|
|
Richmond upon Thames Liberal Democrats:Covering the constituencies of Twickenham and Richmond Park |
Tim Farron writes: Enough doom and gloom, we have the greatest opportunity in the history of our party
May 24, 2011 1:45 PM
• [May 24] Tim Farron writes: I DON'T know if you noticed, but the elections on May 5th weren't all that good for the Liberal Democrats. There was that business of the referendum defeat too. In much of the country we got an absolute pasting . . I for one am not prepared to sit around feeling sorry for myself. Not now, when we have the greatest opportunity in the history of our party before us.
. . I'd like to make three observations. The first is that despite everything negative that we have been associated with in the last year, 16% of those who voted put a cross in our box this month.
. . The second observation is that our biggest collective failure recently - from the grassroots to the cabinet - has been that too many Lib Dems have drifted from the sort of community politics that we have prided ourselves on in the past, or else been too busy to practice it. For Liberal Democrats community politics must be both tactic and ideology. Without it, we lose the ability to understand what normal people think.
We all run the risk of spending too much time listening to council officers, Special Advisers and civil servants at the expense of getting our hands dirty out there and talking and listening to the people. That's why we end up slipping on predictable political banana skins and failing to speak the same language as voters.
. . We have proved we can take difficult decisions and act with authority. And those difficult decisions have earned us the right to get a hearing we have never had before.
That hearing lasts four more years. Let's spend them making our voice heard - a lot better and more intelligently that we have this last 12 months! Let's spend them showing people we are more competent than Labour, fairer than the Tories and more radical, green, liberal and progressive than both. That is rich electoral ground - let's lay claim to it.
So there you are: competence, credibility and community politics. There's a speech in there somewhere…
What would you like to do next?
-
Subscribe for updates
Follow the party's activity on...
- Twitter:
- Liberal Democrats
- Facebook:
- Liberal Democrats
- YouTube:
- Liberal Democrats