Seven awkward questions for the Lib Dems

My friend Isabel Hardman of The Spectator Coffee House blog wrote an interesting piece yesterday entitled "Seven awkward questions for the Tories" which was itself prompted by the seven questions Tony Blair had recently posed for Labour.

I thought I'd have a go at posing seven questions for my own party as we move into the final two years of this parliament.

1) How can the party fight the next election running against numerous Tory policies that they don't like but have allowed through?

There is a difficult and delicate line to be trodden between making it clear what distinctive Lib Dem policies look like and distancing ourselves from those measures we would not have implemented ourselves whilst not looking like we are trying to run away from our record in office. Politics is so often filtered through a binary prism. The idea that a party may have compromised on measures does not sit easily within this system. We need to find a way to make this argument without constantly fighting a rearguard action against accusations of "betrayal" which Labour (and indeed the Conservatives) will throw at us. This will be particularly true if leader debates go ahead in advance of the election. If Clegg is still the leader in 2015 he will not have the luxury he had in 2010 of being able to attack the Conservative's record as he will be attacking his own! It will take a great deal of political skill to navigate this and not come out looking hypocritical or ridiculous.

2) How can the party restore its much vaunted internal democracy?

One of the reasons joining the Lib Dems was attractive to me several years back was that the members made the policy. Recent events such as the parliamentary vote on secret courts which led to a number of significant figures quitting the party have shown the limits of this. I actually submitted one of the emergency motions on this to the recent conference (mine was not picked but the other one by Jo Shaw was) and the point was repeatedly made to me that it is against our constitution to "mandate our parliamentarians". This point was also made from the floor during the debate on Jo's motion. But if our MPs can essentially do what they like in direct defiance of the will of the party membership then this shows that we are not so very different from the other two main parties with a de facto top-down structure. This is one of the biggest crises the party faces. We all thought we as voting members determined the policy programme. The party needs to find a much better way of reconciling a restive membership with being in government.

3) What do the Lib Dems stand for?

Alex Wilcock set a challenge last month for Lib Dem bloggers to set out what in their opinion the Lib Dems stand for. I did not personally participate in this and I think this fact is rather telling in that I am struggling to answer the question at the moment. Before 2010 I would have had no problem talking about civil liberties, social justice and all of the other good stuff referred to in the preamble to our constitution. But after all the compromises of government it is getting harder and harder to point to a distinctive theme for the party. The next manifesto needs to make this clear and give us all something to unify behind and fight for.

4) How can the party make sure it is still heard in the run up to the next General Election?

The last three years have been anomalous in terms of how much coverage the party has had. We have 5 cabinet ministers including the Deputy Prime Minister and over 20 junior ministers. What we decide really matters in a way it hasn't for 65 years or more. But as May 2015 approaches I expect we will start to see a squeeze on this. That binary prism effect will kick in once more as the media focuses on "who do you want to be the next Prime Minister". The increasingly presidential style of our media coverage and the fact that no major publication is likely to back the party directly means we will once again have to fight for every column inch and soundbite.

5) How does the party deal with its Northern problem?

I've nicked this one directly from Isabel but it is an important question for the Lib Dems as well. We have numerous seats in the North many of which have relied on "borrowing" votes from Labour leaning voters. How many of them will be willing to still vote for a Lib Dem after 5 years of being part of a Conservative led government? Incumbency can be a powerful tool but the anger of the electorate can be stronger still.

6) What is the party's position on electoral reform?

At previous elections this has been a no-brainer. We want STV with multi-member constituencies for a more proportional parliament. The problem is AV was overwhelmingly rejected by the electorate and whilst I will to my dying day keep shouting that "AV is not PR" the plain fact is electoral reform for Westminster is off the table for the next decade or two at least. There are some like me who say we should focus more on reform for local council elections. There are very strong arguments for this such as stopping the all party fiefdoms that too many of us live under locally but we need to be careful not to appear like pig-headed ideologues ignoring the will of the people. At least that's how our opponents will paint us if we're not careful.

7) How do you solve a problem like Nick?

I like Nick Clegg. He's a nice guy and a much better politician than many of his opponents in the media claim. But there is a simple fact that he is the politician most closely associated with the compromises and difficult decisions of government. I know there are a fair few former Lib Dem voters who will never vote for the party again whilst he is still leader. There are also plenty within the ranks who feel bruised and battered and as 2015 moves ever closer will start to wonder if a Cable or a Farron might help heal some of the wounds.

Why is our democracy so broken?

I know I have blogged about this sort of thing before but I still get exasperated when I see comments like this from Peter Hoskin on the Spectator Coffee House blog today:

Cameron & Co. say that they would cut further and faster – but, when it comes to the details of what to cut and when, the similarities between them and Brown's government are striking. Indeed, as I've said before, we're largely taking it on trust that the Tories have a plan sufficient to the scale of the debt problem – even though there are timorous signs that that trust will turn out to be well-placed.

In the meantime, the think-tanks and other non-party political bodies, like the CBI, are doing most of the running when it comes to identifying specific candidates for chop. Perhaps that's all we should expect with an election around the corner. But, for the time being, the debt markets look on nervously.

Why do we have to take it on trust, and why is that all we should expect with an election round the corner? Just think about the logic of this for a minute. The closer we get to the public having their right to decide who should govern us, the less likely the people who want to do that governing are to tell us what they intend to do.

I am not politically naive. I understand the pressures politicians are under and what could happen if they "say too much" especially from their political opponents. But surely something has gone seriously wrong when the result of our adversarial political system is that politicians just cannot or will not go into details about crucial things like where they will focus on for public spending cuts before an election?

What's even worse is that judging by the "that's all we can expect" comment, there are some in the media who seem to accept that that is just the way it is! They should be shouting very loudly that we are not getting the answers.

At this rate, neither the Tories nor Labour will have any mandate to make the necessary cuts if they get into government.

UPDATE 19:05: Peter Hoskin has been in touch with me to point out that he is not condoning the Tories and in fact he has been saying for months that they should be more honest on cuts. His comment about it being "all we can expect" was out of exasperation. I am happy to set the record straight.

Does politics really have to be like this?

I have posted before about how the full weight of the government is used to come down on suggestions that do not chime precisely with what the government want to do.

This post on Coffee House yesterday from Fraser Nelson has me again wondering if politics has to be played out the way it is at the moment.

From what I can see, Michael Gove has made some suggestions about how we might want to consider implementing some of the policies that Sweden have apparently successfully followed for the last few years regarding schools. Irrespective of the individual merits or otherwise of the proposals, what has happened is that Jim Knight, a minister has come out and ripped into the proposals claiming the plans would involve cuts, that they are risky, divisive, that the Tories would allow schools to wither and die and that it would lead to a lottery that would benefit only the few.

As far as I can tell, the suggestions merit sensible debate, unless you think that the current system, or whatever the government's latest policy is (it changes fairly frequently) is unquestionably absolutely right, with no need for any debate. At all.

Of course, this is how politics is done in this country. One party has a policy and the the other parties rip into it pointing out how it is completely wrong. Whichever party forms the government basically does what it wants irrespective of the arguments.

Isn't this one of the main problems we have at the moment in this country though? Whoever is in government does not really listen to opposition. There is the odd occasion where they do, when it is close to election time for example but even then it is the few thousand floating voters in swing seats that they focus on. Also, when public anger bubbles over e.g. on fuel prices in 2000 or on the 10p tax hike last year. But by and large they stick their fingers in their ears, shout "La, la, la, la, not listening" and do as they please.

And the Tories are exactly the same. I remember in the dying days of the Major government how minister after minister would tear into Labour for having the temerity to suggest that workers in this country might be able to earn a minimum wage rather than be exploited. It would cost hundreds of thousands if not millions of jobs we were told, the country cannot afford it, we were assured, any argument to maintain the status quo was mustered. Of course all the apocalyptic predictions never came to pass and the Tories quietly adopted the minimum wage as policy a few years ago.

I wonder if one of the problems is the completely adverserial nature of debate in the political sphere. Many MPs were part of debating societies at university and the job to be done here is to argue a case and to win the argument. It is embedded deep within our judicial system also. I think that this attitude is so prevalent that the odd occasion when a politician tries to step outside the bounds (e.g. Cameron's call for no more "Punch and Judy" politics - how long did that last?) they almost immediately fail because everybody else is still playing the same game.

I think politics in this country would be much better if there was actually proper debate. Watch a government minister or opposition spokesperson on Question Time or whenever they are being interviewed next time and see if you think they are really listening, or whether they are calculating how to rip into their opponent's policy in the most effective way irrespective of the merits of their proposals.

Oh and one last thing, I know we Lib Dems can sometimes be guilty of this but from what I can tell we are the best certainly of the 3 main parties at actually engaging properly with an argument. It is one of the reasons I joined the party.