Most of the complaints from within the party about Ming Campbell’s leadership are misplaced, argues Simon Titley

The Liberal Democrats are slipping in the polls. Things need turning round if the party is to avoid being squeezed at the next general election. What is the best remedy?

Attack your own leader in public with little thought for the consequences and no coherent idea of what might be done instead? Raise the prospect of another leadership coup followed by a second leadership election in as many years? Assume that the outcome of this scenario is bound to improve the party’s standing with the electorate?

One does not need to be a political genius to see that this is not a winning strategy. Yet this obvious point seems to have eluded some people in the party.

Take Federal Policy Committee member Linda Jack, for example. She declared publicly that Sir Ming Campbell had been “over promoted” and furthermore claimed to represent the views of “10% of the shadow cabinet”. To be fair, Linda’s proposed remedy was not the immediate defenestration of the leader. Instead, she recommended that he “raise his game”, perhaps with some “training or coaching”.

Linda’s analysis suggests that she has little grasp of the party’s strategic failings. Forcing the leader through some sort of re-education process does not address any of them. Still, she is entitled to her view and to express it. But there is a distinction between exercising one’s rights and one’s discretion. These gratuitous remarks gained a lot of media coverage, but for whose benefit? The only practical effect has been to help the opposition.

PEARL HANDLED REVOLVER

Linda Jack may be the only party office holder to have made attributable remarks but she is not the only culprit. As reported in Radical Bulletin (Liberator 320), one anonymous Liberal Democrat peer told the Sunday Telegraph (1 July), “We are hoping [Ming] will go off on his summer holidays with a pearl handled revolver in his suitcase.” The same day’s Observer reported a “whispering campaign”.

The main source of disappointment about Ming seems to be his lack of passion. I share this feeling. It would be great if we could see him display some genuine anger instead of always presenting a desiccated, lawyerly façade. But he is not going to do that because it is not in his nature. We’ve all known that from the start. Ming has never pretended to be anything other than what he is (except briefly during last year’s ‘put the zing into Ming’ PR fiasco, which shows what happens when you try to act out of character).

Ming does not have, and has never claimed to have, either Paddy Ashdown’s physical dynamism or Charles Kennedy’s chat show affability. Indeed, the party chose Ming precisely because of who he is rather than what it hoped he might be. The members wanted a ‘safe pair of hands’ and consciously rejected excitement. So it is both pointless and hypocritical of party members to criticise Ming for being himself.

The critics also need a sense of proportion. However great the disappointment, the situation is not so bad that it would remotely justify another messy coup and another uninspiring leadership election. After all, Ming is Ming, not Iain Duncan Smith (or Charles Kennedy, for that matter).

And the critics need to realise that most of the troubles besetting the Liberal Democrats are the result of deep-seated problems that existed long before Ming became leader. They would have been a problem whoever won last year’s leadership contest and they would remain a problem even if Ming were replaced next week.

FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS

There can be no better illustration of these fundamental problems than the party’s ‘Community Canvass Week’ being organised the week after this September’s party conference. On 30 August, party members received an e-mail from Cowley Street announcing this latest wheeze: “Thousands of Liberal Democrats across the UK will be out calling on people, conducting surveys, hearing what people think on issues and recruiting new members and deliverers.”

Can you see what is missing? At no stage is it proposed that we should promote ourselves, our values or our policies. This initiative is devoid of political content. It isn’t democratic or empowering but is a vacuous exercise in ‘press the red button now’ politics. If any further proof were needed that the party’s ‘we can win everywhere’ strategy is exhausted, this cheap stunt is it.

I was reminded of a recent radio comedy sketch by Mitchell and Webb, which satirised the BBC’s similar ‘tell us what you think’ approach: “Are you personally affected by this issue? Then e-mail us. Or if you’re not affected by this issue, can you imagine what it would be like if you were? Or if you are affected by it, but don’t want to talk about it, can you imagine what it would be like not being affected by it? Why not e-mail us? You may not know anything about the issue, but I bet you reckon something. So why not tell us what you reckon. Let us enjoy the full majesty of your uninformed, ad hoc reckon, by going to bbc.co.uk, clicking on ‘what I reckon’ and then simply beating on the keyboard with your fists or head.”

Yet again, the party is making empty gestures instead of taking a moral lead. This is a consequence of a deliberate strategy of avoiding the creation of a sharp image or saying anything controversial for fear that somebody somewhere might be offended. This problem has existed since the merger in 1988, long before the last leadership election.

Because the party believes that it can ‘win everywhere’, it subordinates policy to short-term tactical expediency, and fails to target and cement the loyalty of a core vote. Hence support is so shallow that the party must campaign for most of its votes afresh at each election.

Still, a lot of people in the party have turned this vice into a virtue, through a ritual activity they call ‘campaigning’. The party maintains that it can keep the show on the road indefinitely solely through the device of incremental gains won by exploiting transient local grievances – a strategy with inherent limitations. The party has failed to develop a complementary ‘air war’ (with the honourable exception of the campaign against the Iraq war – and even that advantage wasn’t pressed home).

And the show is kept on the road indefinitely. The party’s total number of councillors has remained more or less the same for the past twelve years.

Ming cannot be blamed for this depoliticised culture and excessively tactical approach. But he must openly acknowledge that his party’s prevailing strategy has reached the end of the road. He should feel under no obligation to respect the shibboleths of clapped-out tactics and slogans. He should be leading a debate about how the party can develop its strategy into something more appropriate to its circumstances.

If the party is to develop a successful ‘air war’, it needs a clear brand image. The closest the party has come to developing such a brand has been its policies on Iraq and tuition fees. For several years it has traded on these diminishing assets but, as these issues fade, the party has done little to create sufficiently powerful replacements. The only initiative that comes close is the new climate change proposals. But it is significant that, instead of choosing to campaign on that policy, the party will spend the week after conference going round the country with a blank sheet of paper.

DISPLACEMENT ACTIVITY

The party has no shortage of policy initiatives and campaigns, but they seem to lack any strategic focus or impact. Almost every month, one frontbench spokesman or another launches a new ‘campaign’ while the rest of his colleagues churn out several press releases each day. Most of this effort sinks without trace.

Just who or what is all this campaigning aimed at? There seems to be no target audience and no defined objective, other than to keep busy. It is displacement activity rather than political action.

Again, this problem does not originate with Ming. The party has been engaging in this sort of ritual for years (and how ironic that such unfocused activity should go out under the banner of ‘Focus’). While it is not Ming’s fault, it is something he could reform, by ensuring that the party focuses its limited resources on campaigns that have a point.

Ming should argue for the party to do less but better. The party’s campaigning should aim to build and cement the loyalty of its core vote, which electoral and polling evidence overwhelmingly shows is (potentially) the younger, better-educated and more cosmopolitan demographic. It is not the ‘middle ground’, a fallacious concept based on the illusion that most of the electorate shares the same ‘sweet spot’. Converging with the other parties on the same ground would make the party seem indistinguishable and consign it to oblivion.

Unfortunately, there are influential voices in the party who believe that the party should compete for the imaginary ‘middle ground’. They argue that the party’s situation is analogous to that in the Labour Party during the 1980s. The Lib Dems are repelling the middle ground, they claim, because the party is “too left-wing”. Ming must therefore emulate Neil Kinnock and show who is boss by staging a ‘Clause 4 Moment’, to take on and defeat his own party.

Anyone with an ounce of sense can see that this analogy is entirely false. Despite this, the leadership gambled a disproportionate amount of its prestige on two conference motions, on post office privatisation and on Trident, that were deliberately contrived as wedge issues to provoke a fight with the membership. Ming is clearly getting dud advice. He should clear out all the ‘Clause 4 Moment’ merchants from his office without further ado.

If anything, the Liberal Democrats need to be more radical, not more right wing. Politics today is dominated by the failure of right-wing ideology. Financial deregulation has led to the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage market, the consequences of which threaten a global recession. PFIs are failing to deliver in the health service and have left NHS hospitals with £12bn of private debt. Billions have been squandered on useless defence weapons. ‘Fat cat’ pay and bonuses are causing widespread moral outrage. The Iraq war has been such a failure that a British general has recently described neo-con foreign policy as “intellectually bankrupt”.

BATTLE OF IDEAS

Perhaps the most useful service Ming could therefore render as leader would be to engage the party in the battle of ideas. The Liberal Democrats produce a lot of policy initiatives and statements, but most of this activity seems to exist in a parallel universe. Whenever there are big debates in the real world on controversial issues, it is rare to find a prominent Lib Dem making an effective intellectual contribution.

Consider the big moral issues of the day, for example the question of life-work balance, the argument between multiculturalism and integration, the moral panic about paedophilia, or the looming issues of generational politics. The Lib Dems are simply not at the centre of these debates. On the rare occasions they put in an appearance, they deliver sterile dissertations rather than passionate arguments that would rally support.

The basic problem with the party is not Ming but its strategy of incrementalism, its failure to cement the allegiance of a core vote, its failure to create a clear brand and its failure to engage effectively in the battle of ideas. Changing the leader will not necessarily solve any of these problems, therefore most of the internal criticism of Ming is misplaced.

But Ming has a duty as leader to leave the party in a better state than he found it. He must show that a process for addressing the fundamental problems is underway otherwise the grumbling will grow.

Simon Titley is a member of the Liberator Collective