‘Look Right, look Left, look Right again and then it’s safe to cross to the Middle of the Road’

‘Look Right, look Left, look Right again and then it’s safe to cross to the Middle of the Road’ – Lib Dem Motto

When I was taking my first meagre interest in politics in the 1960s and 1970s, I was a Labour voter/pre-voter partly because my parents, from what might be called the working class, instilled in me a detestation of the Tories and partly because Labour policies did actually seem the fairest and best.

At that time there was a party called the ‘Liberal Party’, with Jo Grimond as their patrician leader. He struck me then as a decent chap and the party as a minor but also decent party which struck a ‘middle of the road’ political note.

Like Manuel, I knew nothing then. Decent Jo was followed by the charismatic but ambitious and entitled trickster Jeremy Thorpe and worse was to come with the arrival of David Steele. Steele was best known as pocket handkerchief to the suave David Owen, whose party, the SDLP, finally blew its nose on the handkerchief and the Liberals were transmuted into The Liberal Democrats in 1988.

This was not, however, a transmutation from base metal into political gold being merely another stage in the attempt to create a party which embodies the idea that moderation in all things is the best way to run a country. This middle of the road approach is dangerous both for its advocates, who might and do get knocked down electorally and those drawn to it, who can easily be misled as to the definition of the ‘centre ground’.

Since 1979, when the drift to the right which started in the USA, manifested itself here in the shape of Thatcherism, what is considered to be centre ground politics has itself shifted to the right leading to both New Labour – the party which masqueraded as the real Labour Party from 1994 until 2016 – and the Lib Dems to adopt policies which approximate to those introduced and enforced by the Thatcherite Tories.

This is very relevant today as the Lib Dems emboldened by their good showing in the recent local elections are again parading their smug faces in the newspapers and on television. (If they can elbow their way past Nigel Farage that is, but that’s another story).

They are using the idea that they offer something that hasn’t been tried before, that the two main parties are ‘broken’ and that theirs is a ‘new’ way. This is nonsense.

What we have before us are the detritus left behind by Nick Clegg and his acolytes from what is called the ‘Orange Book’ group of Lib Dems, indeed their current leader was a key person in that group.

There was an actual Orange Book*, co-authored by various LD luminaries, dim ones as it turned out, which promoted a form of liberalism which looks to individuals and not communities, a lesser role for the state and an increased role for competition in areas such as the NHS and other public services. This, literally ‘neo-liberal’ world view then subjected us to the ruinous economic policies of the LD-Tory Coalition government. Once they had fulfilled their useful idiot role, the LDs were cast aside by the Tories and the voters leaving us with years of austerity, inequality and cruelty.

The final Frankenstein monster produced by this bunch of actual, for the most part, losers is, of course, Brexit.

Remarkably, they still have the cheek to claim that they are the route to a ‘new way’ of politics when, in 2010, they had the best and, so far, only chance that any party has had to provide exactly that by way of a change to the voting system. Properly done, this would be a good idea, sadly the Lib Dems, desirous of those cabinet seats and the trappings of power, compromised and lost the AV referendum. Personally, it did their big cheeses no harm – look at Nick Clegg – but it betrayed the country and democracy.

What have the LDs done to redeem themselves? Nothing except produce a couple of potential leaders more photogenic than Vince ‘Sprism’ Cable.

Their continued eye to the main chance is exemplified in Bolton, where LD councillors have allied with Tory, Independent AND UKIP councillors to keep out Labour, the largest group.

Their apparent revival has not arisen because of a flood of new, exciting, policies but because of the troubles of other parties, as amplified, in the case of the Labour Party by our disingenuous media. In the South West of the country where the LDs did well, their success was due to other voters, especially, Tories, not voting. Actual LD voter numbers hardly changed from 2015. So full marks for blind loyalty to LD voters in the SW, who exhibited the party tribalism their leaders so revile in other parties.

Ironically, we have our own ‘South West (of Shropshire)’ contingent of Lib Dem councillors complete with their own tribal following. There is, after all, no other explanation of their continued success in the local elections. My actual councillor is a serial non-returner of emails and failed fulfiller of promises of action.

Others may be better and I daresay that they handle the ‘dog shit and lamp post’ issues well enough but they do have an easy job when it comes to the big issues of council budget cuts given the domination of the Tories. One would think that they might, however, acknowledge the part that their leaders played in the massive cuts to council funding started by the government in which they were partners.

– Bob, your Uncle.

* In the book the group offers liberal solutions — often stressing the role of choice and competition — to several societal issues, such as public healthcare, pensions, environment, globalisation, social and agricultural policy, local government, the European Union and prisons. It is usually seen as the most economically liberal publication that the Liberal Democrats have produced in recent times.

Nick Clegg and David Cameron laugh it up during PMQs (2011)