It is a good question to ask a month out from the election results but I fear that your opinion reads more like you started with your premise and are working back to justify it. You obviously have a longer history with the Lib Dems than most people myself included but I wonder how useful your experiences are now post Coalition, post Ref, post 2017, 19 etc. Are you involved in party activism? Do you go to party socials, campaigns, conferences? If not, when did you stop?
You dismiss the usual arguments about the press and such, which I think isn't unfair as that has always been the case. You also dismiss manifesto and policy blithely, then saying the party will just follow Labour. Then you note the activists are to the left of Trotsky despite the MPs/voters. Which I think also is a bit off and doesn't really reflect the reality of members or activists I've met. The current activists do include a lot of left wing people and right wing people, both united by their anger at the Tories or Labour (depending where they live).
The answer to me is simply that a month isn't a long time to know if Things Have Changed. The focus understandably has been on the new government, how it deals with the problems of Britain, its large majority etc; the Conservative collapse and long summer leadership contest; the surprising success of the Greens, the collapse of the SNP and of course the return of UKIP/Reform Party and Farage, this time in parliament. Those are all very interesting topics and I'm afraid to admit as a member, equally if not more than the recovery of the Lib Dems to 3rd.
But that's not to say it remains comparatively boring. Because MP numbers matter in parliament, even if not to media, commentators or reporters. The sheer weight of Lib Dem MPs compared to the SNP, Reform or Greens and even the Tories, will start to tell. They'll do or say interesting things in parliament, or at home, they'll get on the national media or local media. It'll be clear they're doing things in a way that they haven't really since the Coalition or before.
No one who's followed politics since after 2010 has experienced the Lib Dems as a large opposition party. This will include loads of members, activists, councillors or MPs, not just media under their mid 30s. They are used to it being a Tory/Labour(Corbyn etc)//SNP system, with Green/UKIP/Reform taking up the oxygen of opposition, with the LDs at 8-11 MPs and some by election wins. But that period is over now. Labour can no longer do oppositional politics. The Tories will be at sea for a few months/years. Reform and the Greens will be boisterous till they slowly become aware of the realities of being very Small, even if Exciting to media or voters.
So I don't think there's any need yet for Bold Prescriptions about tacking centre right, or this policy or that policy. Let’s wait to see what comes out after the party conference next month, with the new spokespeople, with the new select committee chairs and many LD MPs on most of the other committees.
I do hope the party takes a bold position on Single Market, or Rejoin though!
Absolutely right. Being MPs for ‘lovely places to live’ as one of my friends dubs them isn’t enough. They are the natural refuge of wet, liberal, Waitrose shopping, environmentally aware Tories.
Please ask Mark Pack what the plan is, as he’s the campaigner with influence at the top.
They (we, as I am a very passive member) need to sing from the rooftops about the single market. I would advocate joining EFTA. That would get Labour activists countering and put pressure on Starmer
EFTA are clear that do not want the UK joining temporarily and dominating them as bigger than the combined members by far. It's not an option. Macron's new European body is an outer ring to gradually bring the UK and others back into the fold. The German LIberals also told this to Davey. The UK can get most SM and CU benefits potentially
Isn't it true that in all three main parties the leader's policies are well adrift of what their supporters want? For Labour it's clear that around 80% of supporters want the UK to rejoin the EU which Starmer for unknown reasons completely rejects. For the Conservatives the membership seem to be mostly supporting the extreme right such as Braverman and are quite likely to elect another leader who is so far from the mainstream of conservatism that they are likely to lose the next general election as well.
I have been a LibDem member on and off since the 90's, only active for a couple of years, when as Epping Forest Press Officer, I discovered how the local press was so Tory, they would re-write a story you gave to them and misrepresent an issue to give them a positive hand up.
What Davey has done in building thousands of councillors, putting many paid agents on the ground and building winnable seats, way more than realistically expected is a lot more difficult and meritorious than posing for free publicity in the national press as Farage did and running possibly non existent candidates to build vote share. Reform may have broken various electoral laws.
Farridge is a stirer and pied piper and failed to do any representative work for people or companies in 21 years in the EU Parliament, where he did mis-use funds and had to return them. It is very likely that all of the Reform 5, a London Taxi's worth, will lose their seats as people find their local MP is absent or useless or both. This a lot more high profile than as an MEP and they will not know what hits them with the volume of correspondence they receive.
The LibDems are biding their time until there is sufficient public opinion movement on the Single Market and Customs Union that they are in a good position to fight the seats again with a good chance of holding most and gaining some. We may well not have seen the Tory's lowest point as the next decade will see about 1/3 of their vote dying, with almost no youngsters to replace them.
They might be biding their time, but they need to start a conversation about single market membership and educate the electorate. That’s proper politics. I think they’d be pushing at an open door. The demographics are against the Brexiteers and they know it.
Agree with this sentiment completely. Prior to the election the pro EU lobby was very quiet, for reasons already written about many times. It seems that the policy of staying quiet has stuck and yet closer economic ties with our nearest biggest market are a clear advantage when trying to improve the economy and thus provide a better environment for the public services that are really struggling. Like Nick says, what's not to like about a pro EU policy.
LibDem members are not anything remotely like Trots, not even close. I worked next to Trots in a Civil Service Union many years ago, so I know all about those ineffective, exploited nutter activists.
LibDems, based on the conference votes, are about 1/3 so called Orange book centre right and 2/3 centre left with some radical edges. Just ask your wife, Polly Mackenzie !
I think you are forgetting the facts on the ground; that is, how many voters can a party mobilise. The Lib-Dems got 3,519,143 votes, and 72 seats. Reform got 4,117,610 votes and 5 seats. Reform got 42% of the Labour vote. If you had watched the rally in London on July 27th you would know that the rally goers were almost all Reform supporters.
The nonsensical British electoral system is going to create huge problems for Britain. We already see Labour acting as if it had an overwhelming mandate, which, in reality, it doesn't. The crowds out on the streets protesting the 3rd world immigration mess and its inevitable consequences, I guarantee, are mostly Reform supporters. Starmer's reaction to the protests is to enact even more draconian police powers and to ignore the causes of the protests. Imprisoning white protesters while allowing immigrant criminals to do whatever they please and get off scot free, is not going to solve the problems.
The parallels with Weimar Germany are very unsettling. There is no chance of significant growth in the UK economy. The only realistic path to even anaemic growth is to rejoin the EU, at least partly. But there is powerful resistance to any pro-EU policy. That means that the economy is going to continue to shrink; poverty, already bad, is going to get worse, with the resulting frustration. It is only a matter of time before there are serious violent clashes between Reform members and the left such as the Corbynites, antifa, ISWP, and the rest of the violent revolutionary groups of the left. Supporters of Lib-Dem are going to be completely irrelevant in the street battles.
What we are seeing is the results of the appalling political decisions made in Britain, particularly in the post WW2 period but extending way back to the start of the 20th century. Unfortunately the consequences of these decisions are mostly irreversible.
I see that anti EU resistance melting away. The poll numbers are going down and down. People know the LibDems are pro EU and it's just a matter of time before EU membership is back on the agenda, with Macrons outer ring of Europe being a way back,. German Liberals in government told Davey that they could get most SM benefits by aligning with EU standards.
LibDems and Reform fought different battles and LibDems fought under the system we had rather than the one they would like, which would have got them closer to 100 seats. Reform had it easy from having daily free publicity at the top level, while LibDems got none of that apart from limited visual stunt coverage, accepted as a blinder in the end. The LibDems achievement is way stronger gven what the cards they were dealt. The LibDems did the hard work on the ground, put thousands of councillors in place and many paid election agents, years ago. What Farridge did was just posing in the national media. If that gets bored with Farridge he is finished. There's no body there for Reform on the ground and possibly some of their candidates didn't even exist. Just the smell of stale beer and fags could be all that remains of the populist liar.
The anti EU feeling didn't melt away in the 41 years between the 1975 and 2016 referendums, thus BREXIT. It may well happen that Britain is able to attain a closer relationship with the EU, I certainly hope so. But aside from that Reform have a huge advantage; they are the "against" party, and so can take advantage of a number of issues that people feel angry about without being tainted with the policies that produced that anger, or having to produce detailed policies that would assuage that anger.
Under a genuine PR system Reform would have more seats than Lib-Dem and Labour would be a minority govt. That doesn't matter though; Britain's problems are profound and mostly intractable. As failure follows failure the protest parties get stronger, on the left as well as the right. This will inevitably lead to violence as the established political system is exposed as unable to provide solutions.
Where all this is headed is anybody's guess. But it is entirely likely that the class of rugger and buggery will be cast aside.
Under a genuine PR system, people would have voted differently and the Libdems would have campaigned differently. There is no guarantee that Reform would have won more seats. Under STV, the mostly likely PR system for the UK as it related to geographic constituencies, the LibDems would again have done far better than Reform UK.
It is a good question to ask a month out from the election results but I fear that your opinion reads more like you started with your premise and are working back to justify it. You obviously have a longer history with the Lib Dems than most people myself included but I wonder how useful your experiences are now post Coalition, post Ref, post 2017, 19 etc. Are you involved in party activism? Do you go to party socials, campaigns, conferences? If not, when did you stop?
You dismiss the usual arguments about the press and such, which I think isn't unfair as that has always been the case. You also dismiss manifesto and policy blithely, then saying the party will just follow Labour. Then you note the activists are to the left of Trotsky despite the MPs/voters. Which I think also is a bit off and doesn't really reflect the reality of members or activists I've met. The current activists do include a lot of left wing people and right wing people, both united by their anger at the Tories or Labour (depending where they live).
The answer to me is simply that a month isn't a long time to know if Things Have Changed. The focus understandably has been on the new government, how it deals with the problems of Britain, its large majority etc; the Conservative collapse and long summer leadership contest; the surprising success of the Greens, the collapse of the SNP and of course the return of UKIP/Reform Party and Farage, this time in parliament. Those are all very interesting topics and I'm afraid to admit as a member, equally if not more than the recovery of the Lib Dems to 3rd.
But that's not to say it remains comparatively boring. Because MP numbers matter in parliament, even if not to media, commentators or reporters. The sheer weight of Lib Dem MPs compared to the SNP, Reform or Greens and even the Tories, will start to tell. They'll do or say interesting things in parliament, or at home, they'll get on the national media or local media. It'll be clear they're doing things in a way that they haven't really since the Coalition or before.
No one who's followed politics since after 2010 has experienced the Lib Dems as a large opposition party. This will include loads of members, activists, councillors or MPs, not just media under their mid 30s. They are used to it being a Tory/Labour(Corbyn etc)//SNP system, with Green/UKIP/Reform taking up the oxygen of opposition, with the LDs at 8-11 MPs and some by election wins. But that period is over now. Labour can no longer do oppositional politics. The Tories will be at sea for a few months/years. Reform and the Greens will be boisterous till they slowly become aware of the realities of being very Small, even if Exciting to media or voters.
So I don't think there's any need yet for Bold Prescriptions about tacking centre right, or this policy or that policy. Let’s wait to see what comes out after the party conference next month, with the new spokespeople, with the new select committee chairs and many LD MPs on most of the other committees.
I do hope the party takes a bold position on Single Market, or Rejoin though!
Absolutely right. Being MPs for ‘lovely places to live’ as one of my friends dubs them isn’t enough. They are the natural refuge of wet, liberal, Waitrose shopping, environmentally aware Tories.
Please ask Mark Pack what the plan is, as he’s the campaigner with influence at the top.
They (we, as I am a very passive member) need to sing from the rooftops about the single market. I would advocate joining EFTA. That would get Labour activists countering and put pressure on Starmer
I love the notion of joining the EFTA: not the EU, but certainly a first step in the retreat from Brexit.
Well, we help found it when de Gaulle turned us down for the then Common Market. We’d be in the single
Market and EEA
EFTA was founded before the UK had attempted to join the EU's predecessor.
Essentially the UK was against having a customs union with other European countries, which the 6 founders of the EU insisted on.
So EFTA was created as an alternative that explicitly had no customs union between its members
EFTA are clear that do not want the UK joining temporarily and dominating them as bigger than the combined members by far. It's not an option. Macron's new European body is an outer ring to gradually bring the UK and others back into the fold. The German LIberals also told this to Davey. The UK can get most SM and CU benefits potentially
Isn't it true that in all three main parties the leader's policies are well adrift of what their supporters want? For Labour it's clear that around 80% of supporters want the UK to rejoin the EU which Starmer for unknown reasons completely rejects. For the Conservatives the membership seem to be mostly supporting the extreme right such as Braverman and are quite likely to elect another leader who is so far from the mainstream of conservatism that they are likely to lose the next general election as well.
Absolutely. I am sick of the idea that discussing Brexit is the equivalent of talking about favouraite sex positions at a Victorian tea-party
I have been a LibDem member on and off since the 90's, only active for a couple of years, when as Epping Forest Press Officer, I discovered how the local press was so Tory, they would re-write a story you gave to them and misrepresent an issue to give them a positive hand up.
What Davey has done in building thousands of councillors, putting many paid agents on the ground and building winnable seats, way more than realistically expected is a lot more difficult and meritorious than posing for free publicity in the national press as Farage did and running possibly non existent candidates to build vote share. Reform may have broken various electoral laws.
Farridge is a stirer and pied piper and failed to do any representative work for people or companies in 21 years in the EU Parliament, where he did mis-use funds and had to return them. It is very likely that all of the Reform 5, a London Taxi's worth, will lose their seats as people find their local MP is absent or useless or both. This a lot more high profile than as an MEP and they will not know what hits them with the volume of correspondence they receive.
The LibDems are biding their time until there is sufficient public opinion movement on the Single Market and Customs Union that they are in a good position to fight the seats again with a good chance of holding most and gaining some. We may well not have seen the Tory's lowest point as the next decade will see about 1/3 of their vote dying, with almost no youngsters to replace them.
They might be biding their time, but they need to start a conversation about single market membership and educate the electorate. That’s proper politics. I think they’d be pushing at an open door. The demographics are against the Brexiteers and they know it.
Very well said.
Agree with this sentiment completely. Prior to the election the pro EU lobby was very quiet, for reasons already written about many times. It seems that the policy of staying quiet has stuck and yet closer economic ties with our nearest biggest market are a clear advantage when trying to improve the economy and thus provide a better environment for the public services that are really struggling. Like Nick says, what's not to like about a pro EU policy.
LibDem members are not anything remotely like Trots, not even close. I worked next to Trots in a Civil Service Union many years ago, so I know all about those ineffective, exploited nutter activists.
LibDems, based on the conference votes, are about 1/3 so called Orange book centre right and 2/3 centre left with some radical edges. Just ask your wife, Polly Mackenzie !
I think you are forgetting the facts on the ground; that is, how many voters can a party mobilise. The Lib-Dems got 3,519,143 votes, and 72 seats. Reform got 4,117,610 votes and 5 seats. Reform got 42% of the Labour vote. If you had watched the rally in London on July 27th you would know that the rally goers were almost all Reform supporters.
The nonsensical British electoral system is going to create huge problems for Britain. We already see Labour acting as if it had an overwhelming mandate, which, in reality, it doesn't. The crowds out on the streets protesting the 3rd world immigration mess and its inevitable consequences, I guarantee, are mostly Reform supporters. Starmer's reaction to the protests is to enact even more draconian police powers and to ignore the causes of the protests. Imprisoning white protesters while allowing immigrant criminals to do whatever they please and get off scot free, is not going to solve the problems.
The parallels with Weimar Germany are very unsettling. There is no chance of significant growth in the UK economy. The only realistic path to even anaemic growth is to rejoin the EU, at least partly. But there is powerful resistance to any pro-EU policy. That means that the economy is going to continue to shrink; poverty, already bad, is going to get worse, with the resulting frustration. It is only a matter of time before there are serious violent clashes between Reform members and the left such as the Corbynites, antifa, ISWP, and the rest of the violent revolutionary groups of the left. Supporters of Lib-Dem are going to be completely irrelevant in the street battles.
What we are seeing is the results of the appalling political decisions made in Britain, particularly in the post WW2 period but extending way back to the start of the 20th century. Unfortunately the consequences of these decisions are mostly irreversible.
I see that anti EU resistance melting away. The poll numbers are going down and down. People know the LibDems are pro EU and it's just a matter of time before EU membership is back on the agenda, with Macrons outer ring of Europe being a way back,. German Liberals in government told Davey that they could get most SM benefits by aligning with EU standards.
LibDems and Reform fought different battles and LibDems fought under the system we had rather than the one they would like, which would have got them closer to 100 seats. Reform had it easy from having daily free publicity at the top level, while LibDems got none of that apart from limited visual stunt coverage, accepted as a blinder in the end. The LibDems achievement is way stronger gven what the cards they were dealt. The LibDems did the hard work on the ground, put thousands of councillors in place and many paid election agents, years ago. What Farridge did was just posing in the national media. If that gets bored with Farridge he is finished. There's no body there for Reform on the ground and possibly some of their candidates didn't even exist. Just the smell of stale beer and fags could be all that remains of the populist liar.
The anti EU feeling didn't melt away in the 41 years between the 1975 and 2016 referendums, thus BREXIT. It may well happen that Britain is able to attain a closer relationship with the EU, I certainly hope so. But aside from that Reform have a huge advantage; they are the "against" party, and so can take advantage of a number of issues that people feel angry about without being tainted with the policies that produced that anger, or having to produce detailed policies that would assuage that anger.
Under a genuine PR system Reform would have more seats than Lib-Dem and Labour would be a minority govt. That doesn't matter though; Britain's problems are profound and mostly intractable. As failure follows failure the protest parties get stronger, on the left as well as the right. This will inevitably lead to violence as the established political system is exposed as unable to provide solutions.
Where all this is headed is anybody's guess. But it is entirely likely that the class of rugger and buggery will be cast aside.
Under a genuine PR system, people would have voted differently and the Libdems would have campaigned differently. There is no guarantee that Reform would have won more seats. Under STV, the mostly likely PR system for the UK as it related to geographic constituencies, the LibDems would again have done far better than Reform UK.