Richard Baum

Another day, another disappointing article about us tanking in the polls. Apparently now, if there was a General Election tomorrow, the Liberal Democrats would be reduced from having 59 MPs to having a single man with a long beard standing atop a mountain howling forlornly at the moon.

This isn’t good news, especially for those of us closer to the polling booth firing line than others. It’s fine to say that this is the third month of a five year project, and that we won’t have to go to the country until George Osborne starts shaving, but there are Council elections in May and this poor sap is one of many due to be on the ballot. 

Of course, local elections are fought on local issues, and the Lib Dems in Prestwich have a long and successful track record which I am confident will continue and which has so far led to people putting their trust in us. But of course come election day we’ll be in the middle of the Nuclear Cuts Impact Winter and other things might dominate people’s minds. Perhaps polling stations will be cut entirely and I’ll be saved.

Again, for me, our problem comes back to our presentation, which I think remains woeful and needs some radical bucking up. Policy-wise we should be holding steady and gaining. As I demonstrated the other day  we are coming good on more manifesto pledges than you might expect. We’re doing good. There should be a wave of positivitiy. But there isn’t.

It’s the message about what coalitioning is all about which we’re struggling with, and I think thats what’s causing the confusion and the upset. We haven’t done anywhere near enough to explain why we’re supporting the Conservatives and what it means for the country. We’re not doing it because “Nick Clegg is a Tory”, we’re doing it because they came first in the election and because it’s the only way for Lib Dem voters to see Lib Dem policies negating Tory ones.

Why aren’t we putting this message across loud and clear? The “Nick Clegg is a Tory” one is as ubiquitous as a World Cup vuvuzela (and equally annoying). How have the voices shouting about betrayal taken hold of people’s senses when the truth is nothing of the sort?

If the public aren’t grown up enough to understand that coalition means compromise, then I want to give up and go home. But I’m pretty sure that they are more than grown up enough. So for God’s sake let’s be honest about it and better at explaining it. We have to support Tory things we don’t like, but that’s the trade off. If we didn’t make that trade then the Tories would be doing it untempered, and that would be worse. Remember that Labour lot you booted out the other week? That’s the alternative.

If we did it right we could be the natural home not just for people like me who are genuinely enthused by the Lib Dem policy agenda (as was), but also for lots of people not on the rabid end of the Tory party, and any Labour sympathiser who remembers the shower who ran the country until May.

At the moment though it seems as if we’re the natural home for nobody.

We need to sell our message more right now. I understand that the party has changed the way it’s financed since it’s now in government and doesn’t get the money it did as an opposition party. And I know that, regardless of the truth or not of tales of members leaving and joining us and Labour since the election (I have no idea what the truth is there. The conflicting statistics flying around are like an episode of The X-Files) we are still the third largest party by a mile. But can somebody please employ somebody to put out the message that we are a separate entity to the Conservatives, and that whilst the government is one entity, the two parts of it are not?

When I get married in two weeks (at the same venue as Eamonn Holmes, I disappointingly discovered recently) I won’t entirely cease to exist as an individual human being. Yes a new partnership will have been created, but we remain two people. The same thing has happened in the government, but for some reason we aren’t spreading the message to people to help them understand that. We don’t have a separate identity from “the government”, and since the government’s face is almost entirely Conservative, we don’t have a separate identity to them. It’s like me being subsumed by the in-laws, which is something I am keen to avoid in a couple of weeks.

We don’t help ourselves sometimes. The “latest news” section of our own website is depressingly out of date at times, and updated nowhere near frequently enough. Surely we must be doing more positive in the government than we’re making public on a day to day basis? It’s fine releasing a list of our achievements every few months (as happened this week), but where’s the dripping tap of good news and Lib Dem policy being enacted that will keep our identity separate and keep people interested? People might start thinking that there isn’t such a stream of good news, and then will start asking what the point is…Tomorrow the two parties are meeting for a full session at Chequers (they can’t use mine, unfortunately, because it’s the Hen weekend). Apparently on the list of topics for discussion is how to raise the Lib Dem profile. I hope they make some progress, or else we’re in more trouble than even our poll ratings suggest.

Rick