More Tom Brakes, fewer David Laws please

This week has demonstrated both a good and bad example of communication (or not) with party members and helpers, courtesy of Tom Brake and David Laws.

Tom’s got the communication better even though the substance he’s working with is less promising. David’s had the better case – but the he and the party haven’t been explaining it.

David Laws first. The BBC reported this about the forthcoming conference in Glasgow:

Although there will be a string of new policy announcements in Glasgow, they have all been agreed with the Conservatives, reflecting the coalition’s desire to continue “right up to the wire”.

Understandably, the idea that policies get cleared with the Tories in advance set off a round of complaints from party activists. Predictably (but wrongly – see blogs passim) the party hasn’t communicated promptly, even though there’s a pretty good defence of what the underlying issue is.

The substance of the story is similar to what’s happened in previous years – i.e. all new government announcements by either party are meant to be agreed with the other before going public as a definite ‘this is what the government will do’ statement, whether at conference or elsewhere. That means that if a government minister wants to say in their speech, “The government is going to do X” then it gets agreed with the Tories first – and the other way round too. (Sssh! Don’t tell Peter Bone…)

Is there a practical alternative to that when you’re in coalition? It might be fun surprising the Tories with some of our new government commitments if things weren’t done that way. Fun that is until the Tories get to do the same, and there are rather more Tory ministers to do it…

So – a decent explanation but one the party hasn’t put out, leaving another round of worry and mistrust to gradually build up.

By contrast, Tom Brake has on the substance a far tougher gig – defending the controversial lobbying and third-party campaigning legislation.

He has however been very active at communicating on the issue (such as his latest on Lib Dem Voice). I’m less persuaded by the substance of all that he has to say than I am by the explanation of what was behind David Laws’s comments. But his willingness to communicate and debate is certainly right – and what the party still, three years into government, needs to learn to do more often and better.