU? I’d have declared war on you too. Vlad, Vlad, you’re my best mate, you are…’

Labels: British Politics, European Politics, Gay, Marriage, Nick Clegg, UKIP, Winston Churchill

How are you with Photoshop, flags and Batman?

Last night’s LBC debate between Nick Clegg and Nigel Farage saw one of the most telling clashes about crime. Nick said we were better off IN to fight crime and get better justice. Nigel said he was so hell-bent against any form of European co-operation that he’d rather see cross-border criminals go free on killing sprees and British tourists locked up without help.

So where is the Photoshopped poster of Nick Clegg as Batman (in half-EU stars, half-Union Jack Batsuit) vs Nigel Farage, the Joker, saying ‘Together, We Fight Crime’? Your turn! Can you take this opportunity to turn them into a colourful graphic before next week’s rematch?

The Lib Dems have turned part of Nick’s attack into a poster, but a ridiculous picture is worth a thousand words. And I should know – I like a thousand words.

Here’s the Cast of Characters I’m Looking For

Nick Clegg IS Batman

In half-EU stars, half-Union Jack Batsuit, with ears (armoured nipples optional), and dynamic pro-European Arrest Warrant slogan, ‘Together, We Fight Crime!’

He won’t thank you, but I will.

Nigel Farage IS the Joker

UKIP’s colours already run to the purple suit, so that’s most of the work done already. Just change the sickly green highlights to sickly yellow, and you’re away. With an exaggerated downturned grimace of hatred for immigrants instead of a grin!

Yes, I know that the real Mr Farage’s face goes frothing-mad beetroot rather than deathly pale, but no fictional character could be as ludicrous as the real thing.


And if you’re up to a few minor supporting characters, even though they were too scared to appear in the story and bottled it…

David Cameron IS Two-Face

Hinting at ‘OUT’ to his Conservative Party members, reassuring he’s ‘IN’ to the public at large!

Ed Miliband IS the Riddler

What will his policy be? Search for Labour’s deviously concealed and indecipherable off-the-record briefing clues to see if you can work it out!


Riddle me this: is Mr Miliband already regretting running away from the debate and leaving the leadership of the whole progressive side of British politics to Nick Clegg because Ed was terrified of losing the racist vote? This morning’s off-the-record Riddler clue says that next year, anyway, he’d be happy to debate Nigel Farage as well as Nick Clegg, and accuses Two-Face of being cowardly. Which makes cowardly Mr Miliband pretty two-faced himself.

But riddle me that: if all the other three Leaders are willing to debate each other before the 2015 General Election, and Mr Cameron tries to run away, will that any longer be enough to stop the debates happening? As of this week, the broadcasters – LBC, Sky and BBC all helping stage the two European debates – have accepted the precedent that if a Party Leader, even the Prime Minister, is invited to a debate but too frit to show up, they can go ahead anyway and just leave him looking like the cowardly bottler he is.

So if Mr Cameron thinks he’s got a veto on the Leaders’ Debates… Toss a coin. (Two-)Heads, it’s an empty chair for the frit PM.

Labels: Batman, British Politics, Conservatives, European Politics, Labour, Leaders' Debate, Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg, Pictures, UKIP

Tomorrow, Liberal Democrat Leader Nick Clegg puts the positive case for being in the European Union, in the first of two debates with UKIP Leader Nigel Farage putting the negative case for Little-Englanderism (the other two ‘Leaders’ can’t decide, so they’ve bottled it). That makes two headlines for What the Lib Dems Stand For: “Stronger Economy, Fairer Society” and “IN Europe, IN Work”. So how do those two fit together? Here’s my go at something slightly more than a slogan, but still punchy. If you like it, please borrow it to stick on a leaflet or add to a speech. If you don’t, please send me something better!

• The Liberal Democrats stand for freedom for every individual – freedom from poverty, ignorance and conformity.
  

• To make that freedom real needs both fairness and economic responsibility: an economy that works, that encourages enterprise, and where everyone pays their fair share.
  

• So freedom from poverty requires responsible spending, not debt, built on fairer taxes where lower earners pay less tax and the wealthiest pay more; being in Europe to be in work, to fight crime and tackle climate change; and building green jobs for the future.
  

• Freedom from ignorance needs better education and training, so people have the opportunity to realise their potential.
  

• And freedom from conformity, supported by freedom from poverty and ignorance, means everyone should have the liberty to live their lives as they choose – without harming others; with equality before the law; with a better say, because no government always knows best.
  

• These values are why Liberal Democrats are working for a greener, stronger economy in a fairer society, enabling every person to get on in life.

Last year I wrote a series of articles on What the Lib Dems Stand For, looking for something to fit in a box on a leaflet or in a minute’s speech – something to enthuse and inspire Lib Dem believers, something to attract and persuade potential supporters, something that’s more than a slogan or a soundbite but short enough to get in one go.

I opened it up into a meme, and many other Lib Dems took part as well – you can find the links to where I’ve published theirs, too, below. That’s still open: if you can do better, whether saying ‘Change this little bit because…’ or suggesting your own from scratch, I want to hear from you, too (my email link’s on the sidebar. I’d like to hear if you make use of mine, too).

Especially now we’re sharing power, it’s important to assert our values. I wanted to answer: What makes us different, and makes us stay? How is that reflected in our priorities in Coalition Government? How does that pick out the central message of the Preamble to our Constitution? How does that expand on the party’s ‘core message’ slogan of “Stronger Economy, Fairer Society”? And how can we best express it in language that feels natural to us and anyone listening to us? All the while making a positive case for us, not just ‘…But the others are worse’? I’ve tried to do all that together. Does it work for you?

Adding ‘IN’

Last year I tried to combine everything at once, with the added challenge to make it short and to make it make sense, rather than just being a storm of buzzword-salad. It works pretty well for me telling the story of how the three big freedoms of our Preamble fit together with fairness, but even then I knew it had to leave some things out, and the biggest one I couldn’t seem to fit in was internationalism. And what’s our big theme for this year’s European Elections? Who could have guessed?

My main change today is… Adding more words. Compared to last year’s, below, it’s up 16, taking it further from my target of 150 to fit in a medium-sized box on a leaflet or just one minute in a speech. What do you think of “being in Europe to be in work, to fight crime and tackle climate change”? Does it work? Does it fit? Is it too specific compared to the more values-based rest of the text? I based it on our three main campaigning messages about Europe, because I couldn’t find a way of getting the ‘drawbridge down’ sort of values behind them to work in just a few words. Can you?

And yes, now it makes the “Freedom from ignorance” bit look a bit short, but I’m not adding even more. Though if you don’t like semi-colons and want to break it up a bit more to make it easier to read, the pedant in me doesn’t like it, but you can use full stops instead to make the “Freedom from poverty” and “Freedom from conformity” bullets punchier.

The ‘What the Liberal Democrats Stand For Challenge’ So Far

This aims to be something short and simple that Lib Dems members can look at and think, ‘Yes, that’s some of why we bother’, and that other people can look at and think, ‘Oh, that’s what the Lib Dems are for, and I like it’. Feel free to borrow it for a box on your Focus leaflets, to be part of your speeches, for your members’ newsletters, your Pizza’N’Politics evenings – wherever it’ll do some good. And here’s what I’ve done with it so far, including many other Lib Dems’ own versions…

Happy 25th Birthday, Liberal Democrats – and What the Lib Dems Stand For 2013.1

Why we should sum up What the Lib Dems Stand For, and how it’s developed over the years.

What the Lib Dems Stand For 2013.2 – a Challenge and a Meme #LibDemValues

Setting out my ‘What the Lib Dems Stand For’ based on the Preamble, practice and core messaging, and challenging other Lib Dems to come up with their own.

The Liberal Democrat What Do We Stand For Challenge 2013.3 – Eight Answers (so far) #LibDemValues

After receiving the first set of responses, rounding up eight different Liberal Democrats’ versions of what we stand for – so far…

The Liberal Democrat What Do We Stand For Challenge 2013.4 – What It’s All About #LibDemValues

Inviting people to use my short declaration of ‘What the Lib Dems Stand For’ and explaining what each bit of it means.

What the Lib Dems Stand For 2013.5 – Why I Am A Liberal Democrat #LibDemValues

This one’s very different – longer and more personal: how did I get here? Why did I become a Lib Dem in the first place? And why do I stay?

The Liberal Democrat What Do We Stand For Challenge 2013.6 – Another Eight Answers #LibDemValues

Another eight different Liberal Democrats’ versions of what we stand for in the second set of responses people sent in.


Last year’s slightly shorter version:

The Liberal Democrats stand for freedom for every individual – freedom from poverty, ignorance and conformity.

To make that freedom real needs both fairness and economic responsibility: an economy that works, that encourages enterprise, and where everyone pays their fair share.

So freedom from poverty requires responsible spending, not debt, built on fairer taxes where lower earners pay less tax and the wealthiest pay more, and building green jobs for the future.

Freedom from ignorance needs better education and training, so people have the opportunity to realise their potential.

And freedom from conformity, supported by freedom from poverty and ignorance, means everyone should have the liberty to live their lives as they choose – without harming others; with equality before the law; with a better say, because no government always knows best.

That’s why Liberal Democrats are working for a stronger, greener economy in a fairer society, enabling every person to get on in life.

Once again, there will be more.

Labels: Blogs, Education, Environment, European Politics, Ideas, Liberal Democrats, Liberalism, Memes, Nick Clegg, Tax, The Golden Dozen, Top Tips, UKIP, What the Lib Dems Stand For

Tomorrow, nominations close in the “Liberal Democrat Voice Awards”. These have been thrillingly renamed, relaunched and expanded, but for me the greatest pleasure in them remains celebrating the brilliant flow of ideas by a carnival of Lib Dem voices on their own blogs. The shortlist I most look forward to is that for Liberal Democrat Blog Post of the Year – both because that always introduces me to some great writing I’ve not seen before, and because it’s so much easier to read a hand-picked selection of posts than read through the complete shortlisted blogs, Twitter pages or Facebook timelines.

I was sad to see this award dropped last year, and delighted that it’s back in the greatly expanded new array. And last year I resolved to do something about it, saying: “I will pick at least a dozen articles from at least a dozen different blogs from across the year that I think are among the best and plug them” here. I’ve been noting the most interesting posts to catch my eye – not necessarily the ones with which I most agreed – throughout the year, and as well as irregularly proposing them for Lib Dem Voice’s weekly Golden Dozen, I’ve spent the last couple of weeks poring over the lot (one reason I’m rather later with my selection than ideal). I hope in the three weeks before the winners are announced this will be part of showing just how marvellous Lib Dems blogging are.

So here, to celebrate the talent in the Lib Dem blogosphere and introduce more blogs is a journey through the year (rather than in order of preference) with two dozen of the Lib Dem finest. Pah-pah pah pah-pah-pah…

The first post I’d recommend might be in the ‘Best individual post’ category, or it might be in the ‘Best online campaign’. I’ll leave that to the judges. But last Autumn Jennie Rigg’s outstanding effort in putting questions to over a hundred candidates for the Liberal Democrat Federal elections made a mighty series of posts that shouldn’t be forgotten.
Jennie Rigg on Automated Attack Monkeys, Scalpel Mines, & Acid: “Questions for FCC and FPC candidates”

Chris Richards on On Liberty Now: “Time for Liberal Democrats to stop saying ‘No’”
Isn’t it deeply conservative to campaign only to prevent things? The Liberal Democrats should have positive ideas.

Jonathan Calder on Liberal England: “Nick Clegg needs to get crunchy again”
Nick needs to rediscover his old self as a thinker and libertarian, because the “centre” is defined by your opponents.

Zoe O’Connell on Complicity: “New Tory Policy: Pretending to protect children more important than protecting children”
Why education is better at keeping kids safe online than faith in the Daily Mail and Internet blocking.

Andrew Brown on The Widow’s World: “Dear Nick… An Open Letter on Closed Material Procedures”
A loyalist takes a stand on civil liberties.

Jennie Rigg on Automated Attack Monkeys, Scalpel Mines, & Acid: “Saturday Silly today comes courtesy of Andy Burnham MP”
Now Labour wants to ban Frosties – Jennie outlines some healthy alternatives. Not to Frosties; to bansturbation. Puritanism is never satisfied.

Jonathan Wallace: “The Lib Dems’ Battle of Stalingrad”
A vibrant image of how Eastleigh “was fought street by street, house by house, sucking in vast armies of activists battling it out.”

Councillor Gavin James: “How the Lib Dems should take on UKIP”
The three parts of UKIP’s support and how to take them on – by being Liberal Democrats.

Cicero on Cicero’s Songs: “The SNP tries to have its cake and eat it”
The SNP is now in favour of the pound while defaulting on its debts, British identity while leaving the Union, armed neutrality while staying in NATO, divorce while getting more love from the divorced partners, and it sees no contradiction in that. Cicero does.

Stephen Glenn on Stephen Glenn’s Liberal Journal: “In response to Simon Hughes”
Thoughtfully exposing the mass of contradictions in Simon Hughes’ attack on religious freedom and equality.

David Boyle on The Real Blog: “Violet, Winston and the meaning of Free Trade”
What Churchill’s thundering Liberal case for Free Trade in favour of the lower-paid tells us about how the Tories have warped the idea since.

Richard Flowers on The Very Fluffy Diary of Millennium Dome, Elephant: “No New Powers for the Security Services At Least Until They Explain Why They Failed to Use the Ones They’ve Got!”
A message to Alan Johnson on the Zombie Snoopers’ Charter – is totalitarian China the best role model?

Nick Barlow on What You Can Get Away With: “On political stereotypes and Doctor Who”
Who would have thought that polling voters about Doctor Who would reveal so much about the wildly differing social attitudes of different parties’ voters?

Mark Pack on Mark Pack’s Blog: “Liberal Democrat achievements in government” and “What do the Liberal Democrats believe?”
Not quite ‘blog posts’, but his twin infographics (disclosure: I made some suggestions on the second) are well worth a look.

Mark Thompson on Mark Thompson’s Blog: “Seven awkward questions for Liberal Democrats”
Still waiting for answers.

Nick Thornsby on Nick Thornsby’s Blog: “UK tax revenue and public spending 1997-2012”
Sounds boring, doesn’t it? But – shockingly – in the last 15 years, UK governments have only balanced the budget once, relying on massive borrowing in every other year, from a full decade before Labour could blame the international crisis. Sole credit year: +£16bn. Biggest debt year: -£186bn. No wonder the deficit’s taking a while to fix.

Jen Yockney on Either / And: “But he’s a TORY!”
On why it’s good for sexuality not to be a party political plaything and why both people who grumble that the latest out bisexual MP is a Tory and the Daily Mail have got it wrong.

Peter Wrigley on Keynesian Liberal: “ Wither amnesty for illegal immigrants?”
Contrasting Nick Clegg’s courageous debate performance with his unilateral retreat.

Sam Phripp on So Sam said... “A statement about my membership of the Liberal Democrats”
Sam gives his three top tips if you’re planning on leaving the party.

Jae Kay on Freedom Is Not The Problem: “Marriage Equality: Taking Stock And Preparing For The Future (AKA It Ain’t Over)”
After a year of heroic posts about equal marriage – and many more before then – this looks to what’s next.

Lester Holloway: “The Voice says Labour are losing the Black vote. Addressing Black voters might help”
A detailed analysis of the relationship between all parties and the Black vote – and what to do about it.

Caron Lindsay on Caron’s Musings: “What the hell are the Home Office playing at – and why are Liberal Democrats letting them get away with it?”
The Tories aren’t just re-toxifying themselves with their racist harassment of every non-white person but trying to toxify the Lib Dems too. It’s time for Nick to take the gloves off both because it’s right and for our survival.

Charlotte Henry on Digital Politico: “Anti politics leaves us all with egg on our face”
When our political culture is so warped and toxic that no-one can discuss it properly.

Carl Minns – Thoughts from Hull (A Liberal view from Hull): “How to tweet like a Lib Dem”
After columnist guides to tweeting like the other two, Carl redresses the balance with a guide to tweeting like a Lib Dem.

And finally… Alex Wilcock on Love and Liberty: “My Best Posts 2012-2013”
…It’s quite hard enough choosing one from other people’s!

If any of these blog posts excite and delight you, please consider nominating them for the Awards. Good luck to everyone nominated.

And if there’s a vital one I’ve missed, please add it in the comments! After all, my draft list started out twice as long, so there are plenty more where all of those came from…

Labels: Best of Love and Liberty, Blogs, British Politics, Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats, Nationalism, The Golden Dozen, UKIP

This article comes in two versions: in depth here, and the supercompressed version published as part of Lib Dem Voice’s Lessons From Coalition series.

All governments depend on events – some, like the LiberaTory Coalition, coming in when events were especially bleak. No lesson can predict all political outcomes. But whatever the economic and political weather, some lessons are plain.

The two biggest problems for any future coalition will be the breakdown of trust between the voters and the coalition parties, and the breakdown of trust between the coalition parties themselves. The Liberal Democrats have learned that all too well.

We know what the flashpoint issues for each during the current Coalition that still say ‘bitterness’ and ‘betrayal’ to many, too: tuition fees and Lords reform. On both, ugly reality got in the way of how coalitions ought to work. The challenge is to learn from them in order to foresee and avoid similar events – if we don’t find solutions to both problems, any future coalition will suffer the same poison.

If It Won’t Work, Walk; But If It Will Work, Walk In

We should aim to achieve things in government – that’s what a political party’s there for.

The theory of forming a Coalition is sound. If we don’t win a majority and no-one else does either, the Liberal Democrats must negotiate with other parties – ideally playing them off against each other to get more of what we want, if the votes tumble evenly enough to give us that chance. It’s the worst option apart from all the others. We should always oppose a ‘confidence and supply’ arrangement, which means nearly all the blame for none of the power to do anything. That leaves two options: a coalition, yes or no. For a political party rather than a debating society, the choice is straightforward. We should drive as hard a bargain as we can. If it’s impossible to reach agreement on enough of our priorities, we must be prepared to say no. But the corollary of that is that we must be prepared to say yes, too, if we can form a stable government with another party that delivers enough of our aims. When I spoke in favour of endorsing the LiberaTory Coalition, I was under no illusions, and neither was anyone else in the hall:

“Maybe it is the worst possible time to take power. But I don’t want us to wait until I’m wheeled into Conference aged 78, in another 40 years, to say, ‘Well, the economy’s crashed again and at last we’ve got another hung Parliament. Maybe we should try it this time’.”

From the platform, Vince Cable made a similarly practical point:

“It’s going to be bloody awful. But it’ll be less awful because we’re there.”

It’s never going to be easy, but it’s in the national interest – and it’s simply what a political party is for.

The Lib Dem Voice regular polling question ‘Would you rather form a coalition with Labour or Conservative?’ is based on a completely mistaken assumption. I’d rather we form a government on our own. If the voters don’t give us that, I’m still a Liberal Democrat, and I don’t follow the media narrative that I must be ‘really’ Tory or Labour, push comes to shove. I dislike both of them. My answer is not that I want to be a bit Labour or a bit Tory, but that I’d go with the one that’s prepared to be the most Lib Dem. Whichever way round they go, we should partner the party that compromises and not the one that’s arrogant enough to just demand we join them. That’s the principle; the simple common sense reason is that to prefer one side in advance is essentially an endorsement, one that sends voters streaming away to whichever side we’ve given the nod to before the election and loses all bargaining leverage afterwards.

2010 is the only case study we have. I’ll never like the Tories either, but the tiny band who pretend we should have formed a coalition with Labour (and Uncle Tom SNP and all, and still not got a majority) after the last election were out of touch with reality then and have rewritten history since. Both the number of seats that the voters gave to each party and the Labour Party’s own ‘negotiations’ made a coalition with Labour impossible – but I also remember what the Labour Party did with thirteen years of absolute power and saw them as no better than the Conservatives. I didn’t forget the war-mongering, evidence-sexing, amnesia-promising, freedom-crushing, LGBT-hypocrisising, rich-brownnosing, poor-taxing, crony-bribe-swallowing shameless Labour Government overnight in favour of a starry-eyed childish fantasy image of the ‘nice’ Labour Party that bears no resemblance to their continuing record. And I remember what they offered as the price of coalition: bugger all.

Next time will be different in ways we can’t know. The Tories may well prove ungovernable; Labour may realise that they can’t demand absolute power when more than seven out of ten voters oppose them. But there’s a simple lesson from 2010 about how to negotiate. Labour did not offer a Coalition. It demanded a mass defection. Despite the Lib Dems getting our second-biggest vote since 1928 and Labour their second-worst vote since 1918, Labour’s sense of entitlement pretended that they had the right to keep everything they wanted and Lib Dem voters should get nothing. Despite Labour winning eight and a half million votes to the Lib Dems’ seven million, they expected all Lib Dems to suddenly join the Labour Government to vote for everything we’d previously opposed, because our voters being 83% as numerous as theirs didn’t count. Well, that was a ‘privilege’ it was easy to turn down. There is no point whatsoever in joining a government only to do exactly what the other party would do anyway – otherwise, we’d all have taken the easy road and just joined one of the others years ago. One lesson for Labour from the LiberaTory Coalition is that the Lib Dems are not their battered spouse. As Andrew Hickey said most pithily, we are not Labour’s back-up plan.

The Tories had a larger vote still – ten and a half million – but they weren’t so tribal as to insist only their votes counted… Not when they didn’t have a majority, anyway. Of the four main priorities on the front cover of the Lib Dem 2010 Manifesto, the Tories agreed to three and a half of them (though the ‘half’ has since crumbled further), and Labour none of them. The main advantage of talking to Labour turned out to be that even the Tories couldn’t believe how arrogant Labour would be and assumed that they, too, must be bargaining in good faith, giving a boost to the Lib Dem-Conservative negotiations. I vividly remember self-important Tory grandee Sir Malcolm Rifkind complaining all over the TV that the Lib Dems were “harlots” for talking to Labour as well, a Tory predictably failing to comprehend so-called Tory principle of free-market competition to get the best deal.

So the theoretical lesson is that, short of a Lib Dem majority, the best outcome for the Lib Dems at the next election would be genuinely holding the balance of power (as we didn’t quite last time), with both other parties so hungry for power that they offer big compromises – like the Tories in 2010, only more so. That would give us the most power to bargain, and to choose the partner that would enable the greatest share of our Manifesto. The worst would be for the voters again to give us only one realistic choice, and for both others to behave like Labour in 2010 and offer nothing. Then I hope we’d have the guts to walk away.

Unfortunately, reaching even a good deal on paper is where the problems really start.

Compromise or Betrayal?

Voters don’t trust parties to do what they promise. Most of all, they don’t trust us.

The Coalition Agreement was a decent programme for government. The Liberal Democrats didn’t win the election. Fortunately, neither did anyone else. That gave us a chance at last to put some of our Manifesto into action after nearly a century of none of it. The LiberaTory Coalition promised government by principles of freedom, fairness and responsibility, all sounds Liberal ideals. We’d constantly made clear what our priorities were before the election, and three and a half of those four main priorities written on the front of the Liberal Democrat Manifesto were being delivered. Even in Coalition Government, even after Labour blowing the economy to bits and leaving an incredible debt to repay, and even having to compromise with the Tories over what they want to do, the Liberal Democrats have still put our own distinctive stamp on good things from government, not just lessening the bad. Raising the income tax threshold and cutting taxes for 23 million ordinary working people. The Pupil Premium to help out poorer schoolkids. Not just a stronger but a fairer economy, tackling the banks, record numbers of apprenticeships, green jobs and the new Green Investment Bank open for business. And tiny baby steps that soon tripped up on more open politics. Win-win-win-OK, lose a bit on the last one, surely?

Well, we all know what happened next. Somehow the narrative is almost entirely that to get nothing, zip, zero, nada done and help no-one at all would have been principled, while getting stuck in and delivering quite a lot of what we wanted to do is a betrayal. No-one’s interested in looking at policies as a whole: that’s too much effort. No-one complains when we moderate what the Tories want to do (despite the best efforts of baying Tory MPs who actually see what’s going on). But for the Lib Dems to make compromises in some areas to achieve wins in others is an unforgiveable sell-out. The irony, of course, being that this is the corrosive attack by Tory and Labour Parties who have identical policies on tuition fees, the Lib Dem effect on which was to make them far fairer to poorer students (and poorer graduates).

Without a way to challenge the idea that any compromise is betrayal, it’s hard to see how any future coalition can work, either.

In retrospect, David Cameron’s cleverest move in the Coalition negotiations was to have the nous to put his foot down and say the new government would have to keep his expensive but explicit promises, like protecting handouts to millionaire pensioners, even when they weren’t key commitments of the Tory Party itself. And Nick Clegg’s was to be willing to bargain away expensive personal promises because they weren’t at the top of the Lib Dem Manifesto. We all know by now how devastating the effect of Nick breaking his tuition fee promise has been, however improved the real as opposed to the political outcome.

The problem even for negotiations is that voters regard Labour and Tory as opposites and Lib Dems as somewhere in the middle – according to taste, a moderating or a blandifying influence. This is something Nick Clegg has done his best to amplify. It’s not enough on its own. It gives only weakly negative reasons to vote for us, when even Nick in the early days of the LiberaTory Coalition knew that it wasn’t enough to hold each other back, but to achieve big positive things, too. And it’s actively dangerous to future negotiations. It does nothing to explain our poor bargaining hand on the many, many issues where the other parties are identical and we oppose both: most famously, raising tuition fees, but also wasting billions on Trident and, increasingly for the Tories as they move back towards Labour’s far right position, attacking civil liberties.

The best case that can be made with this message is that the Liberal Democrats are in Coalition with the relatively moderate side of the Tory Party and pulling them to greater moderation in the process. While shrieking ‘Traitor!’ for the Lib Dems being an independent party and not their possession, Labour see no contradiction in voting again and again and again with the far right of the Tory Party to make politics more rabidly authoritarian. Which wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t that no-one else sees the contradiction in that, either, because it simply doesn’t fit the narrative that Labour’s illiberal gut instincts are just as extreme as the Tories’.

Agreements Are the Start, Not the End

Parties don’t trust each other to keep to their agreements. Most of all, we don’t trust either of the other two.

If Labour were the more unbearable immediately after the election, a large proportion of the Tories have been making up for lost time in the Coalition itself as their own sense of entitlement grows. And not just the far right MPs who are irreconcilable to any compromise with the Coalition, with their own Leader, or with reality, but – more subtly though in many ways more damagingly – many of the Tory Ministers who in theory are loyal to the Coalition. So what would be the point of making another Coalition Agreement with Mr Cameron if we know from experience that his Leadership is too weak to deliver on his fine words?

Both the letter and the spirit of the Coalition Agreement have slowly withered. A lesson from the LiberaTory Coalition is that agreement on policy at the start is not enough. For two inevitable reasons, any unequal coalition government will get more like the larger party as it goes along: the initial agreement will run out of steam as (and if) it gets delivered; the larger party having the mass of ministers will be able to respond day-to-day to events to its own tune. And those inevitables aren’t all. Large swathes of written promises and more of the principles on which the Coalition was proclaimed have simply not been delivered.

The LiberaTory Coalition has tested if the Lib Dems really meant our Opposition rhetoric about co-operation; through gritted teeth and pain, it turns out we do. It’s also tested if the Tories really meant their Opposition rhetoric – and their signed-up Coalition Agreement’s explicit promises – about the environment, freedom and decentralisation. It turns out they don’t. George Osborne consistently undermining a greener government, Theresa May’s indistinguishable-from-the-Labour-Party authoritarianism and Eric Pickles micro-managing every local council to his own bizarre prejudices only the biggest examples of Tory Ministers simply chucking the LiberaTory Coalition’s founding principles in the bin.

More openly, there’s been a repeated pattern of Lib Dem MPs faithfully voting through some horrible compromise closer to what the Tories wanted, then Tory MPs voting against the more Lib Dem-agreed proposals or Tory Ministers simply dropping them. Part of this is because the Lib Dems agreed to the Coalition en masse, while only the Tory high command ever gave their word. Part of it is simply that it’s in the Lib Dems’ long-term interest to show that Coalition can work, and in the Tories’ long-term interest (if not in David Cameron’s, who can’t afford to lead a failed government) to show that Coalitions fail. Polling may show that more voters believe the Tories haven’t kept to the deal, but I suspect they also don’t care. The “Betrayal” label still belongs to the Lib Dems.

This doesn’t mean that Labour have been blameless in Opposition. More headless. Labour’s years of shrieking fury against the Lib Dems for having the temerity to be a separate party, where they flung shamelessly homophobic abuse at the Coalition and voted against everything they claimed to support simply out of mouth-foaming hatred and a desire to see the Coalition fail, have made them – as under George W Bush – soulmates of the US Republican Party in its obsession with wrecking anything to do with President Obama, even if that means wrecking America.

It all throws into sharp relief the problem with Coalition Agreements. What happens if the other party simply breaks the agreement? Like tuition fees for the voters’ sense of betrayal, one totemic issue was the breaking point. David Cameron agreed to Lords reform, but a large pack of his MPs are feral animals who will vote against him, let alone against us. The Labour Party has pretended to support Lords reform for a hundred years, but on the one single occasion that an elected Lords was on the verge of being delivered in that time, not just a feral faction of them but the entire Labour Party collectively voted to defeat its own principles because, like spoilt teenage bullies, they couldn’t bear anyone else to get the credit. As on so many issues that they claimed to support in principle, in practice they treated Lords reform as a political football, with them as Lucy van Pelt. I don’t know which is worse, but I do know that that day made it seem impossible for the Lib Dems to trust either party in 2015.

Is There Any Hope For A Future Coalition?

The Lib Dems can’t just sit back and hope that press, public or other parties will all suddenly decide to treat us fairly.

That isn’t to say that others may not change their minds in a more helpful direction. To be fair to our opponents / dubiously potential partners, there are straws in the wind that each other party may be stepping back from the abyss, if not quite becoming creatures of reason and principle. To Ed Miliband’s credit, in recent months he’s finally been grown up and passed up opportunities to cut off his nose to spite his face (on, for example, Europe and mostly-equal marriage). It’s too early to say if this means the end of Labour’s all-consuming hatred, but it’s a start. And to David Cameron’s credit, he appears to be realising that he’d have to get his party to commit themselves in another hung Parliament as the Lib Dems did, rather than leave himself exposed when he leads and they choose later not to follow. But faced with two such major problems looming for any future coalition, we need to find our own solutions too.

The Lib Dem Leadership’s ‘we are the middle’ answer appears to be to abandon the big ambitions of either Lib Dem policies in general or even of the early days of the LiberaTory Coalition. It’s at best a sort of judo, to let the other two parties stand for something and then try to turn standing for anything against them by saying ‘Well, we don’t know what we want to do, but we’ll stop them getting that.’ To me, a Manifesto that doesn’t promise anything much that distinguishes us from the other two may guard against betrayal, but it doesn’t give people much of a reason to vote for us in the first place. It also seems to be tacitly accepting in advance that neither of the others can be trusted to vote for any of our own programme, and that all we can hope for is for them to get their own, just not as much as they’d like of it.

I don’t have all the answers, but here are three proposals for a start:

• To help define ourselves and our bottom lines, pick an enemy. Announce firmly and repeatedly that we would not enter any coalition of which UKIP is a part, and mean it. It’s not likely they’ll get enough seats for that to be a runner anyway, but they have a distinct image that both Tories and Labour are afraid of confronting. UKIP are our opposite: openness vs insularity; diversity vs bigotry; looking to the future vs complaining their way back to an imaginary 1950s. By defining them as extreme and standing against them, we get the rare bonus of making ‘moderate’ also ‘principled’ – as well as making it clear that there are some places we won’t go, and that we won’t just sell ourselves to anyone.

• We never know how much money any government will be able to spend – but it’s a safe bet that in 2015 the answer will still be ‘probably not much’. That means we should only make a small number of tightly focused, red-line expensive promises. But there are things we can shout about that don’t cost money – or even that save it. Make freedom more central to our commitments. That way we make money-saving more positive by not wasting money on more security-state bullying, and can show a powerful extra reason to oppose the others’ authoritarian splurges when cash is so tight.

• Any new Coalition Agreement should have explicit sanctions if a party doesn’t stick to it. As the institutional power of Ministers is at least as big a drag away from any agreement as an open rebellion, how about for every Parliamentary vote lost due to one side’s MPs, that side loses a Minister to the injured party? Even if that would be too frightening for them to sign up to, it might concentrate their minds on a better deal in the first place.

Labels: Blogs, British Politics, Coalition, Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats, Liberalism, Nick Clegg, UKIP, What the Lib Dems Stand For

So, Nick Clegg and Mick Jagger: everyone’s quoting the 1967 description of Mick’s views as “straight John Stuart Mill”, but has he done what the rest of us haven’t and convinced Nick of the merits of Lib Dem drugs policy, or further? I only ask (as I did of Nick the first time I interviewed him, to his well-concealed delight).

Anyway, this is only a quickie, but will include the two cooler Lib Dem-pop crossovers and a terrible joke (I can almost hear you sigh). But first, Jennie Rigg’s meme to rewrite Rolling Stones songs for the Lib Dems: fab. I’m especially knackered and in lots of pain this week, so my creative energies are low, but click here to see some of the entries so far.

Just meandering for a moment – were I writing the detailed music-related article I meant to instead of this quickie, it’d be about Tom Robinson. So imagine I have, and that I’ve recommended the newly-released Tom Robinson Band Anthology 1977-1979 (though I want the stuff from 1989-1990 when I was going to their gigs).

Tune into a Tom special on Neil McCormick’s Needle Time on Vintage TV at 7pm tonight, because I won’t have written anything proper by then and you’d’ve missed it.

Back to the story of the week, which is Nick Clegg and Mick Jagger and co having dinner together. Which is cool. And Jennie’s plan to get Mick to guest at Glee Club. Which is terrifying.

Enjoy Hyde Park, Mick, and though today’s may not be as iconic, I bet you all play better this time… Though a better performance than Glee Club isn’t hard.

Rolling Stones Feat. Lib Dems – My Favourite New Entries

Jennie:

“I see a red door and I want to paint it yellow”

Jennie’s concept / Magister’s lines:

Sympathy for the Paddy

“So if you meet me, have some courtesy,
“Have some sympathy and some taste
“Use all your well learnt politesse
“Or I’ll kill you with one hand.
“Because I can, you know. Would you like to hear my joke?”

Nick Barlow’s all-too-familiar title:

Here Comes Your Nineteenth By-Election


But most of all the lovely Andrew Hickey’s massive wins with:

“I know
“It’s only a rogue poll
“But I like it…”

Oh yeah – I meant to write about a possibly rogue poll that was way better for the Lib Dems than anything else recently, but possibly worthwhile as it was polling about something other than the usual. Remind me, reader.

And the outstanding…

“I’m canvassing apartments on the ninety-ninth floor of my block
“I knock on the door looking through the window and hoping the barking will stop
“Then out comes a guy who’s all dressed up like a Union Jack
“And says I’ve won his vote if I’ll just send those immigrants back

“I said, hey! UKIP! Get off of my round!
“Hey! UKIP! Get off of my round!
“Hey! UKIP! Get off of my round!
“Don’t hang around ’cause two’s a crowd”

Finally, Magister for Simon Hughes:

“Start me up!
“If you start me up
“I’ll never stop.”

That’s one for me, too, obviously. Simon and I once did a pair of set-piece speeches to finish a Lib Dem Youth and Student Conference. Everyone missed their trains. Including me (remember, this article is a “quickie”).


On a more critical note, the Jumpin’ Jack Flash (probably my favourite Stones song, along with Saint of Me) suggestions have missed the points – they’re clearly about the wrong ex-MP. Surely…

“But I’m all right now, in fact, it’s a gas
“But I’m all right, I’m jumping lights – flash!
“Step on the gas, gas, gas”

…should make you think of an even more recently ex-ed MP (and a certain Elephant denies all responsibility for that lyric).

Too shuhne?

That Cool Lib Dem-Pop Crossover Chart In Full

Nick and Mick’s new entry only at number 3, I’m afraid, below…

Number 2: Jeremy Thorpe and Jimi Hendrix – when they were both big

(Google for the cool pictures; I’d provide a link, but they all seem to be either scandals or rip-offs, so I’m disinclined to)

And a surprise Number 1: Norman Lamb and Tinchy Stryder

Because mortgaging your house to help launch an unknown rapper’s career and him making it big is significantly cooler than a photo-op or a meal, however cool the star.


*My urge for terrible puns means I was tempted to title this Paint It Yellow Sub-Par Meme, but it’s not sub-par. It’s fab. It’s also the wrong ’60s band, and though it has the major Glee Club advantage that it’s a song everyone can sing, since the Coalition we can no longer sing along to:

“We all live in a yellow squeaky-clean…”

Labels: Liberal Democrat Conferences, Memes, Music, Nick Clegg, Paddy Ashdown, Rolling Stones, Tom Robinson, UKIP

In short…

Five Lessons From Eastleigh:

1  Partial winners: the Liberal Democrats, UKIP
2  Total losers: the Conservatives, the Labour Party, the entire British media
3  Voters trust or like none of the above
4  Hard work and authenticity can still win
5  All politics is local. Thank fuck.

Two Questions After Eastleigh:

1 With a neo-fascist party on the rise, will British politics get nastier and more illiberal?
2 Will the entire UK media change their narrative about the Lib Dems now? Or will they just hold up two fingers to the voters?

…It’s the two fingers, isn’t it?


Just the other day, I put yesterday’s by-election in the context of the previous one in 1994. So how did the comparison go? Last time, the incumbents (Conservative) was pushed into third place, while the main challengers (Lib Dems) won – now Lib Dem and Tory starting points are reversed, the Lib Dem incumbents were punished by staying in first place and the Tory main challengers soared from second to third. Again.

Last time, Labour began the process of Tony Blair’s coronation by leaping from third place to second and gaining 28% of the vote, showing they were on their way to government. Ed Miliband’s Labour Party leapt from third place to fourth and less than 10%, showing he’s on his way down the toilet.

And after the most sustained, hysterical venom from the entire British media against any party in the by-election history, they showed that they still don’t quite have the power they thought they have, but that hysterical venom does help the rise of neo-fascist parties.

The Biggest Loser: The Media

One thing that, surprise, none of the headlines tell you this morning is that the entire British media establishment believed, wanted and actively did all their power to ensure that the Liberal Democrats were dead, and they all failed. Instead, the only mention is an outraged ‘How can they still have won?’

I’ve been an active and detailed watcher of UK Parliamentary by-elections ever since the Lib Dems were formed in 1988. The sheer, destructive hailstorm of hate in the last week – was it five screaming front-page attacks on the Lib Dems in a row from the Daily Hate Mail alone? – is literally unprecedented. There are no Lib Dem-supporting media outlets, and even the BBC (terrified after its own failings into becoming identikit hatemongers) lost all sense of proportion.

And it didn’t work.

Out of hate for Liberalism, out of fear of Leveson, out of outrage that so many voters had the temerity not to listen to them last time – in their hunger to pervert the course of this by-election, the establishment was utterly determined that the Lib Dems must be destroyed and the voters put back in their box.

The sane reaction would be for the media narrative about the Lib Dems to have to change.

The almost certain actual reaction is that, now confronted with the fact of their impotence even when at their most brutal and determined, throwing everything at us with a following wind behind them – the media will hate and fear both the Liberal Democrats and the voters even more.

So expect ever-greater hysteria and evil authoritarianism.

Paddy Ashdown, as ever, has wise words: “Don’t panic, Lib Dems. All this manure just makes us grow stronger” goes into the pain, the problems and the press’ ravenous feeding frenzy. Millennium Dome, Elephant puts things in perspective, too.

The Main Winner: The Liberal Democrats

Congratulations to Mike Thornton – reassuringly calm, local, knowing his stuff and answering questions honestly, unspun and without a hint of shrill hysteria… Yet, against the two most virulently far-right challengers in by-election memory, sticking quietly to Liberal guns on issues like equal marriage. He was exactly what the Lib Dems in Eastleigh, and the voters, needed for what Jonathan Wallace has termed this morning “The Lib Dems’ Battle of Stalingrad”. And congratulations to all the valiant volunteers carrying out that street by street battle.

Without Mike and all the troops, the hurricane of hate would surely have consumed us. With them, it showed that even a “perfect storm” isn’t perfect. While the Tories and UKIP competed to see who could make Britain the littlest by excluding the most people from it – gays, ethnic minorities, Europe, poor people, people who go to state schools, immigrants – and Labour struggled and fell short of being the One-Tenth-of-a-Nation party, at least the Liberal Democrats felt authentically British: complaining about the storm, but still going out in all weathers and not letting it stop them.

All this shows that the Liberal Democrats can’t be assumed to be a write-off at the next election, holding a by-election in the depths of mid-term blues and with the full fury of the establishment bent on annihilating us, aided by terrible real news stories. Even the Daily Telegraph – shellshocked and angry that their attempt to bludgeon the voters into obedience failed – this morning admits, calling UKIP the hammer of the Tories and us the anvil (I wonder if the Torygraph’s Deputy Political Editor actually knows what happens, respectively, to the anvil and hammer?):

“It’s the ‘sheer bloody resilience’, as one Tory put it earlier this week. ‘They just won’t lie down and die.’
“Eastleigh is yet more proof of an old adage: in the event of a nuclear holocaust, all that will remain of life on earth will be cockroaches, and Lib Dem activists handing out Focus leaflets attacking the cockroaches for not being local.”

When you’ve been in the wilderness for ninety years, still not being all that popular but actually being in government and getting something done is hardly going to make Liberal Democrats give up. There’s a massive relief to be had that, even under the worst possible conditions, the fall in the Lib Dem vote was limited and hard work held the seat. In future seats, we can hope for similar hard work, now given a morale boost by a slogging victory, and that neither real news stories nor the screaming hate of the establishment can repeat such force. There’s hope based on reason that this is the worst they can do to us, and we’ve withstood it. But that’s not enough. We still took a battering, though we stood up to it. There’s a strong likelihood that our anti-establishment vote is gone, leaving us competing for the much more crowded ground of dull, respectable governing parties. The good news is that this win can’t be called a protest vote, but a successful defence by Lib Dems as a governing party. The bad news is that that’s what you say when you’ve lost a shedload of what were very useful protest votes.

The last few weeks have seen the first concerted use – allied to all the local depth – of the new Liberal Democrat message:

“Only the Lib Dems can be trusted to build a stronger economy in a fairer society, enabling every person to get on in life.”

Nick Clegg used the line when campaigning and in victory. We saw “Stronger Economy, Fairer Society” on posters – something I heartily approve of, as it’s about time national messages were consistently and succinctly integrated with local campaigning. It gives the lie to those who say we won only on local issues. And it clearly reflects the party leadership’s desire to compete as a dull, respectable governing party: it’s a new – and sharper, more priority-driven – version of the Alliance’s ’80s ‘Head and the Heart’ message, saying we can split the difference between Tories and Labour and give you only the nice bits of each.

Is this message right?
If it is, is it our priority?
Is it sufficient?
Will it help to enthuse – or even win back – any of the idealists we need to do all that hard work?

I’ll return with the answers to such questions (not all of which are “No”, not all of which are “Yes”; I can split the difference, too) and more answers on what the Lib Dems’ core message should be next week.

Update: So, from the following week, What the Lib Dems Stand For Part 1 and What the Lib Dems Stand For Part 2 – 2013.

The Loser That Looks Like A Winner Because the Media Can’t Bear To Give Credit To Lib Dems: UKIP

There’s no doubt about what UKIP, the party with the clearest messaging, stands for. Three things, two the obvious vileness of neo-fascists, one less specific and more tempting. Between them, they show UKIP’s appeal particularly to some former Tory and some former Lib Dem voters.

UKIP’s explicit priorities: The Double Racism. No to Europe! No to immigrants!

Yes, we know what you mean.

UKIP’s handy new market opportunity: the anti-politics, ‘none of the above’ protest.

It’s clear that the Twenty-First Century has created one opportunity, with angry old privileged people feeling left behind now that everyone else is getting uppity and equal (hence other policy priorities of kicking the gays back down, Mr Farage’s incredible misogynistic sneering, and so on). Even Andrew Neil – so utterly shit as a host of the BBC By-election Special that he made you pine for a pompous but competent Dimbleby – managed to expose UKIP’s man last night by asking “Why run so hard on immigration with so few immigrants in Eastleigh?” and leaving him floundering for any answer than wasn’t the obvious ‘Because we’re racists’. It’s unfortunately clear that, though in most respects the Lib Dems are UKIP’s polar opposite, for the visceral anti-establishment voter the Lib Dems’ transformation into a dull, respectable governing party has opened the other flank – though I doubt very much if UKIP would have succeeded in peeling votes equally from Tories and Lib Dems yesterday were it not for the hailstorm of hate. But then, hate breeds hatemongers.

The media establishment will love to talk up UKIP, and have been doing nothing but all day. They’re the establishment’s wet dream of an ‘anti-establishment’ party: viciously prejudiced, nearly all white, male defenders of privilege. It’s like a party of newspaper editors. The Labour Party has already shown its usual commitment to principle by rushing to the far, far right of the Coalition, again, with John Denham now promising Labour will shameless pander to racism on immigration to compete with UKIP as a trailer for his Leader’s next cynical courting of the crumbling BNP vote in the hope that those ex-Labour voters won’t go to the middle-class purples.

All this mixture of gloating viciousness and craven pandering will, too, unfortunately move British politics in a more nasty and authoritarian direction, but UKIP really isn’t worth it. I’d assumed before the last election that if Mr Cameron won, UKIP would do very well. With the LiberaTory Coalition handing him a brilliant opportunity to get the anti-politics vote as well as the disgruntled Right, I expected UKIP to be regularly scoring 20+% in the polls – as Lib Dems always did against a Tory Government in dire straits – and to take several seats from the Conservatives in by-elections. To look at their adoring press coverage and the craven panic of both Labour and Tories, you’d think that was where they are. Instead, they’ve been underperforming to an amazing degree – something that shows the voters aren’t as stupid or as nasty as the whole media establishment likes to think they are.

Can you believe that UKIP’s greatest ‘success’ so far is to still be on just 20+% in their best ever by-election, and still never to have won one? Even George Galloway’s taken more people in than that. Can you believe that, with all the massively orchestrated press hyperbole, UKIP still struggles to break double figures in the opinion polls? If they’re supposed to be the ‘replacement’ for the Lib Dems as the party that makes the sort of protests the establishment likes to hear, just imagine if in the ’80s, ’90s or ’00s the best the Lib Dems ever managed was squeaking a second place but never winning, squeaking to 10% but never staying there, not having a single MP, not having more than forty-three elected local councillors in the entire UK – rather than four thousand? Imagine what the media would have said about that as a bandwagon, and you’ll see how much, much further down UKIP would be without the heavy support given by the media establishment’s bias to neo-fascism.

The Other Big Loser: The Conservative Party

What can you say? It’s as bad as it could possibly be for them. If they couldn’t win yesterday, then when? As the Daily Mash puts it:

“Tories beaten by perfect storm’ of Huhne, Rennard and nutjobs”

The Conservatives chose a candidate to give their Leader the finger, a far-right ideologue who disagreed with Mr Cameron on every single issue. That, in itself, was arrogant stupidity when they needed to appeal to Lib Dem voters. And then the candidate made the implicit message that they took the seat for granted explicit with her spectacular arrogance, incompetence and snobbery, from slagging off every state school to turning her nose up at the prospect of any voter talking to her and hiding from most of the hustings. She surely was the worst mainstream party by-election candidate for at least a decade.

And then, despite being identical to a UKIP candidate in all her views, she lost even to them when UKIP managed to find a candidate who seemed more competent. Yes – UKIP seemed more competent and less insanely illiberal than the Tory.

And despite the Tory being so far from Mr Cameron’s position that it’s hard to believe they’re in the same party, the wet dream candidate of the Tory Right who believe that all the electorate needs is shrill attacks on gays, ethnic minorities, Europe, immigrants, poor people, state schools and so on to come to the Tories in droves but which actually drives them away, all of which reason suggests Mr Cameron’s attempts to detoxify his party are right and the Right are wrong… Despite all of that, all the narrative is that poor Mr Cameron is in trouble and the Tories, totally rejected with their most extreme candidate in recent by-election memory, were beaten only because they weren’t extreme enough.

This proves how stupid Mr Cameron was to pander to his extremists on Europe and other issues – feeding them only makes them hungrier. Making the Tories sound like UKIP only makes UKIP seem a respectable choice – and choosing a Tory less competent than UKIP’s choice suicidal. And, of course, it proves again that the media establishment love to talk up neo-fascism and hate not just Liberalism but reality.

The Other Other Big Loser: The Labour Party

Oh dear. Poor Ed. Again. Eastleigh is only the latest result to put the Mili into humiliation.

Only a few weeks ago, Labour were talking of Eastleigh as a test for Mr Miliband’s “One Nation” idea. Failed. When Tony Blair was headed into government he went from third to second here – now Labour goes from third to fourth, just scraping a third of Blair’s vote share (but not scraping into even double figures).

But then, everyone always knew John O’Farrell would have a Weak Ending. It’s only by being awarded points for turning up that he rises above the level of the Tory hustings-dodger as a terrible, incompetent, foot-in-mouth candidate.

Labour had two messages last night:

• They will try to be as racist as UKIP, because being as shockingly anti-immigrant as Gordon Brown’s disastrous campaign wasn’t far-right enough
  

• They talked to tens of thousands of people in Eastleigh, which shows they’re making contact! Though, er, it also shows that the more people hear from Labour, the less they vote for them.
  

• And, er, that’s it.

I’d say more about Labour, but there’s not much I can fit in less than 10% of the space and, on the results, why bother?

Labels: Bigotry, British Politics, By-elections, Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats, Newspapers, The Golden Dozen, UKIP