Why Labour party members should consider becoming Lib Dems in 2019

In recent times a number of debates within the council of the Social Liberal forum, of which I am a member, have turned as much on where the Labour party as well as our parent party the Liberal Democrats is heading.  Extrapolating from these as a Liberal Democrat I am bound to ask whether, given the current crisis of leadership within and support for Brexit by the latter (with which 88% of Labour’s members appear not to agree), there is scope for some and possibly even a great number of Labour activists either to join the Liberal Democrats or to set up a new centre party which they in their turn may then want to invite others to participate in.

Inevitably a short essay like this will be accused of opportunism or, worse, being no more than cheap party-political propaganda.  It isn’t intended to be either. Whilst I am – since 1981 – a near-lifelong Liberal or Liberal Democrat it was my voluntary opting-in to this, the Social Liberal forum, which by its very nature attempts to bring together/assimilate adherents of more than one political grouping, which prompted me to put it here in print.  Whilst I would clearly like to see the Liberal Democrats grow from their current modest base of eleven MPS and a few hundred councillors I can also see greater or equally great gains for the country in the emergence of any new centre party comprising initially those with solid representative or campaigning experience at any level but representing that large swathe of ‘middle England’ at present without any voice in the Westminster legislature on account of the Brexit debacle. This is that very same establishment we thought of until recently as the ‘Mother of all Parliaments’!

As the European institutions get back to work, most of the talk in Brussels surrounds how the new Romanian presidency of the Council will fare in wrapping up a lot of unfinished business before the European Elections in May. Tongues are also wagging as to the political complexion of the next European Commission, which is expected to begin its mandate in December this year.

To the extent to which non-Brit officials in Brussels still discuss Brexit, their incredulity it seems to me, stems from the fact that they see the UK taking such a huge strategic gamble based on so little understanding of the long, hard and winding process to come. Living in Brussels and working on EU legislation these last few years, I have often been struck by how little the political debate in the UK seems to relate to my day-to-day understanding of how the EU works.

Nothing illustrates this better than references in the UK media to “The EU says” or “The EU wants”, or “Brussels says”. Nobody in Brussels would ever speak like this; for the simple reason that the EU is so multifaceted that it is impossible – especially at the outset – to discern a single EU line. Interests and opinions between member states, between political groups and within and between the institutions vary hugely. What I think most UK commentators tend to mean when they say the “the EU wants” is the European Commission, but I have often seen the descriptor appended to the personal views of single MEPs, often from smaller political groups like the Greens.

If Brexit does go ahead on the 29^th of March, the UK public and media will soon find out that the high degree of consensus between the 27 EU member states on the dry technicalities of the Withdrawal Agreement is unlikely to hold once the UK is out and discussions turn to the future trading relationship. It will be a “blind Brexit”.

The joint political declaration appended to the legal text of the negotiated Withdrawal Agreement is little more than a goodwill statement. But if the Brits are serious about securing access to the Single Market for goods, they will have to begin negotiations with, essentially 27 other countries after March, each of which will have a veto, as will the new European Parliament. What happens to the £100 billion or so worth of services the UK sells to EU countries every year is anyone’s guess. Services are not usually included in trade deals and “passporting” is due to end.

To give a flavour of how long it generally takes to go from vague political statements to fully-fledged regulations and directives, published in the Official Journal of the European Union, the legislation I have been working on, called the Clean Energy for All Europeans Package, first received its “political declaration” from Heads of Government in the European Council in October 2014. It is not yet complete. The EU-Canada Trade deal (CETA) took around eight years to negotiate and ratify and was held up for several months at the 11^th hour by the Walloon Parliament in Belgium, one of Belgium’s three regional parliaments, all of which can block the ratification of an EU trade treaty.

So, if Brexit goes ahead on the 29^th March the UK will be taking a leap into the dark. For non-Brits, this is an unprecedented political and economic experiment on a huge scale. It still gives me the shivers.

SLF Council member Paul Pettinger writes about his experience of attending Green Party conference on behalf of the SLF:

In October 2018, the SLF had a stall at the Green Party of England and Wales’ annual conference in Bristol for the first time.

Relations between Lib Dems and Greens have improved in recent years and in no small part thanks to the sacrifice of local Green parties who have stood down for Lib Dems in Conservative Lib Dem marginals, such as in the 2016 Richmond By-election and a host of seats at the last General Election.

These local arrangements have not only encouraged former Green voters to vote tactically, but also allowed Lib Dem candidates to use the endorsement to better squeeze other anti-Conservative voters, something made much harder since the Coalition.

At the 2017 general election the contribution of Greens probably made the difference between the Lib Dems winning or losing in Tim Farron’s seat, as well as Layla Moran gaining Oxford West and Abington. More generally, many social liberals and Greens agree on today’s biggest issues (Europe, environmental issues, electoral and constitutional reform), and there are demonstrably many social liberals in the Green Party.

Pluralism should be a strength of progressive politics, not a weakness, and it is in the hands of progressives to determine whether this is the case or not. To date, SLF members have not needed to be Lib Dem members. Back in the summer a constitutional amendment was passed at our AGM allowing Green members to join the SLF. Consequently, we decided to organise a stall at their annual conference.

Our attendees were struck by the open minds and friendliness they experienced. I am pleased to report that since the summer several Green members have joined the SLF and I would like to extend a warm welcome to them. I look forward to working with all SLF members over the year ahead towards forging a society that is more liberal, equal and green.

“Massive money laundering  and a major tax haven; failing police effectiveness including official as well as unlicensed corruption; insufficiency of judges, too few prosecutions that are often ill-prepared; insanitary over-crowded prisons with endemic drug-taking and rioting; use of drug-pusher children; and epidemic of teenage knife crime; foreign assassins; declining health provision; too few schools with growing teacher shortages; crumbling railways; increasingly deficient regulatory system with conflict -of -interest ‘revolving door’ hop-on hop-off recruitment; lack of effective party leadership; government reliant on a bunch of crony unaccountable fixers; growing demagogic populism carrying ever-more fascistic overtones; increasingly impotent representative bodies at all levels; and many more deficiencies besides.”

This is a fair description of many third world countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Yes, but it also defines contemporary England and especially its capital London.

Thus throughout the UK varying degrees of chaos threaten the very essence of what have been accepted as the canons of representative democracy. A brief survey is revelatory.

Ian Kearns is the former Deputy Director of the IPPR thinktank and an author. He made a speech at this year's Lib Dem autumn conference which is well worth reading in which he talked about why he had left Labour for the Liberal Democrats.

He has also written in the Independent on the same topic and about how it was the importance of the social liberal tradition that drew him to the Liberal Democrats. We reproduce the article below with his kind permission:

There is nothing that this country needs today that cannot be drawn from a social liberal rather than a socialist tradition.

After many years in the Labour Party, and after many months of agonising, I left the party in June of this year to join the Liberal Democrats. This is why.

At home, the idea that Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party is radical is a myth. Its 2017 manifesto was a travesty of a document for a party that claims to believe in a more equal society.

The biggest single spending commitment in it was the £11.2bn set aside to abolish university tuition fees and reintroduce student grants. The majority of those who would benefit are from the wealthier end of the income distribution. They need help, for sure, and this could be achieved by switching to a graduate tax and some additional support from general taxation but, in the same manifesto, Labour failed to commit to reverse the closures of Sure Start centres and refused to reverse all the Tory government’s welfare cuts. They refused to do this, even though we know life chances are largely locked in by age three or four, the problem Sure Start was designed to address, and even though those on welfare are some of the most vulnerable in our society. 

Corbyn’s manifesto demonstrated that he is prepared to pour money into the middle class while screwing the poor, including the youngest of the poor, if that’s what it takes to get elected. And on top of that, his catastrophic position on Brexit would reduce tax receipts and lead to further cuts in the public services relied on most by the least well off. Labour can’t defend the poor while being complicit in making them poorer.