The libel reform O-turn – and what the party needs to learn

The Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Party has reversed their reversal of the party’s views on libel reform, and we’re back to where we started. As Glyn Ley commented on my wall on Facebook, that makes it not so much a U-turn as an O-turn.

The issue at stake has been the ability of corporations to use libel law to silence critics, something that Nick Clegg has been vocal in opposing in the past and which was in the Liberal Democrat manifesto. However, it then for a while looked as if the party would back down and let the provision to implement this manifesto commitment be axed from the libel reform bill going through Parliament. As Julian Huppert reports, that’s now been reversed, and things are (just about) back on course.

Julian and Tim Farron deserve praise for the hard work they’ve done to turn that U-turn into an O turn and – most importantly – it looks like the substantive outcome in terms of the law will be the right one.

There are still lessons however for the party to learn, especially as the fact that Julian, Tim and others (including some effective lobbying from outside the party) have ridden to the rescue if anything has heightened the anger of some party activists at the party’s leadership in government on the issue. The party in government was prepared to back down on the issue and now the wider party has shown that this was not a necessary call to make. (Had it been the case that this was the only way to get the rest of a very good bill through, then it might just have been a justified call. However, we now know that isn’t the case.)

Another lesson is that, once again, there were clear signs of anger from party activists a good 24+ hours ahead of the party starting to use its official or semi-official channels to communicate with party members on the topic. Given the speed with which anger (and other emotions – sometimes even positive ones!) spreads on social media through the activist ranks of an organisation, the best react faster and more fulsomely than is the party’s usual habit. Otherwise, you’re only starting to communicate after people have made up their minds – and it’s then far harder to shift them than if you get in at the early stage before views become hardened.

The party’s social media accounts have largely left their previous horrors of long periods of silence behind them. That progress is good; there’s an awful lot more still to be done, even on very limited resources, to get them to having the sort of impact they could have – and which the party needs them to have.

Today’s O turn won’t be the last. That’s the nature of coalition politics.

But it should be the last where there’s the yawning, debilitating gap between members getting angry and the party communicating with them.