The Lib Dems Need to Rediscover the Spirit of Charles Kennedy — or disband
“If it makes us unpopular in certain quarters, let us be unpopular for what we care about, what we believe in and what defines us and what we think is best for the country.”
That’s a quote from the late Charles Kennedy. Read it. Read it again. And read it one more time. This is the blueprint, the absolute minimum we should demand from our party — yet the current leadership moves us further and further away from Charles Kennedy’s ethos every day.
I left the party in April 2020, overwhelmingly irritated by our failure to launch in the 2019 election — I have since rejoined following Keir Starmer’s desertion of the pro-EU cause in order to court voters in the so-called ‘Red Wall’ — imagine my annoyance that my belief that I was rejoining an unabashed pro-EU party went up in flames barely a fortnight later.
I rejoined hoping that the Lib Dems would finally learn from their mistakes and seize the opportunity to drive home a distinctive political identity for the party. Opinion polling from December 2020 showed that as many as 32% of the country would vote to rejoin the EU — including 69% of 2019 Lib Dem voters — a retention rate that seems completely out of our grasp at present.
Being able to nail your colours to the mast is one of the scant few upsides of being a smaller party — electorally, we can afford to campaign on our principles without the need to balance competing voter blocs.
So why exactly is Ed Davey splitting the difference and positioning Lib Dem policy on Europe like the party is on the cusp of government? Veering away from Pro-EU messaging is unlikely to do anything except increase our vote share in the Red Wall from 3% to 4%? Is that the scope of Liberal Democrat strategic thinking these days?
When the pro-EU ground has already been vacated, there is substantial support for rejoining, and it’s an ideal the party is readily associated with, it is absurd to distance ourselves from it.
BestForBritain’s latest MRP forecast, a technique that has been devastatingly accurate for the last two elections, puts us on 2 seats. That’s not a typo — two seats.
Looking back at the disastrous 2019 election campaign, the party’s only success was building up rafts of votes in pro-EU constituencies — that is where every single one of the party’s winnable seats are. This demographic isn’t something to be taken for granted, it is our salvation, our only route back to being a competitive third party once more.
As we get further in to this parliamentary session, and the effects of Brexit on top of the Covid-19 aftershock are felt, it seems almost inevitable that the Lib Dems will pivot towards a rejoin ticket, at which point such a move will appear opportunistic and dishonest — an opinion that many already hold for the party.
In place of making Rejoin a central tenet of Lib Dem focus, Davey is trying to move Lib Dems’ core messaging in to being ‘pro-carer’- an undoubtedly noble cause but ultimately a fruitless one for the Liberal Democrats. Where is the open ground for a ‘pro-carer’ party? Which party exactly is campaigning on being ‘anti-carer’? Better yet, why would a party led by a man with a sketchy voting record on carers issues want to draw focus to that very issue? Davey may see such a course as personally on brand, but tactically it is a complete non-starter.
It appears as if the Lib Dem leadership is embarrassed by our radical streak. Think back to the 2017 election where cannabis legalisation was one of the party’s most recognised and liberal policies. For want of a better term, it’s a sexy issue with significant public support yet Lib Dem after Lib Dem was churned out in the media boring everyone to death by framing it as a means of increasing public finances — what a way to completely sanitise an exciting vote winning pledge.
Given how the party presents itself in the media you’d be forgiven for thinking that Lib Dem policy would read like a 500 page dirge of wet lettuce centrism, yet the party does actually boast radically liberal ideas.
In fact, I’d argue that there are three other distinctive areas where the Liberal Democrats can carve out a unique identity besides rejoining the EU. These are being pro-immigration, drug liberalisation and Universal Basic Income. These are the exciting issues that encompass modern liberalism and truly differentiate the party from its progressive rivals.
It’s all well and good hopping on to Andrew Marr to talk about a ‘Green Recovery Plan’ but the party is never going to outflank the Greens on issues that are literally baked in to their party’s entire identity. Think about it, if the environment is your number one issue, are you going to vote for the party named after being pro-environment or the party led by a man who thinks his shocking record on carers issues is something to publicise?
It might seem flippant but if we continually relegate these issues that are distinctive to our party to the background then what are we for? Are we not effectively the socially liberal branch of the Labour Party at this point, with a poor imitation of Keir Starmer at the helm to boot?
This coy, uninspiring attitude from party bigwigs is an enduring hangover from the Coalition years. We are still completely and utterly traumatised from the experience of being in government. So much so that most in the party fear boasting about radical positions in case it upsets swathes of voters who would never ever vote Lib Dem in the first place.
We constantly act as if we are on the precipice of government, and managing a vast and diverse voting bloc — yet we’re not. Like it or not, our core vote are the youngish, middle-class, well-educated suburban professionals. We need to win in the seats that are heavily populated by this group — and the good news is, we’re well placed to, thanks to our pro-Europeanism. The sooner the party recognises its strengths and stops trying to act like its on the verge of winning each of the 650 seats in parliament the better.
To anyone with a bit of sense, it is absolutely obvious that there is nothing to be gained from a third party (and a distant third at that) campaigning on competence. Nobody wants to hear about how drug liberalisation is economically sound, nobody is enthused by a half-arsed ‘closer’ alignment with the EU — that’s not what these issues are about. Reports of the Liberal Democrats’ imminent death have historically been exaggerated, but for the first time since the 1950s, the doom mongers might be on to something.
We’re at a crossroads once more, and the directions of travel couldn’t be more different — embrace the unapologetic bleeding heart liberalism of Charles Kennedy — or we might as well fold in to the Labour Party.