Oh boy. This is pretty darn ugly isn’t it?
I will not sit here and type about what he did or didn’t do. I don’t know so I won’t comment on it. However one thing is what happens next and I feel as though I can have an opinion on that.
No one man (or woman) is bigger than the party. The party would be better off if Lord Rennard left the party. That is the plain and simple truth. If he feels as though his membership and the fact he is a Lib Dem peer is more important than either the perception of the party and/or the feelings of the membership then I would be incredibly disappointed.
It is something I have been thinking about recently, whether people are too comfortable in being part of the establishment and their own self-importance. He has to decide what is more important, the party’s future and furthering our liberal agenda or his own beliefs that he’s done nothing wrong and should be allowed to continue?
I fear that he’s comfortable in being part of the establishment. I certainly believe that he is extremely arrogant. Even if, and I stress the word if, if he actually did no nothing wrong and all the stories were untrue, the party will never go forward with him in the fold. All he can do is drag the party down. Whatever he does, he can’t help the party anymore. Even if he disappeared and came back quietly in a few years then it wouldn’t work.
Lord Rennard is toxic. Not toxic with the electorate but toxic with the progressives within the party. I have always seen the liberal Democrats as a party with progressive people at the helm and the more progressive people the party has in its membership and subsequently in key positions, then the more forward-thinking the party can be. Lord Rennard’s position within the party is such that the progressives cannot abide him.
He has to go. Quite simply if he stays on he is saying that he is more important than the party. No-one is more important than the party. So it is now down to his arrogance and sense of self-worth against views of the party he claims to represent. I’m sure some people would say that if he hasn’t done anything wrong then why should he go. Well that if seems like one giant stretch of an if at this juncture but even if that were true, then he should go for the sake of the party and for the people of the country. As liberals we want to benefit the country, I suppose all political groups would say that but if the party gets weaker and unhappier then it doesn’t benefit our hopes to make the country more of a liberal bastion for the 21st century.
So whilst I am an innocent until proven guilty guy, I really am. I have to say that if he is truly a liberal, he will understand that his position will hurt the liberal cause because the party will lose members and with that he should leave the party. If someone said to me that if I left the party that it would stop a lot of progressive genuine liberals leaving the party, or if I left then a lot of progressive liberals would join the party then you’d know the right thing to do.
The party has the goal of making the country, at local, national and European levels, a better place to live. That is our goal and surely deep down it doesn’t matter who takes us there but getting there is the key. Lord Rennard cannot help the party reach our goals. He quite simply cannot. For that reason and that reason alone he should take his bow and leave. If he feels as though he has been unfairly scapegoated then I feel for him, but if he does want to put the future of the party and our liberal agenda first then he’ll understand that making our goals is much harder with him involved within the party.