The Liberal Democrats held their Annual Conference in Blackpool this week. I am not going to pretend to give a complete analysis of all the debates but maybe an impression of the main themes and some of the tricks the MSM and other parties are getting up to so they can subvert coverage.
First, a quick background on the party and the lead-up to the conference and then I’ll get to the themes and tricks.
(Crossposted from EuroTrib)
The LibDems are a marriage of the Liberal and Social Democratic parties. The Liberals have a very long history but fell out of government after the first World War when the (old)Labour Party grew. By the 50s the party had fallen into the doldrums and it was only in the 1970s that it started to pick up any great deal. The SDP was formed by a group of Labour MPs (the “Gang of Four”) who were disillusioned with the extreme left-wing influence in Labour (It should be said that the “looney left” at that time included such firebrands as Jack Straw, David Blunkett and Ken Livingstone.) The two co-existed and fought elections together, first under a sort of non-aggression pact and later under a joint “Alliance” manifesto). Although there were huge intial gains in popularity, this did not translate to votes at important elections and the two eventually merged. At the this year’s General Election the party got the highest number of seats since the Liberals in 1928. In Scotland, where the Parliament is elected by Proportional Representation, the LibDems are in coalition with the Labour Party in the Executive. Key policies on health and education have been implemented that are more generous than in England and Wales
The history is important to understand the two strands in the party. There is the historically radical, green, unilateralist, pro-gay/civil rights Liberals who stereotypically are the wooly jumper, beard and sandal wearing hard bitten campaigners who knit their own muesli; know the words to “The Land” and enthusiastically give a clenched fist flourish while singing it(guilty). Social Democrats are the suit and tie wearing “economic liberals” concentrating on “electability” who either mouth “The Land” at the Glee Club party while rocking their glass of red wine or by then have sneaked back to their digs in their Volvo estate cars. The story of the week in policy terms has been the defeat of the righter wing by the rank and file who tend to the more radical Liberal wing. The most important one was the defeat of a central party proposal to include as policy the privatisation of the Royal Mail to finance the Post Office network.
LibDem conferences tend to be heavy on policy consideration although the press like to concentrate on personalities. This year the MSM were playing was “The LibDems are pretending this as a celebration of the election but really there are questions about the Leader because they should have got more”. Charles Kennedy, the party leader, had a bit of a wobble in the middle of the campaign when his wife gave birth and the came back after a short break to an early morning press conference. Unfortunately the new baby had kept him up most of the night so he was a bit shell shocked and this was spun by the MSM as “does not know his own policies”.
The “incompetent leader” line meant all the press coverage of the conference tended to concentrate on that rather than the policy issues. The Liberals were the first UK party to have a “question the Leader” session at a conference. Unfortunately a badly phrased question about how to get people to ask about policies over personalities when campaigning was cut to imply the leadership was being challenged. Part of Kennedy’s problems are due to him being more consensual and taking people with him than Paddy Ashdown, his predecessor. The phrase “chairman not leader” was used. In case you recognise the name, Paddy Ashdown is now the UN High Representative in Bosnia-Herzegovina. As an ex-Special Boat Squadron (the naval SAS) officer and a diplomat, he had an “action man” image compared to Kennedy’s laid back approach. Kennedy’s main keynote speech at the end of conference was ammended to address this supposed split in the party.
Today, instead of coverage being on that speech, the Times has published a potentially damaging story about campaign finances. The gist of this is that a Swiss based company with a London office gave a very large donation. There is some question over whether the company was trading in the UK at the time. If not, the donation would have to be returned as outside the rules and would leave a big hole in the finances. The investigation by the Electoral Commission is as a result of a complaint. That complaint was almost certainly made by another party who leaked the details. As noted in recent diaries; Rupert Murdoch, the owner of the Times, is rather friendly with a resident of Downing Street so it is not difficult to guess which party leaked the story.