Seven approaches to beating the Liberal Democrats

Yesterday ConservativeHome argued that the Liberal Democrats are David Cameron's biggest headache.  Tomorrow Britain's third party announces that Nick Clegg will be their next leader.  Surely it will be him?  On today's Platform Iain Duncan Smith argues that we are most likely to beat the LibDems by being a decent party ourselves.

In the most recent ConservativeHome readers' survey we asked for your ideas on we should tackle the Liberal Democrats.  We've selected some of your verbatim responses and publish them below under seven broad headings...

DON’T GIVE THEM PUBLICITY (AND NEGATIVE CAMPAIGNING DOESN’T WORK)

• “By ignoring them”
• “Don't give them the oxygen of publicity.”
• “Be more ssertive in publicising Conservative policies. Negative campaigning, even when true, turns the electorate off. It also gives them publicity & inprints their names in the electorate's mind.”
• “They are doing quite enough to tackle themselves- just ignore them.”
• “Let them continue to hang themselves.”
• “Concentrate on being Conservatives; the Liberal Democrats will fade away.”
• “Exhibit lofty disregard.”

HIGHLIGHT THEIR UNPOPULAR AND INCONSISTENT POLICIES

• “You should explain that their plans to axe council tax for a local income tax will make the average family worse off.”
• “By highlighting their constant demand for more taxes.”
• “LibDems want us to be a province of Europe! We should expose this in PR output.”
• “By highlighting the inconsistencies in their stated policies.”
• “Mass publicity of their daftest ideas.”
• “The Conservative Party takes a far too relaxed attitude to the LibDems. Every opportunity must be taken to examine, expose & ridicule their far-left, spendthrift policies. The LibDems are are a far greater danger than they are given credit for & must be countered & neutralised at every opportunity.”
• “High visibility attacks on their policy stances and the variations between constituencies.”
• “Expose them as more left than Labour. It is a myth that they are in the centre and a place for Tories to protest too in mid term. They are very radical , silly and dangerous and more irresponsible than Labour , more like left Labour. We must expose them on Defence , as unilateralists and as a high tax and spend party.”

MAKE THEM IRRELEVANT BY STEALING THEIR POPULAR POLICIES

• “We should strengtnen our green Policies particularly the decarbonisation of the electricity supply and attack them as surrogate Socialists.”
• “By pursuing socially liberal policies on issues of lifestyle and by concentrating on traditional strong Liberal Democrat issues such as the environment and localism.”

PRESENT THEM AS A WASTED VOTE THAT COULD KEEP LABOUR IN POWER

• “Expose them as having no hope in forming a govt.”
• “Go with the "Vote LD - get Labour" targetting.”
• “Paint them as the left to labour Say they will prop up a defeated labour party Show that they're very illiberal.”
• “Depict them as a wasted vote because only the Conservative Party can provide the change required after 10 years of Labour mismanagement.”
• “By promoting the fact that a vote for them, effectively increases`Labours chance of re-election.”
• “We can form the next govt, they can't.”
• “Ram home the message to voters that the only way for them to sack the Government is to vote for the only viable alternative”
• “TAKE EVERY OPPORTUNITY TO DEMONSTRATE THAT voting for them is not the way to change this government.”

UNDERMINE THEM FROM WITHIN (PARTICULARLY BY ENCOURAGING DEFECTIONS)

• “Play on their internal ideological divisions, which are gigantic, in order to put across a picture of them as ineffectual would-be politicians who are only interested in in-fighting and killing off their leaders.”
• “Encourage their supporters to defect to us.”
• “You should try to cox Vince Cable to defect to the tories. He is the star of the Lib/dem and is wasted there. He would be invaluable as a Tory minister.”
• “There's very little difference between an "old school" Liberal and a "new school" Conservative. Old school Liberals are starting to see that. Party loyalty is the only remaining issue. If we want to attract old school Libs then we must continue to offer them old Tory "wet" policies.”
• “We must re-educate them. The Tories have moved away from the hardliners on the right. With the LDs self destructing, now is the time to pull the tooth and absorb their followewrs into out camp. Co-opt any sensible policies into our own culture. We are no longer the party of just the aristocracy or top end business. We must be and seen to be the party of aspiration for all and achievement by all.”
• “Try to embrace more conservative minded libdem mps/candidates. They want power but will never have it as a LibDem so try and get more of them to defect, and fight those more left/labour leaning ones.”
• “Look for those who lean more to the right and involve them in the next Conservative administration.”

LOVEBOMBING

• “Forge close relations with them on issues we agree on (like 28 day detention limit) in case we need them to form a minority govt”
• “Love bomb them on green issues, ID cards, localism Highlight their nuttier policies, like amnesty for illegal immigrants, unilateral disarmament, more European regionalisation and federalism.”
• “Love their councilors and activists to death whilst exposing the inconsistencies of their policies.”
• “Appear nicer, more moderate sounding, less extreme and more decent. Be sensible, offer good policies that are popular and deliverable, show local conservatism to work.”

Read ConservativeHome's definition of love-bombing.

BEAT THEM AT PAVEMENT POLITICS

• “Fight them on local issues in every village, every ward, and every constituency.”
• “Beat them at their own game - local activism, regular leaflets, building up assocations locally. Requires hardwork and targetting.”
• “Target vulnerable sitting Lib Dems with pavement politics. Focus on Local candidates both for local government and PPCs.”
• "Work harder and spend more than them in marginal constituences."
• "At grass roots level. The Lib Dem communications machine at local level is excellent in terms of feedback to the electorate - far better than ours and Labour's. But we need a funded distribution system and must not rely on local volunteers, who are overloaded as it is."
• "Conservatives need to survey, canvass and listen to voters. Then we may offer the electorate the choices they seek. There is no alternative to foot slogging in the constituency to let people know you are around and care for them."

Now, it is clear that these approaches are not all consistent with each other but many thanks to everyone for their contributions. All 1,033 are all being forwarded to CCHQ...

Comments

[Icarus]

Ha ha ha. all wonderful My favourite is: MAKE THEM IRRELEVANT BY STEALING THEIR POPULAR POLICIES

By pursuing socially liberal policies on issues of lifestyle and by concentrating on traditional strong Liberal Democrat issues such as the environment and localism.”

You are the Conservative Party remember! Half your members think Dave is useless softie already!

[Malcolm Dunn]

No they are not all consistent. The worst advice for me is ignoring them ,the best is to highlight their more disastrous policies and to commit to beating them at 'pavement politics'.

[MH]

And surely the best way to lose to them is to give them a veneer of legitimacy as Dave attempted to do yesterday?

[London Tory]

I.D.S was the best recruiting sergeant the Lib Dems ever had. Because of his catastrophic misjudgement over Iraq, he tied us in to Blair and all the stigma that went with it from 2003-2005, giving Michael Howard no chance to capitalise in the 2005 election, and resulting in 62 Liberal MPs.

We don't need any advice from I.D.S on how to beat the Lib Dems, he had his chance, and boy did he blow it.

[Trevor Morgan]

Sorry, but negative campaigning can work.
The lofty distain stuff is just a rationalisation for doing nothing

[Sean Fear]

"I.D.S was the best recruiting sergeant the Lib Dems ever had"

Even under IDS, we didn't lose votes to the Lib Dems, although our stance on Iraq certainly prevented us picking up Labour voters who switched over that issue.

[jim]

Q: Can today 90% of our Associations easily create a Survey from their voter systems?

Ans: No

Q: Why Not?

[Mark Andrew]

From local knowledge in Calderdale and other Pennine areas the following points are the most important, especially where they contest Town and parish Councils and we dont.

Mark Andrew
Halifax

“Fight them on local issues in every village, every ward, and every constituency.”

“Beat them at their own game - local activism, regular leaflets, building up assocations locally. Requires hardwork and targetting.”

“Target vulnerable sitting Lib Dems with pavement politics. Focus on Local candidates both for local government and PPCs.”

"Work harder and spend more than them in marginal constituences."

"At grass roots level. The Lib Dem communications machine at local level is excellent in terms of feedback to the electorate - far better than ours and Labour's. But we need a funded distribution system and must not rely on local volunteers, who are overloaded as it is."

[Yet Another Anon]

A lot of the above suggestions involve policy decisions that are disputed - if you are socially liberal then being socially liberal to defeat the Liberal Democrats is legitimate, if you arent then doing so is hypocrisy

[Dale]

"We don't need any advice from I.D.S on how to beat the Lib Dems, he had his chance, and boy did he blow it."

No he didn't, he was denied his chance by the backstabbers. The vast majority of conservatives supported the war with irag, I find it difficult to beleive that howard or davis or clark would not have made the same decision.

[Dale]

I was the one who said “By ignoring them” by the way.

I feel so proud that you chose to quote me.

[George Hinton]

I don't think any one would want to steal Proportional Representation.
We really must expose this policy as nothing less than a total submission to the EU and its thoroughly corrupt politics.
PR would cause total paralysis in Westminster and would fragment the poltical landscape for the worse.

[London Tory]

# the vast majority of Conservatives supported the Iraq war #

You can also add the Hutton Report to the I.D.S charge sheet- once again we were unable to capitalise on WMD/dodgy dossiers because I.D.S had tied us to the political Titanic that was Iraq.

I.D.S was far too quick to jump in with Blair, firstly because he had no authority with the public, and secondly because he wanted to be seen to have gravitas on this matter. What a tragic error.

As for 'backstabbers', I am convinced we would have gone below 100 seats had I.D.S led us into the 2005 election with the albatross of supporting the Iraq War around our necks.

As for Lib Dems not taking votes off I.D.S, you obvioulsy were not looking at the opinion polls from 2001-2003.

John Major committed the murder, William Hague pushed the body into the coffin, I.D.S nailed the lid on.

[Dale]

"As for 'backstabbers', I am convinced we would have gone below 100 seats had I.D.S led us into the 2005 election with the albatross of supporting the Iraq War around our necks.

As for Lib Dems not taking votes off I.D.S, you obvioulsy were not looking at the opinion polls from 2001-2003."

Even though IDS was ahead?

[John Leonard]

I agree with much of what the Editor says. Although I do see some contradictions. How can you ignore the Libdems and at the same time trivialise them, steal some of their policies, undermine others, love bomb them etc.

To me it is a choice, either ignore them or take them at their worth. Personally, I think ignoring them has been one of the mistakes of the past and therefore it is better to follow the other course. It is better to take them at their worth and prove they have very little real value to our political future.

There are many contradictions in the Libdem policies. My particular favourite is how they describe themselves as being the true 'localist' party but at the same time would drag us further into the morass of EU bureacracy, centralism and statist authoritarianism.

I recognise there are genuine (but misguided) localists in the Libdem ranks. It should be a goal to convince them they are backing the wrong horse if they want their aspirations to be fulfilled.

Cameron was wise to put the offer to the Libdems to join the Conservatives in seeking further localism. It should leave them in a quandry.

Do they prove they are a 'true' localist party, join with the Conservatives on this, and potentially ruffle the feathers of many of their activists or do they drop the pretense of localism and leave the issue of localist policy solely to the Conservatives?

[Robert Wright]

I would have thought that any Lib-Dem supporters of the Orange Book are ripe for conversion to Conservatism. It does seem odd that such free marketeers should be shacked up with sandled hippies.

[London Tory]

David Laws would make an excellent addition to our front bench, but Clegg has gone right down in my estimation after the leadership election.

He is totally vacuous.

[Tony Makara]

It is social issues that allow the Liberals to pull in disaffected votes. The Conservative party must continue to put itself forward as the most socially conscious party. The party that believes in community and wants to address social issues. The Liberal strength at local level is their ability to interact, or seem to interact, with local communities. The Conservative party must do more to promote David Cameron's less-is-more philosophy of promoting community over the big-fix of the state.

[David Belchamber]

If Brown's government doesn't implode in the next few months, we have just about time before the next GE to outdo the Libdems where they hold marginal constituencies.

This is why I believe the last section "Beat them at pavement politics" has the most practical suggestions.

We have to beat them at localism and therefore need to hear a lot more from the DC and the shadow cabinet on this.

We need good candidates in place soon in these constituencies and, just as important, we need "active" activists to make sure that our message is heard by all voters in the constituency, not once but several times.

By all means play the Libdems at their own game a little by selecting the message that the voters most want to hear (without too much spin or downright deceitfulness).

[Sue Doughty]

To defeat Lib Dems you gotta work harder than they do, and get lucky. In Guildford they campaigned against a waste incinerator near Guildford while secretly sending Guildford's waste overnight to a waste incinerator on the south coast - past the homes of loyal Tories I met at a conference. Then we phoned the electorate and asked them what they thought about that.
Get their leaflets, find out what they are doing in other areas that is different and challenge on that one to one with the electorate - ignoring the Lib Dems themselves. For instance they signed up to having house building en masse in Surrey and ran petitions against local house building - so we phoned the electorate and asked what they thought about Lib Dems having agreed to 45,000 houses being built at the end of their street.
Don't forget to explain by phone that the named person saying in the papers how marvellous their Lib Dem is should be saying it across the breakfast table - they are married!
Happens so often.
So pavement politics works, but it can be done one to one on the telephone as well.

[A.T. Watt]

I think that making lots of fresh and incisive comments about the 'beard and sandals brigade' would be a very constructive way forward

[Sean Fear]

We must always remind the electorate to "Remember, Rinka! Vote Conservative, if you believe that dogs have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness!"

[Malcolm Dunn]

Had a good a good lunch Mr Fear?

[Alex]

re Sue Doughty - I wonder if that is the lady of the same name who used to be Lib Dem MP and now Lib Dem ppc for Guildford......

[anne Allan]

Although IDS is not cut out to lead a political party, he is a thoroughly decent man and the main reason he backed the Iraq war is, that like most decent people, it never occurred to him that a British Prime Minister would lie over something so serious. Now we all know better and I hope that no other PM will be allowed to get away with such appalling mendacity.
The second reason was that Parliament was presented with a fait accompli - our troops had already been mobilised and you cannot stand up in the House and condemn people who are risking their lives, albeit on the orders of a bunch of politicians not fit to clean their boots.

[Yet Another Anon]

Although IDS is not cut out to lead a political party, he is a thoroughly decent man and the main reason he backed the Iraq war is, that like most decent people, it never occurred to him that a British Prime Minister would lie over something so serious.
Michael Howard also supported the war. It isn't a matter of whether someone agreed with the government's or the White House reasons for war whether given or suspected, or the war strategy - in the UK, the government handled the issue terriby. The White House were more adept politicaly on the issue, but the Rumsfeld stategy was fundamentally flawed, the Pentagon warned him against it - it is long established in military strategy that it takes more troops to hold land than to take it.

The Baathist regime broke the 1991 Ceasefire Treaty - the 150km missile range limit, limits on guidance systems and they failed to co-operate with inspectors and were found not to have declared many banned weaponry. In addition the regime was a threat to the stability of the area, funding terrorist bombers in Israel, attacking Iran and Saudi Arabia - they used chemical weapons against border Iranian villages and against Kurdish cities in Iraq. They were destroying the marshes and attacking the Marsh Arabs as well as Kurds. Indeed in the 1980s it was illegal in Iraq to have a beard, people with beards were seen as being religious extremists. 20% of GDP on armed forces, huge idolatrous statues to Saddam Hussein and palaces built for the party leaders who lived a playboy lifestyle while running Iraq's economy and environment into the ground, a regime that had little support outside of a small area to the north of Baghdad.

I still believe it was right to remove Saddam Hussein and the evil entrenched Ba'athist regime, without the action sanctions and periodic bombing would still be going on, the Ba'athist leaders would be biding their time for international attention to slip away so that they could resume their nuclear programme and perhaps have a nuclear warhead and new guided missiles capable of striking Tehran, Damascus, Tel Aviv and Riyadh.

The Coalition of the Willing doesn't have to share the same reasons for prosecuting the war, and nor do others supporting the war.

There is a danger of anti-war groups using a kind of divide and rule strategy to block through the political system any military action overseas whatsoever.

[Joe James Broughton]

"Posted by: Sue Doughty | December 17, 2007 at 17:06 "

I like it!
Very funny.

Good advice.

BTW, the Tories gained a seat off the Lib Dems in Guildford, about 2 months ago.