Three things the Liberal Democrats must learn from Eastleigh

From Liberal Democrat Voice:

Liberal Democrats are entitled to a weekend of being incredibly pleased with ourselves. I have never been as proud of this party as I am now. The way we calmly and professionally got on with delivering a brilliant campaign on the ground was astonishingly good. Activists put their lives on hold and dedicated themselves to Eastleigh for three weeks. My eternal regret will be that I never made it there, due to a horrendous Flu and its lingering aftermath. However, Team Scotland and many others across the country phonebanked their hearts out. Yesterday in Edinburgh, we even had to have an overflow room because so many people turned up to get out the vote. One young man, Daniel, even drove the 130 miles from Aberdeen to join us. 

The way the party bonded in adversity was not dissimilar to Willie Rennie's shock victory in Dunfermline seven years ago which was set in a backdrop of us having no leader and an uncomfortable tabloid story appearing roughly every half hour. We weren't in Government, then, though.

The team on the ground who produced the leaflets, got them delivered, made good use of the VIPs' time, organised the technology and inspired the party to rally round them were second to none. None of them should ever have to pay for a drink at Federal Conference ever again. We all owe them.

Stephen Tall has already written about the overall political ramifications of the result. I want to concentrate on the lessons the party must learn and act upon in the future.

There is no room for complacency

Yes, we won. But we had a significant swing against us that we can't ignore. We can't allow ourselves to forget in the warm glow of victory that we have some serious stuff to sort out. When we get things wrong, we don't have friendly media to help us out of the mire. As we've seen the last week, the likes of the Mail, the Murdoch empire and the Telegraph are only too keen to give us a good kicking. We have to demonstrate that we have dealt with all the issues which have been raised about us in the last week. If that means a few boats need to be rocked, then so be it.

The very nature of a general election means we can't concentrate all our activists on one place with one common goal. It is neither practical nor legal to deliver a leaflet a day in a campaign where the expenses limit is much smaller.  The intensity and brevity of the by-election helped us. We have to work out how to translate the things that worked in Eastleigh to local campaigns and build the capacity to deliver them. That necessitates a serious strategy to attract both members and supporters.

We have to value and build on our local government base

I doubt we would be celebrating this morning if we hadn't had such a bedrock of a local government base and a long record of delivering for the community. Keith House leads a team of over 40 local councillors who do all the right things. I lost count of the times voters told me great things about their local Liberal Democrat councillor, whose name they always remembered. The party needs to step up to the Eastleigh or the Portsmouth level of activity. We need to throw the kitchen sink at the County Council elections in May and make sure that our local base is enhanced. Our councillors matter and we need to work with them better. I'm encouraged by closer working together between ALDC and the party's election strategists. We need to do more, though and we need to listen to our councillors when we develop national campaigns. We might not have elections here in Scotland, but I'll certainly be encouraging people from here to help in Northumberland.

We have to develop a liberal response to the anti-immigration rhetoric of UKIP

It is not a good thing when a party like UKIP does well in any election. Their narrow nationalism makes any self-respecting liberal wince. The only thing we were saying about the UKIP candidate was that she lived in Surrey. We need to do better than that and effectively challenge the rubbish they come out with. Too many voters told me widely inaccurate stuff about how 40 million Romanians and Bulgarians were going to come here and get houses. 40 million? Really?  That's more than the entire population of both countries put together. We need to arm ourselves with some facts and engage in this debate. I was very happy with the policy we had at the last general election, to give people who had been here for a long time a path to citizenship and I wouldn't want to see us change it. Even Nick Clegg saying on the radio the other week that we need to look at whether the rules on housing allocation were fair made me slightly uncomfortable. What we need is more affordable housing, not to put people against each other. Nobody else is going to put the liberal case for us. We have to do this effectively and never pander to the sort of rhetoric we hear from UKIP and, regrettably and increasingly, our coalition partners and the official opposition.

The same goes for issues relating to the EU, as well.

Just for a little, while, though, let's allow ourselves the luxury of a well deserved celebration. Federal Conference a week from today is going to be fun.

Will we still like Mike after Monday's secret courts vote? #no2secretcourts

New Eastleigh MP Mike Thornton's life is about to change immeasurably. On Monday he takes his seat in Parliament. I don't know if he's visited the place before, but even now I've been there many times, my jaw drops every single time. When you go into the Scottish Parliament, it's all bright and shiny and new and modern. With Westminster, you can feel yourself stepping back a century or two when you step off the escalator from Portcullis House. I am sure it's going to be quite an overwhelming experience for him.

One of the very first things Mike is going to be asked to do is to vote on the dreaded Justice and Security Bill. For some reason, the vote on Part 2 is happening first, on Monday. That's the bit about secret courts which the party has made clear it opposes outright and wants to see deleted. Liberal Democrat MPs Mike Crockart and Julian Huppert tried to get the secret courts clause deleted at Committee stage and failed by one vote. Labour voted with them.

We don't yet know how Labour will vote on Monday. But if they decide that the Bill is too illiberal for them, the same people who wanted us all to have to carry ID cards or who wanted to lock people up without charge for 3 months, our civil liberties credentials will be severely compromised.

What's the problem with secret courts? Well, how can you possibly have a fair trial if one side is not allowed to see all of the evidence? If it's shown to a judge and a special advocate, but not to the person suing the Government. One of the foundations of our legal system is that decisions are made after evidence is properly tested in court. That means that all parties have to have sight of all of the evidence. If they don't, for example if some has been withheld, then it's a miscarriage of justice.

The other thing we need to think about is that surely the very essence of a liberal party is to protect the people from the excesses of the state. Why would we put the state in a position which makes it much easier for it to cover up complicity in torture. Did you see that Channel 4 drama, Complicit, the other week? The plot showed an MI5 officer basically ask a foreign "security official" to torture some information out of a British citizen he suspected had been sorting out smuggling of ricin into Britain. We never know whether the suspect is guilty or not. The information gained under torture proved to be false and he was pretty severely injured. Had he then sued the British Government for compensation for complicity in his torture, the chances are that would be heard in a secret court where he would not be able to see the evidence the government presented in its defence. The whole thing was presented as Moral Dilemma Central, but I'm afraid I don't see the dilemma. Torture is never, ever acceptable. And anything which makes it easier for a government to overstep the boundaries is really not on.

I think it would be good to give Mike an idea of how strongly the party feels about this. Conference was very clear last September that it wanted to see Part 2 of the Bill deleted. I think it might be a good idea for all of us who are opposed to secret courts were to email him this weekend and tell him why he should vote against this legislation. I understand it would be quite difficult for him to make his first ever vote in Parliament against his party. He wouldn't know where to go for a start. So it would be much easier if he had some company. Why not email the rest of our MPs and ask them to vote against the Bill too so he has company in the voting lobby. There will be some history geeks out there, I'm sure, who will be able to tell me if any MP has ever rebelled on their first vote.

But back to Mike. He very nicely sent us an email thanking us for all our help last night. I suspect that replies to that don't go straight to him, so I think it would be more effective to use his council email address, mike.thornton@eastleigh.gov.uk.

Oh, and as far as my question in the title of this piece is concerned, of course we will still like him. We liberals don't fall out with people because they disagree with us. Or we shouldn't, anyway. The activists from all over the country who poured into Eastleigh or spent hours on phone banks at home will really, really love him, though, if he does what Conference asked and voted to get rid of unfair and illiberal secret courts.Let's get to filling his inbox. Don't write loads - we don't want to overwhelm him - but do write. His first vote could be his most important.

Irony and the Tory MP #eastleigh

One of the funniest moments of yesterday was listening to Tory MP George Hollingberry talk about how refreshing it was to have politicians who spoke their mind. "Do you want to have robocandidate?" he said.

And he said it without a trace of irony, too.

Who would have thought his comments came as part of the Eastleigh by-election hustings on Radio 5 Live? Here he was, replacing the party's actual candidate in the by-election, Maria Hutchings. Why on earth would the Tories replace a loose cannon of a candidate who has criticised state education with an on-message Cameron crony? Her minders have form for keeping her as far away from the press as possible as Mark Pack reported the other day, for what appear to be obvious reasons. She's not been called the Tories' Sarah Palin for nothing.

This poster was seen circulating round social media yesterday morning and I thought it was worth putting it on here for posterity.

Mike Thornton, the Liberal Democrat candidate, made some excellent points during the hustings, despite being rudely interrupted by host Victoria Derbyshire on numerous occasions, even during his closing statement.

He was very clear that he thought Chris Huhne should apologise for the wrong that he's done. He was very good on both local and national issues, talking about how he had consistently opposed the gravel pits and voted for one responsible and needed housing development in order to save the green space between the towns and villages. He talked about how youth unemployment in Eastleigh had gone down by 20% and how 2100 apprentices had been created in the constituency. He emphasised the tax cuts for ordinary people secured by the Liberal Democrats.

If you have some spare time this weekend, please use it to help Mike Thornton to become Eastleigh's next MP. Wherever you live, you can make a difference to the campaign, whether by phonebanking (which Scottish Liberal Democrats will be doing in Edinburgh tomorrow, or by travelling to Eastleigh and helping deliver leaflets or knock on doors. All the information you need is here.