Richard Baum

I watched last night’s Lib Dem party conference broadcast with a mixture of boredom and depression. It really was a disappointment. 

I know the environment and climate change is very important. The problem for us in trying to make a film about it is that everyone else thinks it’s important now as well, so where once banging on about it made us look radical and modern, now it makes us look like we’ve got nothing else to say.  

People associate us with the environment more than anything else, and whilst we may have scored a moral victory in getting Messrs Brown and Cameron to start talking green too, we now need to move the debate on to other policy areas to maintain our identity as a radical party of opposition, rather than one of three parties all nervously frowning about climate change. 

Who in the country knows anything about our crime policies, which are sensible, radically different, and plainly workable? Absolutely nobody. Who knows about our plans for education and the NHS – both areas where we stand out a mile from Labour and the Conservatives? If Brighton were covered in a giant net for a fortnight, trapping all Lib Dems inside, there’d scarcely be a person left in the rest of Britain who knew anything about them.  

We’ve made the environmental case. And we’ve done it so well that it’s now the mainstream of British politics. Yes, we’re still the best at it, and we’re suggesting different things to the others, but we’re not ploughing a lone furrow any more. We should still talk about it, but it should be treated as one of many important policy areas, not the only one.

If we ever want to be seen by most of the people of the country as more than a single issue party, it’s time to move on. We’re worried about Labour and the Tories jumping on the bandwagon and stealing our green credentials – but I think we’re wrong to worry. People will see bandwagon jumping as just that. We’ve been committed to the environment for years, and people won’t forget it. We haven’t talked about PR in a major way for a while, and people haven’t forgotten that we stand for that, have they? Now we need to show what else we’re made of.

Last year we had our “Five Steps to Cutting Crime” campaign, which I haven’t heard anything about since. We’ve just had an NHS campaign, which again seems to have evaporated. What about our plans for taxes (other than green ones)? Or education? Foreign policy? Jobs? Anything except bloody carbon emissions, please. We’ve done it to death. 

And if we must concentrate on the environment, please can we do it in a less gloomy way? We’re supposed to be liberal, optimistic, positive about human potential and what we can do for the world. But last night’s broadcast was like “Book of Revelations: The Movie.” Flooding and disaster abounded (and that wasn’t just Ming trying to look young and play rugby with people 60 years younger than himself). Environmental promotion should be about the sexy things – new technologies, working in partnership with poorer nations to reduce carbon and increase development at the same time. The only things that make the headlines are revenue grabs and car bans.  It’s about as sexy as Ann Widdecombe in a British Gas boiler suit.  

I get frustrated sometimes. I didn’t join the party because all I care about is carbon emissions. I know it’s important, but so is everything else. Forget drowning when the polar ice caps melt – everything is drowning now in a theme which takes us no further forward.

Rick