Anthony Barnett (London, OK): The Lib Dems matter, even if at the moment they matter in the way that they fail to matter. This needs to change if they are up to it. The issue is not just tactical, in the way that Peter Preston discusses, it is about setting the terms. Whether or not there is a hung parliament, a possible coalition, etc, the current strategic impasse Labour is facing, trying to demonstrate its "competence", and the likelihood that any Tory majority will be fragile, means that the next election could be one whose outcome the the Lib-Dems can frame. By this I mean whether or not there is a deal they could define what he country needs. I was trying to get at this (even if I went a little far) when I suggested that Vince Cable shows the Lib Dems could be "hegemonic".
Now its getting personal, always a good sign. Thanks to James Graham I have learnt of a self-justification piece by 'Lord' Chris Rennard the party's most influential back-room boy. Don't dump me and all my works, he seems to be saying, as he feels the pleasures of influence slipping away. Jame is characteristically generous,
Chris’ genius for campaigning is unsurpassed. More than any other single individual he can rightly claim the credit for our renaissance in the 90s and beyond. He has been the true brains and in many ways the real leader of the party. But he is a tactician, not a strategist. And when someone has been in the position he has been for as long as he has been, there is always a danger of going stale.
The article is in Lib Dem News, though no link comes up. James gives a clear summary and reports Rennards as arguing,
The reason for our success? Strict targeting and pushing issues that matter to people. In 1997, lest we forget, we fought the election on CHEESE (Crime, Health, Education, Economy, Sleaze and the Environment).
Well, I didn't know about CHEESE until now, but whether or not it was Rennard's doing it stinks. The Lib Dems may think they did well in 1997 because they increased their number of MPs. In fact it was a tragic lost opportunity for UK politics. If they had not had an alcoholic leader whose removal well beforehand any "real leader" would have organised, if they had Ming, for example, when the Iraq war was a defining issue, they could have got close to replacing the Tories as the second party. Look at the poverty of aspirations in CHEESE: any mention of Iraq; or of Labour lying and trust, very different from 'sleaze'; or of the need for better and more efficient government; or how to manage globalisation? A CHEESY approach will always condemn the Lib Dems to being marginal. A party has to have a defining project: of what it wants to be and do as a party and what it wants the country as a whole to become. The good news is that the age of CHEESE may be over and a new leader will start to cook some main courses.
Comments
Sorry guys, I skipped a stage in the argument, I think that the Lib Dems got more not less CHEESY after 97, which is more or less implied by James. In 1997 the national project was provided by New Labour itself reaching out to the Lib Dems and preparing the ground for a centre-left coalition if needed, Lib Dem success then was in part a function of and in the slipstream of the destruction of Tory hegemony. But the longer Labour governed the more the Lib Dems needed, and need, to strike their own project. 'What R they 4?' seems cruel and dismissive because it trades on supposed numerical insignificance, there is a strategic core to the question which holds - an answer is essential now.
Anthony
[...] ourkingdom added an interesting post today on What way for the Liberal Democrats?Here’s a small reading [...]
Hold on: CHEESE was the acronym Chris adopted in 1997, not 2005.
As it happens, I think you are right: the 2005 election campaign was a tremendous missed opportunity. But in 1997, to go from 20 to 46 MPs at a time when Labour was pre-eminent was close to miraculous.
The problem is we've been fighting the same election ever since when everyone else is moving on.
There is no online version of that article by the way. Lib Dem News has no website.
I find this article quite confusing. In 1997 Paddy Ashdown was the leader. In 1997 Iraq was not an issue. In 1997 Labour had not proven themselves as venal as the Tories (it took almost six months for the Bernie Ecclestone affair to do that).
You seem to be arguing that in 2005 they lost a terrific opportunity to win 1997's election. Or something.
[...] did a recent post on how badly the Lib Dems did in 2005. For their part Labour’s ‘victory’ masked an appalling performance. The [...]
I don't think the problem is "CHEESE" per se - that was just a reminder that we must always talk about issues that the public cares about. The problem is that the party has stopped talking about these issues in liberal terms.
To take 2005 as an example, while we had lots of policy about localising public services, our core messages were all about setting national policies on public services. If (hope against hope) we had actually won the election, we'd have had a pretty hard time arguing that we had a mandate to roll out the radical programme of decentralisation that was in our manifesto.
And we did talk about Iraq in the 2005 election - we just didn't say anything more than "it was the wrong decision" (at least it was better than the lame Tory mock outrage of "they lied to us!!!"). It was an open goal waiting for a political party to say something fundamental about the nature of power in the UK, and we walked away.
The problem is, ultimately, that we spend so much time straining to hear what the people are interested in we have a fatal loss of nerve during the few times when we actually have something to say that they might like the sound of. The tail has not only been wagging the dog, it has been throwing the dog about until its brains fall out.
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