How Lib Dem members describe their political identity: ‘liberal’, ‘progressive’ and ‘social liberal’ top the bill
by Stephen Tall on April 30, 2011
Lib Dem Voice has polled our members-only forum to discover what Lib Dem members think of various political issues, the Coalition, and the performance of key party figures. Over 530 party members have responded, and we’re currently publishing the full results.
LDV asked: Please tick any or all of the descriptions below that you would be happy for someone else to use to describe you:
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87% – Liberal
65% – Progressive
64% – Social liberal
60% – Internationalist
55% – Pragmatic
52% – Reformer
45% – Centre-left
44% – Civil libertarian
44% – Radical
41% – Green
35% – Economic liberal
34% – Social democrat
33% – Moderate
30% – Moderniser
27% – Centrist
25% – Keynesian
21% – Libertarian
20% – Ideological
16% – Mainstream
14% – Free marketeer
9% – Centre-right
4% – Other (please specify)
This is the kind of debate which can to easily become bogged-down in semantics, with some phrases (eg, economic liberalism, social democrat) loaded with historical baggage not always inferred by those using the descriptors of themselves. Nonetheless, there are some interesting findings here.
Amost two-thirds of members (64%) identify themselves as ‘Social liberal’, compared with 35% happily self-identifying with ‘Economic liberal’: given these are the two terms with greatest currency at the moment to describe the different ‘left/right’ wings of the party, it’s interesting that social liberals outnumber economic liberals 2:1, according to our survey.
Interesting, too, to ponder what such a survey of the party 25 years ago, when we were the SDP/Liberal Alliance, would have shown: my guess is fewer than 87% of party members would have been happy to call themselves ‘liberal’, and more than 34% would have self-identified as ‘social democrat’. That latter descriptor appears to have more or less replaced by the term, ‘progressive’, which 65% of members willingly ascribe to themselves.
LDV then asked: How would you describe your own politics?
Over 400 of your responded with your own free text description. Here’s the collective Wordle of how Lib Dem members describe ourselves:
