Fresh Starts

Following heavy defeat at the 2011 federal election, the Liberal Party of Canada is burnishing itself with a fresh start. Canada's longest lived federal party is hoping to rebuild its fortunes through a leadership election.

That leadership election took off in earnest last week when Mr Justin Trudeau officially launched his campaign (Naumetz, 2012). Since arriving on the political scene, as the son of former Premier Mr Pierre Trudeau, he has been courted as a future party leader (Greenway, 2008). Yet so far he has a lean record when it comes to policies.

Now the moment has come to clearly lay out the policy platform for a liberal future. When doing so there are a few things for Mr Trudeau and the other candidates to consider.

It has been covered previously on this journal that the UK's parties of the left have had plenty of lessons in cooperation to take from the Canadian left. Now, however, Canadian liberals have plenty of reasons to watch Mr Ed Miliband's progress as leader of the Labour Party in the UK - to study how leadership elections affect parties, what issues are affecting people, and what methods may or may not work.

A primary issue for the Liberal Party of Canada will be addressing the unexpected collapse from last year's election - not to mention a long term polling slump that still hangs over their heads (White, 2011). But a new leader is no sure salve: UK Labour's new leader Mr Ed Miliband has had a rocky ride since his election - which was won only by the narrowest of margins. He has tried to cast off the towering shadows of Mr Blair and Mr Brown (Telegraph, 2011) and rebuild the party's reputation. But such shadows are hard to shake.

And those inherited troubles have lead Labour, and will lead the Canadian Liberals, down a difficult road. Labour have had to try and rebuild their much maligned economic credibility (Elliott, 2012), which was so sorely strained over the course of the election - and afterwards when the full scale of public debt came to light. Overcoming those stigmas has lead the party to alienate some of its core support by backing the theme of the government's economic approach - even as they oppose the details (Wintour, 2012).

The Canadian Liberal party will need to avoid such alienation of its core supporters as it looks for a solution to the number of voters who have moved over to the Conservatives. While the easiest route will surely be to try and match their opponents blow-for-blow, there are alternatives - not least providing a realistic, practical and affordable way to assuage the fears that have driven voters over to a Conservative majority.

A third lesson should also be taken from UK Labour's leadership election. The favourite, Mr David Miliband, lost narrowly to the his brother Mr Ed Miliband - a point particularly pertinent to the favourite in the Canadian Liberal leadership race, Mr Trudeau. Nothing can be taken for granted.

Canadian Liberalism needs to be wary of the selfish path to short-term polling success. While effective at putting a party on the radar, it also breeds instability, alienation and dissatisfaction down the line - as UK Labour saw when its long-term policy of establishing itself as the sole bastion of the UK's political left has seen the party lose ground to left alternative parties across the last two elections. The question then becomes: how do you build a core of support and a framework of policies while avoiding the alienation of potential allies?

Beginning to answer that question will mean restating the values of liberalism and figuring out how those words translate into policy in the 21st century. And that means finding a starting point, something like the words of that former citizen of Mr Justin Trudeau's constituency,  Louis-Joseph Papineau (1867):

'It is to my fellow-citizens of all origins that I call on today as I always did; to them I say that we must not only be anxious to preserve the rights which are acquired, but that, by free discussion, we must unceasingly endeavour to acquire new ones.'

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References:
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+ Tim Naumetz's 'Trudeau makes it official and Liberals riding a wave of voter interest, 30,000 outside party sign up for leadership election';in Hill Times; 3 October 2012.

+ Norma Greenway's 'Justin Trudeau top pick as Liberal chief: poll; But rookie MP says he's not interested'; in the Montreal Gazette; 29 October 2008.

+ Anne White's 'In Canada’s election there have been two surges: the far-left in Quebec and the far right in the rest of Canada. The result bucks the recent trend of hung parliaments and may offer some lessons for the UK'; on British Politics and Policy at LSE blog; 5 May 2011.

+The Telegraph's 'Ed Miliband tells 2011 Labour Party Conference "I am my own man"'; 27 September 2011.

+ Larry Elliott's 'Labour still has a long way to go to restore its economic credibility'; in The Guardian; 30 September 2012.

+ Patrick Wintour's 'Ed Miliband backs Ed Balls's stance on spending cuts'; in The Guardian; 15 January 2012.

The success of co-operatives

2012 has been the United Nations International Year of Co-operatives, and at the end of October celebrations will culminate in a festival in the City of Manchester. The year of the festival seems well timed, considering the recent strength of co-operative organisations.

This strength was demonstrated just two months ago when the the The Co-operative Banking Group spent around £400m (possibly rising to £800m) on the purchase of a large number of Lloyds branches - a deal that increased the Co-operative Group share in the current account market to around 7% (BBC, 2012). These successes have not been limited to banking either. Farming Co-operatives of various sorts have been starting up and expanding (Bourne, 2012); in the Basque Country, Mondragon, a co-operative working in machine assembly, has laboured on and protected its employees even during the worst of the financial crisis (Burridge, 2012).

And it seems that (at least a part) of the UK Government has started to take notice. In January the Liberal Democrats advanced proposals to put workers closer to company decision making processes (Clegg, 2012) - a move to counter the re-emergence of the mismanagement that has been strongly tied to the causes of the financial crisis.

Co-operatives, building societies, credit unions: these organisations have yet to be perfected. Each have had their share of issues throughout the past decade, even if they have shown themselves to be very competitive. Last summer the Co-operative Group began seeking a buyer for parts of its insurance arm and just last month claimed worse than expected profits.

But in the face of the most recent financial meltdown, people are taking a fresh look at how to get democratic values into the heart of business. The reasons are twofold: it is primarily the long-awaited next step in the advance of social democracy, but its also serves as a means of building greater stability into businesses. Co-operatives, thanks to their resilience, provide a sound foundation for building towards those aims.

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References:
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+ BBC's 'Co-op to buy 632 Lloyds bank branches'; 19 July 2012.

+ Nick Bourne's 'Fruit and vegetable community co-ops rise to 350 in Wales'; on the BBC; 9 May 2012.

+ Tom Burridge's 'Basque co-operative Mondragon defies Spain slump'; on the BBC; 14 August 2012.

+ 'Nick Clegg calls for a 'John Lewis economy'' on the BBC; 16 January 2012.

Renewals

Cabinet reshuffles, like that of Mr Cameron's last month, are a fact of political life. They serve as a way to reorganise, to break from certain continuities or to shed unfortunate reputations that have been accumulated.

In 2003 Mr Blair reorganised his cabinet amongst much controversy (Jones & Rozenberg, 2003). His cabinet changes reformed and watered down the the role of Lord Chancellor (Wintour & Dyer, 2003). The changes came at a time when, after the outrage sparked by protests and resignations over the Iraq War, Mr Blair's New Labour were in need of reasserting their reforming credentials.

So what are the aims behind Mr Cameron's new cabinet?

Commentators are suggesting this reshuffle is a move to, or at least a concession to, the Tory Right (Clark, 2012). Such an attempt to shore up his support may reflect the difficulties the Prime Minister has faced. His role has consisted of trying to juggle party demands past his Liberal Democrat coalition partners (Stevenson, 2012).

There is danger, though, in being drawn in too far by these reshuffles. Methods such as these - used to manage public perceptions of government action - are reflective of the unfortunate role that personality plays, ahead of reason, in the formulating and carrying out of policy (although there have been attempts to rectify this).

This amount of focus given to personality allows ministries to get rid of bad impressions with an outgoing minister, and to press on from any newly established policy plateau - all without the baggage that comes with unpopularity. In this case, the reshuffle betrays concern in Tory ranks about their chances at the next election.

Changing faces, changing personalities - these are just misdirections to ease the passage of difficult legislation. The realities are always more complicated. We must be wary not to let misdirections such as these distract us from maintaining vigilance against dangerous legislation.

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References:
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+ George Jones & Joshua Rozenberg's 'Blair casts aside legal history in radical reshuffle'; in The Telegraph; 13 June 2003.

+ Patrick Wintour & Clare Dyer's 'Blair's reforming reshuffle'; in The Guardian, 13 June 2003.

+ Tom Clark's 'Cameron's new cabinet: not just a shuffle but a great trek to the right'; in The Guardian; 4 September 2012.

+ Alex Stevenson's '"Chambermaid" Cameron told to stand up to Lib Dems'; in Politics.co.uk; 30 August 2012.