I remember in 1993, the Liberals landslide win when the Conservatives reduced to just three seats. This followed Bill Clinton’s victory in 1992, which his opponents did not see coming (see Hunter S Thompson, “Better Than Sex”) and foreshadowed the UK Conservatives’ crushing, justified defeat in 1997. The 90s was a good decade for the centre-left.

I was travelling in Canada in 2002 when Jean-Chretien, the Liberal Prime Minister, announced his retirement.  Having just fought my first election, as the youngest Liberal Democrat PPC, it was fascinating to read in the Canadian press how a party so similar to ours ideologically grappled with the exigencies of government.

Liberals were the dominant party of Canada in the twentieth century.  R. Kenneth Carty’s book (written before the recent election) is a short (130 pages) readable but evidence based (no shortage of statistics and graphs) analysis of why the Liberals have been so strong, whereas, as the author recognises comparable, explicitly centrist liberal parties have fared far less well in most other democracies, including the Westminster-based “Anglo-Celtic” countries.  The party lost power to Conservative landslides four times over the century. After each the party adapted, changed and rebuilt to renew its connection with voters and return to power.

The interesting question for Liberal Democrats is whether, despite our radically different electoral position today from our Canadian brothers and sisters, is whether there is anything we can learn for their history to help our future.

NATIONAL IDENTITY

The first element he identifies is that throughout the twentieth-century, the Liberal Party was instrumental in projecting a sense of what it meant to be Canadian. The Liberals, more than any other party, consistently had an communicated an idea (which changed over time) of who Canadians are and what they stand for. The voters found this idea of who they were appealing.

A WINNERS’ MENTALITY

A second element that is very apparent is that the Canadian Liberal Party has consistently had “winners” within its rank. It has attracted people who want to win elections and exercise power and do not see a good second or third place as a moral victory or any kind of victory at all. The party leadership and grassroots has responded to defeat with “what do we need to do to win?” and then done it.

A BROKERAGE PARTY

The third element of success, emphasised most of all in this book is that the Liberals are a “brokerage party”.  They are “the big tent” referred to in the title. They bring people together and find a balance between competing interests and demands. Over the decades as waves of immigrants from different parts of the world arrived, the Liberals brought them into the party.

In particular, the Liberal stood for unity between French and English speakers. For a time the party had a convention that the leadership would alternate between someone from each community. Quebec proved a Liberal heartland.  The brokerage party also rested on brokering interests between the national government and the different provinces, to which more power was devolved over the twentieth century.  He analyses the party structure (and how it changed) and concludes this was vital for the brokerage party to work.  He writes:

…in the name of accommodating difference and promoting national community the Liberals adopted an organizational form… to embrace all elements of society.

In this sprit, the party has operated in the principle that rather than representing one perspective, one group, or one interest, it could provide all kinds of Canadians with a political home.”

The party was electorally successful when it successfully persuaded voters that it alone was equipped to bring all of the nation together.

PARTY DEMOCRACY

Carty believes that a key element to success was the preservation of party democracy. As in the Liberal Democrats, local party members picked candidates, elected leaders and set policy through the party convention. Over decades there was tension between leaders and grassroots and the party bureaucracy was created and grown to interface the two. But, more than most other parties, the Canadian Liberals maintained a strong member based party democracy.

BUILDING THE BIG TENT

Electorally, the party was pragmatic rather than ideological. It is sometimes seen as governing from the right and campaigning from the left (Jeremy Thorpe once said dress to the right, speak to the left – he never had a chance to govern in either direction). A recurring theme was to talk about the collective “national interest” and frame opponents as putting something else first.

The Liberals were generally ready to accept new people into their party but always resisted coalitions or pacts with other parties. The message was that the Liberals were the national coalition and to protect this identity would prefer minority government or opposition to joining up with any other party.

After defeat, Liberals rebuilt and returned to power by especially appealing to those the Conservative government alientated – at different time Catholics or French speakers.

Carty’s book is long on international comparisons and his view is that the UK, Australia, New Zealand have sometimes produced a dominant party but never on the brokerage model. For other examples, we need to look to Ireland, India, Japan or Italy. In ever case, a sense of national identity based in democracy and human rights was essential.

LOCAL CAMPAIGNING AND THE GRASSROOTS

Like the Liberal Democrats, the Liberals’ success in Canada has been linked to local campaigning. But at a national level the party supplemented this strength with links to the advertising industry and donations from medium and large corporations.  Local campaigners operate largely independently from the national party with little money from the national party sent to be used at a local level.

The book contains interesting analysis of the make-up of grassroots Liberals.  Carty argues there are three distinct groups and one “the tourists” only joins the party at election time or when there is a leadership election.  Successful party leaders have, without exception, taken the party grassroots seriously and recognised that motivating it is a key to success. Elections for representatives to the Convention are hotly contested.

PARTY LEADERS

There is an interesting correlation between candidates who decisively win the party leadership going on to do well in General Elections, whereas candidates who narrowly win the party leadership do less well with the public. Tim Farron’s margin of victory bodes well by this standard.

On the leadership, the party has enjoyed success because each Leader cultivated a successor. When there has been a change of Leader without an obvious successor the party has tended to drift into the wilderness. It is surely the mark of every responsible politician to think about who will carry on after them.

One of the problems the brought about the Liberals’ massive collapse to third place in 2011 was that views on policy had become more rigid.  There was more “ideological coherence” which sounds attractive but meant a smaller political tent into which fewer people were welcomed.

There is much in this book for UK Liberal Democrats to think about. Do we want to gain and hold power or do we exist for something else? If we do exist to gain and hold power are we able and willing to become, a Big Tent?

* Antony Hook was #2 on the South East European list in 2014, is the English Party’s representative on the Federal Executive and produces this sites EU Referendum Roundup.