This single was Alanis Morissette’s first foray back into the charts after Jagged Little Pill. That album remains a very well-regarded piece of work, and justly so; it’s twenty years old, and now sounds of its time, but the themes it dealt with and the bravery of its lyrics remain significant.
I would guess that that album has made many people, and particularly women, think again about their identity and place. As suggested by the name it’s often an angry album, and you sense that catharsis is achieved through that anger.
A few years on and this single showed us that Alanis had reached some different point, some deeper catharsis. The video famously featured her singing completely naked, with only her hair and some CG blurring to protect her modesty. At the time it felt tacky, and it still does. It was clearly an attempt to visualise the openness and honesty of this song, but it was heavy-handed, detracting rather than enhancing.
The song itself remains revelatory. The nineties were the last decade where sincerity was mainstream; this is possibly the acme of that trend. There were a clutch of similarly heart-on-sleeve female songwriters around at the time, but this is a classic of the genre: the soaring vocal in this track elevates it as much as the crunching, semi-industrial drum track grounds it.
The lyrics are a mixture of painfully open and whimsically obscure. But it’s when you get to the chorus that you are hit by Morissette’s acceptance. It’s a wonderful song that understands the proper purpose of pain:
Thank you India
Thank you terror
Thank you disillusionment
Thank you frailty
Thank you consequence
Thank you, thank you silence
How about me not blaming you for everything
How about me enjoying the moment for once
How about how good it feels to finally forgive you
How about grieving it all one at a time
The news has just broken that the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee has been abolished, following meetings between the party whips.
The Committee was established in 2010, mainly in order to scrutinise the work of the Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, who had responsibility for a host of reforms – so many, in fact, that he infamously suggested we’d get “the biggest shake-up in our democracy since 1832“.
As it turned out, of course, most of these reforms either failed to materialise, or were rejected. The only one that has remained in place that I can think of is the Fixed Term Parliaments Act, and one can envisage a situation where even that is under threat.
This is not the point, though.
The Committee got through a prodigious amount of work between 2010 and 2015. It was arguably one of the most active and conscientious committees in Parliament.
Now it is being abolished, in the face of an obvious need to retain Parliament’s ability to scrutinise matters of political and constitutional reform. Perhaps the whips from the Conservatives and Labour don’t think it’s worth having such a body in place in order to deal with – oh, I don’t know – Scottish devolution, an EU referendum, and constituency boundary changes to name but three.
The argument might run that these issues would be better dealt with by other Committees. There is a Scottish Affairs Committee, for instance, that will be doing work on devo max and full fiscal autonomy. The Foreign Affairs Committee, too, might suggest it is well placed on European issues.
But the reality is that a committee dedicated to thinking about and suggesting alterations to the fine detail of political and constitutional reform – which will inevitably eventuate from these processes, whether or not we see the seismic shifts that are possible were we to leave the EU – is a very sensible idea.
Moreover, I tend to the view that the more bodies available to challenge government policy and suggest improvements, the better.
The reality seems to be that this is yet another early casualty of the Lib Dems’ lack of Parliamentary representation. How many more times will we have to point to a lack of liberalism within the House of Commons over the next decade?
EDIT: The other thing about this is that it is a direct slap in the face for the 477,000 who signed the Electoral Reform Society petition on voting reform, which was only delivered to Downing Street on Monday, supported by the Lib Dems, Greens, UKIP and others.
On a sunny spring day, you either need bubblegum pop or something ethereal and dreamy.
This 2010 cut from Warpaint does the latter thing in spades, with a slowly burning build, woozy vocals and subdued guitars gradually moving into a more aggressive second half.
A good example of how a drummer can drive the feel and momentum of a track, solely through variations in cymbal play – the shift to sixteens on the hihats signals a change to a more frenetic mood without seeming tacky.
The BBC reported today on a boat filled with desperate people in the Andaman Sea. Apparently ten people on the boat have already died from starvation or dehydration, while others are resorting to drinking urine. 350 Rohingya people, from Myanmar, are said to be aboard, drifting, having been refused entry to Thailand.
This is just one of many such boats currently drifting off the coasts of Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia. The Rohingya are one of the most oppressed ethnic/religious minorities in the world, having no recognition as citizens in Myanmar, and therefore having experienced constant persecution.
According to the BBC’s Jonathan Head, who can be seen in a video at the top of that report, “no-one wants them”. It’s quite striking when a journalist feels able to make that kind of judgement. But that is the world we live in.
Closer to home, meanwhile, the European Union has this week announced a new approach on its own “migrant” crisis, which follows the decision to scrap Mare Nostrum in October last year. This involves a new quota system aimed at allowing in a higher number of people (20,000 over two years) and distributing them fairly across member states. Even this reasonably moderate proposal was met with total rejection by Britain’s Home Secretary, Theresa May, who claims that these people leaving war-torn countries and despotic regimes are merely “economic migrants”, and that we shouldn’t encourage them.
The EU’s approach also contains some far more worrying plans. In particular, the proposal for a “military campaign” to “smash” smuggling networks should strike fear into the heart of any reasonably compassionate person. The Guardian reported that this would be at least an air and naval campaign – but that it might also include “a presence ashore”, which is a quite spectacularly horrifying euphemism.
This is all awful, of course. Both situations have been created by a lack of liberty – both in terms of the countries from which these people have already fled, and in terms of the response from the rich old nations to which they want to flee. The solution cannot lie in reducing freedom yet further. Whether it is Indonesia or Britain, the reality is that by turning such people away, you are actively choosing to contribute to their deaths.
Moreover, “cracking down” on the smuggling networks – as I’ve suggested before – is meaningless without providing a legal, safe alternative. It is not as if these people want to use such networks. They use them because they have no other choice. The smuggling networks are a classic black market, created by prohibition; they’re the equivalent of bootleg liquor or cocaine cut with ground glass. Except instead of intoxicants or narcotics, these people just want to live in a place that isn’t so irredeemably screwed up beyond repair that their very lives are worthless. And they’re willing to do anything – literally anything – to get to that place.
Any of us would do the same. And this is the biggest irony of all. The very hope that these people embody is another side of the “aspiration” that conservatives preach to their citizens. The same hope that drives people to get into rickety boats and drift for weeks without food or water is what is supposed to drive people in UK JCPs to keep applying endlessly for the same McJob.
It doesn’t seem to have occurred to conservative, aggressive, anti-immigration governments that shutting these people out doesn’t just tell them no-one wants them. It sends a message to anyone without hope: get out and stay out, because we don’t want your type here.
This is a fairly long summary of the Clegg leadership of the Liberal Democrats, 2007-2015. If you want to skip to where we are now, and the real answer to the question posed at the top of this post, then scroll down to “Where We Should Go”.
I wasn’t around for the last Lib Dem leadership election, in 2007. At that point I was still at university and had shied away from student politics. I am reliably informed that it was a very close race between Nick Clegg and Chris Huhne, one that famously turned on the failings of the Royal Mail.
I still believe that the choice the Lib Dems made at that election was the right one, regardless of what subsequently happened to Chris Huhne. On balance, Nick Clegg led the party with decency and endeavour, and succeeded in what was clearly his main goal – putting the party in a position to enter government.
Perhaps that sentence reveals the problem with his leadership, though. At its heart, Clegg’s leadership always felt responsive, if not reactive. The only time it felt like he was truly setting the agenda was in 2010, at the height of Cleggmania. But even then, the Lib Dems’ campaign felt strangely weightless, and defined the party largely by comparing it favourably to others – most of all by claiming the moral high ground and emphasising that there would be “no more broken promises“. The failure to set out a convincingly liberal case, promoting the party on its own terms, may have been one of the reasons that the “surge” fell away on polling day – although there were any number of other factors, including a traditional third party squeeze as the desire to force Gordon Brown out of office, or keep him there, took its toll.
Fast forward five years, and the circumstances were very different – on the surface. We had spent five years “enabling” the Tories to form a government, although Lib Dems, and increasingly others, recognise that much of the substance of the coalition came from our side. Unfortunately, the strategic choice to treat coalition as an end in itself – mainly by defending and “owning” all the policies decided upon by the whole government – was decisively wrong, and again, strangely negative. It would inevitably undermine our independence as a campaigning party, even without the obvious tactical errors that so badly tarnished our trustworthiness and integrity in the eyes of the voters.
Clearly, the 2015 campaign was far more focused on positioning the party to enter government for a second time. This was a catastrophic error, which played into the hands of squeeze messages from the two big parties, especially the Conservatives. Others have already analysed the movement of former Lib Dem voters, which seems to have been mainly towards the Tories in key seats. When the question being asked is “security” vs “change”, trying to position yourself as a little bit of both was always doomed to fail.
This failure was compounded by an even more insubstantial policy platform than had been the case in 2010. Our policies this time around appeared designed to appeal either to the Tories or to the Labour Party in the event of coalition negotiations. This was made worse by Nick Clegg’s insistence during the campaign on speculating on the constitutional intricacies of the potential result. The campaign was almost entirely negative, and based on a self-defeating and depressing centrism.
A final point is that Nick Clegg’s approach to leadership was characterised, in my opinion, by too ready a tendency to surround himself with like-minded people. This is something Michael Dugher criticised Ed Miliband for in an interview in the New Statesman today. But my perception is that it was just as true of Nick, whose advisers were generally young, personable and keen, but may have lacked the kind of campaigning experience and political nous we needed. The same could be said of his approach to coalition negotiations: the team in 2010 was Laws, Alexander, Huhne and Stunell. The reluctance to draw on the experience of older, wiser heads – such as Vince Cable, Menzies Campbell and Charles Kennedy – was palpable, and continued into government, with the marginalisation of Vince at the 2013 party conference particularly egregious.
And that’s a quickish summary of how the Liberal Democrats ended up where we are today: reduced to a rump of 8 MPs, with a combined majority of fewer than 25,000 votes, and continuing to see our local councillor base eroded. Notwithstanding the vast number of new members being added daily since the general election result became painfully obvious, we remain a party that has lost its way.
Where We Should Go
It seems abundantly clear to me that the party needs a fresh start. David Howarth has written eloquently on Social Liberal Forum about the need to clarify our values:
Clarify our values – We are a party of values or we are nothing. An effective party of values, however, needs to do certain things. The most important is to achieve clarity about its values… Some of our values are clear – internationalism, protecting individuality and non-conformity, hating bullying and the abuse of power, promoting environmentalism, protecting civil liberties and a love of democracy… But some of our values are not clear. Most significantly, what is our view of economic inequality?
While I didn’t agree with everything David wrote in that article, this point is absolutely vital for the party to grasp. We cannot go on fighting from election to election on the basis of what other parties decide to know.
We must instead understand the values that are fundamental to the party’s existence. This is the only way we can create a compelling story to tell voters – one that isn’t reliant on a position of negative moderation.
To me, that should include a commitment to freedom at the core of everything we do. And yes, that should include maximal economic freedom for every citizen. I haven’t yet fully thought through what this might look like, but I think starting from the point of view of individuals is vital in order to counteract the deadening influence of today’s political discourse. We need to get much more acute in describing what we imagine will be the impact of policies: this requires creative thinking. Perhaps a start would be to identify a few party members of wildly different backgrounds and tell each of their stories under a Lib Dem government.
And yes, it’s also time we started talking about a Lib Dem government again. The purpose of campaigning is not to give in to the assumed outcome. Even if you are expecting a hung parliament, the best negotiating position is to have a set of strong, majoritarian policy positions from which to start.
This doesn’t mean trashing our record in coalition. But it does mean reappraising it and telling the truth about where we succeeded and where we didn’t. We had some great victories and some appalling defeats. We need to say so, and when we do, we also need to make sure that it doesn’t sound defensive, but is part of the new story we are telling.
Who Will Take Us There
The new influx of members is truly exciting. A lot of work will need to be done to understand where these people are coming from, and what their reasons are for joining. A mass survey should probably be commissioned as soon as possible in order to hear their views properly and learn from their decisions. My guess is that it will be a real mixture – perhaps mostly entirely new members, but some returners; some who were waiting for Clegg to resign, and others who feel he and the party were hard done by; some who have simply realised too late the need for a liberal party in the UK, and are worried about the Tories governing unfettered and what it means.
It shouldn’t be forgotten that there is a bigger constituency of those who have remained with the party, often reluctantly (or in my case intermittently), through the pain, frustration and, yes, anger, of the past few years. These were the people who were trying to maintain the party’s independence through the lean years of government, when even their own party leadership failed to heed their warnings on touchstone liberal issues, and ignored the much-vaunted internal democracy that is generally cherished.
And we have to recognise, too, that there remains a large number (although perhaps a minority) of members who feel the approach in government was broadly right, and do not want the Lib Dems to “revert” – as they might see it – to a party of protest for protest’s sake.
A new leader must be capable, somehow, of uniting these disparate strands behind a new vision for the Liberal Democrats. They must therefore be someone who understands the Lib Dem membership deeply, ideally through direct contact with the grassroots over a number of years – particularly during coalition. They must also be someone who has not been tarnished in the eyes of voters or members through being too close to the mistakes we made in government. More importantly still, they need to be someone who is capable of galvanising the party into action. This means they need to be a person with energy, character and charisma.
Norman Lamb is a good man who has used his time as a minister to make significant improvements to the lives of many people. He’s also clearly able and a decent communicator. It is clear that he’s a valuable asset to the party, and I’m glad that he is standing and providing us with a proper leadership race, rather than a coronation. But he is also Nick Clegg’s former adviser, someone who voted for higher tuition fees, and closely involved in the coalition project. My impression of him, perhaps unfairly, is also that he is relatively technocratic, a calming rather than an energising presence. If you’ll forgive the simile, coming from the party of drug reform, we need something rather more akin to amphetamines than tranquilisers.
It will come as no surprise that I believe, instead, that Tim Farron is the leader the Lib Dems now need. During the years of coalition he acted as a critical friend – praising its achievements and maintaining an attitude of loyalty, but also speaking out on issues where the party was losing its way. Some people will think he was too critical, others too loyal; that probably shows that he got it about right, most of the time. He was also an exemplary party President who must have been in contact with more Lib Dem members than anyone else. His responsiveness, enthusiasm and generosity are legendary.
But all of this would mean nothing if Tim were not also capable, in my eyes, of taking control of the party and helping us to create a new identity for ourselves. He is a passionate liberal who is better able than anyone else to articulate sometimes complicated political beliefs in simple language. He might come across at times as a bit folksy, but each time I’ve pointed people outside the party towards his speeches, they’ve both enjoyed his style and been impressed by the substance of what he has said.
As good an example as any of his ability as a speaker was his speech at last autumn’s party conference. If you’re unconvinced by Tim as a potential leader I’d encourage you to watch it.
A lot of Lib Dems have been defining the party and themselves as “centrists” over the past few years. Nick Clegg has frequently referred to us as the party of the “radical centre”. The whole election strategy was based on taking up a defensive position between Labour and the Conservatives: “look left, look right, then cross”.
The purpose of political parties is precisely not to define themselves based on the existing political landscape. By choosing the word “centrist”, that is what we did. In the UK’s political environment, after 30 years of Thatcher and Blair, the political “centre” shifted markedly to the right. Voters instinctively recognise this.
Instead it is the job of political parties to change the political landscape. We do this by defining what it is we believe, and then crafting policies that turn those beliefs into tangible change. It is really a very simple process. It’s made simpler if your party is founded on the basis that you will protect certain interests, as the Conservatives and Labour Party were.
For the Liberal Democrats it’s slightly more complicated, because what we believe in is more abstract. Fundamentally, we believe in the protection and extension of freedom – liberty – for all individuals in society. The problem with that is that abstract concepts are more difficult to communicate and more difficult to translate into tangible change. But that is the problem we must overcome if we are to renew the party and restore its place in UK politics.
So let’s hear no more of “centrism”, please. You can’t build anything lasting on shifting sands.
A little more than 24 hours after it became painfully clear just what the Conservatives had achieved in the general election, there is already a developing sense of buyer’s remorse. Apparently almost 2400 new members have joined the Liberal Democrats since polls closed. This is obviously a good thing, although perhaps it just reflects the endless propensity of British people to back a plucky underdog.
But it was striking already across both old and new media yesterday how subdued the response to the prospect of five years of majority Tory rule was. There was limited triumphalism from newspapers that had mostly advocated some species of continued coalition or power-sharing arrangement. And the response on Twitter – certainly from people I follow, who are not all Lib Dems by any means – was quite sceptical.
People are belatedly poring over the Conservative Manifesto to find all the horrors within that might now become a reality. Certainly there are some big, beastly policies that spring out immediately which would never, ever have happened under a continued Tory/Lib Dem arrangement. These include:
Abolition of the Human Rights Act
Because we, the people, like governments actively to reduce the number of rights available to us as citizens…
£30 billion in further cuts, including £12 billion from welfare – the so-called “rollercoaster” of public spending cuts that will be deeper and more rapid than anything between 2010-2015
Because we, the people, like governments actively to reduce the quality and breadth of public services available to us as citizens on the basis of an arbitrary numerical target…
No increases in the vast majority of tax rates
Because we, the people, would rather see the government hack away at vital services than ask us – or our wealthier friends – to pay a bit more to the Treasury…
“Abolish” long-term youth unemployment
This is code for the following policies: tougher Day One Work Requirements for jobseekers; introduction of a “Youth Allowance” to replace JSA for 18-21 year olds that forces them to take an apprenticeship, traineeship or do “community work” for their benefits; remove automatic entitlement to Housing Benefit.
Because we, the people, think the best way for new adults to start in life is through a combination of embarrassing and demoralising situations. Work for your benefits and live with your parents into adulthood.
Introduce a 50% workforce threshold for strike action, and make it harder for staff in health, education, fire and transport to strike
This will presumably be known as the No Bob Crow Bill. Other policies include the removal of restrictions banning employers from hiring cover during strikes – at a stroke, undermining the whole point of industrial action.
Because we, the people, want our employers to have even more power over us – the balance at the moment is far too much towards us, the bolshy workers.
We will give Parliament the opportunity to repeal the Hunting Act on a free vote
Because we, the people, feel this is a sensible use of government and Parliamentary time in the 21st century. And because we like using hounds to kill foxes.
We will make EU migrants live here for four years without claiming any benefits
Because we, the people, want to benefit from the presence of people who “work hard and get on” without having to protect them if anything bad happens to them, like if they lose their job – you know, the one a lot of British people wouldn’t want to have to do.
“Deport first, appeal later”
This rule will be extended to all immigration appeals and judicial reviews, including where a so-called right to family life is involved. Satellite tracking will also be introduced for every foreign national offender subject to an outstanding deportation order or deportation proceedings.
Because we, the people, care more about getting rid of suspicious-looking foreigners than ensuring they have a right to fair treatment and due process.
Introduce new powers to force coasting schools to accept new leadership
Because we, the people, think the best way to make schools better is always to force them to change their leadership. Because problems always start at the top, and nothing can be blamed upon, say, social deprivation or the lack of buy-in from rich parents who can move to be nearer good schools.
We will address the unfairness of the current Parliamentary boundaries and reduce the number of MPs to 600
We’ll also introduce “votes for life” for expatriates who live abroad permanently, meaning all those angry people who spend their days on the Costa del Sol, whinging about the country they left, will be able to have an influence on future elections.
Because we, the people, think changes to our electoral system should be left in the hands of whoever won the last election, so that they can make sure the changes made benefit them as a party.
We will force Housing Associations to sell their stock at a discount
Extending the Right to Buy to tenants of housing associations? It’s just the beginning. Let’s also extend Help to Buy, give people free money if they’re saving for a deposit, and protect the Green Belt.
We pay lip service to building more bloody houses, but that takes a long time whereas all of these super-popular policies can be done pretty much straight away.
Because we, the people, know that the best way to solve a shortage of a thing is to increase demand for that thing. It’s simple economics.
An end to new onshore windfarms
We’ll stop public subsidy for these because they often fail to win public support (but, strikingly, not always).
Because we, the people, like a clear view of our electricity pylons, thank you very much.
We will allow security services to know everything they want to about communications data – the Snoopers’ Charter
And we’ll do “whatever is necessary” to protect the British people.
Because we, the people, are happy for the government to know who we’re talking to, where, when and how. None of that is remotely intrusive as long as they aren’t actually reading the messages themselves.
We’ll stop taxing people when they inherit wealth up to £1 million
People should absolutely have the right to have £1 million dropped into their lap without having done a stroke of work to earn it.
Because we, the people, think the best way to make sure everyone in society benefits is to make it easier for aggregated riches to be retained solely by the extremely wealthy.
But does a majority actually mean the Tories will be able to push forward with all of this stuff?
The answer is probably – and hopefully – no. The Conservatives have won a very small majority of 12. That’s worse than John Major’s in 1992, which was 21.
The difficulty of maintaining discipline in such a Parliament cannot be underestimated. But I think it will be worse than it was even for Major. Thanks to the Coalition, the Tory backbenchers from 2010-2015 have had relative freedom to rebel, safe in the knowledge that the majority created by the stability of Conservative/Lib Dem agreement would be sufficient to pass government legislation.
That safety net no longer exists. So what you now have are right-wing Tory backbenchers hungry for red meat – and with a track record of rebellion. The Conservatives’ whipping operation, which was hardly rock solid towards the end of the last Parliament, will become critically important now. The question is whether Michael Gove (the current Chief Whip) or his replacement will be up to the challenge.
On the other hand, these right-wingers will be pulling the party further in the direction of Euroscepticism, spending cuts, and general nastiness. There are few notable exceptions: David Davis, for instance, will continue to fight the good fight on civil liberties, and there might be a small group that joins him. They might be able to get in the way of things like the Communications Data Bill.
But realistically, we should be afraid of what this government is likely to try to do. Against an opposition in disarray, even a strident backbench voice might not be too difficult to quell. Decent people need to mobilise fast against some of the worst aspects of this agenda.
Right, first of all a quick video response to recent events:
Last night (and this morning) was the most bitter political experience of my life. It was made worse by the fact that I, like most Lib Dems, thought I was braced and prepared for the worst. At 10pm, when the exit poll was broadcast, it turned out I wasn’t – and then it turned out that was only the beginning of something even worse than that. Yes, it was truly the worst of the worst of the worst.
The loss of Julian Huppert in Cambridge is the single most devastating indictment of UK representational politics that I can remember. Never can any constituency have rejected such an intelligent, hard-working, passionate and most of all effective Member of Parliament. The list of achievements Julian has racked up in five short years is nothing less than astounding, and reflective of his boundless energy, his unquenchable curiosity and his genuine compassion and care for constituents.
Perhaps I’m biased, as I used to work for the man. But then he treated me, as one of his staff, with the same remarkable care as that he gave to all constituents. So I’m more than happy to be biased.
Julian’s narrow defeat was only one of many kicks in the teeth. At times it felt like the blows were coming in so fast they were more like an avalanche, burying hope beneath an endless cascade of lost deposits and overturned majorities. Just listing the likes of Vince Cable, David Laws, Jo Swinson, Lynne Featherstone, Simon Hughes, Adrian Sanders, and many more…
It’s not fair. It didn’t have to be like this. But we can’t blame anyone but ourselves.
The temptation is to turn inwards in denial and acrimony: pointing fingers, extracting pounds of flesh, demanding apologies. No doubt some will want to do so. But that is not the right response.
The right response is what has been firmly, if forlornly, advanced by some of our remaining MPs and by the likes of Paddy Ashdown. A Conservative majority was not foreseen. But it now exists, and must be met with a liberal opposition. The UK, too, is on the verge of splintering, of turning inwards, and becoming a more dangerous and authoritarian place. Theresa May is set to continue in Marsham Street, happily proposing ever more mad ideas that will limit our liberty and do little for our security. Iain Duncan Smith will soon be given the task of finding the £12 billion of welfare cuts that the Tories wouldn’t give us answers on before polling day. George Osborne will be sizing up other spending cuts in key areas like further education.
We cannot leave it to others to do what the Liberal Democrats still exist to do. There is no one else around to do it: to provide a different, better way forward. One based on liberty, equality and community, on internationalism and openness; on the vital commitment to empower each person to live a life that is full of opportunity and creativity, free of poverty, ignorance and conformity.
I have been guilty of doing too little to safeguard that identity. The party, too, has been guilty of neglecting it and allowing government to turn us into nothing more than an often-overlooked rudder on a ship bound for the rocks.
Now is the time to accept what has happened – and our responsibility for it – and fight, and fight again, for the values that we are founded upon. I intend no longer to be a passive Liberal Democrat. Today marks the day when we begin the long process to turn the anger and pain of this general election into renewal: not just for ourselves, but for the society we still aim to serve.
Today’s Anzac Day, and the 100th anniversary of the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign. It is perhaps Australia and New Zealand’s most important national commemoration – similar to our Remembrance Day. More than 11,400 Australia and New Zealand Army Corps (Anzac) troops died during the campaign.
The BBC has a good piece outlining what will be happening today to commemorate this important occasion.
Gallipoli, like many other failed campaigns, has perhaps inspired more successful and richer responses in art than military successes tend to. It’s probably unsurprising that artists respond better to concepts of suffering, pain, failure and death. There was an excellent 1981 film, made by Peter Weir (also director of Dead Poets Society), which was unflinchingly harrowing in its portrayal of wasted young lives. It was also one of Mel Gibson’s best performances.
But I have always been moved particularly by the song “The Band Played Waltzing Matilda”, by Eric Bogle. Written in 1971, it tells the story of an anonymous “rover” who is conscripted by the Australian government. It is a powerful indictment not only of war, but of attempts to glorify or romanticise it, even directly addressing Anzac Day itself: “The young people ask what are they marching for, and I ask myself the same question”.
Perhaps the best version is by the Pogues, although there are many others.
In an election where the outcome is highly uncertain, and likely to be defined by feverish negotiations between many parties – with even the smallest possibly playing a part – ruling out options before the result is known is obviously foolish.
2010 was a success
The Liberal Democrats know this well. We have recent experience of negotiating in a balanced Westminster Parliament. In 2010, we established a clear principle – that we would talk first to the party with the largest number of seats and/or votes. This was our initial negotiating position. Crucially, we did not rule out talking to other parties.
Over the five days following the last election, Nick Clegg and his team played a blinder. They skilfully used tenuous electoral arithmetic (which only just made a deal with Labour potentially viable – and wouldn’t have in practice) to increase their leverage in conversations with the Conservatives, who were terrified that such a deal had already been done. (This is often forgotten, but the reason for Cameron’s famous “big, open and comprehensive” offer was that senior Tories believed – laughably, in hindsight – that a Lib/Lab deal had been struck.
I still believe that in 2010, the Lib Dems got a good deal in policy terms. We secured our main goals, and while there was obviously a major error (you all know the one), I still don’t believe the Tories could have been forced into a better deal on the constitution.
The reason we got a good deal was because we kept our options open. There was a clear, established principle – the largest party is the one we’ll talk to first – and our manifesto had sufficiently radical policy positions to enable a sensible trade-off or trade-down based on Hegelian-type principles.
Why not the same again?
I can only assume, though, that senior Lib Dems this time around think we got a bad deal in 2010, as the approach seems to be entirely different now. Nick Clegg has been on the news today, ruling out some sort of minority coalition with Labour. As it happens, the arrangement he describes – one where the SNP are free to come and go, nipping at our heels and creating instability – would perhaps be both unworkable and damaging to the process of government.
But the idea of ruling such deals out now – difficult though they may be – is deeply counterproductive. At best, people will ask why we haven’t specifically ruled out other deals, perhaps with parties that are no more representative (or even less representative) than the SNP; we can think immediately of the DUP. At worst, the risk is that the Lib Dems look like they are pulling only in one direction, especially when Nick has also said that a government formed by the second largest party might “lack legitimacy” – something that has no basis and actually militates against sensible coalition-building.
This is doubly baffling when one looks at the Lib Dem manifesto and realises that it is a highly cautious, measured document, designed to allow synthesis with either of the two big parties. If anything, the Lib Dems’ current policy agenda is closer to Labour’s than to the Tories. Effectively, unlike in 2010, we have pared down our expectations before even commencing negotiations, hoping to act as a tacked-on adjunct rather than as the engine of ideas. This, I believe, is a grave mistake and one we will live to regret as a party.
What’s the result?
It’s a very confused position, especially as current polling indicates that a Labour-Lib Dem-SNP match-up of some kind may be the only grouping that actually guarantees a majority.
But more damagingly than that, voters who only read headlines (and that’s probably most of us) will again get the sense that Nick Clegg only wants to do a deal with the Conservatives. I know that this is not the case: all Lib Dems are passionate about working in government in the national interest, and would certainly not be averse to working with Labour if it meant a better settlement and another opportunity to push through liberal policies. I think even Labour recognise that, which is why we are yet to hear official calls for Clegg to stand down to enable a deal; there is recognition within Labour that Clegg is a player and a believer in plural government.
All of which only brings us back to the question: why take this position publicly, less than two weeks before polling day?
This is just one of many such boats currently drifting off the coasts of Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia. The Rohingya are one of the most oppressed ethnic/religious minorities in the world, having no recognition as citizens in Myanmar, and therefore having experienced constant persecution.
It will come as no surprise that I believe, instead, that Tim Farron is the leader the Lib Dems now need. During the years of coalition he acted as a critical friend – praising its achievements and maintaining an attitude of loyalty, but also speaking out on issues where the party was losing its way. Some people will think he was too critical, others too loyal; that probably shows that he got it about right, most of the time. He was also an exemplary party President who must have been in contact with more Lib Dem members than anyone else. His responsiveness, enthusiasm and generosity are legendary.
The purpose of political parties is precisely not to define themselves based on the existing political landscape. By choosing the word “centrist”, that is what we did. In the UK’s political environment, after 30 years of Thatcher and Blair, the political “centre” shifted markedly to the right. Voters instinctively recognise this.
People are belatedly poring over the Conservative Manifesto to find all the horrors within that might now become a reality. Certainly there are some big, beastly policies that spring out immediately which would never, ever have happened under a continued Tory/Lib Dem arrangement. These include:
Never Cruel Nor Cowardly 