James Thompson

I’m starting the process of building a compehensive Lib Dem links page (follow the link below for the first few links). It’s not exactly state of the art, but it will do the job.. It will probably take a long time to build up and will be an ongoing process. Other than links to the main party sites, I have included links relevent to the Leadership election, including the candidates campaign sites and some video feeds of news reports. More to follow…watch this space…

Liberal Democrat Links Page

The 4 leadeship candidates took part in a debate earlier this evening on Sky News and for me I found it very interesting. Whilst it re-affirmed my backing for Simon Hughes, it did leave me unsure as to where my second preference vote will go to. I was extremely impressed with all 4 candidates. Whoever wins the contest, I will be happy for them to lead my party.

Chris Huhne impressed me, I had never heard him speak before. But, I do think at the moment my second preference will be Mark Oaten. I was not happy with his views on the NHS, but I did admire his ambition for the party. we should stop all this talk of no glass ceilings and should be ambitious and confident that we can form a government. In the next election, lets try and get as many votes and as many seats as possible. Our priority in a general election, needs to be the general election. But I feel many people in our party are more obsessed with local election success than gaining credibilty as a national political force.

Many Liberal Democrats were hoping for a breakthrough in last years election. I was personally expecting 100 + seats. Unfortuanatly this did not happen. The ‘decapitation strategy’ failed miserably and we wasted far too much time and resources chasing the Tories in their heartlands. The message we must learn is that it’s impossible to push the Tories below the 30% mark. So where do we go from here?

The previous strategy was to try and replace the Tories as the second political force in the country, an option that many in our party would like to continue with. So, we could go down the route of promoting smaller government and offer a more ‘economic liberal’ set of policies. But, this option is not one I feel very comfortable with and I do not believe this will result in significant gains from the Tories. Michael Howard fought the election largely on the issue of immigration. This played very well in the Tory heartlands of the south. So in order to beat the Tories in places such as Surrey and Kent we would likely have to provide a set of anti-immigration, low tax, anti-Europe and public service cutting policies. This is not why I and many others joined this party.

What we did seein the election was massive swings to us from Labour. Labour voters have become very disillusioned with Blair swinging the party to the right. So harsh has Blairs repositioning been, that many now see us as to the left of Labour. This should not scare us, if we are to the left of Labour it does not stop our policies from being more in touch with the people.

Labour have a dismal record on public services, fairer taxation and civil liberties and we must hold them to account. Labour have left us no choice but to attack them from left. We need a coherent set of policies that address these issues and then take them to Labours heartlands. People vote for Blair because they feel there is no alternative, we need to show them that we are the alternative Labour and It is our parties policies and traditions that will best inable the free and fair society that they were hoping Blair will deliver.