It’s been an especially exciting time in internal Liberal Democrat politics of late, as Liberal Reform took its first faltering steps into the world and received a wonderfully positive response, as laid out here. As mentioned there, my Lib Dem Voice piece officially heralding the launch of the group went most of the way to explaining the reasoning behind it, but there seem to be a few points that still need to be cleared up.
Let’s make it perfectly clear; Liberal Reform are a broad, radical centre-aligned grouping, set up with the intent of providing our party’s economic liberals a forum for debate, but open to all. It should go without saying that we have no precedence in regard to which of the Labservative illiberal duopoly we would rather see ourselves in coalition with! They’re as bad as each other… social conservatives and economic illiterates exist in both parties, and both have a dreadful track record on civil liberties. Frankly, neither should be trusted in government alone, and any future coalition deal should be examined in pragmatic, realistic terms – no biases, no pre-deals, no preferences. The Liberal Democrats were, are, and should always remain an independent electoral force, agitating for freedom, fairness and democracy; not left, not right, just liberal, as Clegg said. (Although how a political ideology as broad and beautiful as liberalism can be dismissed with a mere ‘just’ is beyond me!)
Yet we’re so used to being dismissed, we liberals, by the conservatives and socialists who dominate British politics, that we’ve adopted something of a bunker mentality of late, tending to view any internal subgroupings as harmful to the family. The gut reaction of some seemed to follow this out – Alexandra White’s blogpost heralded ‘friends falling out’ and bemoaned ‘bitching’, ‘sniping’, ‘deriding the opposite opinion’… yet I hope it’s obvious that that’s the last thing I, or any member of Liberal Reform wants. Construction, not destruction, is the name of the game. I remarked on Twitter of the not-at-all curious phenomenon of people choosing to join both the Social Liberal Forum and Liberal Reform, and of course such ‘Social Reformers’ are welcome.
Yet Liberal Reform is already a good thing for the party. We’ve encouraged people to join the Liberal Democrats, we’ve even had an effect as far afield as Australia – in mere days of existence. It’s hard not to see a goodly portion of the party as simply waiting and seeing before passing judgement, though, which is fair enough! You could probably look to the sudden creation of scores of comic Lib Dem ginger groups on Facebook and elsewhere (in favour of Diet Coke, cakes, biscuits, curry, beards and even ginger people) as a symptom of the party’s nervousness when it comes to itself. So used are we to our outsider political status that the mere suggestion that there may be more internal groupings than just being ‘those nice people who deliver leaflets’ has some freaking out… and as many are noisily nervous, you can be sure that plenty more are quietly worried.
There’s really no reason for this – we may be a family, but we are also a political party, sternly resilient enough to see off innumerable internal trials, from Thorpe to Oaten. Don’t forget that our ‘little’ party has been through a lot, from polling above Labour to below the Greens… The family ties forged through our years in the political wilderness will be more than enough to keep us together now that we’re finally a serious party of power rather than a leaflet-delivering cult. Don’t forget, friends and family can argue together and drink together. And rest assured, Liberal Reform have as loud voices and thirsty throats as any other Liberal!
