Wittenberg

¡Estimat.das Reformistàes Livereschti!

I've been waiting until all hope of "the deal" with the Progressive Alliance broke down before posting this, but these are thoughts I've had since the election, and for that matter, during it. So I'm posting it here in the hope of some good, honest party debate on the subject. (Non-party members are welcome to make good faith contributions.)

Let's deal briefly with Baron Davinescu's assertions. He claims that we lied about them. As far as we see it - and I think the rest of the party leadership backs me up here - they outright lied about us. It started with "Miestra Schiva was going to break the law to exclude unsavory prospective citizens", and transformed into "the URL want the power to throw immigration applications into the trash". I have no way of knowing this, but my hunch is that they were always going to run some kind of immigration-related line, the pre-election boom derailed their preferred option, so it was a small "gear shift".

But is where we made our first mistake. I ignored this line of attack. (https://wittenberg.talossa.com/index.php?topic=4465.0) "AD is having another one of those episodes," I told myself, "where he yells about a complete falsehood loudly enough that he convinces himself". I keep being told that no-one likes bickering between me and AD. I don't like it myself. So I thought I could just avoid the debate, get the bill voted down to prove a point, then start discussions afresh at that point. It didn't work. It just encouraged AD's rhetoric to inflate (to get our attention?) And unfortunately, it worked - especially on citizens who were coming back from inactivity and didn't know what was what. When they did find out what was what, they had already frozen partisan loyalties and didn't want to hear it.

Here intervened one big setback that wasn't our fault - the Chancery's decision to open election mailers way in advance of the election. This allowed Baron Davinescu to directly retail his line to a mass audience. This happened while Mic'haglh, our campaign leader, was on a work trip. I was left in a cleft stick. I could lead a counterassault myself, but I was already facing accusations that Mic'haglh was simply my puppet. I made the choice that this was Mic'haglh's campaign, for better or for worse, so I wouldn't take over. That probably damaged us, but it was also probably the better option in the long term.

But in my opinion, we made a second mistake, equal and opposite to our first. In my opinion, the Prog line that they won because of "URL negativity" has a kernel of truth around a candy-coating of self-regard. For a start, it excludes why the URL decided to go negative (the aforementioned slander). But if you go negative, you have to have a positive flipside. And our campaign messaging lacked that.

And I'm afraid I have to go back further as to why we lacked the positive flipside. That is: we did not have the stomach to defend our record as Government, and explain why we should get a third term.

There is a common factor here since the last time we lost an election to the No Miestras Clique, and that is, that time we were an exhausted Government out of ideas too. To put it bluntly, for most of the term, we had a Cabinet where, at any given moment, only 2 out of 5 Ministers were actually doing anything. Absolutely no shade intended on the other 3, who had all kinds of personal issues and other fish to fry. But nothing was happening.

There is also a debate to be had whether our mailers, when they were positive, were effective. Several times during the campaign I read a URL mailer and I had to admit - if I wasn't a party member, I couldn't see a reason being given why I should vote to re-elect the URL, apart from "the Progs are lying about us". Whether they were or not, that's insufficient.

Ages ago, I told the Free Democrats that you can't win a Talossan election without an executive programme - a list of "stuff that you'll do". I do not think an outsider could deduce one of those from URL mailers. I think this is partly down to the aforementioned political exhaustion, and partly due to inadequate communications.

I think we've come out of this in good standing for the future, though. The FreeDem/PdR merger went off without a hitch. We've built a new collective leadership around this - and the capering about the Progressives building a coalition with an opponent of democracy, then breaking that coalition up within five days, helped us significantly recruit. Being no ifs, no buts, The Party of Talossan Democracy is our new identity, and a good one.

Unfortunately, the next Cosa term is going to be marked by bitterness and mutual recrimination. It is also going to be marked by total deadlock, because, I have to say, look at the Senäts numbers. If the incoming Government do not negotiate with us, no legislation gets passed. And the PA do not want to negotiate with us.

But hey! Didn't I just say above that you can't get away with being negative without a positive, even if the negative is well deserved? The URL's task over the next Cosa term is to build our program. This includes the Democracy Agenda (https://wittenberg.talossa.com/index.php?topic=4794.0) - our program of big constitutional changes. To some degree, the outgoing government was hampered by that. A negative heritage of the old Free Democrats was that we had a "conservative" wing which didn't want real constitutional reforms, but had stuck with the more radical among us in opposition to the Woolley monarchy. And then that raziun d'estar disappeared. So: we're now more free to dream.

But the big lessons to deal with over the next Cosa term, IMHO, are:

• Build better political communications.
• Build an Executive Programme to go with the Democracy Agenda.
• Build a strong Shadow Cabinet as the nucleus of the next Government.

I don't think "thermostatic reaction" (people just getting tired of the Government) will propel us back into power. Especially since the URL is refounding itself as a party of principle, rather than the "No Barons Clique" (I think we're allowed to have one?) It may be that a party of democratic, less-monarchy reforms will always be a minority, like the old ZRT was. But you've got to decide whether you're in this to be popular, to win titles, to have power for its own sake - or whether you have an aim.

The floor is now open for comments.