I thought I would be a loyal Liberal Democrat and blog about Ed Davey's appearamce on ITV's Acting Prime Minister podcast, so I started to listen to it.
Literally the first thing Ed tells his interviewer is:
"I've had to give the party some truths, namely that we've had a bit of a bad time in the last five years - three poor election results - and I've said 'Look, we've got to wake up and smell the coffee'."
The idea that Ed is aware we have had a bad time of late and ordinary party members have not noticed it is just silly.
As I blogged back in back in Nick Clegg's day:
Political activists now exist chiefly as a sort of stage army that can be brought on so their own leader can look tough by criticising them. It's no life for a grown up.
It's no wonder that people decide to work through charities and pressure groups instead. If I were Ed, I would take more care to make Lib Dem members feel valued and wanted.
I didn't get much further with the podcast, but you can find it above. For all I know, it may be very good. Give it a try.
It's sometimes a relief never to vote for the winning candidate in a leadership election . . .
ReplyDeleteI seem to remember many activists on ld voice commenting on the enormous quantity of coffee being created by the “leadership “ between 2010 & 2015.
ReplyDeleteQuite simply, our leaders and most senior figures live their own personal bubble surrounded by their closest advisors a few friends and almost every occasion where they face ordinary party members is managed to such an extent that concerned voices with hard questions are totally filtered out.
ReplyDeleteThat goes for meetings at conference, hustings (including the recent set) and even things like social events and annual dinners.
The one occasion where I broke through was at a small hustings back in 2019 where only Ed could attend (Jo had another engagement) and I asked him why over the five years from 2010 to 2015 he personally had done nothing to save the party from the catastrophe that was enveloping it. To which he replied with the usual stuff and "Cabinet Collective Responsibility" which prevented him etc. I pointed out that not a month earlier Conservative Ministers had voted against their own party, and he responded with the good old rousing "the Conservative Party are an absolute rabble " and we weren't like that etc etc. Great for garnering votes in a leadership election, but avoiding the point?
Of course we all know that Ed's so called absolute rabble totally wiped out the wonderful sound upright Lib Dems once again in a general election about eight months later.
Bet I don't get selected to ask a question by that chair in future.