Decaptitation Looks Good, But to Kill a Weed You Have to Go For the Roots
By Emma.
There has been a strong feeling in Labour Circles today that the Lib Dems are dead in the water already, and we should be focusing all our fire now on the Tories. Important Labour thinkers with whom I largely agree such as Ed Balls and Mark Ferguson have written as such. Certainly after last night it’s a tempting and seemingly true narrative.
But it worries me. I don’t think the country is ready for us to go after the Tories yet. I don’t think we’ll find fertile ground there. The cuts haven’t started to really bite they way they will next year, and people are still in a wait and see mood. The economy may well stutter as a result of Osborne’s cuts and unemployment will almost certainly rise. There will be time enough for this to settle in the public consciousness, but it hasn’t happened yet.
In the meantime, the Lib Dems are clearly dazed and confused. They are stumbling and lost. But the tuition fees vote wasn’t the knockout blow, it was what creadted the space for a knockout blow. That comes in May.
We need to remember that the Lib Dems are like weeds. We can knock off the heads as often as we like, but unless we tackle the roots, they’ll grow back stronger than ever, and ready to wreak the same havoc they are enabling now.
May is going to be our opportunity to tackles those roots. To elect Labour Councillors at the Lib Dems expense the length and breadth of the country. Keeping the focus on the Lib Dems until the May elections will maximise our wins and energise our members ans supporters while at the same time vastly reducing and demoralising their activist base. It will be at this time when the effect of the cuts start to kick in and once we have neutralised the Lib Dem threat, we can then turn our fire on the Tories at a time when it will be most beneficial to do so.
While I agree that we need to defeat the Tories (and the Lib Dems are doing a fine job of defeating themselves) we can’t make the mistake again of forgetting that we are up against two opponent parties, not one. We did that at the last election, and gave the Lib Dems far too easy a ride and now look where we are.
Tags: Lib Dems, Local elections, tories
Saturday, December 11th 2010 at 21:10
Hi Emma, I completely agree. For years the Lib Dems have operated with a “holier than thou” attitude and at the first real test of their principles, they fall at the first hurdle. Of course we need to take the fight to the Tories but we must hammer home the message that what the Tories are doing would not be possible without Lib Dem support. We should be training our sights on the government as a coherent whole, for that is what it is.
On a somewhat related note (and in some shameless self-promotion), I wrote an article for LabourList on Compass’s arguments for pluralism and against “Labourism” – I’d love to hear your comments! (http://www.labourlist.org/the-labour-party-or-nothing)