EVERY Lib Dem activist will soon be expected to give a summary of key policies in just a minute, Simon Hughes said yesterday.
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Responding to accusations at a fringe event chaired by Robert Thomson, the Editor of The Times, that Lib Dem policies do not add up, Mr Hughes said that every party worker visiting doorsteps will have to learn to recite a precise answer against the clock. Like the BBC Radio 4 panel game Just a Minute, the party faithful will be expected to perform without hesitation, deviation or repetition, to banish the image of Lib Dems as woolly or inconsistent.
David Laws, the Lib Dem Treasury spokesman, told the fringe that the party had been out of power for 90 years, but voters were getting used to the idea of them winning again. Mr Laws said that the 1929 total of 59 Liberal MPs was a realistic target for the next election. The fringe meeting heard from the pollsters Populus that the public believed that the Lib Dems would do a better job in government than the Tories or Labour on ten out of twelve main national policies. There was, however, still a credibility gap because 62 per cent regard the Lib Dems as a protest party.
Mr Hughes, who will become party president on Thursday, told the fringe meeting that he was determined to ensure that party workers got their message across. “We have to be better at putting our message across and one of my jobs is to ensure that nobody goes canvassing in the future who cannot say in a minute what we stand for,” he said.
“In one minute they should be able to answer any question on a major issue.”
After the event, Mr Hughes said that he would be issuing precise policy revision documents to help party activists to prepare their minute-long answers.