AFRAID TO MEET THE CHALLENGE?

This September’s Liberal Democrat conference offers the party a rare chance to turn a corner. Has it the courage to do so?

It is less a question of overcoming the embarrassments of the past year, more about overcoming the inhibitions of the past thirty.

Bluntly, the party has been afraid to promote its values for fear of causing offence. The Meeting the Challenge policy review, due to conclude at conference, ought to draw a line under that era.

This review was intended to create the coherent ‘narrative’ missing from the party’s policies. But assuming it succeeds, what happens next? It will need considerable courage to take this process to its logical conclusion.

Adopting a coherent, ideologically based platform does not end with a vote at conference. It represents a strategic gearshift with profound implications for the party’s policy-making and campaigning.

It will mean saying bold things that attract some voters but repel others, an uncomfortable position from which the party has tended to shy away in recent years.

This timidity is why the party has failed to consolidate a loyal base but instead has to campaign for its votes afresh at each election. Hence the plate-spinning to hold seats and incrementalist tactics to gain them, which at the present rate would take 200 years to achieve a parliamentary majority.

Such conclusions are the basis of a collection of controversial essays published at conference titled Liberalism – something to shout about, edited by Graham Watson MEP and Simon Titley. [The book can be ordered here.]

The essays’ authors come from the right, left and centre of the party but agree on one thing: the party has lost the plot.

It claims to be green, then runs a petition against VAT on heating fuel. It claims to be pro-European, then runs a Euro election campaign that avoids mentioning Europe. It claims to support civil liberties, then backs ASBOs and hedges its position on migration.

It runs populist local election campaigns in which policy is reduced to a tactical afterthought, leading the party to say one thing in one part of the country and something else in another.

When the party wins power locally, it often fails in its Liberal duty to empower people. Instead, it becomes absorbed into the establishment, wallowing in what Dostoevsky called ‘administrative ecstasy’.

Why did the party lose sight of its values? It is partly due to political trends that have affected all mainstream parties, not just the Liberal Democrats.

Politicians tend nowadays to follow rather than lead public opinion. The end of communism removed the defining division in post war politics and led many to assume ‘the end of history’. Meanwhile, globalisation has limited politicians’ freedom of manoeuvre and capacity to deliver.

In Britain, politicians are petrified by fear of the press and obey a tabloid-led agenda. The range of ideas has narrowed considerably, and mainstream political argument is confined to a debate about nuances or replaced by personality issues.

Instead of setting out their ideological stalls, politicians use polls and focus groups to try and find out what people are thinking. Instead of engaging in ideological argument with one another, politicians compete to agree with perceived public opinion.

This is the potent cocktail behind the ‘sameness’ of political parties, where the debate is about ‘efficient management’ rather than moral choices.

But the Liberal Democrats have made their predicament far worse by adding some ingredients of their own.

Following the merger, ideology was placed firmly out of bounds for fear the new party might unravel. And until the wheels came off the ‘project’, all the talk was of pacts and deals. Rarely did the party argue on its own merits.

‘Community politics’ also played its part. What started out as a noble strategy rapidly degenerated into ‘mindless activism’. Campaigning became an end in itself and campaigns avoided ideologically contentious issues. When did you last read a proposition in any Focus leaflet with which any reasonable person could disagree?

But the main reason Liberals avoid ideology is that they are too nice. They naively believe the party potentially appeals to all of the people all of the time. They cannot accept that a substantial body of opinion loathes everything Liberals stand for and will never vote for them.

David Steel always used to bang on about how the electorate hated ‘yah boo’ politics. He could not have been more wrong.

It’s not the argument between politicians that puts people off; it’s the sameness. When parties try to be all things to all men, they disaffect their core support and benefit only the fringe. No wonder most voters are bored or disillusioned. If politicians offered people a real choice by standing up for what they believe in, we might see a renewal of democratic engagement.

Despite this, some argue that the party should abandon its core values and join the rush to appeal to the mythical ‘Middle England’ vote. The sheer lunacy of such a strategy cannot be overstated. The party’s resulting loss of integrity would be obvious a mile off.

The party will never really enthuse its base or make any great leap forward if it is forever pulling its punches for fear of causing offence. Its campaign priority should be to mobilise its supporters, not appease its opponents. And that means taking the big but uncomfortable step of accepting that attracting some voters entails repelling others.