High Peak Liberal Democrats

Nick Clegg takes the Liberator line

In a somewhat improbable turn of events, Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg is increasingly copying the party strategy long advocated by the perennial critic of Lib Dem (and before that Liberal Party) leaders, Liberator magazine.

Liberator has been consistently critical of the party's leaders and in particular of what it sees as their forlorn search to build far too broad a base of support. Instead of trying to win the votes of just about anyone, the magazine's editorials have argued for several decades that the third party should concentrate on more controversial policy commitments, such as being strongly pro-European, which might put off many voters but would also (so the argument goes) build a bigger core party vote. After all, as 25% of the vote would be an amazingly good result for the party in a general election, how much does it matter if even a majority of the electorate doesn't like the party?

The party's 2010 general election campaign was most certainly not from the Liberator playbook. The party's appeal was set very broadly, looking to attract votes from just about anyone, and with a target seat strategy to match, going for a very broad front of seats in a way that helps explain why the party's number of seats ended up falling despite an increase in votes.

More recently things have been rather different, largely due to the influence of strategy advisor Ryan Coetzee (who, despite rumours in South Africa to the contrary, is not about to leave the UK for a job there).

In a recent series of speeches Nick Clegg has taken policy positions that follow the Liberator strategy - setting out positions on the environment and Europe which are controversial, do not necessarily have majority support in the country but which fit with long-standing party beliefs and which also fit with trying to build a larger core vote. (He is in favour of both the environment and Europe, in case you wondered.)

Civil liberties have, so far at least, been notably missing from this list.

All that makes the party's forthcoming new immigration policy something to keep a close eye on. At the time the policy review was launched, it appeared to many that it would move the party towards a much more immigrant-sceptic position, thanks to the floating of an immigration bonds idea.

That idea, however, was quickly sidelined under a blizzard of protests from within the party, widespread criticisms from experts outside the party and a bevvy of quotes dug out by journalists citing Lib Dems previously opposing the very such idea.

Add to that the logic of the European and environmental speeches - that the party's immigration policies should steer clear of trying to broadly appeal to everyone but instead concentrate on carving out a larger core liberal vote - and it's possible the immigration policy may yet do something very different from those fears.The context

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