Lib Dem PPC explains why he’s joined the Labour Party

Earlier this week, a two time Lib Dem PPC announced that he was joining the Labour Party. Professor Richard Grayson was the Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate for Hemel Hempstead in the 2005 and 2010 general elections and Richard a former vice-chair of the Liberal Democrat federal policy committee – but left the party in July having become disillusioned with Lib Dem broken promises in Government.

On the eve of Nick Clegg’s speech to Lib Dem conference, we spoke to Grayson about why he left the Lib Dems, what drove him to join Labour, and whether he thinks others will follow him…

What drew you to the Labour Party after leaving the Lib Dems?

I very much like the direction of the party since 2010, and of course I also support some of what happened before then because on lots of issues, Labour and the Liberal Democrats were on the same page. But I think that what’s been seen since 2010 is a very determined effort to stand up to vested interests, whether that be Murdoch or banks. More generally, the values and policies which are being developed around One Nation Labour are attractive and offer the chance to build a more cohesive society. That’s resulted in some practical proposals. In particular, on policy, Ed Miliband’s advocacy of a living wage is something that none of the other parties would talk about now, and it does demonstrate to me that Labour is led by someone who understands the hard realities of daily life for many people.

Also, I think that anyone who’s ever been involved in politics knows that politics is about making a stand with other people, for the things with which you agree, and against those to which you are opposed. Certainly that’s always been very big in my family, and at an early age I was told stories about relatives who’d been at Cable Street in 1936 in opposition to Mosley and the fascists. So as I have reflected in the months since I left the Liberal Democrats, looking at examples of people who are active in politics now and in the past, both in this country and overseas, not being involved feels like the wrong thing as far as I’m concerned. With Labour now saying so many things which are very appealing to those who have supported the Liberal Democrats in the past, I just felt it was the right thing to do.

Do you think there are other Lib Dem PPCs who might join you in becoming Labour members?

Well, I believe some already have. Certainly in my own area, Andrew Lewin who stood in Hertford and Stortford in 2010, joined quite soon after the last election, so I’m not alone. The online reaction to my own recent writings on the two parties suggests that quite a number of former Liberal Democrat activists have done the same. Overall, there is a fairly solid shift to Labour of a sizeable number of voters whom I cannot see going back, and I’d expect more to follow as Labour’s messages continue to resonate.

This does lead into one debate which I know Labour has been having though, and I’d add that I think a key challenge for Labour is to win back voters who went to the Conservatives in 2010 for whatever reason. Most Labour gains will come at the expense of the Conservatives simply due to electoral realities, and every vote from the Tories in such a seat is worth twice that of a vote from the Lib Dems. I expect that One Nation Labour has an appeal to many such people, and it’s important to remember them rather than focusing overly on former Lib Dem voters, many of whom have probably already been won over.

Do you have any plans to stand as a Labour PPC?

No. I told my local Lib Dem party in the summer of 2010 that I would not stand again, after being a candidate for eight years, because a) I could not defend the coalition in the way they would expect their candidate to; b) I wanted to spend more time being a parent, my son then being just 8 years old. While I no longer have to do a), there has been no change at all to b). And as a specialist in the history of the First World War, I do a lot of public engagement work and will have an enormously busy time with the war’s centenary approaching. So whenever I can, come 2015 and in the run up to it, I will just be helping whoever the Labour candidate is in Hemel Hempstead, and I’ll also hope to engage in policy debates more widely in the party.

What was it in particular that drove you away from the Lib Dems?

I’ve written at length about what I think started to go wrong with the Liberal Democrats from about 2008, not just since the formation of the coalition. People will be able to find a lengthy piece from July 2010 on the Compass website if they Google ‘The Lib Dem Journey to Coalition’ and my name, and also a more recent piece on the same site about why I left the party. Cutting both very short, I feel that although notionally centre-left, the bulk of the membership seems perfectly happy to allow the more right of centre leadership to go along with the Conservative election programme on the biggest issues, in return only for minor concessions. That has raised some fundamental issues of trust because having slated the Conservative economic policy in 2010, Liberal Democrat ministers are now implementing it.