Lib Dems all at sea

The Lib Dem conference has revealed some discontent with Ed Davey's leadership and the party's failure to make an impact with a distinctive narrative.

Three names were mentioned as possible alternatives, but I had never heard of them.   The only other Lib Dems I knew were deputy leader Daisy Cooper - competent but doesn't look like a leader and Alastair Carmichael, the Orkney and Shetland MP.  I only know him because he chairs the Defra committee and is wife is a vet who cares for my Orkney friend's dog.

Liberal leader Jo Grimond was the MP for Orkney and Shetland.

The Lib Dems are the most pro EU party, but they have most of those votes already.  They also have probably harvested most of the votes from moderate Conservatives who don't like the Tory shift to the right.  It wasn't clear how the announced tax cut was to be funded.

I suppose their best hope is that Labour will need their support after the next election and the price will be PR which Andy Burnham favours.

Boomers against Reform

I posted on a private anti-Reform Facebook group a comment that not all older people back Reform or Nigel Farage and the number of likes and comments reached four figures.

There is a clear age gradient in terms of support for Reform (latest available figures):

• 18-24, 6.3%
• 25-29 13.5%
• 30-39 17.1%
• 40-49 20.6%
• 50-59 29.5%
• 60-69 33.7%
• 70+    33.0%

Hardline Restore Britain shows a rather different profile.  There is relatively little support from over 60s (around 2 per cent) and support peaks in the 30-39 age group.

What one has to be very careful of is the ecological fallacy of relating aggregate behaviour to individual behaviour.  At least two-thirds of the elderly groups do not support Reform.

One thing that concerns me is that younger people (not my own family) may see me as 'Gammon', an elderly white male who backs Reform.

One has to be careful about accusing Reform supporters of being racists.   Rather more may be xenophobes.   However, I think that quite a lot of them are what one activist described as 'despairists'.  They find it difficult to adjust to the reality of a cosmopolitan 21st century Britain.

I think they are nostalgic for a past that never really existed.   I can remember the 1950s (I grew up in London near the docks).  I can recall:

• Overt racism (although not from everyone)
• Homophobia
• Pedophiles were there in abundance, but they were white and hiding in plain sight in schools and churches
• Pretensions of imperial grandeur, although these were punctured by Suez
• Pollution: smogs in London that killed thousands of people and you could smell the Thames in summer 
• Back street abortions
• Capital punishment used against a woman who was the victim of what we now call coercive control
• A rigid class bound society

One respondent suggested that there is scope for a movement 'Boomers Against Reform'.  I think there is, but I am reluctant to put my head above the parapet - and I am not encouraging anyone else to do so.

I can do without a visit from balaclava clad vigilantes.   More important so can my wife, children and grandchildren.  (My great-granddaughter lives in Spain and already use four languages).   In addition I live in a retirement apartment and I would not like to see people here harrassed.    But I am very encouraged by all the responses to my posts.