On the 19th June the Scottish Lib Dems has arranged a Members’ Forum in Edinburgh where the principle topic will be a review of the 2011 Scottish Parliament Election. The booking form contains a section that seeks members views on the issues of “The Manifesto & Policies”, “Campaign Literature” and “Media Performance & Coverage”. Below is my response (bear in mind it is a small response as space on the form was limited):
The Manifesto & Policies
I was really enthused by the manifesto. The idea behind the changes to Scottish Water the ambitions to use that money for improvements across many areas in Scotland were new, ambitious and encouraging. The focus on jobs and economic growth was good as was the idea behind the Science Nation Fund. The ambitions for the renewables sector were realistic and focussed (although I was unclear as to why Aberdeen would be the global energy hub). In places we descended into jargon (like not explaining what a HEAT target was). Clearly not everyone reads the manifestos in detail but if jargon is allowed there, where else does it creep in? One of the key policies that was put forward was the effort to ‘save local policing’. Personally I am ambivalent on the issue but can see need for good local policing and have yet to see how that can really continue under the single police force idea. However, I am stunned at how big a centre piece that policy was when it came to pushing our policies. As was asked a number of times on Twitter and in blogs, did we have a number of focus groups where the only participants were police officers? Yes, the people of Scotland want more police on the street but we totally failed to show why a centralised police force would mean fewer police on the streets.
The Scottish Water change & benefits associated from that should have played a much greater role in any policy push. The Centre for Public Policy for Regions showed that the idea was sound and that should have been used more. I was disappointed that there was not an awful lot of thought in the manifesto about the fact that Scotland has an ageing population. Yes the Council Tax reduction is welcome but there was a lot of content for younger people but not a lot for older people, who tend to vote in greater numbers.
Since the Coalition was formed it was clear that this would be a hard campaign in Scotland. Even before the complete and utter failure of the Westminster party to deal with the tuition fees policy problem, the fact that we were in partnership with the Tories was an issue in Tory hating Scotland. In the middle of last year I was asking for a more clear definition of what it meant to be a Scottish Liberal Democrat where we agreed with some of the Coalition policies (income tax allowance) and disagreed with some of the others (tuition fees). I am a proponent of the coalition but we had to make ourselves more Scottish but nothing was done until we were well into the 2011 election campaign. The line of pro-Coalition, anti-Tory would have been good if used for the entirety of the last Parliamentary year rather than the two weeks prior to the election.
Furthermore, could we have not been more ambitious for the powers that Scotland has? I understand our support for the Calman proposals but a manifesto setting something more akin to the Steel Commission would have made us more distinctive from Westminster. I believe that it is party policy to support a Land Value Tax to replace business rates and this could have been a popular policy in a number of different ways economically, environmentally and socially. Why was this policy not included in the manifesto.
Finally, the position on not supporting a referendum was a shocking one. It was, and is, illiberal. Saying one is needed very soon due to the economic effects of uncertainty is fine. Saying we should not even ask the people of Scotland what there opinion is for a period of 9 years (2007 – 2016) flies in the face of the preamble to constitution of the Liberal Democrats.
Campaign Literature
We have to move on in many respects. The bar chart and “only the Lib Dems can win” line cant really be used again. Not only is it a source of mockery but after these results we are third and fourth in a number of seats. We cant use dodgy comparisons from one election to the next (like comparing Euro elections to council elections). The electorate have shown that they can vote differently depending on the election so we need to respect that. Many of the bar charts don’t. I am not a design expert but I think that there needs to be some overarching theme to all our literature which was lacking as well as some key important national issues included in each leaflet.
I think that the online & social media presence of the Scottish Lib Dems was a bit lacking. Our website is a bit dated and the facebook/twitter interaction was not as slick as it could have been. To be fair this is the first election where all of this did matter for many voters but that does include a whole cohort of 1st time voters. We need to have something better established and in place by the 2012 council elections which can then be built upon in the 2015 Westminster election.
Media Performance & Coverage
Due to the fact that we had not created a “different from Westminster” narrative prior to the election that was always going to be a focus of the media. Why should we be trusted? Nothing was made of the 1999-2007 period when we were in government in Scotland, where we did deliver Lib Dem manifesto commitments and didn’t breach any trust. And where we did reference the past it was a bit dishonest. Yes, we got rid of tuition fees but we brought in the student endowment. We were still looking for a graduate contribution and the SNP did easily attack that, again making us look a bit silly. The party needed to sign the NUS Scotland no fees pledge but in doing so it looked desperate. Being honest, two Newsnight Scotland interviews did a lot of damage. The first, Jeremy Purvis on the day of the manifesto launch, got bogged down on two areas where we should already have had different answers. The issue about the referendum being a coalition deal breaker and the lack of communication with Westminster colleagues regarding the changes to Scottish Water. As I have said, the referendum position was illiberal and the lack of a clear answer regarding any conversations with the Chief Secretary resulted in a poor performance. As a result our manifesto was not really covered.
Unfortunately this continued with a Tavish Scott interview where, for whatever reason, Tavish did really badly in the face of harsh and occasionally bizarre questioning. On occasion media coverage was lacking and unfairly brief. This was exemplified during the BBC Leader Debate in Perth where Tavish was spoken over and ignored by the moderator and the other party leaders. It is hard to deal with this and difficult interviews sometimes but we do need to improve in many respects.
The Members Forum will be one of the first of many steps back to a larger number of Scot Lib Dem MSPs in the Scottish Parliament. I hope my small contribution will help.