Can we follow up the by-election by showing steel?
Leading Tory commentator and former MP Matthew Parris commented in his last Saturdays Times column on our partys appeal in the by-election to people he sees as decent, middle-of-the road Conservatives who have a distaste for Boris Johnson. However, he complained that our party avoids hard choices, wobbles off the highway into the ditch of localism, neighbourhood grumbles, government intervention and whatever your gripe is (its) ours too. He even rudely accuses us of having a big yellow streak beyond our orange bird, and says that to have a fighting chance at the next election we will need to learn to show steel, to say no to someone, something, anything   The choices of Mr Parris, who voted Lib Dem at the last election but only, he says, out of repulsion at the alternatives, are not those of Centre-Left Liberal Democrats, but I suggest he makes good points. We do tend to assume that with our excellent principles and good policies, Middle England only needs to know about them to support them. Yet even to the educated middle-classes we can easily appear Labour-lite or else too Conservative-friendly offending adherents of either big party, or else so indefinite that supporting the Greens who appear definitely right for these times is an easier choice for the politically homeless. The old slogan of being anti-Brexit and pro-Europe isnt sufficient now. We cant give the clear-cut answer which our nineteenth-century forbears could. Of course we promote localism, community politics, join in with the clamour against the new planning laws which the Government has proposed. Of course we support the unity of the United Kingdom and want regional rebalancing. And of course we want a fairer, green and caring Britain. We will stay a good choice at elections for the liberal-minded, fed up with the unprincipled, untrustworthy government of Boris Johnson. But Sir Keir Starmer in not being Jeremy Corbyn will win back many progressive thinkers, and also some of the decent Conservatives who despise populism, nationalism, the cut in foreign aid, or the contempt for local democracy shown by our Prime Minister. And as the latest famous recruit to the Labour party, John Bercow, states, the Labour party stands for equality and social justice. Clear principles they are known to support. Our now twelve MPs are already putting forward interesting bills on all sorts of topics, and they and our peers do sterling work. But I believe we have to take a stronger and more visible stand. I believe we should state that our country needs a new social contract between citizens and government which we will define, assert and promote for the good of all. We have to show up the creeping reversal-to-type of this government, which wouldnt provide free school meals for disadvantaged children until pressed by a young footballer, which offers only a tenth of the necessary extra schooling costs which its own adviser seeks after the losses of the past year, which wont give decent pay to nurses or support carers, which only fosters infrastructure projects and town development to favour big business and Tory backers, and which wont even promise adequate welfare support for those who will be forced into homelessness or unemployment in the coming months. We should say loudly, No! We oppose Tory policies. And Yes to a fairer deal for all our citizens, provided for by taxation policies which cut the privileges of the wealthy and of big business. * Katharine Pindar is a long-standing member of the Lib Dems and an activist in the West Cumbrian constituency of Copeland and Workington.