Why brilliant MPs fail on national issues (in small parties)

This article focuses on the LibDems but the fundamental concepts apply to UK politics generally.

On the 6th January 2020 Daisy Cooper assumed office as a Member of Parliament for St Albans after more than a decade of local campaigning. A huge victory for the party and shows how years of determined effort can pay off.

In the coming days, MP Daisy Cooper will bring a bill to the House of Commons to “End the use of prison for women, except for the most serious and violent crimes.”

Despite being a bill by the Lib Dems- it is obviously discriminatory and illiberal: men and women should be treated equally before the law. That’s liberalism 101.

This bill, which is currently being promoted by the central party, is sure to fail. (Hopefully without a great deal of press attention). Parliamentary arithmetic is against it, and fundamentally it’s a bad bill which the government will see no reason in adopting (to steal the credit).

More importantly - party members are appalled that their party could be advocating an illiberal change to the justice system. This may well have scuppered Daisy’s chances of winning the LibDem leadership contest.

So, how did such a genuinely brilliant local MP get it so wrong on a national policy issue?

The big issue is that the skills to become an MP are different to the thought leadership required to translate liberal social democracy into a political force.

Local politics is about local issues, and MPs represent a local constituency.

Rightly or wrongly, the truth is that a prospective parliamentary candidate’s policy on bin collections will have more impact than their policy on, as in this case, sentencing guidelines for the justice system.

The LibDems are a smaller party that has to win every vote and is funded by members (rather than unions or a few wealthy individuals). 

With the big think tanks, and political institutions focusing on the big party’s (that are most likely to form a government), smaller partys have a much harder job of doing both local politics and national politics at the same time.

To be blunt - Daisy wasn’t elected for her policy positions on justice- she was elected as a representative of St Albans.

How do we stop local MPs failing on national issues?

Well for a start, MPs are individuals who the public have chosen. The answer isn’t to stop them pursuing bad ideas but to flood them with good ideas. (With Mark Pack’s election as libdem party president I‘m hopeful that the next wave of ideas will be focused on winning votes rather than having interesting but niche fringe debates).

We can examine the rise of the Scottish National Party (SNP): Scottish Nationalism is a single issue, with a simple message, that everyone in the SNP can rally behind. This makes it easier for local activists and politicians to work on local issues on the ground, yet tune into national policy when needed.

How do we “fix” the small party problem for the LibDems?

In simple terms - the party has to get bigger.

In the same way that the party is funded by its members, policy development is going to need to come from its members as well.

More members who are more engaged and active will lead to more, and better thought out, policy.

All party members have a role in this - in being friendly and welcoming. And also in trying to include new members as much as possible.

If you’re not yet a member of the Lib Dems, you can find a local party to get involved with here and join the party here.

If you are a member and/or an activist, mark pack (party president) runs a newswire here.

If you want to know the recent Lib Dem policy positions, the 2019 manifesto is here.

If you have specific ideas about policy development, get in touch with me here and I will do my best to help connect you to the right person or group.

Lastly (but not leastly) if you want to volunteer generally for the libdems, you can get in touch with the central party here.

Boris, Brexit, and the Lib Dem surge

TL;DR

Boris will win the Conservative party leadership election becoming the next prime minister, Britain will crash out of the European Union, the Liberal Democrats will win the next general election.

Trajectory Boris

The Conservative party is the party of the privileged: it is 97% white, 71% male, and dominated by the wealthy.

These Conservative party members think of Boris Johnson like a plucky, amusing uncle. They think he’s a bit of a fool, mostly harmless and most importantly definitively British. They will inevitably vote for Boris to be the next Prime Minister.

Boris will, with the verbosity of Russel Brand and the tactfulness of Trump, fail to make any progress negotiating with the other members of the European Union.

At this point, Boris will either 1) deliberately crash Britain out of the European Union on October 31st with no deal or 2) default blunder towards a Theresa Trap of perpetual negotiation.

To be clear- towards perpetual negotiation doesn’t mean that the deadlines will actually be kicked down the road. While Boris and fans enjoy evoking images of a spam-from-a-can eating blitz defying Britain, no one actually wants to eat spam. And the European Union, viewing Boris as a posh shabby Trump, are feeling as defiant of Britain as they are the USA, and are tired of distractions from their own internal politics.

Either way, Boris leads us in the same direction. Britain is likely to plunge off a no deal Brexit cliff. The 85% of Conservative party members who now support a no deal Brexit will be pleased. The Etonian old boys will make a killing, having bet against the pound.

And as we fall off this cliff, most of us will look up to see crony-capitalist vultures paragliding into the sunset. International firms (stuffed with “patriotic” Brexit supporting Brits) will move in to buy out British industry on the cheap. A great ‘offshoring’ of wealth and assets into international tax havens. And as we fall, some of us will be momentarily distracted by one of Boris’s attention seeking stunts - like getting stuck in a zip line. It will be hilarious- good old uncle Boris.

It’s not all doom and gloom

Roughly 25% of British people favour a no deal Brexit. Many of those people are also disillusioned with politics, preferring antiestablishment, man-of-the-people ex-investment bankers (like Nigel Farage). Even with disproportionate constituency boundaries (favouring the conservatives in the countryside) 25% of the electorate does not make a government.

The majority of British businesses are small and medium enterprises. These small employers also employ the majority of people. These should be natural Conservative supporters - self made entrepreneurs who like their markets to be free and fair.

And so when the Conservatives so blatantly betray the interests of these businesses, whilst the Brexit party draws populists from the right, Conservative support will simply melt away.

Our antiquated first past the post, winner takes all, electoral system favours broad church party’s with breadth of appeal. With the Conservatives pandering to a smaller and smaller base of supporters, moderate voters will look for a new home.

This is in the context of a Labour Party that has gone full left wing mob-mentum. While Conservatives talk of lowering taxes for rich baby boomers is unpopular- Labour’s talk of tax hikes and re-nationalisation is about as popular as magic grandpa’s Lenin hat.

Time is ripe for a moderate, sensible party. A party for the many AND the few.

A party of liberals who are socially democratic. A party of Pro Europeans, economic liberals, those who want capitalism with a heart, a party that takes the environment seriously and values humanities future.

I am of course talking about the Liberal Democrats.

And things are looking up. The Lib Dem’s are well organised and practiced in campaigning with a huge number of supporters.

People are quite rightly tired of having to vote against one party to keep out the other. More and more people are voting for what they believe in. Voting for Liberty, Equality and Community.

It’s looking more and more likely that the hard work and positive campaigning of the Lib Dem’s is paying off.

So while it is extremely likely that we’re about to plunge off a Brexit cliff - we might just be able to reach out and grab a tree branch on the way down.

The great thing about living in a democracy is that people are free to change their minds. And the thing is in life, is that everything seems certain until it isn’t.

Before the referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union it seemed a certainty that Britain would remain a liberal socially democratic nation with a leading role in the European Union. That was certain until it wasn’t.

And the UKs departure, international isolation and harsh split with its closest trading partners will be inevitable, until it isn’t.

How the European Union Works (by Kurzgesagt)

The Kurzgesagt team have put together a video explaining the European Union, how democratic it is and how this compares to the democracy of a nation state.  

Long story short, the EU is democratic, with power balanced between the democratically elected European Parliament, and the governments of each of the European member states.

The full video is well worth a watch:

Blog post - how to stop Brexit (in five easy steps)

This article sets out four steps for how we, the people, can help to stop Brexit. I’m writing assuming you’re someone who would lime to stop Brexit, but I hope that this is interesting, regardless of your position on Brexit.

Step One - stop trying to win the argument

The first step might be the most difficult, but telling people that they are wrong won’t convince them of your argument. Labelling ourselves “remainers” and others “Brexiteers” creates a “them and us” environment that makes changing sides more difficult.

When we, as emotional human beings, are told directly that we are wrong, we instinctively react to double down emotionally.

On a base level humans are tribal. It is by our very nature to associate with people we think are like us and in our tribe. And we unite against things which are outside of our tribe. This is normal.

Being told we are wrong gets our backs up. We feel under attack, we become defensive. “If I’m wrong I’m stupid- I’m not stupid, you’re wrong.” We become emotional and irrational. We put the accuser into the “other” tribe.

To solve “Brexit” we will need to come together. Regardless of the outcome we want as individuals, the only way out of the current mess is an agreed compromise.

I don’t want to leave the European Union, but the truth is that some form of Brexit might be the only way forward. Then again- there may be a way forward that satisfies the needs of those who voted to leave while we remain in the European Union. I don’t know, but somewhere along the line, some compromises will need to be made and compromises can only be reached through rational discussion and debate.

Rational thought comes from cooperative problem solving. It is from the safety of our own tribe that we innovate, imagine new solutions and ideas. Humans are better when we work together. The sum is always greater than the parts. But we need the correct environment to behave rationally rather than emotionally. We need to feel that we are in the same tribe.

Fundamentally humans are messy and complicated. People voted for Brexit for whole range of reasons. It is lazy and quite frankly ignorant to label everyone who to leave as “Racist”, or “stupid”, or “gullible” or anything else. If you’re in the habit of labelling people who voted leave I’d strongly urge you to stop, and instead have a listen. You don’t have to agree with them but you will get a better understanding of their views than assuming you can sum up an entire other person, in your head, with a label.

Actually you’d be surprised how many of the reasons people voted to leave you would actually sympathise with. And we know from conflict resolution that it is by finding the things that we agree on that we can start to come together.

For example, I often find that a reason people voted to leave the European Union is because they are concerned about funding for the national health service. Sometimes people worry that immigrants (i.e people outside of their tribe) are using the health service which they, as taxpayers (inside the tribe) are contributing to.

Or they feel that our government is unable to contribute enough money to the national health service (I.e. to look after our tribe) because too much money is going to the European Union (I.e. outside our tribe).

The common ground here of course is that the national health service is good and should be properly funded.

Regardless of how you feel about possible factual flaws in those arguments to leave, they come from a normal human emotional place. Rather than argue with those people about the details behind those arguments, it is actually good enough to agree with those people that the national health service is amazing and that it needs to be adequately funded.

I then also gently introduce the truth that a significant proportion of national health service workers are actually immigrants, often doing lower paid difficult jobs, working really hard to care for British people. The idea is not to convince someone of my conclusions. The idea is to introduce the concept that maybe the people outside the tribe are helping our tribe. The idea is to allow that person to reach their own conclusion that maybe we’re in the same tribe?

I don’t demand that the person who voted to leave tell me that I’m right. It’s nearly impossible to change someone’s mind with one conversation. I just try to reach common ground and gently introduce ideas they will then hopefully think about later.

The other benefit of talking politely and calmly and listening to people who voted to leave, is that they come away less likely to feel that you are in the other “tribe”. Every potential argument, that instead is a civilised conversation as another step out of the current mess we find ourselves in. Little by little. Step by step. Conversation by conversation. With no quick wins.

In essence, winning is not winning an argument. Winning is having a conversation and not having an argument.

 Step Two - tell a friend

Probably seems obvious but if we want to remain in the European Union we need a clear majority of people also to want to remain in the European Union. There are two groups of people who need engaging - those who voted leave and those who just don’t care anymore.

Lots of people voted to leave - engaging with people who voted to leave is important. To form a clear majority to remain some of those people will need to support, or at least not oppose, remaining in the European Union.

A huge number of people are still apathetic about Brexit. They might not understand the implications or they might just not care. And it’s not difficult to see why when you see ongoing immature arguments between politicians who often aren’t always saying what they believe but are saying what they think the public want to hear in order to try to be as popular as possible with their tribe of potential voters. All those politicians arguing to a back drop of not much actually happening.

For many people, the Brexit argument is drowned out by their actual life. Picking the kids up from school. Working out what to cook for dinner. Getting into the office. That big task to do at work.

Point being, to stop Brexit we need to reach both groups of people. We need to engage with people who voted to leave and we need to engage with people who have just tuned it all out.

What we need to tell those people is what’s happening, and what that means for their lives.

Reasons why Brexit would be bad are for another post (and can easily be found by googling “why is Brexit bad?”)

You can also find a compelling argument against Brexit made by Pindex (and narrated by Stephen Fry) talking about the motivations of big business for Brexit.

To get informed about what’s going on in terms of Brexit, the YouTube channel TLDR News provides fairly objective updates.

Also, I always recommend joining Rob Blackie’s email subscription and Mark Pack’s Liberal Democrat Newswire. Both Rob and Mark provide regular updates and information about Brexit, as well as lots of other related and interesting content.

Step Three - vote at every opportunity

Sounds obvious, but vote for what you believe in. The Liberal Democrats are squarely in favour of remain, so they should probably be your first consideration.

It is worth looking at who you are voting for in each election to identify candidates who also are in favour of remain. For example, the Green Party are also pro remain, and in some seats (like Brighton Pavilion) are most likely to win.

That said, I personally don’t vote tactically. I vote for what I believe in. For too long we have allowed ourselves to be bullied into voting for parties that we don’t actually want for fear of the other party that we reallydon’t want winning. It is much better in my view, to vote for what you believe in, and to encourage others to do the same.

At every possible democratic opportunity vote for remain. At the European elections, in general elections, in local elections.

Every time a remain candidate wins, there is more momentum for the whole remain movement.

Step Four - write letters and emails

It is always worth writing to your elected representatives. A general rule of thumb that a lot of members of parliament use is that for every one letter received roughly 1000 of their constituents also have the same opinion. If you believe in remain, and even better if you have direct examples of how you will be negatively affected by Brexit, then you should tell your Member of Parliament, member of the European Parliament, and even your local councillors.

Most politicians want to be re-elected and therefore regardless of political ideology, will take seriously the views of their constituents. Even ardent leave supporting politicians will take notice if they’re bombarded with letters from their constituents.

They work for you is a brilliant website that can help you find and contact your elected representatives.

Step Five - meet with like minded people

As stated above the Liberal Democrats are squarely in favour of remain. You will find like-minded remain supporters at the many Lib Dem social events. Your local area will likely have a Lib Dem Facebook page. You can also find heaps more information at the Liberal Democrat website.

The Liberal Democrat’s membership has now exceeded 100,000 members and is actually larger than the Conservative party membership.

Meeting like minded people is a great way to keep up momentum - almost everyone would agree that Brexit can be dry and depressing in equal measures. With some of the political antics going on I often don’t know whether to laugh or cry. When I’m with other people we usually laugh.

A second benefit of meeting other people who want to the UK to remain in the European Union is the free exchange of ideas. Humans are better when we work together. We specialise, divide tasks and act more efficiently. The more ideas that are shared the more strokes of genius that can be employed.

Thirdly - it’s just nice to meet nice people. The Liberal Democrats have a reputation for being friendly easy going types for a reason. In the many years of being a liberal political activist I can genuinely say that I’ve never disliked a Liberal Democrat I’ve met.