All hail Sir Ming!
New year, new leader, but will this mean a policy shift for the Liberal Democrats?
"The party had been in search of a leader, and now the leader is in search of a party". These are the words of Labour chancellor Gordon Brown, upon hearing the news that the old hand of the Liberal Democrats, Sir Menzies Campbell, was elected as their new leader.
After the installation of a new leader, has anything actually changed for the party criticized for being inconsistent and out of touch? It may only be early days, but a few of his speeches and praises have already revealed that the Lib Dem's might be making a move towards the centre ground in an effort to regain votes; a move which may prove risky to its core electorate.
His first major speech, made at the Lib Dem's spring conference, was mostly much of the same; he called on the Lib Dem's to improve on its electoral performance in the light of the good show put on at the last General Election (but failed to mention the massive drop in support after the ousting of Charles Kennedy).
He called for `the radical reform of Britain's tired political system'; presumably a reference to the Liberal campaign for a proportional representation voting system in British general elections.
However considering the Lib Dem tendency to move to the left of Labour with its policies, Sir Menzies Campbell has made clear some "laissez-faire" based policies which fuelled a fear of a shift to the right. Lord Greaves, a veteran activist, has condemned some of these, saying, "The word `modernisation' in British politics means the Blairite agenda".
These fears were started when Norman Lamb, MP for North Norfolk and very much a Lib Dem moderniser, put forward a motion to call for half the Royal Mail to be sold off. This is not the end; revealing his plans for tax, he called for a simpler tax system which "must support enterprise and must not stifle it". Charles Kennedy's approach of 50% tax for those who earn over £100K a year was played down, with Sir Menzies telling the conference "We should avoid becoming fixated on one tax rate".
The Liberal Democrats have still focused on welfare-state centred policies, calling on the Lib Dem's `to reshape our welfare system, to build a society secure against poverty'. Sir Menzies also called for `the tax burden must be lighter for those on lowest incomes', and planned to introduced taxes to encourage environmentally friendly companies.
At the start of the speech though, a glowing inconsistency emerges. Sir Menzies has called on previous Liberal policy to show that the party concentrates on rights; criticizing Tony Blair over ID cards, arresting protesters outside the Houses of Parliament, and the Iraq war. He also called for `real justice' in asking for telephone tapping evidence to be made admissible in court. This is a move vastly opposed by many civil rights groups; if Sir Menzies expects to pass this though, he should expect a lot of verbal opposition and it might need a rethink of how it fits into the rest of the Liberal Democrats' plans.
