Political

The Project: how the Conservatives were beaten last time – with Duncan Brack

In the latest episode of Never Mind The Bar Charts, I talk with Duncan Brack, the closest thing the party has to an official historian, about the lessons for the Liberal Democrats from the last time that a Conservative government was defeated.

A key part of that was cross-party cooperation so we dive into what then party leader Paddy Ashdown’s plans were, what worked, what didn’t work and what lessons apply to this Parliament.

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Show notes

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5 responses to “The Project: how the Conservatives were beaten last time – with Duncan Brack”

  1. that was then, this is now, and so much has changed in between. Although not changed, crucially, is our ‘only two parties matter’ media and our undemocratic voting system. Those two need tackling, and we need a government with the guts to tackle them. That will not happen if Labour simply take turns with the Tories.
    We must make Labour understand that the only way to stop the Tories continuing to rule for most of the time is for Labour to work with the rest of the opposition. They will only realise they have to do that if we recover our rightful vote share next May, and we can only achieve that by having our new Leader in place before Christmas to lead us into that campaign, and offer hope to the country.

  2. As the Tories go into their 4th term with a nearly impossible to shift ( in one go) 80 seat majority after which they will have been in power for 14 years, if not 19, this should be ringing severe alarm bells with Labour and ought to make them ready to listen

    Does Labour really want to have just the possibility of occasional monopoly power to break up those long Tory multiple terms, rather than seize power and share some of it, to become the new normal leaders of a regenerated, continental style coalition politics?

    Are Labour so keen on these rare bits of monopoly power for itself that they are prepared to let the Tories build the future in the meantime and ruin the living standards and prospects for it’s core constituency and supporters?

    The Tories have ruined many people’s prospects of owning a property, while a minority build empires for rent and private profit. They destroyed the Union annual pay round that pulled up the pay of non members and even non unionised industries, while they continue rally and progressively starve hospitals, schools and public services of adequate funding.

    As a minority of Labour appear to accept, the Tories do far too much damage in between Labour Governments to be allowed to continue on this course. Now we have the post industrial revolution happening faster than anything previously, which will jointly take physical, white collar and professional jobs and probably also take many of the new jobs created. To let the Tories handle this with a cack handed nationalist approach and with deregulation would be a disaster

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