Liberal Democrat Newswire #41 is out: what does “weekend” mean?

Liberator has been consistently critical of the party’s leaders and in particular of what it sees as their forlorn search to build far too broad a base of support. Instead of trying to win the votes of just about anyone, the magazine’s editorials have argued for several decades that the third party should concentrate on more controversial policy commitments, such as being strongly pro-European, which might put off many voters but would also (so the argument goes) build a bigger core party vote. After all, as 25% of the vote would be an amazingly good result for the party in a general election, how much does it matter if even a majority of the electorate doesn’t like the party?

The party’s 2010 general election campaign was most certainly not from the Liberator playbook. The party’s appeal was set very broadly, looking to attract votes from just about anyone, and with a target seat strategy to match, going for a very broad front of seats in a way that helps explain why the party’s number of seats ended up falling despite an increase in votes.

More recently things have been rather different, largely due to the influence of strategy advisor Ryan Coetzee (who, despite rumours in South Africa to the contrary, is not about to leave the UK for a job there).

In a recent series of speeches Nick Clegg has taken policy positions that follow the Liberator strategy – setting out positions on the environment and Europe which are controversial, do not necessarily have majority support in the country but which fit with long-standing party beliefs and which also fit with trying to build a larger core vote. (He is in favour of both the environment and Europe, in case you wondered.)

Civil liberties have, so far at least, been notably missing from this list.

All that makes the party’s forthcoming new immigration policy something to keep a close eye on. At the time the policy review was launched, it appeared to many that it would move the party towards a much more immigrant-sceptic position, thanks to the floating of an immigration bonds idea.

That idea, however, was quickly sidelined under a blizzard of protests from within the party, widespread criticisms from experts outside the party and a bevvy of quotes dug out by journalists citing Lib Dems previously opposing the very such idea.

Add to that the logic of the European and environmental speeches – that the party’s immigration policies should steer clear of trying to broadly appeal to everyone but instead concentrate on carving out a larger core liberal vote – and it’s possible the immigration policy may yet do something very different from those fears.

For more on the background to this strategy, see the previous Liberal Democrat Newswires:

• #40: How many seats will the Lib Dems win in 2015 and what national share of the vote is needed for a decent result?
• #37: How is the revamped Liberal Democrat message going?
• #31: The Liberal Democrat general election manifesto process explained

The £10,000 limit comes into force in April 2014 and the party is already setting out its stall for having a general election manifesto policy of further increasing the limit up to the equivalent of what a full time worker on the minimum wage would earn. There is an obvious appealing logic and simplicity to saying that anyone on the minimum wage shouldn’t pay income tax, and it is also a rather more direct and quicker way of introducing in effect the Living Wage – as income tax cuts add to people’s income just as wage increases do.

However, there is a political and economic gap between achieving something in April 2014 and then wanting to do something further after May 2015. What will the party be pushing for in the quartet of Budgets and Annual Spending reviews still to come before the next general election? It is hard to see a mansion tax being conceded by the Conservatives, although extra Council Tax bands for the most expensive houses is still something Lib Dem negotiators think is worth pushing for.

At the weekend Nick Clegg staked out another tax policy to fill the tax gap – going for a further increase in the income tax allowance beyond £10,000 in this Parliament:

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Read on and you’ll find a special set of offers from Biteback Publishing for readers of Liberal Democrat Newswire, including the new biography of Shirley Williams and Damian McBride’s must-read account of life as a Labour spin doctor turned drunken purveyor of political smears. Any of them will make a great Christmas present for political friends (or a little personal self-indulgence in case you fear your presents from others are just going to be socks again).

If you’re looking for further ideas, here are my five top book recommendations:

• War With The Newts by Karel Capek – a great satire on colonialism, racism, capitalism, appeasement and politics by the man who invented the word ‘robot’.
• Sign of the Times by Peter Brookes – a lovely coffee table book containing some of the best pieces from The Times‘s political cartoonist.
• The Victory Lab by Sasha Issenberg – the essential introduction to how smart political campaigns run tests to find out what works.
• Talking to a Brick Wall by Deborah Mattinson – a fascinating account of how politics looks through the eyes of the voter.
• A Fortunate Life by Paddy Ashdown – a great read covering many topics, including a chapter on how he won Yeovil. Still very relevant.

If it is a Liberal Democrat you are looking for a present for, then there is always the perfect on-message gift that combines Alarm Clock Britain with anchoring our politics in the centre ground.

Imitating Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey, various Liberal Democrats are wandering about asking “what is a weekend”? It is a word that appears but once in the Liberal Democrat party’s federal constitution, but it is an appearance that is causing legalistic arguments to fly back and forth over quite what it means.

The cause is clause 6.6 of the constitution which states that,

The Conference shall normally meet twice a year, for a week in the early autumn and a weekend in the early spring.

This is a problem for those who want either to axe completely or scale back to a single day the party’s Spring conference. Presented as being a cost-saving proposal, the idea has bombed so far within the party, getting a near-unanimous thumbs down at a consultation session held at the last party conference.

Also very hostile to the plans are both the party’s Federal Conference Committee (responsible for organising the conferences) and the Federal Policy Committee (responsible for much of their policy content). More suspicious party activists also fear that the proposals are motivated by a desire to reduce the number of opportunities for the party to hold its leadership to account.

Given this widespread resistance, it is hard to see how a constitutional amendment could get the necessary two-thirds majority at a party conference in order to remove the requirement for “a weekend” conference to be held each year. Hence the attempts to argue that a short event over just one day still meets the requirement.

If that is the case, it just takes a couple of party committee votes to implement the plan for Spring conference and if that were done, it would then be much easier to defend the new status quo (especially with arguments such as “but we only have booked the future venues for one day”) than it would be to get that two-thirds majority.

The exchanges of legal arguments means the issue is now up with Federal Appeals Panel to rule on.

To buy any of these titles, just visit https://www.bitebackpublishing.com/promotions and use the code listed under the book cover below.

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“This is an excellent book… An essential source for anyone interested in the contribution of Liberals and Liberalism to British politics.” – The Journal of Liberal History. Code: LDNP

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To buy any of these titles, just visit https://www.bitebackpublishing.com/promotions and use the code listed under the book title.

If so, then why not join thousands of others and sign up to receive direct to your email inbox future editions of what the Daily Telegraph calls a “must read”?

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Its 308 pacy pages cheerfully zig-zag between marketing manual, self-help book, and campaigning A-Z — with dollops of political history, pop-psychology, and behavioural economics thrown in for good measure – Stephen Tall

101 Ways To Win An Election is available from Amazon (paperback and Kindle editions).

For Apple fans it is available on iTunes as an iBook for iPad, iPhone and iPod.

Users of Kobo readers are also catered for with the Kobo ebook version.

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Best wishes and thank you for reading,

Mark