Welcome news as Lib Dems change tack on coalition
A common theme of my posts about the party’s strategy over the last few months has been my scepticism about the strategic decision taken to love everything the coalition does.
As I wrote in July, the risk with trying to ‘own’ the entire government record is that we get blamed for the things we’ve opposed or got changed yet don’t get credit for what we’ve achieved:
The danger is that, rather like a good speech writer, the party may end up making many significant changes to government, improving what is being done, but whose good work is not noticed by the public as it is behind the scenes.
So this was very welcome news over the weekend, courtesy of the Independent on Sunday:
The Liberal Democrats are to adopt a new strategy of laying claim to aspects of coalition policy in an attempt to reverse the impact of government spending cuts on their poll ratings.
In a significant U-turn from the pledge to “own” the entire government programme, Lib Dem strategists at the party’s Cowley Street HQ will spell out where key reforms would not have happened if the Tories had been in power alone. This includes taking the credit for significant areas of policy covering welfare, energy, housing, and constitutional reform.
Quite right too! This needs to be adopted immediately. The other point is to say when supporting Coalition Policy because we are in a coalition, eg “The Coalition Policy which we are bound to support is X, although a Lib Dem government would have done Y” The alternative is Lib Dems beocome indistinguishable from Tories.
Then that just leaves the breaking of manifesto “pledges” after promising a new kind of politics…