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The future’s bright…the future’s orange

By Angela Harbutt
September 25th, 2011 at 6:00 am | 10 Comments | Posted in coalition, Liberal Democrats

A personal view of Conference 2011: I walked away from conference on Wednesday with that bloody annoying mobile phone company’s strap-line in my head. I certainly didn’t expect that when I headed out on Saturday. 

In fact to be frank, for the first couple of days of conference I confess that I thought it was more grey than orange. Dreary grey Brummie clouds hung menacingly over a huge ugly grey conference building that seemed packed to the rafters with earnest young men and women in grey suits. I have never seen so many corporates at a Lib Dem conference. Welcome to power and influence I suppose. Even the mood was pretty grey. I thought at first it was gloom and despair (or was that  just Vince’s speech!). But actually it was more steely than gloomy, more resolute than resigned. But you could almost feel the burden of power weighing heavily on the party’s shoulders.

So….a grey, dull conference. But dull is good. Dull means no reckless, immature muscle-flexing from conference played out for all the nation to witness. Dull means no leadership humiliations. No pictures of 2000 or so voting passes held up high. No hurried press calls to “explain” what the hell just happened. Dull is good.

It was father funny to see so many media types scratching their heads and tearing up their scripts. Lib Dem conference all serious and grown up. With conference refusing to play ball, there was just the the danger that some journalists might actually have to leave the comfort of the bar/media centre and go  do some proper journalism around the place. Perish the thought.

Actually conference was not as grey as it first looked. It was also very yellow. I was struck by the conference hall – didn’t it look very, very yellow compared to last year where we saw much more blue?  Doubtless this is all part of the “distinctiveness” strategy. And what about that fabulous dress Miriam turned out in on the last day?

It was also very very orange. Never have I met so many economic liberals in the bar, in the fringes, in the conference hall itself. I don’t know how many have always been there keeping a low profile and how many were new. Some were definitely new . They were university students, graduates, first jobbers, newbies to conference. They get liberalism; they are internationalists; they stand up for civil liberties; and yes they are orange bookers. They are definitively NOT Tories. Some were clearly old guard – some even had beards! They had long thought that liberalism had been neglected by the party. Too many years in opposition had allowed us to get flabby – promise spend on everyone and everything. That policy was being driven by a small highly organised minority that had over the years actually got out of kilter ith the mainstream of the party….

But every political party has it’s factions. Factions are good. They expose weak arguments , encourage the generation of ideas, test and often improve ideas. And you see this nowhere else like you see at conference. On line, behind the anonymity of the pc, people can be hideously rude. Vicious even. You only have to have read the comments on the Liberal Vision blog to see how much anger and bile we have been subjected to. At conference – and especially at this conference we saw the factions of the party talking to one another, laughing with each other, challenging each other, and agreeing with other. I know the media don’t like that – maybe some party members won’t like it either… but from the sharp end i saw it happen…

So the party has grown up. The conference was mature. The factions more engaged with one another. I guess when times are tough and the stakes get raised you pull together. I certainly hope so.

Sad to say however – I do not think that I can say the same for some of  the party’s leading lights. Yes I get the need for us to be distinctive. I understand the urge to show at every opportunity that we are not “Tory patsies” . But there is a fine line between being “distinctive” and being destructive. And that was a line several senior MPs crossed. I doubt it was intentional. I could be generous and say that they were simply playing to the gallery. I could be harsh and say they had one eye on the next leadership challenge. I certainly don’t buy the idea that this was co-ordinated. But the outcome was that for a while the conference descended into a cacophony of increasingly vitriolic anti-Tory rhetoric.  The Tories had “tainted us” and their political tactics were “evil”. (Farron). They were “too city dominated”  and the Conservative Right were the “descendants of those who sent children up chimneys” (Cable) or Tea Party extremists “slavering” to cut taxes for the rich (Huhne).  I was particularly sad to see two of our senior Government ministers  leading this unseemly assault. What were they thinking?

It was a sign of the maturity of the conference that this did not go down as well as you might expect. Yes, conference had enjoyed the bloody spectacle at the time. But in the bar the talk was definitely NOT about how great this all was. Many of those you might expect to be relishing the Tory bashing were shaking their heads.  There was genuine concern.  “It’s gone to far”…”I’ve got to work the the Tory councillors next week…. ” Why aren’t we giving Balls or Milliband a kicking?”… “It looks so crap on TV” … “How can he go back into cabinet after saying that?”…. well you know its gone too far when Shirley Williams calls time on the Tory bashing.

So praise be that come Wednesday, Nick gave possibly his best speech at conference since becoming leader. Guns blazing. Fire in his belly and a gleam in his eye. His closing speech to conference was a masterclass in the right way to get across the party’s distinctiveness. Talk about what you have done, what you want to do and (most importantly) tell people why you are doing it. Some of our critics called the speech lean. I call it perfectly measured. It was a serious speech, but a passionate one. . Rarely have I seen the conference react so warmly to him.

There were two elements of his speech that were particularly revealing about where Nick is taking the party. And it is good news for all of us. Firstly I don’t recall having ever heard the word “liberal” used more in any speech at our conference. He talked of our liberal spirit  and  “liberal valuesof  “a liberal nation” and a “liberal society. I confess I gave a tiny cheer (in my head – not out loud of course) on each and every one  of the 19 times he used the word.

Secondly, he used the word “Labour” 13 times… And what he says tells us a lot…. 

“Another term of Labour would have been a disaster for our economy. So don’t for a moment let Labour get away with it. Don’t forget the chaos and fear of 2008. And never, ever trust Labour with our economy again”

Nick was on top form on Wednesday. He has put liberalism front and centre of our party and made Labour the focus of his scorn (ruling out any chance of a LibLab pact) and got a standing ovation in the process.  This does not surprise me. We should be concerned that David Cameron wants the liberal badge for himself. And we should never ever let him have it. It’s ours. So when our leader sends out a very clear signal that he will defend it come what may, we should applaud. We should also remember how much we hated the Labour party in power. The money they spent, the public sector ballooning out of all reasonable size, the pensions they stole, the chronically unfair education system they left us. Of course we should applaud when our leader says “never,ever trust Labour with our economy again”. Damn right.

The party walking out of conference on Wednesday had the hint of a spring in its step. I wouldn’t go  so far as to say that we were collectively skipping our way down to New Street Station. But we have got through a hideous year. We had a sober, grown up and uniting conference – with a clear shift back towards the centre ground – the best place for this party to be. The future is definitely looking a tiny bit brighter and a lot more orange….

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Select Committee recommends Whitehall reform

By Simon Goldie
September 24th, 2011 at 10:31 am | Comments Off on Select Committee recommends Whitehall reform | Posted in Conservatives, Liberal Democrats

The Commons Public Administration Select Committee has produced a report arguing for major changes to the way Whitehall is structured. It says that if the coalition wishes to ensure the success of the ‘Big Society’, reform of the civil service is vital.

While the ‘Big Society’ originates from the Conservative side of the coalition, there is no reason why the Liberal Democrats can’t seize this policy opportunity. Decentralisation has been part and parcel of the liberal world view for many years. For a time, the party was committed to abolishing the DTI. When the department became BERR, then BIS, and the financial crisis hit, this policy was quietly dropped.

A liberal policy to reform Whitehall, moving power away from the centre and potentially reducing the cost of running government has various advantages. Not only would this fit with Lib Dem policies but it would also be acceptable to the Conservative party. That would defuse some of the tensions between the two parties and build political capital for the Lib Dems in order to win other arguments with the Conservatives. It could also help move Britain towards a more liberal society.

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Peter O’Bore’s Erroneous Comparison

By Leslie Clark
September 23rd, 2011 at 2:10 pm | 9 Comments | Posted in EU Politics

Political discourse is full of unhelpful comparisons: shrieking keffiyeh wearing activists like to demonize Israel by comparing it to Nazi Germany or apartheid South Africa and unlettered Eurosceptics (usually found skulking the Telegraph’s comments section) like to compare the European Union to the USSR. Pro-Iraq War Tories had the impertinence to dub Charles Kennedy ‘Charlie Chamberlain’ in the lead up to the 2003 invasion. And not to revert to easy-Lib-Dem-clap-on-Question-Time mode, we all know how that turned out…

So those uneasy with inappropriate analogies must have been taken aback by the Centre for Policy Studies publication ‘Guilty Men’ (if you don’t want to read the whole thing, you can view a brief précis at The Spectator website).

The term ‘Guilty Men’ of course refers to the classic text of 1940 that condemned fifteen British public figures for their appeasement stance against Germany throughout the 1930s. The journalist Peter Oborne and his colleague Francis Weaver have appropriated the term for their critique of British pro-Euro public figures of recent decades. Today’s ‘Guilty Men’ include Danny Alexander, Tony Blair, Paddy Ashdown, Ken Clarke, Will Hutton, Michael Heseltine and Nick Clegg amongst others.

In the foreword, Peter Jay justifies the title:

In choosing the title of their book from that famous earlier study of national betrayal by the nation’s élite, the authors of this book  have chosen well. Like the appeasers, those who after 1950 worked to deliver their country into the hands of a foreign power…” (piii)

Eurosceptics may have the upper hand given the current political and economic turmoil unfolding in the Eurozone but that is no excuse for historical ignorance by applying such a loaded term to Europhiles (even if they have indulged in some unsavoury character assassinations in the past).

All in all, there isn’t anything particularly revelatory in the book. We all know about the Beeb and FT’s pro-Europeanism just as we know that The Daily Express, The Times, The Sunday Times, The Telegraph, The Sunday Telegraph and The Sun are not too keen on the whole project.

Oborne and Weaver’s work is also based around a number of counterfactuals such as:

Mr [Danny] Alexander ran the pro-euro campaign, and had he had his way would have steered Britain directly to economic catastrophe.”

Yet it is just as easy to respond with another; that is, if the criteria set out at Maastricht had been adhered to, then the Eurozone would not have been in the mess that it is in.

Invoking Churchill in their final chapter, they call on a number of British politicians to come out and apologise: “Top of the list comes Tony Blair, who during his party conference speech of 1999 implied that Conservative euro-scepticism stood  in the foul tradition of South African racism. There can be no  place in our national debate for this kind of cheap and debased argument, which sadly poisoned so much of the British debate over the single currency.” (p65)

But come on Mr Oborne, just look at your title. Are Europhiles analogous to the Nazi appeasers of the 1930s? Really?

What David Laws and Jeremy Browne said at conference..

By Angela Harbutt
September 23rd, 2011 at 1:04 pm | 1 Comment | Posted in Liberal Democrats

On Monday evening Liberal vision and the Institute of Economic Affairs co-hosted a fabulous fringe event  in Birmingham. Our distinguished panel considered how entering government has changed the Liberal Democrats. Whether deficit reduction meant the party has embraced a new economic direction? Whether the days of the Lib Dems making high public spending pledges were over? And to what extent the LibDem leadership is now decisively “free market liberal”?

Our thanks to the wonderful Michael Crick for being such an organised, as well as thoroughly entertaining, chairman and to our speakers Jeremy Browne MP, David Laws MP, Mark Littlewood (IEA), Simon Goldie (LV) and especially to James Forsyth (Spectator) who was drafted in with less than 12 hours to go when Peter Oborne was unavoidably detained elsewhere.

Despite the huge numbers attending the event (standing room only) there are still a loads of you out there who could not make the event and have been begging ( yes begging!) to be told what was said.  We will try to get a more professional video up for you in the next day or two covering comments from all the speakers…. But for those who cant wait – here are the speeches from David Laws and Jeremy Browne (and err… apologies for “shakeycam” – these clips have been grabbed off the back up camera)…..

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Nick Clegg’s social mobility

By Simon Goldie
September 22nd, 2011 at 8:57 pm | 2 Comments | Posted in Liberal Democrats, Liberal Philosophy, Nannying, Social Liberal Forum

Nick Clegg has made it clear that social mobility is a key part of his political agenda.

He returned to this theme again in his closing speech at the Liberal Democrat conference.

Clegg has also been weaving a modern liberal narrative for sometime. Early on in the conference week, he talked about the rich liberal heritage of the party.

For now, he is arguing that the pupil premium will unblock the barriers to achievement for poor children.

Social mobility could be his modern liberal narrative in action. Mill, a classical liberal, was keen on education for all. He wanted everyone to have the opportunity to reach their potential. And once they had reached it, they would be active citizens in a liberal society. For me that meant individuals running their lives and living as they wish as long as they did no harm to others.

The social liberal wing of the party must surely welcome this government intervention while the classical liberal side can look forward to the children who benefit becoming adults who no longer need the ‘Nanny State’.

If Clegg can establish this modern liberal narrative: a combination of different strands of liberalism and then implement a policy that represents it, he may be able to rebuild the party’s electoral base in time for the next general election.

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