The suns shining here in Bournemouth, and if the weather is any judge of the Lib Dem’s mood it’s an accurate one.
Daran Hill posted on Wales Home on Friday that the Welsh Lib Dems should be underestimated at their peril.
Unsurprisingly, I think he is right. But there is more to the Lib Dems and they face challenges that are different in character to the ones Daran posed. I don’t agree with him that the Euro elections this year were some sort of exclusive calamity for the Lib Dems in Wales or elsewhere. All the mainstream parties underperformed. Labour’s awful, awful night in Wales has been well documented but the Tories and Plaid didn’t exactly record stonking shares of the vote either. The control in that election was wrested away from traditional parties, including the Lib Dems as people turned elsewhere in the aftermath of the expenses scandal.
Ironically people turned to the scandalists in chief, UKIP and unfortunately to the repugnant BNP. The Lib Dems in Wales and elsewhere need to find a way to convince people who have been let down by Labour over the last 12 years, that we have a Liberal vision of progressive politics, a way out of the financial crisis, and the best way of improving theirs and others lives. If the Lib Dems can do that, then we’ll have hit a jackpot.
I put precisely this point about our lack of control to Nick Clegg when a group of bloggers spent an hour with him on Saturday morning. He was in feisty form, and quick to point out that Gordon Brown certainly isn’t in control of setting the agenda. Rightly he thinks the next General Election will be about what sort of change people want to see in this country. He set out earlier this week his vision for that and why the Lib Dems will be taking over the mantle of progressive politics in this country – it’s a well reasoned argument that has been generally well received both inside and outside the party.
As Daran pointed out, in terms of share of the vote the Lib Dems broke some records at the last general election. One in four people in the UK voted Lib Dem, that’s part of a wider shift away from a two party hegemony that gives further weight to Nick’s suggestion that the political mould is breaking. Back in 1951 only 2% of the electorate voted for a party that wasn’t Labour or Tory. At this year’s local elections 40% did.
Capitalising on this opportunity is the test for our party. Vince’s pamphlet earlier this week was the first any party to provide detail on exactly the scale and the sort of cuts that the UK will need to be making. Some of them are popular, some less so. Whilst Brown is debating about whether he can even say the word cuts, and Cameron is talking about increasing the price of salads in Portcullis House there are real concrete ideas of how to tackle the hard times ahead.
Nick reassured us yesterday about his personal belief that tuition fees were wrong. He gave a “copper bottomed guarantee” that the Lib Dems would have the best package for students at an election. Personally, whilst I think fees are slowly ingraining their way into the culture of our HE system(s), and more’s the pity for that, we would be foolish not to keep university education as accessible as possible at a time when so many are going back to reskill after redundancies.
The Euro election was many things, but it wasn’t a referendum on Kirsty’s leadership, in the same way it wasn’t one on Rhodri, Ieuan’s or Nick’s either. The General Election holds some considerable promise for the Lib Dem’s in Wales – and Kirsty will have some control over that. Her moment, will be the 2011 Assembly elections.
Nowhere is Nick’s suggestion that we should be taking over as the progressives in politics from Labour got more traction than in Wales. If, as looks likely, the Tories are in power; who has the confidence that George Osborne would be able to undertake the cuts that are necessary to retrieve our public finances and retain the support of the public? Pass, yes you are with me.
Plaid offer a different view of progressive politics. Their left of centre credentials offer a rebadged version of Labour. Precisely the sort of progressive view that both Kirsty and Nick think has had its day. Underestimate Kirsty at your peril.
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