Sunday, May 10, 2015

David Howarth on what the Liberal Democrats must do now

Hindsight makes us all experts, but the problem with the Liberal Democrats supporting tuition fees was not just that it involved breaking a pledge.

That decision also alienated many of the natural supporters of our values..

David Howarth puts it well in a new post for the Social Liberal Forum:
One of the most disastrous aspects of the Clegg era was that just at the point the party was starting to develop a loyal core vote – roughly speaking, graduates, prospective graduates and the parents and grandparents of graduates – it launched an all-out attack on those very voters. 
But those voters are still there and still share our values. In fact, there are too few other people who share our values to make us a viable political force without them.
The whole post - five things we must never do again and three things to do now - is worth reading.
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2 comments:

  1. Frank Little10 May, 2015 09:51

    There is a myth growing that we have always opposed tuition fees. It's not so.

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  2. Kiron Reid11 May, 2015 10:25

    I think Frank that activists know that because it was a hard fought battle by activists to get the opposition to Tuition Fees, just as it was with opposition to the invasion of Iraq, and for a sensible debate about drugs. The leadership and their advisers most opposed these things at the time. That is why Clegg and Cable should not have made a promise that they did not support.

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