Why Liberal Democrats should watch New Zealand's government-making

The vast majority of Liberal Democrats support the coalition with the Conservatives, even if they have deep reservations about some of the government’s policies. But I still hear suggestions that it may have been wiser to enter an agreement to support the Conservatives on votes of confidence and supply, presumably in return for some kind of shared policy agenda.  Such a deal, the argument goes, would enable the Lib Dems to preserve more of their independence and identity, avoid being held accountable for decisions with which they disagree, and gain credit for particular policy gains. This is, of course, an option for  future hung parliaments.  (Over the last day or so, I have seen some tweets arguing that, in light of David Cameron’s refusal to sign the new EU treaty on fiscal union, the Lib Dems should switch to a confidence and supply arrangement sooner rather than later.) 

It wouldn't remove all the potential threats from working with larger parties, however.  My home country, New Zealand, has used the mixed member proportional system (MMP) at each general election since 1996.  No party has won a parliamentary majority on its own – though prime minister John Key’s (centre right) National Party almost managed it in the general election on 26 November.  As a result, the country has seen various types of governing arrangement involving third and minor parties.   But look how the minor parties have fared.

• In 1996, New Zealand First (conservative-populist) won 13.3 per cent of the party vote and went into coalition with National.  New Zealand First later split and crashed to 4.3 per cent in 1999.
• Following the 1999 election, the (left-leaning) Alliance, with 7.7 percent of the party vote, formed a minority coalition government with Labour (social democrats / social liberals).  The Alliance subsequently split into two parties – the Alliance (“bolsheviks”) and Progressives (“mensheviks”). The Alliance won just 1.3 per cent of the vote in 2002.
• After the 2002 election, the Progressives formed a minority coalition government with Labour.   They went from 1.7 per cent in 2002 to 1.2 per cent in 2005 and 0.9 per cent in 2008.
•  Having won 6.7 per cent of the party vote in 2002, United Future (centrist) pledged to support Labour on matters of confidence and supply, in return to specific policy commitments.  In 2005, their vote slumped to 2.7 per cent and, after they signed another confidence and supply arrangement with Labour, 0.9 per cent and one constituency seat in 2008.  Then, they entered into a confidence and supply deal with the incoming National government.  At this year’s election, United Future held their one seat, because of the long-serving MP’s exemplary constituency record -- and also because of a less than subtle endorsement from Key who suspected, correctly as it turned out, that he may again need a few support partners.

• NZ First won 5.7 per cent in 2005 and entered into a confidence and supply agreement with Labour.  In 2008, they won 4.1 per cent, below the 5 per cent threshold and because they won no constituency seats, ended up with no MPs.
• After the 2008 election, (market liberal) ACT’s five MPs entered into a confidence and supply agreement with National, which contained some of their policy priorities.  This year, the party won just 1.07 per cent of the vote and their sole successful candidate only won his constituency seat after a controversial endorsement from Key.   The party now seems to exist on life support. 
•  Less predictably, the Maori Party also made a confidence and supply deal with the new National government in 2008, to secure of their policy agenda.  But the party split and, after campaigning on the basis of what it achieved in alliance with National, dropped from 5 seats in 2008 down to 3 this year, and lost nearly half its share of the vote. 

Well, so much for the myth that PR systems enable the tail to wag the dog!   As the veteran political commentator Colin James once said, the tails just keep getting smaller.

Earlier this year, Tim Bale, a political scientist at Sussex University, described what has happened to the New Zealand parties as the “black widow effect”:

The large spider, after having lured the small spider into a trap, does not kill it but lets it escape, at the price of leaving part of itself behind.

Some of the minor parties have been accomplices in their own near-destruction.  During the 2008-11 parliament, ACT was racked by splits, scandals, a leadership coup and ended up with none of its sitting MPs seeking re-election.  Even so, Bale’s description is all too accurate. The minor parties were all overshadowed by whichever major party they worked with, and were held responsible for the government’s perceived shortcomings.  The black widow effect struck, regardless of whether minor parties had entered into a fully fledged coalition or a confidence and supply agreement complete with disputes processes and provisions for agreements to differ with the senior partner. 

And, whenever realpolitik pushes and opportunity knocks, they will do deals.  With 59 seats in the 121-member parliament, Key needs to assemble a durable majority.  This week, ACT and United Future both concluded confidence and supply agreements with National, as well as signing up to National’s “action plan”.   The two single MP parties both did well.  ACT’s John Banks has scored some spectacular policy wins for his shattered party, including a legal cap on future government spending and a commitment to establish charter schools that compete with existing schools, with funding on a per child basis.  He will be a minister outside cabinet.  (For the full agreement, click here.)

Peter Dunne of United Future has secured Key’s agreement to progress flexible superannuation and some outdoor recreation issues.  He will remain a minister outside cabinet.  (For the full agreement, click here.) Both agreements are drafted so as to clearly brand the minor parties’ priorities.  But then, so were the parties’  agreements with National in 2008.  Once again, the support parties will need to market their policy wins and show potential voters that they have made a difference -- just as they would if their MPs were in cabinet, uner a UK-style coalition.

Key still needs more third party insurance, in case ACT implodes or his own backbenchers become rebellious.  The obvious option is the Maori Party, which has unfinished policy business.  But the bruised party is thinking carefully how it will work with National this time around.   Over the past few days, it has been holding some 20 hui (assemblies) around the country to consider the options: memorandum of understanding (a commitment to work together on specific policy issues; confidence and supply; “relationship agreement” with confidence and supply – and opposition.  Overlain with all this has been talk of a partial leadership coup.  And there has been plenty of advice on hand about what sort of bargain they should strike.

We’ll soon see where the Maori Party ends up, but a new confidence and supply deal is on the cards.  I’m not sure their process for  deciding what to do in a hung parliament would be very helpful to the Lib Dems.  Where the Maori Party holds hui to thrash out the options, the Lib Dems could use regional conferences  -- if they wished.  But what seems to work in New Zealand may not be so easily transposed to the UK.  New Zealanders now take prolonged post-election negotiations between parties in their strides partly because, apart from what happened in 1996, it’s been clear on election night who will be the prime minister.  Based on the experience of 2010,  British markets, media and voters demand a much quicker settlement.

Finally, compare the fates of New Zealand’s black widowed parties with that of the Greens.  In 2002 and 2005, they promised to abstain on votes of confidence and supply, and effectively gave the Labour-led government a majority. They did ok, scoring 5.3 per cent in 2005 and 6.7 per cent in 2008.  In the 2008-11 parliament, the Greens had a “memorandum of understanding” with the National government, to take forward  shared policy initiatives, for which the small party was able to take credit. After running a highly successful campaign, the Greens went on to break the 10 per cent barrier at this election, their best showing ever.

The Greens, having spent years on the opposition benches, courted suburban voters with a "green growth" programme and kept a narrow opening to working with National, in an attempt to gain more credibility, more seats and more leverage.   They may  have another “memorandum of understanding” with Key, but getting any closer to National, when they don’t really need to, would split the party and fracture its support base.  The Greens will surely have their time in the sun as the indispensable junior coalition partner in the next Labour-led government.  The black widow effect may well strike them too, later on.  But they’ll take the chance if it comes.  After all, political parties exist to gain power and make a difference.

 

 

Posted via email from Neil Stockley's posterous

"Competence with a conscience" - how well is Nick Clegg's narrative working?

“Competence with a conscience” sounds like a good, comfortable narrative for the Liberal Democrats.  But the voters don’t seem to be buying it.

 

Nick Clegg’s narrative to market the Liberal Democrats and our role in government was summed up in his speech at the National Liberal Club in May. The speech marked the first anniversary of the coalition’s formation.

 

At the next election, we will say that we are demonstrably more credible on the economy than Labour, and more committed at heart to fairness than the Conservatives. I am confident that by showing we can combine economic soundness with social justice – competence with a conscience – we will be an even more formidable political force in the future.

 

These themes are elucidated in Nick’s foreword to the Facing the Future paper, to be considered by the party conference this week.

 

For the conference season, Populus has produced its latest findings on how the parties are perceived by voters.  The results aren’t exactly encouraging for the Liberal Democrats. A useful summary comes from Anthony Wells of UK Polling Report:

 

Historically these Populus questions tended to show that the Lib Dems had the positive party image. That is no longer the case. They have the least positive score on every measure except being for ordinary people [with 45% agreeing it applies to the Lib Dems], where they at least beat the Tories [with 30% agreeing].

 

This is very important – and very worrying.  In the run-up to the last general election, the image of “being for ordinary people not the best off” was, with a reputation for being honest, one of the party’s most positive brand assets.

 

We have often heard the argument that being in coalition would make the party more credible to voters.  Once they saw us delivering in government and taking the hard decisions, voters would take the Liberal Democrats more seriously  – the “competence” part of Nick’s desired brand.  But Anthony Wells explains:

 

On having a good team of leaders [the [Lib Dems] are on 31% (down 13 since last year), on sharing peoples’ values they are on 36% (down 5), on being honest they are at 35% (down 6), on competence they are at 31% (down 10), on party united they are at 27% (down 13), on having clear ideas they are at 31% (down 11). In most cases the party’s ratings had already dropped sharply last year following their decision to enter the coalition – these falls are on top of that.

 

Then, Wells rams the point home:

 

In summary, go back a couple of years and people tended to give the Lib Dems the benefit of the doubt, there was a tendency for people to assume they were good, honest and caring people (even if other polls also suggested people rather doubted their policies would work or they had any chance of actually winning). That positive party image took a knock after the removal of Charles Kennedy, but was on its way to recovery by 2009. Since then it has fallen through the floor.

 

 

Posted via email from Neil Stockley's posterous

The comeback cop: Brian Paddick's ground-breaking mea culpa story

Congratulations to Brian Paddick, who will be the Liberal Democrat candidate for London mayor in 2012. He is being re-used as a candidate, despite his poor campaign in 2008, when Paddick’s slogan, “a policeman, not a politician”, turned out to be all too true.

Now, in winning the Lib Dem nomination, Paddick has performed an epic feat in political storytelling. Announcing his candidacy back in June, Paddick gave us this carefully crafted mea culpa:

The 2008 campaign was a bitter and bruising experience. I had just left the police over the shooting by armed officers of the innocent Brazilian, Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell. It was a case of ‘out of the frying pan and into the fire’. I was an uptight, politically naïve ex-police officer with no experience of party campaigning or working with activists. I got a lot wrong.

The campaign slogan then was ‘Serious about London’ . . . but I was far too serious about everything. I was terrified of Punch and Judy, of Paxman and Sopel and I had unrealistic expectations of what to expect from the party. I was, quite frankly, a bit of a pain! Towards the end, particularly in the televised debates with Comedy and Tragedy, critics said I performed well, but we need a candidate who gets it right from the start. Crucially I know my enemies from last time, up close and personal! . . .

Then, Paddick developed his theme of the “new me”.

. . . So what is going to be different? A few weeks ago I was in the office of a London MP who commented on how much I had changed since 2008. I am much happier, more relaxed, more realistic and more experienced now – I have even been spotted smiling in photographs! I have spent the last three years campaigning with ordinary members, delivering ‘Good Mornings’, knocking on doors, talking to voters, addressing rallies and speaking at fundraisers. I have attended every Federal Conference since 2008 and either spoken in debates or contributed from the floor. I know the Party now. I didn’t know the Party then

I didn’t go to any of the hustings, but by a number of reliable accounts, Paddick embodied his narrative but seeming cheerier and more focussed and confident than before.

Annette Simmons has explained how “mea culpa” stories work:

When you tell a “mea culpa” story about your own mistakes first, it cheats your adversaries of the opportunity to discredit your intentions and polishes your reputation at the same time.(1)

Until Paddick’s flash of genius, the best example I knew of a “mea culpa” story in politics was the one told by Bill Clinton - the original “comeback kid” - in 1982. Two years earlier, Arkansas voters had evicted the wunderkind from the governor’s mansion. They were angry with Clinton for putting up car licence fees and for seeming out-of-touch and inaccessible. No less than the rest of America, Arkansas was racked by an economic woes and a growing sense of unease in 1980. The state’s voters were hugely disgruntled with Jimmy Carter’s administration and the political toxins spilled over to Democrats in general.

Five months before polling day, several hundred Cuban refugees broke out of their resettlement camp at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas. Not long before the election, Clinton agreed to pardon dozens of violent criminals. The Republican candidate exploited these developments to associate Clinton with a sense of disorder and disarray – and his friend in the White House.

Early in 1982, Clinton was back, seeking once again the Democratic nomination for governor. At the urging of his campaign guru Dick Morris, Clinton made two campaign adverts, one apologising for the car license fees hike and the other apologising for pardoning the violent crims.

In his biography of Bill Clinton, David Maraniss wrote that:

In the end, Clinton managed to say that he was sorry without saying that he was sorry. He did by using down-home Arkansas language. When he was growing up, Clinton said, his daddy never had to whip him twice for the same thing. If the voters gave him another chance, he said he would never make the same mistakes again. He had learned that he could not lead without listening . . .

. . . What the public saw was that Clinton was chastened. Political observers had never seen anything like it – someone announcing for governor via a thirty-second commercial, and doing so with an apology. But the strategy was apparent: By admitting his mistakes and seeking absolution before the first tough question of the race could be asked, Clinton was able to say that criticisms of his previous actions were irrelevant.(2)

As we know now, Clinton was restored to the governor’s mansion in November 1982, after bitter primary and general election campaigns. The “mea culpa” ads bombed at first, but they eventually immunised Clinton against his opponents’ attacks.

Paddick’s “mea culpa” is in a different league again. Clinton was implicitly apologising for forgetting about the people who had elected him, and for making the wrong decisions. Annette Simmons’ suggested uses of “mea culpa” stories recall occasions in which people didn’t follow their values and principles, or when they failed to take up a challenge or to seize an opportunity. But Paddick was saying sorry (sort of) for not even being competent as a candidate when he last had the chance. Astonishing.

Still, failed ex-candidates and empty suits may want to think carefully before trying this one at home. The narrowness of Paddick’s victory suggests that other factors, such as the opportunities afforded him by “hackgate” and the August riots, were decisive too. Liberal Democrat selection campaigns for London mayor are strange beasts, as the party seeks out a mega-campaigner who can rally the troops and pull in more assembly members by his/her coat-tails. This time, the dynamics were mixed up even more by the entry into the race of the former Montgomeryshire MP, Lembit Opik. (In defeat, Opik had his own "comeback narrative" in which he compared himself to Nelson Mandela, but that’s just too dreadful to discuss in detail.)

For now, I’m left wondering once again why Liberal Democrats are so skilled at telling stories to win internal party elections [click here], but so poor at telling stories to “people out there”. Maybe Brian Paddick’s campaign for 2012 will confound me again.

(1) Annette Simmons, Whoever Tells the Best Story WINS (Amacom, 2007) p.70

(2) David Maraniss, First in His Class: a Biography of Bill Clinton (Simon & Schuster, 1995), pp. 398-399

Political narratives - a few basics

If you're like me you hear the term 'narrative' all over the place these days: "What's the political narrative?" "We need a compelling narrative." "Their narrative is unclear or even non-existent." I'm certain most people have little idea what is really meant by the term.

That pertinent observation comes from Shawn Callahan of Anecdote. He has written a great post that clears up much of the confusion around what a narrative is.

Replying to an article by John Hagel, Shawn says:

A narrative must have a narrative structure. That is, it is told as a story . . . For example, John comes close to giving us narrative structure when describing the Christian narrative when he says, "people are born in sin but have an opportunity for redemption through a Savior." This is a statement rather than the narrative but anyone familiar with Christian ways will immediately fill in this statement with the stories that help us make sense of it. The narrative version of this statement is simply "people are born in sin but THEN have an opportunity for redemption through a Savior." Two events connected. Without the 'then' it's not a narrative. Narratives, like stories, are made from events. Their connections infer causality.

These observations are very relevant to politics. To make a political narrative stick, you need a causality, a ‘then’. “Free, fair and green” is not a narrative. It’s a (bad) slogan. So is “muscular liberalism”. Don’t get me started again on “alarm clock Britain”.

“Liberal Democrats believe in healthcare available to all, free at point of delivery, based on clinical need, not ability to pay”

is not a narrative either. It’s a statement of belief.

Here’s an outline of what an accompanying narrative would look like.

In March 2011, the Liberal Democrat spring conference voted overwhelmingly for more accountability and openness in commissioning, to reject turning the health service into for safeguards against cherry-picking by private sector providers… and against the undermining of local NHS services. Then, Nick Clegg insisted on scrapping the requirement that Monitor, the NHS regulator, compels hospitals to compete with each other. Clegg has since put himself on collision course with the Tory health secretary, Andrew Lansley by saying that a clause in the health and social care bill encouraging "any qualified provider" to take over services from the NHS should be radically rethought or dropped.

Tell that story according to your political tastes. Nick Clegg the fearless fighter for the NHS, a liberal creation. Or Nick Clegg, the potential wrecker of the coalition.

After explaining the difference between a description of the narrative (which is a statement) and the narrative itself, Shawn goes on to stress:

Narratives require a narrative structure. Story structure provides a narrative with its power.

He reminds us about the key elements of a story:

Stories are not merely about plots and action. Stories are about people, events and something unanticipated (Jerome Bruner). Jay Callahan, the celebrated professional storyteller, puts it another way: stories are about people, events and trouble. You just can't have a story without characters.

My Nick Clegg / NHS example has characters – the deputy PM, the Lib Dem conference and the health secretary. The events were the Lib Dem spring conferences and Nick Clegg’s subsequent demands to change the NHS reforms.

Other political narratives have been based on characters, “good” versus “bad”. Ronald Reagan versus the evil empire. Margaret Thatcher versus the Argentinean generals and, later, the miners. Tony Blair versus Gordon Brown - -though most people had trouble working out who was the “good” and who was the “bad”. “The west” versus Al Queda.

In each case, something important and quite unanticipated, if not troublesome, took place. Reagan held summits with Gorbachev and called on the Soviet Union to “tear down this wall”. Thatcher had the Falklands War and the miners strike. Blair vs. Brown seemed like an unending psychodrama, yet there it had many signposts and highlights along the way. 9/11 and the killing of Osama Bin Laden were two ends of an especially grim story arc.

But there are four important features that mark political narratives out from business and other narratives. First, the story and the events must affect people and their world views. They must evoke an emotional reaction. The emotions are usually either hope or fear. They can also be compassion, empathy, patriotism, loyalty and other feelings of identity and belonging, anger, contempt or nostalgia.

Second, political storytellers should explain the world to their listeners and enable them to understand their place within it, to reframe their plans for the future. “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem,” said Ronald Reagan in his first inaugural address.

Margaret Thatcher blamed previous Labour and Tory governments for their lax fiscal and monetary policies, as well as the trade union leaders who had brought the country to its knees, for Britain’s economic woes. Her narrative was about standing up for Britain, its people and its aspirations, and against their enemies, both within and without. The characters and how people felt about them were always clear. So was the underlying morality.

During the 2010 general election campaign, Nick Clegg struck a chord when he decried “the old politics” and blamed “the old parties” for letting Britain down. He, too, was telling a morality tale. But he was also singing new versions of old tunes by David Steel and Paddy Ashdown.

Third, a true political storyteller will give people hope – or at least, reassurance about themselves and their future. S/he will explain what happens next and why and how the story will have a happy ending or, at least, a next stage that is good. There may not be an “unanticipated (past) event” but the clever political storyteller will make this future story bigger, better and, above all, more plausible than a simple recitation of their election promises. Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America” tv spot in 1984 is still hard to beat. But Barack Obama’s “Yes, we can change” rhetoric from 2008 is up there too.

Fourth, politicians need to remember who owns the narrative. It’s not them. Here’s one of Shawn’s most acute insights:

Narratives emerge from a combination of events and people deciding what aspects of those events they want to retell; what gets amplified. It's much like history really, an emergent process. Regardless of what we do narrative patterns will emerge and only when we are mindful of these narrative patterns will we are able to choose those patterns to nurture and the ones to disrupt. Nurturing comes from retelling stories. Disruption happens when new stories are triggered that counter the narrative. If the disruption is big enough (think Egypt) then a new narrative is born.

Politicians try to tell stories about themselves, but they are invariably overwhelmed by the stories that other people – the media especially – say about them. It’s unhappy for some of us, but Nick Clegg is a classic example. He was the hero of the 2010 campaign and now, the political villain of 2011. I wonder what kind of “disruption” will create a new narrative for him.

Liberal Democrats: a "no-issue party"?

The latest issue of The Economist features a brief article about the woes of Germany’s liberal Free Democrat Party (FDP). The FDP has fared disastrously in opinion polls and state elections since entering a coalition with Angela Merkel’s CDU in 2009.

There is an obvious comparison with the Liberal Democrats, who are also in coalition with the main centre-right party here. Our opinion poll ratings have halved since last year’s general election. But we should not read too much across from the FDP’s experience. German politics is very different. They use a form of proportional voting, for a start and the “market liberal” FDP are hardly soulmates to the various stripes of “social liberals” who dominate our party.

Yet I was struck by one observation in the Economist article:

When Mrs Merkel vetoed [their promise of unaffordable tax cuts], the FDP went from a one-issue party to a “no-issue party,” notes an academic.

The Liberal Democrats are also looking like a “no-issue-party”. MPs, activists and members are interested in a lot of issues, from jobs to Libya, from banks to pupil premiums. But the voters don’t seem to be able to find a quick and easy way to get a handle on us. Last week, YouGov asked voters which party would do the best job of handling a number of top problems facing the country. For each one, the Lib Dems were in single figures, well behind both Labour and the Conservatives. On the economy, which voters see as the top issue facing the country, just 4% saw us as the best party. The result is consistent with YouGov polls since the general election.

These poor issue ratings can’t be explained solely by the fact that the Lib Dems are part of the coalition. The British Election Study (BES) found that during the 2010 campaign, the party did not win any of the arguments on the issues that mattered most to voters.

The question is: how can the Liberal Democrats – in coalition – “get an issue” in time for the next general election?

The answer depends on whether the party’s ministers in government will have some defining achievements, on an issue of some importance to the public, for which they can claim credit and become popular. The key is to tell people compelling stories. One sort of story would have the Lib Dems as the heroes, winning the policy. The other would show how their policy wins worked for ordinary people.

The signs have not been encouraging, until very recently. But Lib Dem ministers have started to assert themselves over the NHS changes and they are bringing forward new proposals for taxes on expensive homes.

They are in the correct political space. In recent years, the Liberal Democrats have scored the highest of all the parties for being “on the side of ordinary people, not the best off”. Last month, Populus found this was still the attribute that voters (34%) were mostly likely to say was true of the Liberal Democrats. (Note, however, that 52% thought that the statement described Labour accurately.)

But there is still a long way to go.

A masterclass in political storytelling, courtesy of Shirley Williams

I was in the hall during the great NHS debate at the Liberal Democrats’ spring conference in Sheffield last month, but have only recently tracked down and listened to a recording.

I suggest that you should too, because in the space of three minutes, Baroness Shirley Williams gave the conference a masterclass in political communications. (Click here – her speech is about 26 minutes in.)

Whether she realised it or not, Baroness Williams followed the key steps set out in Stephen Denning’s book, The Secret Language of Leadership (John Wiley and Sons, 2007). But she built on them as well.

Baroness Williams gained the audience’s attention, and not just because she is one of the party’s icons. Here’s her opening:

“Let me begin by saying, because we are being covered by the media, that nothing I am trying to do about health is intended is intended to weaken Nick [Clegg] and his fellow ministers and the coalition. I think that Nick and our fellow ministers have done a remarkable job and I very proud of them and I am very pleased to support them in every way I can. [applause]

“But we cannot be bound by those issues that have never been agreed by us and in particular where the outcome of the policy is specifically different from what we thought it was going to be.”

Baroness Williams spoke to the audience’s perceived ‘problem’ just as Denning advises. In this case, it was the NHS and Social Care Bill that departs from the terms of the coalition agreement. But Baroness Williams also provided her comrades with a sense of reassurance. Yes, Liberal Democrats, we can drop a depth charge under Nick Clegg’s bow, but without being disloyal. Right from the start, there was a simple, underlying morality: the government is not keeping faith with us, so we have a duty to keep faith with ourselves.

Denning’s second and third steps are to stimulate the desire for change and to reinforce that desire with reasons. The body of Baroness Williams’s speech encouraged the conference to do what they already wanted to do – vote down the Bill in its current form and demand big improvements. She urged the conference to reject a specific change. Yet she still applied Denning’s key principles.

Baroness Williams told a springboard story:

"There’s a long history of the private sector cherrypicking the easiest patients. What that leaves out is the most expensive patients . . .

"No names, no pack drill, but I certainly know of distinguished private hospitals in London that pass the difficult cases to the nearest NHS hospital. That would wreck the whole purpose of a health service that is supposed to be open and equal to all.

The reinforcement (which actually came before the springboard story, but so what?) came as she explained how the changes would work in practice.

"We did not expect a massive reorganisation and one which will fall within a period when many of our fellow citizens are worried about whether they will keep their jobs and how they will pay for petrol and food. This is not the moment to embark of the reorganisation of the most treasured public service in the whole of the UK.

"A combination of this reoganisation and . . . huge cuts, efficiency savings, of no less than £20 billion by the NHS over next four years, to add on to that reorganisation . . . is just beyond the imagination.”

And:

“The accountability structures of the new proposals are lousy. The GP consortia will be able to meet in private. They will not have to keep minutes. They will not have to be transparent to the public . . .”

All this may read like a list of points and arguments. But, thanks to Baroness Williams, the conference lived a bad a story: that after massive cuts and a complex reorganisation, we will be left with accountable GP constortia making decision about commissioning behind closed doors and private hospitals cherrypicking patients.

Perhaps that was the story they wanted to hear. One of the other speakers was not far wrong when he described Shirley Williams as “having the sanctity for the Lib Dems of a cross between the Queen Mother and Dame Vera Lynn”. And Liberal Democrats see themselves (ourselves) as the party of conscience and reform, the progenitors of the NHS.

Baroness Williams finished with an appeal to this self-image: the party’s story about itself. She quoted a letter from a concerned citizen and challenged the conference to:

". . . stand up and be counted . . .

. . . in so doing we will strengthen both the coalition and the identity of this party, for which have all worked for so long and with such devotion”.

Yes, the story had a happy ending: together, we can make the coalition better.

Footnote: I appreciate that Shirley Williams is one of the Liberal Democrats’ most experienced politicians and that she has long been recognised as a gifted communicator. (She was first elected as an MP more than two years before Nick Clegg was born.) But I still can’t understand why so few senior Liberal Democrats follow her example and try to use straightforward storytelling techniques to put their messages across.

A fairer, more democratic, greener, liberal country

via youtube.com

In this short film from Channel 4′s “Political Slot” Tim Farron, Floella Benjamin, Chris Huhne, Paddy Ashdown and Steve Webb talk about what Liberal Democrats are doing to make Britain a fairer, more democratic, greener, liberal country.

You may like to look at my comment, on Liberal Democrat Voice. [click here]

Posted via email from Neil Stockley's posterous

Lib Dem voters now come from the "centre", not the "centre-left": a quick update

There’s new evidence that Liberal Democrat voters are more likely to have “centrist” political views than was the case before the coalition was formed.

It comes from Times Populus poll for February, details of which are now available. Voters were asked to judge how well or badly they thought the coalition government is doing on “cutting back on public spending in the right way”. Liberal Democrat voters were more prepared than others to give the coalition government the benefit of the doubt.

· 14% of all voters gave positive responses, and 16% of Liberal Democrat voters did so.

· 42% gave neutral responses and 55% of Liberal Democrat voters did so.

· 42% gave negative responses but only 29% of Liberal Democrat voters did so.

As for “sorting out the economy”:

· 21% of all voters were positive, as were 21% of Liberal Democrat voters.

· 46% gave neutral responses and 54% of Liberal Democrat voters did so.

· 32% gave negative responses but only 26% of Liberal Democrat voters did so.

YouGov polling data suggests that those who voted Liberal Democrat in 2010 but have since bolted are more likely to come from the left hand of the political spectrum than those who have stuck with the party. The new Populus data gives this theory some backing, but we shouldn’t get too carried away. For instance, 48% of all previous Lib Dem backers gave negative ratings to the coalition’s record on public spending but only 11% were positive.

All this comes with a health warning: the subsamples of Liberal Democrat voters, whether now or in 2010, were very small.

The Liberal Democrats and their "centrist rump" of voters

The latest issue of Progress – the journal of the “New Labour pressure group which aims to promote a radical and progressive politics for the 21st century” – features an article by Professor Paul Whiteley of Essex University, in which he summarises the key findings from a large-scale survey of party members.

Professor Whiteley and his colleagues found four dimensions or clusters of grassroots attitudes in the data. These are: “lifestyle liberalism”; “equality and redistribution”; “free-market liberalism”; and a strongly pro-EU stance. But he shows that when there’s a tension, the egalitarian impulse will win out. We are, at heart, a social liberal party.

Whiteley concludes that the party’s dismal poll ratings will tie the Liberal Democrats to the coalition, but that over time, both coalition parties will veto policies from the other side that their supporters oppose, most notably on reducing public spending and taxes.

This situation is a recipe for policy gridlock as the next election approaches.

Professor Whiteley may be correct. But then he may not. The coalition government has proved several times already that making political prophecies is a hazardous business, especially when the leaderships of both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats are prepared to act in ways that are so detached from the expectations of their grassroots.

What I found more interesting are the signs of a disconnect since the party went into coalition between core views and instincts of Liberal Democrat members (as set out in Professor Whiteley’s article) and those of Liberal Democrat voters.

Here’s a signpost. On Monday, UK Polling Report commented on a new YouGov poll asking voters where they placed the parties on the ‘left-right’ spectrum.

Until the general election the Liberal Democrats had consistently been perceived as a left-of-centre party, scoring between -9 and -17 on the left-right scale. They are now viewed as being almost exactly in the centre, with a score of +1. Nick Clegg himself is now seen as firmly right-of-centre with a score of +10.

As is well known, the pool of Liberal Democrat voters is smaller than it was at the 2010 general election. Current Lib Dem voters are more likely now to see themselves as being “in the middle” of the political spectrum.

The data also gives us firm evidence of what most people assumed anyway – that the votes the Liberal Democrats have lost since the election have been their more left wing voters, leaving them with a somewhat more centrist rump. “Lost Liberal Democrats” (those who voted Lib Dem in 2010 but wouldn’t tomorrow) place themselves on average at -20 on the left-right scale. Those who have remained loyal place themselves on average at -6.

We now have some clues as to what this “centrist rump” of Liberal Democrat voters think and expect of the government.

First, Liberal Democrat voters appear to be not much more likely than most to be concerned about the cuts to benefits, or changes to social housing. In November, Ipsos MORI asked voters what they thought of the coalition government’s spending cuts.

Over half of the public (54%) were concerned about cuts to benefits but a significant minority (44%) were not concerned. 52% of Liberal Democrat voters were concerned and 47% - about the same ratio - were not concerned.

On changes to social housing, it was a similar story: 52% of voters were concerned, but 42% were not concerned. By comparison, 51% of Liberal Democrat voters were concerned and 47% were not concerned. (Note that the sub sample was very small.)

On university fees, however, 81% of Lib Dem voters were concerned about what the government had announced, and only 19% were not concerned. Amongst all voters the breakdown was 67% to 32%. But whether this issue is really about using tax revenues to reduce poverty (as per the question on the egalitarian dimension in Professor Whiteley’s survey), is open to argument.

Second, when it comes to the spending cuts, Liberal Democrat voters have been more prepared than average voters to give the government the benefit of the doubt. In October, just after the Spending Review was delivered, Populus found that Liberal Democrat voters were more likely than other voters to see the cuts as “fair” and to agree that the government was “getting the right balance between tax rises and spending cuts”. (Still, it must be said that Lib Dem voters were evenly spread on these questions). And Lib Dem voters were much more likely than voters to agree that the government’s decisions were putting the economy on a stronger footing for the long term.

Last month, after the VAT rise took effect, YouGov asked if the government’s cuts will be good or bad for the economy. Only 38% of voters thought they would be good, compared to 47% who thought they will be bad. Liberal Democrat voters thought they would be good, by a margin of 46% to 35%.

But Liberal Democrat supporters are swinging against the cuts, albeit more slowly than the electorate as a whole. Between October and December last year, it was roughly even between voters thinking the cuts would be good and those thinking they would be bad. At that time, Liberal Democrat voters backed the cuts, by a two-to-one margin.

In January, 57% of voters said the cuts are being done unfairly, the highest figure that YouGov have shown so far. But Liberal Democrat voters divided evenly on that question. By comparison, in the closing months of 2010, voters tended to say that the cuts were unfair, with a plurality of Liberal Democrat supporters saying the opposite.

Third, YouGov’s surveys have shown for some months that Liberal Democrat voters are more likely than others to see the economy, education and pensions, rather than, say, health, taxes or Afghanistan, as top issues facing the country.

In the past, Liberal Democrat members’ political views have been broadly in tune with those of people who vote for the party. This was especially the case on key issues around taxing and spending. (See, for example, the work of Russell and Fieldhouse). But members and voters now have different narratives about the party.

Some Liberal Democrats will find this shift discomforting and demand a drive to regain support on the “left”. Others will see it as the opportunity to build some kind of tough, new liberal party for the next general election, and beyond. Harder heads will recognise that you can never wind back the clock, especially where voters and their perceptions are concerned. And the agendas of the ‘left of centre’ voters who backed the Lib Dems in 2010 were vague, if not nebulous. [Click here] Yet the party needs to build a bigger, broader electoral coalition than a “centrist rump” if it is to avoid an electoral wipeout. What we’ll surely need is a long, determined push to gain the support of liberal-minded voters of all varieties.

Nick Clegg's rating for "competence" may vindicate his coalition strategy

Could Nick Clegg’s strategy of taking “full ownership” of the coalition's decisions – even unpopular ones – may be paying off, after all?

Earlier this month, The Independent’s Andrew Grice summed up the accepted version of Nick Clegg’s approach to the coalition thus far:

The Deputy Prime Minister is convinced that his party would reap no dividend at all if it tried to let the Conservatives take the blame for the nasty medicine needed to cure the country's economic ills.

He hopes the Liberal Democrats will eventually get a reward for facing up to hard decisions, by showing they can be trusted in Government and are no longer a wasted vote.

This strategy, which now seems to be in the process of being modified, addresses the weakest points of the Liberal Democrats’ brand. So far, however, “owning the coalition” doesn’t appear to have done the party much good. According to YouGov, in mid-December 2010, our poll ratings for being “led by people of real ability” and having “leaders [who] are prepared to take tough and unpopular decisions” were still stuck in single figures, just as they were before the general election.

It may not be as simple as that. We also need to look at public perceptions of Nick Clegg who is the most accessible symbol of the party, the embodiment of our narrative. That is especially true in this era of quasi-presidential politics.

In The House magazine (17 January 2011, p.9), Professor Paul Whiteley of the British Election Study relates how, in their monthly surveys, the BES asks people to rank each party leader on a scale that runs from 0 (very incompetent) to 10 (very competent). I can’t find an electronic version of his article or the graph, so here are his main conclusions:

Surprisingly, Nick Clegg has been in the lead on this measure for almost the whole of the period [November 2009 to November 2010]. He overtook David Cameron in the competency stakes in December 2009 and has been ahead of him ever since.

Clegg’s rating was boosted by the general election campaign and, in particular, the first of the televised debates.

But the post-election unpopularity of the Liberal Democrats, which has seen their voting support plunge to half that of their general election vote share, has not affected his competency ratings very much.

Professor Whiteley goes on to add a cautionary note, that competency is but one dimension of leadership evaluations. He says that a leader should also be seen as likeable, trustworthy and in touch with ordinary people.

On these scores, the news for Clegg is mixed. The Ipsos MORI political monitor for December 2010 found that 27% of voters thought that he was “more honest than most politicians” compared to 33% for David Cameron and 24% for Ed Miliband.

Ipsos MORI also found that 43% of voters thought that Clegg was “out of touch with ordinary people”, compared to 51% for David Cameron and 34% for Ed Miliband.

Like all polling figures, these findings need to be seen in context. First, at the time of the election, Clegg was seen as the most honest and down to earth of the three leaders, according to Ipsos MORI. So, Cameron has now overtaken him in these areas.

Second, YouGov have tracked a downward trend since the election debates in Clegg’s ratings for being “in touch with the concerns of ordinary people”, “honest” and “sticking to what he believes in”. His best score, especially with Lib Dem and Conservative voters, is for being “charismatic”. [Anthony Wells provides some useful background, including on pre- and post-debate comparisons, here.]

Third, the BES figures cited above do not show the full impact of the tuition fees debacle. Ipsos MORI have traced the plunge in perceptions of Nick Clegg’s trustworthiness in the wake of the tuition fees vote.

Professor Whiteley finishes with the following suggestion.

[To] be seen as competent gives a leader a real advantage since it wins him an audience – voters will listen to a leader who they think is competent, whereas they are likely to dismiss a leader they think is incompetent.

I agree with Professor Whiteley, but I would add that being seen as “strong” is even more important. Last month, YouGov reported that just 5% of voters thought that Clegg was “strong” and 8% saw him as “decisive”. These were amongst his weakest areas just before election day [YouGov], when his popularity was at its peak so perhaps all is not lost. But voters might expect to see evidence of “strength”, which may go some way towards explaining the Lib Dems’ disappointing performance at the election.

Over the next couple of years, Nick Clegg will provide a test case for these theories. His future, and that of the Liberal Democrats, could well hinge on the way public perceptions of his competence, strength, likeability and trustworthiness pan out.