Why be a Lib Dem?
I’ve been a Lib Dem since May 8th 2011 — I joined shortly after the AV referendum and horrific local elections of that year, because I felt someone had to stand up and fight for what I believe in. Now, almost 7 years later, I wonder if this is actually a vehicle that one can stand up and fight for anything in. I’ve lived in London since last September; my membership remains in Hull, because my enthusiasm just doesn’t exist.
What’s driving this is a fundamental feeling that the Liberal Democrats do not deserve to survive, because they don’t want too. Any party that wanted to survive would be fighting hard, with every tooth and claw they had, with every scrap of resource they could find. The Liberal Democrats are not, and seemingly resent being asked to do so. Fundamentally, it seems like they are not interested in national issues — instead, they have the appearance of a random constellation of residents associations, some of which happen to have elected MPs, who fell into roughly similar branding together. They’re more interested in the next pothole, the next leaflet, the next awful unfunny ‘joke’ post on Facebook than they are on the next generation.
The party is infested with conservatism — a fundamental desire to keep things as they are, with only enough change to keep things ticking over. This blinds the party to easy electoral wins — its persistent NIMBYism, which is rife and widely defended, keeps young graduate voters (who are generally open to a Liberal message) out of areas, and instead retains grey homeowners, who are less open to that message. The party’s upper ranks seemingly view the membership as little more than leaflet fodder (as it ever was), but presented with a vast slew of new members since 2015, resent being offered their skills — even on a voluntary basis — as an attack, and instead prefer to lecture and eye-roll. Having sat on a working group, I have encountered the second attitude directed at me — by peers and former MPs, to the point I simply did not want to contribute to that working group.
There are plenty of good individuals in the party. I could name many, without too much prompting. But they are, like the organisation as a whole, individual stars in an inky ocean of deep despair. Their abilities shine more brightly because what surrounds them is so deeply inadequate at the task it now faces, and responds to badly to being asked to do better. There are people who ‘get it’; who get the need to be radical about the party itself, about its message, principles, policies, campaigning techniques, and more. But there are simply too many who don’t — bedblockers, who stuff up committees and working groups, who’ve been there forever and will be forever more, with no urgency, no fight — and virtually no Liberal instincts — to them. Any Liberal party worth the name would’ve expelled people like David Ward before they even became an MP, on the basis of his revolting views on Jewish people. Instead, thanks to the residents’ association approach, he was able to get into Parliament and further share his malicious views.
The party needs more centre, more leadership, tighter organisation. It needs to stop fetishising leaflets, a leader without the ability to actually lead, a scatter-gun approach to policy, and more. It needs to force local parties to change, and it needs to change itself — to actively engage with members, to meaningfully refresh its own view of the world, and to be properly Liberal about things — focusing on the big things, not obsessing over coffee cups and plastic bags. Even when it gets some of these things right — Farron’s focus on a few key issues, and excluding all else — it fails elsewhere; Farron’s total inability to connect with socially liberal voters by virtue of his awful attitudes to LGBT people, and the closing of ranks of the party’s bedblockers around him during the election when he expressed them.
In the end, the party’s only saving grace in my eyes right now is that it is surrounded by infinitely less palatable options. That is all that keeps my £1 a month flowing into the party. Maybe there will emerge, from all the mediocrity and conservatism and downright dreary nonsense, a leader who can lead — and will be allowed to lead — the party with a clear, inspiring message and a sense of purposeful change. But I do not see one on the horizon yet, and the cause of Liberalism is too important to be left to its current feeble guardians. So I will keep it ticking over, and hold the outside hope that the Liberal Democrats will take their own survival as seriously as they should — for what good it does me.
