After the crash

Torbay MP Adrian Sanders: “If lessons are not learnt from the higher education train crash then the next four years are going to be very long indeed, with our prospects of advancement probably non-existent for a generation.”

If the loss of over half our general election support in the opinion polls doesn’t register then letters from members in the national press calling for open rebellion against the leadership and Liberal Democrat voice leading on why someone isn’t leaving the Party, ought to suggest something is seriously up.

Many close colleagues and friends outside the Westminster village have expressed their concerns over the direction of the party and failure of our Parliamentarians to communicate what they have achieved in Government, and while few have indicated a desire to resign I am conscious that many are rediscovering the ‘joys’ of gardening and DIY, over political activism.

If lessons are not learnt from the higher education train crash then the next four years are going to be very long indeed, with our prospects of advancement probably non-existent for a generation.

I am the first to acknowledge that the Coalition’s tuition fees policy makes sense if you have the time or inclination to study the details. But I also know that the concessions negotiated and improvements won stand for nothing compared to the trust we destroyed by breaking a pledge with the electorate upon which much of our General Election campaign had rested, and then rejecting the opt out to abstain contained within the Coalition Programme for Government that superseded it.

How did we get to this point when we should still be celebrating the fact that we are able to implement Liberal Democrats ideas and polices in Government for the first time in over 70 years?

Unlike the bulk of the Liberal Democrat membership, the current leadership and their advisors are dominated by people who give the impression they didn’t, among other things, enter politics to deny the Conservatives political power. That is the fundamental difference between them and those who have spent a lifetime campaigning against the enemy, and who view the Tories as the opposition to just about everything we stand for.

We have a leadership that seems keener on impressing the Conservatives as to how much we can be relied upon to take ‘tough’ decisions, than on asserting how much the Conservatives need us in order to remain in Government.

This has led to the leadership’s complete failure to recognise that the premise upon which difficult decisions are being justified is wholly false.

The leadership cites polls from before the election that showed some people didn’t vote for us because we have no experience of taking decisions in power. Instead of challenging such a silly premise when we have decades of local government experience taking and using power for the benefit of communities across the UK, nearly always involving tough decisions, we chose to believe these polls and give them so much credibility that we could end up sacrificing hundreds of those experienced Liberal Democrat politicians in the local election next May.

In my experience it is a lack of electoral rather than decision-making credibility that prevents Lib Dems winning seats, and it is bad decision-making that losses them.

The leadership on the other hand almost revels in having to take decisions against the grain of Liberal Democrat support and can’t see the damage and hurt left in their wake.

Following the tuition fees vote there was no attempt at a rapprochement with the 28 Parliamentarians the Leader failed to convince should vote with the Government. The impression given was one of regret that everyone couldn’t have voted the same way, not because differences are understood, but because that’s what they should have done. There was no understanding of why two former leaders and the current Party President along with 18 others voted the opposite way. Sadly, there was no attempt at healing the wound, perhaps by immediately rejecting the resignations of the two PPS’s who voted against the rise in tuition fees.

The leadership appears not to understand, or worse care, why it so difficult for some Liberal Democrats to accept policies they have spent much of their lives opposing, let alone the sacrifices many of them have made to get elected and thus allow others to ‘enjoy’ being in Government.

Just as there has been no enquiry into our poor general election performance that saw us lose seats and left little option, but to form a coalition with the Tories, there doesn’t appear to be any strategy for winning back support, and certainly no exit strategy for when the Tories discard us.

It’s more of the same machismo about how big and tough we are in Government, when our supporters are looking for how we have changed Government for the better and what difference we have made now we have been given a chance. All they see is another political party letting them down once they’ve had their vote.

And as if to compound matters our leadership wants us to take ownership of everything the Coalition does, outside as well as inside the Programme for Government, because in their judgement that will show the electorate we are serious about exercising power.

There is a better way and that’s to demonstrate the difference the Liberal Democrats have made to the country, and importantly, to the Conservatives.

When constituents and others complain to me about putting the Tories in power I ask them to imagine a Conservative Government retaining a 50p top rate of tax, introducing an increase in capital gains tax, implementing a bank levy to fund child tax credits for poorer families, taking the lowest paid out of income tax altogether, extending the national minimum wage to include apprentices and reducing the age at which the full NMW is paid, increasing the number of social housing allocations above those of the previous Labour Government, establishing a pupil premium to increase the funding for pupils in poorer areas, investing £900 million to reduce tax evasion and amend legal loopholes that allow for tax avoidance, proposing a £140 minimum state pension, setting up a Green Investment Bank, moving towards a House of Lords elected by PR, agreeing to a fixed term Parliament and much, much more.

And before they can say tuition fees I ask them would a Tory Government have agreed to a fee cap?

Would they have introduced measures where all students will repay less per month under this Government’s policy than they currently pay? Where the lowest earning 25 per cent of graduates will repay less than they do now? Where the top earning 30 per cent of graduates will pay back more than they borrow and are likely to pay more than double the bottom 20 per cent of earners?  Where over half a million students will be eligible for more non-repayable grants for living costs than they get now? Where almost one million students will be eligible for more overall maintenance support than they get now? Where part-time students will no longer have to pay upfront fees benefiting up to 200,000 per year?  Where there will be an extra £150m for a new National Scholarship Programme for students from poorer backgrounds and tough new sanctions on universities who fail to improve their access to students from such backgrounds?

There is so much positive policy and influence to promote, but we can’t get it across to the electorate unless we can show how we made the difference. Getting this information out and understood is part of a giant task that now confronts us to rebuild trust with voters who feel we have let them down, or worse betrayed them.

Perhaps we can start by admitting to ourselves the pleasure most of us take in the distress Conservatives have being in coalition with Liberals. It is such a pity that some in our leadership give the impression they feel the same discomfort with members of their own party.

If they could only see what we see; that the Tories need us to implement some of their policies far more than we need them to water down, or corrupt ours, then maybe we can see light at the end of the tunnel, rather than the lights of another train bearing down upon us.

• First published on Adrian Sanders‘ site, used here with permission.

Related posts:

1. Transport plans ignore the South West past Exeter Torbay MP Adrian Sanders has called for better transport for...
2. Torbay fails on recycling! Torbay is ‘clearly not doing it as well as the...
3. Investment in a sustainable economy - coalition government plans a green economic future A Green Economy was one the Liberal Democrats' major manifesto...