Political

Not quite launched: the Lib Dem pre-manifesto

The planned launch on Wednesday of the much-trailed Liberal Democrat pre-manifesto document was delayed due to the international situation, but one policy made it out into the blinking light of day: proportional representation for local government in England, copying the reforms already in place in Scotland.*

No huge surprise in the policy in itself, but more significant is the relative importance being attached to it as the most promising major political reform for the 2015 Parliament given where we’ve ended up in the 2010 Parliament.

One reason for this is that with STV already in place in Scottish councils, many of the anti-reform scare arguments used in the AV referendum for Westminster voting will work far less well.**

Another is that local government has many important powers (if not as many as it should have) but suffers from far too many dominant one-party states built on a low share of the vote – and part of the story behind many local government scandals is an absence of effective local opposition investigating, exposing and publicising complacent ruling groups because on a low share of the vote the ruling group nonetheless wins nearly all the seats.

When finally published, the pre-manifesto document will get debated at the Liberal Democrat conference in Glasgow this October. Nick Clegg’s foreword to that document, along with some of its highlights, was published last weekend and you can take a look at my archive of policy posts to see the proposals recently launched that will feature in it.

* The party also supports this for Wales, but due to Welsh devolution the Liberal Democrats want the power to determine the local government electoral system to be given to the Welsh Assembly, and for it to then use that power to pick STV.
** Northern Ireland is usually seen by politicians in Westminster as very different from the rest of the UK and so not a protective parallel in the same way.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

All comments and data you submit with them will be handled in line with the privacy and moderation policies.