The Liberal Democrats are the nice party; I have not met anyone in England who has a nasty thing to say about them, most people may be thoroughly ignorant of the Lib Dems core principles and policies, but this is another matter.
Their electoral performance was catastrophic. The Lib Dems were expecting their final breakthrough given the hype, and so-called 'Cleggomania'. Instead as we all know they ended up losing seats rather than gaining the 20+ they were anticipating. Yet here they are the king-makers of British politics who have just decided the make-up of the next British government. Their position as king-maker is however very unenviable. Certainly this was the position the Lib Dems wanted to be in, in 1997. But this is the wrong party to make a coalition with and this is the wrong time, a time of unparalleled post-WW2 economic crisis and social stagnation.
What will be the effect of this coalition? To begin with I must note that for the time being the Liberal Democrats have become a central force in British politics. They hold senior cabinet posts and have genuine influence over future government policy and legislation. This is more power than they have had in 80 years certainly. It is also the position they must have craved since the early 1980s when they seemed have a genuine chance of becoming a third force in UK politics.
But there is a major, soon to emerge electoral problem for the Liberal Democrats. Their electoral strategy, even political raison d'être is being the party of permanent and principled opposition. The party that is free to offer populist policies, and echo national discontent safe in the knowledge that they will never become the party of the establishment and safe in the knowledge that they will never have to face the true political test of holding high office. Now they do. Now they cannot present themselves as the party of alternatives. They have become an establishment party. Yet their electoral base is far too narrow for them to compete with Labour or the Conservatives as a truly national party.So they face all of the problems of being a governing party, I.E. the blame for crisis. But they also face all the funding and electoral problems of a minor party competing with far more established parties.
This leads us to two hypothetical futures. If the economy recovers, and the coalition government remains popular (as it surely is now) then who will get the credit? Undoubtedly the senior partner, the Conservatives. They are also in a better position financially, politically, electorally, and institutionally (think of the right-wing media) to capitalise on this hypothetical success. The Liberal Democrats if the coalition is successful will not be able to capitalise on it. Labour voters will not vote for the Lib Dems in Lib/Lab marginals for the obvious reason that this means supporting a coalition involving the arch-enemy. Naturally conservative voters will not vote for the Lib Dems in Con/Lib marginals when the party they naturally gravitate towards is successful. Thus if the coalition is successful, the best the Lib Dems can hope for is stagnation, the worst is a squeeze where Labour and the Conservatives regains former voters. This is assuming that the desired referendum on Proportional Representation flounders, which it probably will considering how difficult this kind of change is to sell without right-wing media backing and the use of all the organs of state. How can the Lib Dems sell PR to the public on their own? Will Labour join them? It is not clear as yet.
But what if the coalition is a failure? What if the economy still so deeply mired in a corporate and consumer structural debt crisis does not spontaneously bounce back to former glory even with an incredibly weak pound? Who will be blamed? Undoubtedly the coalition. What would this mean for the Lib Dems? The same basic logic of the above paragraph applies. Lab/Lib marginals will swing to the favour of Labour, and Con/Lib margins will likely remain static. In fact ironically it would almost be better for the Lib Dems if the coalition was less successful as at least their would not be a swing to the conservatives in Con/Lib marginals.
At any rate this coalition was to a large extent unavoidable. Labour it seems was not prepared to create a Coalition of the Defeated, and the British public would probably have not worn it. The Conservatives were strategically very smart to seek a deal with the Lib Dems, although it is not especially popular with the Tory grassroots or backbenches it makes a great deal of sense electorally in the future. It is the Clause Four moment for the Tories, it proves that they have moved beyond the Thatcherite legacy. They are now the party of the centre and the party of consensus, when they were the party of right-wing radicalism. A minority Conservative government would certainly have been more popular with the base, and may have been electorally successful in the event of a no-confidence vote. But the coalition makes much more sense in terms of long-term governmental stability, and could very well change the whole British electoral landscape.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
Makes for interesting reading. I think you meant to write *backbenchers instead of *backbenches. It feels like this is the sort of election in which no one got what they wanted, not the voters, not Nick Clegg (or Gordon Brown), not even David Cameron. It feels like people were cheated, no one voted for a coalition government.
Dude, the Libs haven't so much as sold out as taken the only thing they could. If the Tories went for a minority government, the likelihood is in scenario (a) they'd call a snap election and get the majority. The Libs would be nowhere. A Lib-Lab alliance had no real purchase: it would have been weak government, having to play fiddle-de-dum to the disproportionate wants and wishes of Scottish/Weslh nationalists.
The Libs have prevented the rise on inheritance tax to a million. But everything else? Projects for the future. Clegg gets what is effectively a ceremonial position with little discernable power. Danny Alexander gets the Scottish brief. I bet the Tories (who don't give a stuff about Scotland) are pleased to have fobbed that one off. Huhne gets Energy and Climate Change (but not Environment). Ask yourself, why not Simon Hughes. Oh yeah, he's the highest profile Lefty Liberal. I bet he was 'significant abstention'. LAws and Cable are absorbed into the Treasury under the arch-goblin Osborne.
Willets for Universities? Gove for Schools? We're fucked mate. According to Gove, the AHRC (the main source of funding for PhDs) is a socialist quango that needs its wings clipped. The Libs have achieved little, apart from the symbolic presence of some of their number in an enlarged cabinet. They could have held firm on much more; not just education, but health, tax and immigration. They're not even guaranteed reform of voting structures. Fixed term parliaments? They've effectively given the Tories carte blanche.
I'm only positive because I see an enlarged Labour party and a heck of a lot crossing-of-the-boards by Lib to Lab. I hope i'm proved wrong. I hope the Libs really pull above the weight; I hope the tame the Tory savage; I hope they prevent the legalisation of fox-hunting; I hope they ensure enough investment in the NHS to negate Tory plans to make everyone private; and so on and so on.
Hmmmmm. Rant over. I agree with your argument, but I think Clegg in knowing he had a thankless task has actually - as you say - not done the Liberals any long-term good. I hope, as I say, that I am proven wrong because while Labour are in the wilderness, we need some moral fibre to curtail the Tories.
there is only one thing i could have said before reading this post, it hasnt changed, very simply, the lib dems had a choice: ideology or power, they have clearly sacrificed their ideology, no one has a reason to vote for them anymore.
Now that labour is in opposition, the power of decision making within the party is expected to be in the hands of the traditional (usually left-leaning) elements of the party rather than its leadership; a chance for a much needed regeneration.
a rather comical moment for me was when simon shama (with the usual perplexing hand movements) said on the BBC on may 7th that there was no question that a lib-con alliance would form, i - along with others - still held out for libs to go with a more ideologically comfortable choice....
it seems that I am already being proved right on the Labour front: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/election-2010/7728345/Analysis-Liberal-Democrats-switch-support-to-Labour-after-Tory-coalition-deal.html
I agree with your analysis in many regards, I think the Lib Dems really are screwed. But I think they had no option - they would have been punished harshly by the voter if they had kept an unpopular Labour govt. in power and the right wing press would easily have spun the refusal to do a deal with the Tories as a "betrayal of the national interest." Clegg's gamble that all will go well was the best option.
Can't agree with you that no one you've met has not a bad word to say about the Lib Dems though. Very very dirty campaigners (often very hypocritical), very naive policy and no real unity in the party.
It's Paul by the way - Hallward misses you. And so do I. A little. xx
Post a Comment