How to rebuild the Liberal Democrats’ identity

[This is an edited and updated version of my speech to the consultative session on party strategy at the Liberal Democrat conference, 19 September 2010]

We Liberal Democrats need to think seriously about the party’s identity – but we need to understand how the voters see us, not about how we see ourselves.

Remember the Times-Populus polls we hear about year after year.  In 2007 and 2008, clear majorities saw the Liberal Democrats as being “made up of decent people but their policies probably don’t really add up” and “basically a protest vote party because they have no chance of ever winning”.  Many think that a vote for the Lib Dems was a wasted vote.

It’s not all bad, however. As Labour’s flame flickered and died, the Liberal Democrats were seen as the nicest, most empathetic party: “for ordinary people, not the best off”, the most honest and principled — as we’ve proved ourselves many times.  By the middle of the 2010 general election campaign, Nick Clegg was perceived as, by far the most honest leader and the one most in touch with ordinary people.

But the 2010 British Election Study has found that we didn’t win any of the arguments on the policy issues that mattered most to voters.  According to Ipsos-MORI, we weren’t seen to offer a credible team of leaders.

Then the coalition came.  Now the big story people hear from government ministers is that they are to fix the crippling deficit that Labour left behind.  By paying off our bills and living within our means, we will have fiscal redemption.   It’s little wonder the familiar Lib Dem messages have been crowded out.

So we – all of us - have to get back into the persuasion business and start telling people about the difference we are making in government on the issues that matter.  They’ll judge us on what we do, not on what we used to say.

No, that doesn’t mean being like the town cryer in the square – “hear ye, hear ye, here’s a big list of policies”.  And no, it doesn’t mean dusting down the old manifestos, leaflets and slogans of yesteryear and pretending that the last coalition never happened. I’ve never met a liberal who thinks who you can go back.

What I’m talking about is telling people stories about what Liberal Democrats in government are doing now, giving reality to our values.  Stories because that is the way people have communicated for thousands of years.  Stories about the difference Liberal Democrats are making – giving the specifics.  Most of all, stories about the people whose lives will be better as a result.

Here are two quick examples.  I can remember Nick Clegg, years ago, calling for more money to be focussed on the most disadvantaged pupils.  We worked up the idea and campaigned for the pupil premium at the election and now our ministers in government are making it a reality and thousands and in time millions of people will have a better start in life.

And we can’t forget the area where we have shown a strong commitment for decades, and reaped some political benefits: looking after the environment and tackling climate change.  Chris Huhne and Vince Cable have reaffirmed their joint commitment to building a low-carbon economy that will meet our ambitious climate-change targets, deliver energy security for all of us and help our economy to recover.  They are telling us how the Liberal Democrats government will do it.

So, let’s start telling people the stories.

Getting the Coalition Government’s political narrative

In its first 100 days in office, the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government has launched a raft of substantial new policy initiatives, from NHS reform and academies to reorganising the police.  The “Big Society” has emerged as a major theme, alongside a drastic programme or decentralising political power.  Nick Clegg has big plans for political reform.  The speed with which the government is moving and the radicalism of its programme are both big themes of the media narrative about the coalition.  

The government has produced a lot of lists of speeches, policies and bills.  But so far they have told only one story.

They started in the very first paragraph of the coalition’s full programme for government, which declared that the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats had come together to work in the national interest.

“The national interest”: above party and sectional interests; policies that are good for all of us.  One of the most powerful frames in politics but, oddly, ministers hardly ever use it.

Right from that first press conference in the Downing Street rose garden, voters saw two people, David Cameron and Nick Clegg, uniting behind a common purpose.  They embody the coalition’s narrative by looking almost like characters in old, familiar movies.  The Guardian’s Marina Hyde was on to something when she compared the Cameron and Clegg partnership to a buddy movie -. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Road to Morocco. Tango & Cash, Maverick and Iceman.

And the metaphor of the “civil partnership” has been used frequently to describe the government.

 Now for the plot of the story.  The Coalition Agreement said that tackling the UK’s record debts would be the new government’s most urgent task.  The chancellor, George Osborne, has since set a tough target - to have the deficit fixed by 2014-15.  Seismic spending cuts are on the way which, by the normal rules of politics, could well leave the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats sharing the same electoral tomb. 

Just as well the coalition’s story comes with a ready made villain.  By leaving behind a record budget deficit of 11% of GDP, and not explaining where or how they would make cuts, Labour hardly needed to audition for the part.  George Osborne has seized every opportunity to blame the previous Labour administration for the cuts that are now needed.  [Click here, here and here]    Cleaning up the last lot’s financial mess – a story that seems almost as old as democratic politics itself. 

Earlier this month, the energy and climate change secretary, Chris Huhne, pulled the story strands together, in his speech on Labour’s legacy.

It only took one party to create this mess.  Now our two parties – the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives – have come together in the national interest to clear it up. Labour’s [leadership] candidates cannot go on pretending that the budget deficit doesn’t exist. It does and it is the single greatest challenge facing Britain.  They must take responsibility.  You cannot keep spending when the money dries up. Write cheques you know will bounce. Put party advantage before the national interest.

 But that’s not enough.  Any politician who is selling painful change has to tell stories that appeal to a bigger sense of morality. 

So the government has adopted a narrative that’s about good housekeeping: by paying off our bills and living within our means, we can enjoy fiscal redemption later on.  [Click here and here]

In his Bloomberg speech this week, Osborne set out his account – his story – of how the budgetary crisis came about.  He described the forthcoming spending review as “a crucial stepping stone on the way to recovery”.  The chancellor added that “the choices within that review will lay the foundations for future growth and for a fairer society”.

There was a new, clever twist to the narrative.  Osborne  denied that it was “progressive” to oppose the cuts, arguing that left-of-centre politicians in other countries agreed that fairness for future generations and job seekers could only be delivered once the nation’s finances were in order.

Osborne alluded to a few springboard stories but, like many British politicians, did not develop them fully.

In the US it was Bill Clinton and the New Democrats who made the case for balanced budgets and deficit control in the early 1990s. And during an economic recovery they eliminated the budget deficit and pushed ahead with deeply controversial welfare reform.

 

In Canada, [Liberals] Jean Chretien and Paul Martin took the necessary steps to bring their exploding deficit under control.

 

Or there is Goran Persson, the Swedish Social Democrat Prime Minister, who turned a 9% budget deficit into a 4% budget surplus.

And he touched on a more hypothetical type of morality story by simply asking:

… what is fair about forcing the next generation to pay for the debts of our generation?

The government’s narrative has at least two potential weaknesses.  First, the “happy ending” is not too clear and phrases like “future growth” and “a fairer society” have little emotional impact.

Second, there are powerful counter-stories.  As The Economist pithily summed it up last week:

Debate rages—not only in Britain—over whether it makes economic sense to tighten fiscal policy so much, so fast. And austerity plans may not be achievable without ripping vital public services to shreds.

But most people buy the coalition’s story, so far at least.  This week, a YouGov poll found that a majority of the public have confidence in the government’s ability to run the economy (55%) and there is widespread confidence in their ability to cut the deficit (62%).  Last month, YouGov found that 48% of people blamed the previous Labour government for the spending cuts while only 17% blamed the coalition government. 19% blamed both.

Now, here’s a tricky postscript.  What have stories about massive spending cuts and the morality of good housekeeping and fiscal redemption got to do with the Liberal Democrats’ narrative of “stopping the rot at the top” and our established brand as the most understanding and empathetic party, “for ordinary people, not the best off”?

More on that soon.

Explaining the Liberal Democrats’ disappointing performance in 2010: an update

I have just come across the “emerging evidence” from British Election Study (BES) for the 2010 general election.

The findings confirm two of my earlier conclusions, based on the Ipsos MORI election data: that Liberal Democrat support grew during the campaign but remained soft; and whilst Nick Clegg’s personal support shot up after the first debate, support for the Lib Dems did not firm up as a result. 

As the BES summary and conclusions slide puts it:

With weak fundamentals, ineffective campaigns and widespread voter disaffection with politics as usual, the two major parties were susceptible to a move by the Liberal Democrats.  The leader debates provided the Liberal Democrats with the exactly the opportunity they needed.

Despite their surge after the first debate, the Liberal Democrats had to rely heavily on Nick Clegg’s popularity.  Their partisan base remained small, and they had little pulling power on the economy, the issue that dominated the campaign.

On the last point, the BES data seems to back up another of my previous conclusions: the Lib Dems did not win any of the arguments on the issues that mattered most to voters.  Only 9% of the CIPS post-election respondents chose the Lib Dems as the best party on the issue they saw as most important.  (Yes, nearly half of those who saw the environment as the top issue opted for the Lib Dems.  But “green issue” voters accounted for only 3% of the electorate.)

The Lib Dems can draw a small amount of comfort from this BES finding:

… no party had the overall pulling power on major issues that Labour enjoyed in 1997, 2001 and 2005.  In the CIPS post-election survey only 25% chose Labour as best on most important issue and only 30% chose the Conservatives. 

And one of the above BES conclusions should be tempered, just a little.  Voters were more likely to see the economy as the number one issue.  Amongst those most concerned with the economy, the Lib Dems drew even with Labour and the Conservatives as the best party.  I am sure that has not happened before.

But there’s no getting away from the twin realities.  The Lib Dems will make little further progress unless we are more credible across the range of key issues that matter most to voters.  And we need to go into election campaigns with a stronger base of core supporters. Just 11 per cent of voters, the same proportion as in 2005, identified with the Liberal Democrats in the run-up to the campaign.  Neither Labour nor the Conservatives made any progress on that front either, but both started from much higher bases. 

The big question for the next five years is: how will being in the coalition help or hinder the Liberal Democrats’ efforts to build more credibility on the issues — and a stronger partisan base? 

Pollwatch: Ipsos MORI helps to explain disappointing Lib Dem performance in 2010

Ipsos MORI has just published a digest of polls conducted during, and just prior to, the 2010 election.  Their findings are interesting and offer some explanations for the Liberal Democrats’ disappointing performance.

Here are the main points that I have taken from the Ipsos MORI material.

·         The Liberal Democrats won the “young women’s” vote.  The Lib Dems were the preferred party of women voters aged 18-24, where we had a 4% lead over the Tories.  This is the only demographic group in which we clearly prevailed; our support from younger women was 8% up from 2005.  Conversely, older men were least likely to vote for us: just 16% of men aged 55 or older voted Lib Dem.  Overall, Lib Dem voters were more likely to be female than male – but then so were Labour’s. [click here]

·        The Liberal Democrats performed best amongst younger voters and worst amongst older people.   30% of 18-24 year olds voted Lib Dem, putting us level-pegging with the other parties in this cohort The Lib Dems did well amongst 25-34 year olds too.  But voters were inclined to vote for us in inverse proportion to their age: just 16% of those aged 65 or older voted Lib Dem.  The support patterns amongst age groups were even more pronounced than in 2005.  [click here] 

·         The Liberal Democrats performed best amongst higher income voters and worst amongst lower income voters.  Voters voted Lib Dem in inverse proportion to their social class.  We had 29% support amongst “ABs” but only 17% from “DEs”.[click here]  Now, put some of these trends together: just 13% of “DE” men voted Lib Dem.

·         Liberal Democrat support grew during the campaign but was still soft.  Just before polling day, 43% of Lib Dem voters though it was “very important” who won the election, compared to 53% of Labour voters and 59% of Conservatives.  This might explain why the Lib Dems were vulnerable to “late squeeze” messages from the other parties.  But we shouldn’t get too carried away with Ipsos MORI’s data on this point.  34% of Lib Dem voters thought they might change their mind before they voted, lower than the 20% of Conservatives who thought they might switch but about the same figure as for Labour voters (32%).

·         Nick Clegg’s personal support shot up after the first two debates – but that did not strengthen his party’s vote.  Just before polling day, voters still saw David Cameron as the most capable prime minister and the Conservatives as having the strongest team of leaders — with the Lib Dems a poor third.  This mattered: for the first time ever, leaders were as important as policies in driving the way people voted.  Yet the reasons for the lack of a “Clegg effect” may be more deep-seated than anything that happened during the campaign.  The chart on page 15 of the overview (pdf) document shows that Nick Clegg’s positive ratings prior to the campaign did not pull up the Lib Dem share of the vote.  In other words, whatever people thought of Nick’s performance in the debates, they may not have been disposed to take the party all that seriously.

·         Once again, the Lib Dems did not win any of the key policy arguments.  Policies are another basic test of credibility.  In February, voters perceived the Conservatives (by a 2% margin) as having the best policies overall, with the Lib Dems in third place.  In March – just before the official campaign started – the Conservatives were the preferred party on two battleground issues, asylum / immigration and crime, with Labour leading on health and unemployment. The only issue on which the Lib Dems led was climate change.  But the party had a margin of just 2% (over Labour) here.  And climate change was the area in which voters were most likely to rate no party as having the best policies.  There’s more: only one voter in 20 saw climate change as “very important”.   Crucially, on the issue of most concern to voters – the economy – no party established a clear ascendancy.

The lightsabre passes to a new generation of leaders

This week, we saw a real British revolution: the handover of power from a Labour government to the Conservative-Liberal Democrat adminstration, this country’s first coalition government since World War II. 

But another transition took place this week, that may prove to be every bit as important.   The baby boomers’ generation, embodied by the outgoing Labour prime minister, Gordon Brown (born 1951) and the party’s deputy leader, Harriett Harman (born 1950), were sent packing.  

In their place came Conservative prime minister, David Cameron (born 1966) and Liberal Democrat deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg (born 1967).  They are both representatives of what the American commentator Jonathan Pontell calls Generation Jones. This cohort was born between 1955 and 1967 and they are the real children and not the “flower children” of the 1960s, part of a demographic bridge that came between the “boomers” and Generation X, born between 1968 and 1980.   

Pontell  describes Generation Jones as:

 

practical idealists, forged in the fires of social upheaval while too young to play a part.

Yes, the UK has cabinet government, not a presidential system and some of the new coalition’s key players and senior office holders are not part of Generation Jones.  The chancellor, George Osborne (born 1971) is a GenXer.   The business secretary, Vince Cable from the Liberal Democrats, was born during World War II.  Tory “big beast” Ken Clarke (born 1940) predates them all. 

But the demographic tilt is unmistakeable.  The foreign secretary, William Hague was born in 1961.  The home secretary, Theresa May was born in 1956, education secretary Michael Gove in 1967 and the defence secretary, Liam Fox, in 1961.   On the Liberal Democrat side, the chief secretary to the Treasury, David Laws was born in 1965.

And the new parliament is dominated by Generation Jones.  Dods Research has  found that 291 of the 649 MPs elected so far were born between 1955 and 1967. 

These UK politicians join other Jonesers who have reached the top of politics in recent years: Frances’s president Nicolas Sarkozy (born 1955), Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel (born 1954), Australia’s prime minister Kevin Rudd (born 1957), London’s mayor Boris Johnson (born 1964) and New Zealand’s prime minister John Key (born 1961).

What marks these leaders out is their efforts to leave behind old political battles, and, perhaps, core ideologies.  Sarkozy would rather that France forgot all about Paris in May 1968.  Key was too young to protest against the Vietnam war and, astonishingly, once said that he could not remember whether he was for or against the 1981 Springbok tour.  And, of course, Barack Obama offered Americans the opportunity to move on from the culture wars that started in the 1960s.  He came to prominence by declaring, “there is no red state America, there is no blue state America; there is the United States of America”.

But whether they stand on the moderate left or the moderate right, the leaders from Generation Jones have been less clear about defining what they stand for, as opposed to what they want to cast aside.

The UK’s new leaders seem to fit the Jones pattern.   David Cameron defined himself by breaking with Thatcherism and insisting that there is such a thing as society after all. Nick Clegg is the first leader of the Liberal Democrats who has not belonged to either the Liberal Party or the SDP.  Much of the analysis of the UK’s new coalition government has focussed on the prevailing “pragmatism” of Cameron and Clegg.  [Click here, here and here.] 

Yet there may be more to Britain’s Jonesers than pragmatic politics; the “new politics” is not value-free.  The May 2010 issue of Prospect magazine features a lengthy article about what David Cameron stands for.  The writer, Wendell Stevenson, concludes that Cameron is motivated by the need to serve and to lead but has not yet formed a clear vision of where he wants to take the country.  Cameron can point to a big idea: the “big society”, based on community and volunteerism, even if he has not been able to explain what it really means.

Nick Clegg has written and spoken extensively about:

a progressive politics [that is]  about empowerment, reducing dependency on the state, increasing social mobility through individual empowerment, releasing power from the centre politically …

Many times he has described his mission as to “change politics and change Britain.”

As an active Liberal Democrat who was born in 1962 – a Jones year — I am, of course, biased about all of this.  But no, I don’t think it’s not quite as simple as, “my leader has ideals and the Tory doesn’t”.  The two leaders seem be in broad agreement about the sorts of ideas outined above, and the experience of office will test them both, and force them to re-evaluate and re-think their ideas and their political strategies and tactics.  For now,we need to be clear about how we got to this point.

After the election resulted in a hung parliament, Cameron reached out to Nick and offered to begin talks aimed at sharing power in government.  They succeeded; the Lib Dems did very well, despite coming to the table with a poor hand.  Whatever anyone thinks of the new alliance between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, nobody can doubt that for both parties, it’s a risk of historic dimensions.  Both Cameron and Clegg have put themselves and their parties on the line to make the “new politics” a reality.

Practical idealism, or what?

Welcome to the age of Generation Jones.

Forming a government in a hung parliament: advice from someone who has done it

So, here we are, the first UK general election in 36 years to produce a hung parliament and, in its turn, cross-party talks about a new government.

People in countries with PR voting systems seem quite bemused about how the Brits have reacted to this situation. My home country, New Zealand, has used MMP at each general election since 1996.  As a result, there have been various types of governing arrangement.

·     Following the 1996 election, the National Party (centre-right), formed a coalition government with New Zealand First (conservative-nationalist), which was often supported by ACT (market liberal).

·     Following the 1999 election, Labour (centre-left/social liberal) formed a minority coalition government with the Alliance (left-wing) and had support on matters of confidence and supply from the Greens.

·    Following the 2002 election, Labour formed a minority coalition government with the Progressive Party (centre-left) and had support on matters of confidence and supply from the Greens and United Future (a centrist party).

·    Following the 2005 election, Labour formed a minority coalition government with the Progressive Party, and had support on matters of confidence and supply from New Zealand First and United Future. The Greens signed an agreement to abstain on votes of confidence and supply, giving the Labour-led Government a majority. The Māori Party also abstained on confidence and supply votes but had no formal agreement with the Government.

·     Following the 2008 general election, National formed a minority government and entered into confidence and supply agreements with the Māori Party, ACT and United Future.

(Under most of the confidence and supply agreements, members of the support parties became ministers.)

A common element in many of these arrangements has been United Future.  That party’s leader, Peter Dunne, has been a good friend of mine for some 25 years.  In a facebook comment earlier today, he set out his views on how the Liberal Democrats might approach the current situation, based on his experiences in 2002, 2005 and 2008.

I think the important thing is that the Lib Dems do not become seen as part of the problem. I agree the options are all very difficult, but the party has to be seen as able to work its way through the difficulties in a calm and measured way to get the right outcome - for the country, as well as for itself.

I do not think there is any need to move at a pace set by any other party. Without dragging the chain, your guys need to remember the strong position they are in. It is highly unlikely there could a governing arrangement that did not involve them, so they do not need to dance to anyone else’s tune but their own.

Having done this sort of thing on three occasions here now, I suggest the first thing the party needs to resolve is its priorities policy-wise, and the best way of achieving them.

At the next election the key will be justifying the decision to your own voters, and the best way to do that is to have some policy wins to point to. Stable government is important, but funnily enough, people do not appreciate that when you provide it. They only notice when they do not have stable government, and then the smaller parties are to blame, even if the problem lies within the big party.

So I say concentrate on the policies that are important to your supporters and make sure you are able to achieve them - and then get the credit for them.

And make sure, it is all written down, including the procedural and agree to disagree provisions so there can be no misunderstanding at a later date.

United Future’s confidence and supply agreement with National would be worth looking at, as it is the template for these types of agreements here.

Also, here are links to National’s agreements with the Māori Party and ACT. 

Revealed: the Liberal Democrats’ campaign narrative

If you’re still trying to find the Liberal Democrats’ narrative for the general election, you can now see a large part of it.

Here’s Exhibit A: Vince Cable’s closing remarks in the Channel 4 Ask the Chancellors debate last Monday night.

“The Labour government led us into this mess … The Tories presided over two big recessions in office, they wasted most of the North Sea oil revenue, they sold off the family silver on the cheap.”

“Now they want to have another turn to get their noses in the trough and reward their rich backers. The Liberal Democrats are different. We got this crisis basically right. We are not beholden to either the super rich or militant unions.”

Neither Labour nor the Tories can be trusted.  They’ve both let us down for years and they’re both in the pocket of vested interests.

And here’s Exhibit B: the new guerilla marketing campaign for  “the Labservatives”, which accuses Labour and the Conservatives of being interchangeable, offering the same failed politics, more of the same

Both exhibits follow on from Nick’s conference speeches and the New Year’s message.  The Lib Dems are using the archetype of “stopping the rot at the top”, inviting voters to cast a plague on both their houses – “they’re just as bad as each other”.  This is the same narrative that the Liberals used in the 1960s and 1970s.  In the 1979 general election campaign, for instance, David Steel framed Labour and the Tories as “two Conservative parties”, one a failed government, the other a reactionary alternative. 

So, after all the angst about the Liberal Democrats’ need for a narrative, we’re replaying an old tune from the days of Jo Grimond, Jeremy Thorpe and David Steel.   And, as Max Atkinson has pointed out,  “they’re just as bad as each other” is the sort of “yah-boo” politics that Liberals and Liberal Democrats have always deplored.

That’s not quite the end of it though. These days, the party includes specific policies and issues in the story and makes it more positive. In 1997, the last time a government was on its way out, Paddy Ashdown told people that every vote the Lib Dems received, every seat the party won was a vote for real change. He told people what those changes were and looked and sounded like a man of action.

This time, Nick Clegg has his four reasons to vote for the Liberal Democrats.  They have a common theme, fairness, but so far, the linking story, or archetype, is harder to see.  And he still has to show how a third party could use greater political influence to turn those promises into a reality.  Otherwise, the story won’t have a happy ending.

Budget arguments show weaknesses in Labour, Tory narratives

As part of today’s budget coverage in The Times, Peter Riddell gives a good description of how  Labour and Conservatives differ on the economy and the arguments they use.

I think he gets it about right - Labour’s “safety first” vs. the Conservatives’ “time for a change”. 

“The differences are also about the role of government. Mr Darling is arguing for a benevolent and activist State helping people and businesses. For Mr Cameron, it is not just about cutting the State, but also changing it, “unleashing enterprise” and radical welfare and school reform.”

But these statements are not, in themselves, political narratives.  They make assertions but do not recount events or changes.  They do not have characters, although Labour’s view, as summarised by Riddell, makes a start.  The statements are not especially memorable.  They are not emotional.  Most importantly, we still don’t know “what happens next” - how the stories end - because the major parties have told us next to nothing about how they will balance the budget over the course of the next parliament.  As Bill Clinton always says, elections are about the future, not the past.

This is surely why neither Labour nor the Conservatives have established a clear ascendancy as the best manager of the economy, the top concern of voters.  After 13 years in office, including the worst recession in generations, Labour does not seem kind or benevolent.  Gordon Brown’s lack of popularity and failure to connect with voters does not help them. He does not embody the narrative that Labour wants. These counter-stories overwhelm Labour’s attempts to get messages across. And voters are still not receiving clear, substantive messages from the Conservatives about what they would do if they win, the positive alternative they offer.  

The Liberal Democrats do better on the fiscal detail and their story has strong, plausible characters - the old parties who are both as bad as each other.  But warnings of  “wasted votes” are, as always, a powerful counter-story.  And the Lib Dems can’t finish the story with a happy ending, so long as the politics of a hung parliament are so unpredictble and intractable.

It’s going to be a fascinating campaign.

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