Party a `long step' from power

In an echo of the provocative self-critical warnings delivered to both Labour and the Tory leaderships, former Cabinet minister Shirley Williams yesterday told the Liberal Democrats they still had "a long step to take" before being ready for government.

"That long step has to ensure that we put across to the public of this country a limited, clear and precise set of priorities," Baroness Williams of Crosby told a pre-conference fringe meeting.

Lady Williams said the party could not afford to indulge in every passing fancy, suggesting some of Paddy Ashdown's team lacked credibility. "No names, no pack drill, but certainly some of our spokesmen and women are speaking in ways that are taken seriously by the media and other parties."

Lady Williams said the Liberal Democrats were "more and more ready for government" and she would not have written the secret and self-critical "Unfinished Revolution" memorandum which so embarrassed Labour last week. "But we still have a long step to take," she said. "We cannot indulge every little private enthusiasm we have and expect to be taken seriously."

The first need was for clear, consistent and well prepared priorities. A long list would be "rubbished" by the Tories and the media on the grounds that they could not be financed. Generalisations, however well expressed, would be dismissed too. "Paddy Ashdown is right to concentrate on a few issues and to say precisely how such commitments will be financed."

Lady Williams was addressing a meeting organised by the Reformer, a party strategy magazine, on the lessons for the Centre-Left in Britain from the Clinton administration. A former Labour minister turned founder of the SDP and Liberal Democrats, she has recently pursued an academic career at Harvard University.

Lady Williams said that in the United States, as in Britain, "public expenditure" had become a dirty phrase in the political lexicon. Mr Ashdown has made a virtue of his willingness to raise income tax by 1p in the pound to fund education. "Led by the media, the assumption is made that the public is implacably opposed to any increases in taxes. But when taxes are linked to clear, consistent and well-prepared goals, the public may indeed accept some increase," she said.

In a second, starker lesson, she said there was a danger for any party committed to a just society of losing its own supporters through disillusionment or alienation. A third of Americans did not register to vote and only two thirds of those voted, she said. And it was precisely those who benefited from publicly financed health services, school meals subsidies and food stamps who had stopped voting.

"So a vicious circle is created, in which government does less and less to help the poor, and the poor do less and less to influence government. There are signs that the same is happening here. The inevitable outcome is a divided and polarised society in which the bonds of civic decency and responsibility are torn apart."

Lady Williams said the most important lesson was not about Bill Clinton, but about the "devastating" consequences for the American political system of uncontrolled money that bought media time, influence and power. In Britain, too, albeit on a smaller scale, powerful interests contribute to Labour and Conservative party funds - in the case of the Tories, little was known about the donors and what their influence was on policy, she said.

"The Nolan Committee, trying to build a barrage against the corruption seeping into our own body politic, is but a first step. It badly needs the support of citizens who want open and honest politics."