Why I Decided to Leave the Liberal Democrats Earlier this Year
Earlier this year in February, I finally decided to leave the Liberal Democrats. I can honestly say that it was one of the most difficult decisions I have ever had to make. I was a member of the party for over 12 years; first joining in 2008 at the age of 18. I had spent my entire adult life in the party and in the process had made many good friends and colleagues. The Liberal Democrats were like my political family and it was heart-breaking to leave them. When I left a few months ago I wanted the dust to settle, however I now think that people deserve a fuller explanation. This was inspired partly by reading Nick Barlow’s article last month.
No doubt my decision to leave the party came as a shock to my friends and colleagues in the party. In truth, my disillusion had been steadily growing for a few years. There was no single flash point, but rather a series of events which finally culminated in my departure from the party.
One long-term root of my departure is to be found in the Cameron-Clegg Coalition Government. The Coalition’s policies of austerity were the opposite of why I joined the Lib Dems, that being to ensure that “no one shall be enslaved by poverty”. Thankfully, there were many inspirational social liberals (organised in the Social Liberal Forum) who were prepared to take a stand against the regressive policies of the Coalition; this at the time encouraged me to stay committed to the party.
As a person with a disability, the impact of Coalition austerity was personal. Blackpool is my hometown and it suffered immensely from welfare cuts and local government cuts. In 2013 and 2014, I volunteered for a local disability charity and got to listen to first-hand accounts of how Coalition austerity was ruining people’s lives. Some of those conversations will stay with me for the rest of my life. Even today, many leading Liberal Democrats continue to defend the Coalition Government’s programme of austerity, even after the impact of austerity is widely known. Coalition austerity led to tens of thousands of preventable deaths and was even condemned by the United Nations as an “ideological project causing pain and misery”.
And yet 11 years after the Coalition was formed and six years after the electoral disaster of 2015, the party’s establishment has still yet to come to terms with their role in inflicting such hardship on the poorest and most vulnerable people in our country. Yes, Government is about difficult decisions but some of the decisions the Coalition took were heartless. One example is how the party tried to secure a 5p charge on plastic bags in return for tougher benefit sanctions. Did the party of William Beveridge and John Maynard Keynes take leave of its senses while it was in Government?
Today, the party is polling less than half what it was polling prior to the Coalition. Many voters still do not trust the party due to its record of austerity. I have previously been reassured by people in the party that Coalition austerity is no longer an issue. This epitomises the problem, the impact of austerity continues to blight lives today. Yet, the party establishment is still incapable of acknowledging the ruinous impact it has had on the party’s once great progressive reputation. Even in the 2019 General Election, the party’s commitment to run a permanent spending surplus, an economic policy designed to outflank the Tories, raised “the prospect of a swift return to austerity.”
The past cannot be rewritten, but nor should hardship be ignored. The party should recognise the injustice austerity caused and issue a formal heartfelt apology. It is the very least it could do. Such an apology by Ed Davey would be applauded by the Lib Dem faithful. It would give the party a response to Labour attacks against Davey and the party as a whole and would help to prevent any awkward election interviews in the future.
Another reason why I chose to leave the party was due to its inability to engage with working class communities. Living in Blackpool all my life and seeing the social hardship which people face here, I have always been driven to support social justice for communities like my hometown. But in truth, the national Liberal Democrats are not interested in tackling the deep inequalities which left-behind communities face. Added to this, local Lib Dem parties in these areas often lack the expertise, resources and national support needed to mount effective campaigns.
The party has a class problem. Working class people are extremely poorly represented in the party. It is not helped by the overwhelming middle class make-up of the party’s membership and the party’s legacy of austerity. I often wondered why any working class person from the North of England would ever join the party today.
The conclusion I drew gradually over time was quite clear; that the national Liberal Democrats could not speak for the community I represent or for the Blackpool school friends I knew growing up, who were from working class backgrounds who lived in dire poverty. To me, membership of the Liberal Democrats came to be like a loveless marriage. I came to realise that there was no prospect of the Liberal Democrats representing “Red Wall” areas similar to Blackpool and even less prospect of the party’s establishment developing campaigns to try and win voters in such areas. Too often, those communities which need social justice the most are those which are forgotten by the Liberal Democrats.
No doubt this mentality will be continued through the “Blue Wall” strategy the party appears to be developing. Targeting the “Blue Wall” is clearly a logical decision to make, given recent voting trends in the rural South of England, not to mention the historic victory in Chesham and Amersham last month. I was overjoyed to see Sarah Green’s landslide victory and I know she will be an outstanding Lib Dem MP. The success in the “Blue Wall” has shown that there is still a place for the Liberal Democrats in British politics. There is clearly some potential for a liberal centrist party that could appeal to liberal-minded soft Tory voters in the South of England.
However, I very much doubt most voters in some of the most affluent seats in the country, some of which have been continuously voting Tory for over a century, will be crying out for social democracy, let alone for the radical social liberalism I support. This fact will lead to the national party being reluctant to campaign on radical policies, such as universal basic income. If the party targets primarily affluent seats, this will both blunt its radicalism and alienate potential voters in poorer areas.
That brings me to the election of Ed Davey in August of last year. I supported Layla Moran hoping to elect a proud progressive leader who would be “even more radical than Labour” and appeal to young left-leaning voters which the party had lost during the Coalition. The result of the leadership election came as a devastating blow. A couple of close political friends chose to leave the party directly following the leadership election.
In truth, I have come to terms with Davey’s victory. The Chesham and Amersham result proves that Davey is able to win seats in the Tory heartlands of the South of England. However, my politics are not Ed Davey’s politics and even less the politics of the “Blue Wall”. I campaigned against Davey’s vision for the party, I lost. Lib Dem members wanted to go in a different direction, which is fair enough. Sometimes in life, you have got to admit when you have lost and move on. I have chosen to do exactly that.
The final reason for me choosing to leave the Liberal Democrats is that in recent years my politics has moved gradually more and more to the left. I no longer felt satisfied by Lib Dem pavement politics or the party’s approach to politics more broadly. The politics of potholes and broad status-quo defending centrism does not satisfy my desire for more radical economic change. The party is no longer motivated by the battle for radical liberal big ideas.
My politics are now strongly committed to the economics of “alternative liberalism”, essentially a highly egalitarian form of capitalism, equipped with economic democracy. The current Liberal Democrat party are never going to support such economic radicalism, let alone advance the campaigns and narratives needed to pursue it. For me, I left the Liberal Democrats to rediscover real politics (or perhaps a politics which is more honest to my left-wing worldview).
I would like to conclude this article by addressing the social liberals, radicals and progressives who remain in the Liberal Democrats. You are good people, many of you continue to be good friends and continue to give me hope. Please keep campaigning for social justice within your party as well as making the case for cooperation between progressive parties. You are the holders of a great political tradition and it would be a tragedy for British politics if that tradition was to be extinguished.
The Liberal Democrats have the capacity to be a great party and a true force for social justice in British politics, if only it would have the courage of its progressive convictions and take heart from its radical history. I would not rule out rejoining a Liberal Democrat party which was self-confidently social liberal with a clear sense of mission and purpose. I equally would not rule out joining the Green Party at some point in the future. But for the meantime (at least the next few months) I am going to remain politically independent.
Leaving a political party that you have been a member of after 12 years is not easy. I hope any animosity that this article has created can be overcome. I hope many of those who I have met in the party will continue to be good friends and I wish them the best of luck with their political careers. Continue to strive for great things and in any and all things never stop trying to make the world a better place. I know I won’t!
