Liberal Democrat strategy

Alex Harrowell’s been talking about the Lib Dem conference, and how that party can position themselves to do their best at a general election. It’s here:

First up, get a bloody autocue already. We could have a blogger whipround. Out of all the speakers I saw on TV, excepting Ming’s big finish, all of them were very obviously reading off a bit of paper. Danny Alexander’s entire TV appearance consisted of him staring down at a script; not good. Nick Clegg was little better. The best performance was from a ginger Scottish guy called Kennedy; concise, punchy, addressing the crowd not the lectern.

Maybe they should give this Kennedy bloke the leader’s job. What do you mean that’s not a useful suggestion?

And if you can’t remember your whole speech, memorise the bits you absolutely can’t leave out; then just deliver those.

In general, it’s best not to read a whole speech from a perpared text. Make brief notes about the points you want to cover, then speak about them without your actual words being written down. It sounds fresher that way.

Thirdly, we need to define the enemy, and this has never been easier. Here they are - The Party of Control. Labour thinks everyone can be zapped into being better people, the Tories think the poor can be zapped into immobility while the rich clean up.

As I like to think of it, the fundamental question of politics is who gets to kick who around. Labour want Whitehall bureaucrats to control you; the Tories want big business to control you. Both parties want privileged toffs to control you. (It’s notable that both Labour and the Tories have encouraged more female candidates to conterbalance the statistical over-representation of men in the Commons; but neither party has done anything to counter the much greater over-representation of those — like Blair or Cameron — who went to an expensive private school and Oxbridge. Could it be that Blair, Cameron, et al are rather keen on keeping a system that benefits them and their kind so much?)

1. It’s better to fiddle less
If you want to save fuel (and we do), tax it; don’t build a mass surveillance system.

Or for Home Information Packs. Without increasing fuel prices, there’s no point in taking other measures to stop people using fuel, since you will simply get people using outdoor speace heaters and other wasteful uses, unless they are priced out of it. There is a place for measures other than increasing tax of fuel — such as research into new technologies that reduce carbon emissions — but tax must be the main way of reducing carbon emissions.

4. You can’t rig the facts
Presentation, “sending a message” - it’s all crap. We should be keen on real evidence-based policy; the kind where the evidence changes the policy.

Indeed. Policies should as far as possible, be trialled in a limited area before being rolled out to the entire country. The trials should include stated objective criteria by with to measure their success. This would apply to policies such as ASBOs, the ContactPoint database, Home Information Packs, etc. On the subject of ContactPoint, one argument the Labour Party has made against private education is that it means that well-off parents don’t care about the state education system, and therefore don’t push for its flaws to be fixed, because their kids don’t use it. However, the children of MPs won’t get their records put into the ContactPoint database, giving MPs less incentive to fix security flaws in the system.