Do we need the "Liberal Left?"

There is much with which I agree in the "Founding Position Statement" of the Liberal Left.Our current leaders have indeed "taken the party's policy position to the right." We did claim before the election that plans to reduce the public deficit in a single parliament "would remove growth from the economy and their impact would fall disproportionately on those least able to afford them , increasing the gap between the rich and the poor and further dividing the country," and this is indeed "exactly what has happened." And much more.

However, I disagree with them on three important points.

First, they "oppose the party's membership of the coalition." We have to remember that the party overwhelmingly approved joining the coalition. Almost all of us agreed at the time that it was the most appropriate step to take. We have to live with the fact that the deal has turned out to be a bad one. (I argued at the time that there was no need to rush the thing through in a weekend. A ten day period of negotiation, consultation and reflection would have exposed the flaws, such as that an agreement to abstain on tuition fees was insufficient to honour the pledges we had made. The argument that a quick fix was necessary to placate the markets was false.) But that is what the party as a whole agreed to and we have to stick it out. There have been important gains, not least the fixed term parliament, the most important constitutional reform since 1911.

Secondly Liberal Left advocates a clear stance before the next, and presumably subsequent, elections, that in the event that no party has an overall majority we will form coalitions only with Labour, the Greens and other parties of the Left (if any.)This in my view is a nonsense, allowing Labour to argue that the electorate might just as well vote for "the real thing", them, rather than the monkey, us, and the Tories to claim that a Liberal Democrat vote is a vote for Labour. The stance taken at the last election, that the party with the majority of seats and votes should have first crack at forming a coalition, seems fair, right, proper and something the electorate can easily understand. It also guards against the very real possibility that the Labour party simply isn't interested in coalitions but, like spoilt kids in the playground, will take their bats home if the electorate doesn't give them the decision they want , as, if David Laws is to be believed, appears to have happened in 2010.

Finally Liberal Left appears to be set out to create a faction within the party to oppose the leadership. We have seen the damage that such factions have done to both Labour (Bevanites, Bennites, Militant) and the Tories (Eurosceptics). The Social Liberal Forum already exists to to work within the party's structures to steer us back into the paths of Keynesian and Beveridgian economic sense and social compassion. More power to the SLF elbow, rather than a factional grouping, is what is required.