Lib Dems snub call for UK Royal Mail sell-off
Liberal Democrat modernisers suffered an embarrassing setback in their bid to drag the party back on to the political centre ground when conference delegates yesterday refused to back a flagship proposal to privatise Royal Mail.
Market-friendly Lib Dems, who make up a majority of the senior frontbench team, had made the sell-off plan the centrepiece of their efforts to bolster the party’s credibility by enhancing its economic liberalism and shaking up its approach to public service reform.
Delegates shelved the policy pending further consultation rather than rejecting it outright. But the vote means the Lib Dems have missed an opportunity to take a lead on the future of Royal Mail and will have no formal policy if the government decides on a partial sell-off.
Charles Kennedy, the Lib Dem leader, supported the plan although he has not spoken in its defence at the conference. He appeared to accept criticisms from a former adviser that he failed to “stamp his personal authority on the party’s strategic direction”, but declined to give any indication of which way he wanted to take it when he launched a debate on a far-reaching policy review.
Norman Lamb, the Lib Dem industry spokesman who masterminded the plan with Mr Kennedy’s support, admitted his frustration. “I hoped we would have been bold and embrace a liberal solution to a fairly intractable problem,” he said.
The plan was criticised by leftwingers for “going where even Thatcher dared not go” while other activists complained it had been ill-thought out.
Delegates backed a motion that described the policy as the “Railtrack of the letterbox”.
The defeat over Royal Mail exposes divisions in the party that are not simply about left versus right. Power-hungry MPs fret about their party’s credibility and want it to take tough decisions without endless debate. Activists said the policy would be seen as selling off local post offices and would undermine local campaigning.
One leading moderniser said the defeat was the “birth pang rather than the death knell of the new liberalism”. With exasperation he said that members would come round to the idea of privatisation next year once they had been “cuddled and consulted” but by then it could be too late.
But left-leaning Lib Dems have begun to fight back. Evan Harris, the former health spokesman, told one fringe meeting: “Is it right for this party at the moment, in a search for ideological purity harking back to the 19th century – which some of the media call ‘modernising’ – that we should ditch our most popular policies in order to rely on our unpopular policies to be elected as pure economic liberals? I don’t think we should try to compete with the Conservatives and New Labour at being rightwing, because they are better at it.”
Simon Hughes, the Lib Dem president, told another fringe meeting that the party should be prepare to tax and spend more. “My view is that we have so much inequality in Britain we need to raise a lot of money.”
