Read Philip Collins on the future of liberalism in Britain
“I'm going to quote John Stewart Mill at you: 'women have to stir up the zeal of women themselves'”
This is the second time Baroness Sal Brinton, new President of the Liberal Democrats, has referred to Britain's most famous liberal during our interview—in this case, to describe how she wants to advance the cause of women and minorities in the party. Earlier she told me that the “fairer society” portion of her party's “stronger economy, fairer society” election strapline echoes Mill's principles of liberalism. Brinton, 59, a Lib Dem peer since 2011, runs the party's leadership programme. She was elected to her new position by a substantial margin in a three-way race last year. If the role's last occupant Tim Farron—now considered a front runner in any future leadership contest—is anything to go by, you'll be seeing a lot more of her. The daughter of a proud Tory, she became a member of the Liberal party in 1974—in part to help campaign for an “in” vote on the UK's last European referendum—and is steeped in the philosophical and political traditions of her party.
But that party looks to be in trouble. According to the British Election Study, the Lib Dems could lose all but one of their MPs come May. In the estimation of five other major election forecasters, they could be looking at anything from 16-29 MPs, down from the 57 they won last time. They've slumped from 23 per cent of the vote in 2010 to around 9 per cent support in most polls. Are things as bad as they seem? Will the Lib Dems face a wipeout at the election? And, whether they do or not, is there a future for them longer-term in a Britain of anti-immigration politics and euroscepticism?
Brinton believes the party is far from a spent force. Having spent her first weeks in office travelling the country speaking to activists and candidates, she says their experience of talking to voters suggests that things aren't as bad as they appear. “The best moment [so far],” she says of her presidential role, which she has occupied for just six weeks at the time of our interview, “was last Saturday, sitting in a room with 30 of our candidates in the North West.” She laughs: “they clearly haven't read the polls.”
Most notably, one recent poll suggested that Nick Clegg might lose his seat, Sheffield Hallam. Brinton is very keen to emphasise that she is “not worried about Nick and his seat,” but concedes that if he did lose it, the party would be in “an interesting position.” She points out that they would also be without a Deputy Leader, as the current occupant of the role, Sir Malcolm Bruce, is standing down at the election. “The role of the President” in that situation, she says, “is to get the parliamentary party together and to find an acting leader... I see it very much as we need something just to tide us through.” Are there any potential candidates? “We have some very good MPs, of course we have strong candidates. I'm not going to name names.” She wouldn't stand for the role herself, she says, so would be occupied only with ensuring the contest runs well.
Any coalition negotiations, she says, would not be affected: “we're clear... that the party has to own coalition when we go into it. So it's never just going to be a question about 'who's going to take over from Nick and then decide what's going to happen...' we're a democratic party, we've got a team that's going to do the negotiations, our federal committees, and the wider membership, who will also have a say.”
Besides, Brinton thinks, many potential voters will be swayed when they're made aware of what the Lib Dems as a party, rather than the coalition government as a whole, have spent five years doing. She won't give specific predictions, but thinks the party's position will be stronger after the election than is often assumed—not unlikely, given the hyperbolic assumption that the Lib Dems are "over" among the general public. Her party claims responsibility for boosting the number of apprentices by 85 per cent, and Brinton says this is an achievement that can be tangibly communicated to people around the country by pointing out how many new apprenticeships there are in their local area. Several commentators—including Peter Kellner in Prospect—have argued individual Lib Dem MPs remain more popular than their party, and could benefit from a formidable local activist base. Brinton agrees: “our PPCs [prospective parliamentary candidates] are used to knocking on doors all year round,” she says, “finding out what their communities want. That's a real strength.”
As for the future, the party's five “priorities” for another five years of coalition—themes which the Lib Dems would push in any potential coalition negotiations including key education promises and a commitment to balancing the budget fairly—are “chiming on the doorstep,” she says. She argues they are are a useful middle way between assuming that the party will form a majority government—like the Tories and Labour do—and setting red lines in advance, which she says is unhelpful.
Still, they've a tough fight ahead. Brinton knows about hard campaigning from personal experience: she twice stood in the three-way marginal seat of Watford, losing once to Labour (in 2005) and once to the Tories (in 2010.) What did she learn? “In a really hotly contested seat, the air war [the battle for national media attention] is as tough to fight as the ground war,” she says. “It's tricky for any party when there's something that's beginning to chime [nationally] that at a local level you can't respond to... such as in Watford in 2010, at the very last minute, David Cameron saying if you vote Lib Dem you will get... Gordon Brown,” she says, “we could see it drifting away in those last two or three days.” This "vote x, get y" strategy is something which could have an unpredictable impact on any party come May, given its popularity with strategists today—in Scotland, for example, both Labour and the Tories have claimed that a vote for the SNP will get you the other party.
The media is a battleground in which the Lib Dems still struggle to be heard. In the original proposals for TV debates from the broadcasters, Clegg would have been excluded from the top-level debate between Cameron and Miliband. Clegg is attempting to capitalise on the subsequent row over formats with an offer to appear in a one-on-one TV debate with Ed Miliband. The “air war” in the long campaign so far has been dominated by the two main parties retreating back to a traditional binary fight on home turf—the economy, the NHS, big business, the unions. The third party—and second party of government—have had limited coverage by comparison. As the junior half of a coalition, many of their achievements have involved intensive negotiation to secure small but significant changes to legislation. Brinton gives the “slightly techy” example of Lib Dem-backed amendments to the former Secretary of State for Health Andrew Lansley's NHS reforms. Her party claims responsibility for new legislation ensuring NHS commissioning is focused on the quality of services, rather than the lowest possible cost. “It may not be particularly visible but it's actually substantially changed what was proposed, and that's one of the ways we held the Conservatives in check.”
Given its downsides for the party, does she dislike coalition government? No, she says: “Coalition is helpful to a democracy that doesn't think red and blue.” Rather, the way Britain thinks and speaks about coalition is problematic. “The discourse about 'betrayal'... is unhelpful.... but this is also because this is the first coalition in living memory and people haven't quite got over the hurdle. It'll come.”
Great British Liberals past and present:
[gallery ids="30407,30408,30409,30410,30411,30412"]
What about the party's longer-term prospects? Immigration is one issue on which the Lib Dems increasingly stand apart from the other major parties. As David Cameron and Theresa May chase after Ukip, and Labour rushes to change its open-door stance, Clegg has made a series of boldly pro-immigration interventions, describing the Lib Dems as “the only real internationalist party.” For all that one might admire Clegg's courage, is this an area in which the party is simply out of step with public opinion, with a YouGov poll in the last issue of Prospectshowing that a majority think recent immigration hasn't been good for the country? “I suspect that people's views would change when they started to see a problem with nurses [and] other clinical health professionals in our system—the figures in the health service for people coming to work from abroad are quite stark” says Brinton, for whom the NHS is a personal priority—she was health spokesperson for her party in the Lords until the end of last year. Figures from the Health and Social Care Information Centre last year showed that 11 per cent of NHS and community health service staff were not British.
And what about Europe? Her party is the proud party of “in;” how would they run a future campaign to stem the growing Eurosceptic tide? “My first experience campaigning was in the '75 referendum... and the most important part of that was the business sector... I think the really encouraging thing has been some of our large business organisations saying that it would be a disaster if we left the EU, and I think that is going to be the big game changer.”
Conventional wisdom and the evidence of some national polls would have it that Nick Clegg's catastrophic change of heart on tuition fees trashed the party's previously healthy student support base. But Brinton insists party campaigners speaking to students find them less hostile than one might imagine. That said, she admits the fees decision hasn't made student campaigning a picnic (“I just wish they'd called it a graduate tax when it was introduced, life would be so much easier”). “What I would say to older students... who are the ones most anxious for those students coming behind them,” she says, “is that the students that they were worried about... actually have a much better deal than they did under the Labour arrangements, because they have access to scholarships, fee waivers and bursaries.” Polls don't yet suggest much sympathy for the party among students—a February poll by YouthSight found just 7 per cent of students planned to vote Lib Dem (down from almost half before the last election.)
Brinton is adamant that the party has not only negotiated coalition successfully, but it has maintained its core principles while doing so: “We're not authoritarian, we trust people. That is the fundamental difference between us and the other two main parties,” she says. While some of the pre-2010 faithful would baulk at the notion there has been no shift in the party's ideals, Brinton's point is that interventions they have made in coalition have often been aimed at liberalising Conservative policy. "We want to give power back to the people," she says, and gives reforms which have given people more control over pensions as one example. She cites the party's rising membership—after a drop following the last general election, it increased from 42,501 in 2012 to over 44,500 in 2014—as evidence that people understand that it is both “realistic about what coalition stands for” and “is principled about the key things that it's trying to do.”
Most of all, Brinton thinks there is a very important place for liberalism (small l) in British politics. “One of the infuriating things about America has been the Neo Con turning of liberalism into a bad word, and there are echoes of it here sometimes as well,” she says. “People think”—she puts on a harrumphing voice like a retired colonel—“'at the current time we should just be forcing [laws] through... liberalism: there's a time for it and it's not now.'”
Genuinely incensed, she adds: “Actually, there is a time for it, and it is now, and some people need to stand up and say it.” Many in her party would have applauded the speech. It remains to be seen whether the wider country will show the same enthusiasm at the ballot box.
“I'm going to quote John Stewart Mill at you: 'women have to stir up the zeal of women themselves'”
This is the second time Baroness Sal Brinton, new President of the Liberal Democrats, has referred to Britain's most famous liberal during our interview—in this case, to describe how she wants to advance the cause of women and minorities in the party. Earlier she told me that the “fairer society” portion of her party's “stronger economy, fairer society” election strapline echoes Mill's principles of liberalism. Brinton, 59, a Lib Dem peer since 2011, runs the party's leadership programme. She was elected to her new position by a substantial margin in a three-way race last year. If the role's last occupant Tim Farron—now considered a front runner in any future leadership contest—is anything to go by, you'll be seeing a lot more of her. The daughter of a proud Tory, she became a member of the Liberal party in 1974—in part to help campaign for an “in” vote on the UK's last European referendum—and is steeped in the philosophical and political traditions of her party.
But that party looks to be in trouble. According to the British Election Study, the Lib Dems could lose all but one of their MPs come May. In the estimation of five other major election forecasters, they could be looking at anything from 16-29 MPs, down from the 57 they won last time. They've slumped from 23 per cent of the vote in 2010 to around 9 per cent support in most polls. Are things as bad as they seem? Will the Lib Dems face a wipeout at the election? And, whether they do or not, is there a future for them longer-term in a Britain of anti-immigration politics and euroscepticism?
Brinton believes the party is far from a spent force. Having spent her first weeks in office travelling the country speaking to activists and candidates, she says their experience of talking to voters suggests that things aren't as bad as they appear. “The best moment [so far],” she says of her presidential role, which she has occupied for just six weeks at the time of our interview, “was last Saturday, sitting in a room with 30 of our candidates in the North West.” She laughs: “they clearly haven't read the polls.”
Most notably, one recent poll suggested that Nick Clegg might lose his seat, Sheffield Hallam. Brinton is very keen to emphasise that she is “not worried about Nick and his seat,” but concedes that if he did lose it, the party would be in “an interesting position.” She points out that they would also be without a Deputy Leader, as the current occupant of the role, Sir Malcolm Bruce, is standing down at the election. “The role of the President” in that situation, she says, “is to get the parliamentary party together and to find an acting leader... I see it very much as we need something just to tide us through.” Are there any potential candidates? “We have some very good MPs, of course we have strong candidates. I'm not going to name names.” She wouldn't stand for the role herself, she says, so would be occupied only with ensuring the contest runs well.
Any coalition negotiations, she says, would not be affected: “we're clear... that the party has to own coalition when we go into it. So it's never just going to be a question about 'who's going to take over from Nick and then decide what's going to happen...' we're a democratic party, we've got a team that's going to do the negotiations, our federal committees, and the wider membership, who will also have a say.”
Besides, Brinton thinks, many potential voters will be swayed when they're made aware of what the Lib Dems as a party, rather than the coalition government as a whole, have spent five years doing. She won't give specific predictions, but thinks the party's position will be stronger after the election than is often assumed—not unlikely, given the hyperbolic assumption that the Lib Dems are "over" among the general public. Her party claims responsibility for boosting the number of apprentices by 85 per cent, and Brinton says this is an achievement that can be tangibly communicated to people around the country by pointing out how many new apprenticeships there are in their local area. Several commentators—including Peter Kellner in Prospect—have argued individual Lib Dem MPs remain more popular than their party, and could benefit from a formidable local activist base. Brinton agrees: “our PPCs [prospective parliamentary candidates] are used to knocking on doors all year round,” she says, “finding out what their communities want. That's a real strength.”
As for the future, the party's five “priorities” for another five years of coalition—themes which the Lib Dems would push in any potential coalition negotiations including key education promises and a commitment to balancing the budget fairly—are “chiming on the doorstep,” she says. She argues they are are a useful middle way between assuming that the party will form a majority government—like the Tories and Labour do—and setting red lines in advance, which she says is unhelpful.
Still, they've a tough fight ahead. Brinton knows about hard campaigning from personal experience: she twice stood in the three-way marginal seat of Watford, losing once to Labour (in 2005) and once to the Tories (in 2010.) What did she learn? “In a really hotly contested seat, the air war [the battle for national media attention] is as tough to fight as the ground war,” she says. “It's tricky for any party when there's something that's beginning to chime [nationally] that at a local level you can't respond to... such as in Watford in 2010, at the very last minute, David Cameron saying if you vote Lib Dem you will get... Gordon Brown,” she says, “we could see it drifting away in those last two or three days.” This "vote x, get y" strategy is something which could have an unpredictable impact on any party come May, given its popularity with strategists today—in Scotland, for example, both Labour and the Tories have claimed that a vote for the SNP will get you the other party.
The media is a battleground in which the Lib Dems still struggle to be heard. In the original proposals for TV debates from the broadcasters, Clegg would have been excluded from the top-level debate between Cameron and Miliband. Clegg is attempting to capitalise on the subsequent row over formats with an offer to appear in a one-on-one TV debate with Ed Miliband. The “air war” in the long campaign so far has been dominated by the two main parties retreating back to a traditional binary fight on home turf—the economy, the NHS, big business, the unions. The third party—and second party of government—have had limited coverage by comparison. As the junior half of a coalition, many of their achievements have involved intensive negotiation to secure small but significant changes to legislation. Brinton gives the “slightly techy” example of Lib Dem-backed amendments to the former Secretary of State for Health Andrew Lansley's NHS reforms. Her party claims responsibility for new legislation ensuring NHS commissioning is focused on the quality of services, rather than the lowest possible cost. “It may not be particularly visible but it's actually substantially changed what was proposed, and that's one of the ways we held the Conservatives in check.”
Given its downsides for the party, does she dislike coalition government? No, she says: “Coalition is helpful to a democracy that doesn't think red and blue.” Rather, the way Britain thinks and speaks about coalition is problematic. “The discourse about 'betrayal'... is unhelpful.... but this is also because this is the first coalition in living memory and people haven't quite got over the hurdle. It'll come.”
Great British Liberals past and present:
[gallery ids="30407,30408,30409,30410,30411,30412"]
What about the party's longer-term prospects? Immigration is one issue on which the Lib Dems increasingly stand apart from the other major parties. As David Cameron and Theresa May chase after Ukip, and Labour rushes to change its open-door stance, Clegg has made a series of boldly pro-immigration interventions, describing the Lib Dems as “the only real internationalist party.” For all that one might admire Clegg's courage, is this an area in which the party is simply out of step with public opinion, with a YouGov poll in the last issue of Prospectshowing that a majority think recent immigration hasn't been good for the country? “I suspect that people's views would change when they started to see a problem with nurses [and] other clinical health professionals in our system—the figures in the health service for people coming to work from abroad are quite stark” says Brinton, for whom the NHS is a personal priority—she was health spokesperson for her party in the Lords until the end of last year. Figures from the Health and Social Care Information Centre last year showed that 11 per cent of NHS and community health service staff were not British.
And what about Europe? Her party is the proud party of “in;” how would they run a future campaign to stem the growing Eurosceptic tide? “My first experience campaigning was in the '75 referendum... and the most important part of that was the business sector... I think the really encouraging thing has been some of our large business organisations saying that it would be a disaster if we left the EU, and I think that is going to be the big game changer.”
Conventional wisdom and the evidence of some national polls would have it that Nick Clegg's catastrophic change of heart on tuition fees trashed the party's previously healthy student support base. But Brinton insists party campaigners speaking to students find them less hostile than one might imagine. That said, she admits the fees decision hasn't made student campaigning a picnic (“I just wish they'd called it a graduate tax when it was introduced, life would be so much easier”). “What I would say to older students... who are the ones most anxious for those students coming behind them,” she says, “is that the students that they were worried about... actually have a much better deal than they did under the Labour arrangements, because they have access to scholarships, fee waivers and bursaries.” Polls don't yet suggest much sympathy for the party among students—a February poll by YouthSight found just 7 per cent of students planned to vote Lib Dem (down from almost half before the last election.)
Brinton is adamant that the party has not only negotiated coalition successfully, but it has maintained its core principles while doing so: “We're not authoritarian, we trust people. That is the fundamental difference between us and the other two main parties,” she says. While some of the pre-2010 faithful would baulk at the notion there has been no shift in the party's ideals, Brinton's point is that interventions they have made in coalition have often been aimed at liberalising Conservative policy. "We want to give power back to the people," she says, and gives reforms which have given people more control over pensions as one example. She cites the party's rising membership—after a drop following the last general election, it increased from 42,501 in 2012 to over 44,500 in 2014—as evidence that people understand that it is both “realistic about what coalition stands for” and “is principled about the key things that it's trying to do.”
Most of all, Brinton thinks there is a very important place for liberalism (small l) in British politics. “One of the infuriating things about America has been the Neo Con turning of liberalism into a bad word, and there are echoes of it here sometimes as well,” she says. “People think”—she puts on a harrumphing voice like a retired colonel—“'at the current time we should just be forcing [laws] through... liberalism: there's a time for it and it's not now.'”
Genuinely incensed, she adds: “Actually, there is a time for it, and it is now, and some people need to stand up and say it.” Many in her party would have applauded the speech. It remains to be seen whether the wider country will show the same enthusiasm at the ballot box.
