The key issue for me in the leadership debate is our strategy for the next election. My take is based on feedback from electors.
On the whole, our manifesto is sound (although I can’t help adding a quick pitch for the addition of the term time attendance policy for tourism constituencies & to exemplify our trust in people over government/commitment to family life). There are just two huge, key exceptions.
- Ditch the referendum on the deal.
Nothing in recent history, from the AV referendum to Brexit to the Scottish Independence Reernedum, gives cause to trust referenda. The electorate had already learned that lesson. It’s our turn now.
Plenty agreed with Brenda from Bristol that “there is too much politics” and dread the prospect of another election soon, let alone another referendum on a complex issue in which passions ride high. Our system is deeply unsettled; elections/referenda in such circumstances add to the maelstrom, not calm it. More than that, Scottish Independence and Brexit weren’t just arguments between competing political factions, but caused tensions within families and friendships groups which still linger. Neither we nor the SNP gained by offering another such experience in the last election. We would be idiots to repeat the offer.
Remainers are aware the LibDems don’t want Brexit, know we can’t stop the juggernaut and know we will do all we can to represent their interests. They just want us to get on with it without bothering them again.
- Switch tack on Coalition.
We have to hold our noses on the prospect of coalition in the next Parliament (not in this one). Once the 2nd referendum failed to generate a national tide, the argument that we would form the main opposition looked unrealistic, increasingly so once the unforeseen Corbyn bandwagon started rolling. In that environment, ruling out coalition made us an irrelevance.
If another election is called before the end of the full Parliamentary term, it will be because government is untenable. The country will be in a state of great uncertainty and risk, just as we were in 2010. We stepped up then in the national interest. We may well need to do so again. In the meantime we point out only the LibDems in coalition will be able to hold the extremes of either the Tory or the Labour party in check.
It won’t be comfortable and it may not reward us at a future election either, but it may well be a patriotic necessity. Ruling ourselves out of play and relegating ourselves to shouting negatively and ineffectively from the sidelines achieves nothing for anyone. Next time though, a Bill on changing the Westminster voting system.
Finally, we need to be a solution, not part of the problem
It’s about tone and balance. There’ll be a danger that whoever is seen as responsible for forcing this Government into another election will be punished in the ballot box. The ideal scenario for us is a collapse perceived to be the result of unnecessary Tory – Labour feuding. Tribal aggression and Pavlovian-response attacks on other parties are the biggest turn offs for the majority of the electorate.
We are in very turbulent seas, with the two great warships of our political system, Labour and Tory, blasting cannons at each other. We can’t kid ourselves that we have anything like their firepower. Getting in between and firing shotgun blasts at both from our rowing boat just doesn’t cut it, much as we might want to blow them out of the water. My sense is we pull back and offer instead a haven of calm; sanity in a mad world. Can we bite our tongues and position ourselves as healers not combatants? I appreciate it’s a big ask given the air time we get but I think we start not by attacking Tories and Labour in our press releases and speeches, but by explaining them. “Tories say this because they see the world this way…Labour react because they see it this way. We see it this way…”.
* Karen Wilkinson was Parliamentary Candidate for Kingwood in June 2017
