Dear Nick,
If you and you staff have the time, I’ve made many comments over the past two months about how the party needs reforming and reorganising.
But that’s not the object of today. I want to talk to you about the most important meeting of your first 100 days. A meeting, of course, that according to its to principle protagonists will not take place. A meeting, we will not be able to read about until one of you publishes your memoirs. I refer to your first meeting with David Cameron.
It’s important that you set out our stall. Point out the unlikelihood of a Tory majority in the next parliament, though he knows that already. Outline the deal-breakers for us for a future coalition government. An end to Council Tax. An end to ID cards. Real reforms in the public sector. Much of this he will agree with anyway.
Make sure he is well aware that the real talking would only start once a hung party comes about in which the Tories (or us!) are the largest party. Make sure that he is well aware that we will fight them tooth and nail and remain their worst nightmare in electoral terms.
It’s the most difficult meeting you face; but probably the most important. But if we want to create a truly Liberal Britain, we have to accept that coalitions are the inevitable consequence of a reformed constitution and that as a party we are mature enough to accept them, however reluctantly.
Yours sincerely,
Martin
* Martin Land is a Cambridgeshire Liberal Democrat Activist.