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 660 party members have responded, and we’re publishing the full results over the next few days.
Overwhelming ‘No!’ to Lib Dem-Tory electoral arrangement
LDV askd: There have been some suggestions that, if the Coalition holds until 2015, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats should consider some form of electoral arrangement: perhaps the Conservatives might not stand against all Lib Dems and vice versa, or there could even be joint ‘Coalition candidates’. What best describes your view of any such arrangement:
Here’s what our sample of party members said:
- 3% – We should actively encourage an electoral arrangement with the Conservatives in 2015, including standing down Lib Dems in some seats.
- 10% – We should be open to the idea of an electoral arrangement with the Conservatives in 2015 so long as the Lib Dems contest all seats.
- 86% – We should reject any suggestion of an electoral arrangement with the Conservatives and fight the next election in all seats as a party independent of either Conservatives or Labour.
(Excluding Other, Don’t know / No opinion 4%)
The media stirring may continue about the possibility of electoral ‘deals’ between the Lib Dems and Tories — but there’s no doubting the views of party members. Fully 86% are against any form of arrangement, while a further 10% say that the Lib Dems must contest all seats even though they’re open to the idea of an arrangement. Just 3% of party members support a pact in which the Lib Dems would stand down in some Labour-Tory marginals in return for Tory support in Lib Dem-Labour marginals.
These findings are almost identical to those we found in the summer when we last asked the question.
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33 Comments
Thank goodness, any pact has as much potential to lose Lib Dem votes as it does gain them.
However, reading the comments on the OES polls people some are happily suggesting a “mass” tactical vote by the Tories. This is little different and in conjunction with campaign lite from the Tories only helps enforce the ideas of some (and headlines of the media) that suggest a de facto pact already exists.
Although I am not a Liberal Party member I do feel that it is essential to the health of democracy that the Liberals can present themselves as a,largely, independent and self motivated party,able to present to the country a distinctive political position.Although I support Labour,I think their is much that a strong and independent Liberal Party can put before the people and,thus, enrich democracy.
We’d be mad to plan a pact, that would be to deny ourselves the possibility of a Lab Lib coalition. I would possibly support a “courtesy leadership pact” where we don’t stand candidates around one or two Conservative leadership seats and the Conservatives will not stand candidates in Eastleigh and Sheffield Hallam.
Oh and we shuold make it clear to Ed Miliband that if he absolutely closes the door on a Coalition before the election, we’ll be more likely to form an anti-Labour pact.
I agree with red trev. Any electoral pact would mean the Liberal Democrats having to endorse some Conservative candidates (and vice versa), meaning that we would have to effectively endorse the Conservative manifesto. In addition, it would be very difficult for us to switch coalition partners straight after an election where we have been in a pact with the current one. This would mean we would no longer be an independent political force.
From absolutely any Lib Dem perspective (from “Orange Bookers” to Simon Hughes) the negatives of a pact greatly outweigh the positives. The only people who’ve been pushing for a pact are the “Cameroons” in the Conservative party, because they know that it would neuter the Tory hard right who hate them. But as I have argued elsewhere, a Yes vote to AV would achieve much of the Cameroon aims in weakening the hard right while also benefiting the Lib Dems (and indeed the voters!).
@Rich
Either you believe that the coalition parties stand on their own or not. Don’t temper the decision based upon what Labour do or don’t do, it’s either wrong to form a pact or not.
@Rich
“We’d be mad to plan a pact”
“Oh and we shuold make it clear to Ed Miliband that if he absolutely closes the door on a Coalition before the election, we’ll be more likely to form an anti-Labour pact.”
Doesn’t one of these comments contradict the other?
Any pact would prove that plural politics doesn’t work, It would also strengthens the argument for the No to AV campaign, in my opinion
Steve: There’s a difference between putting a tactical squeeze on supporters of the third placed party – which parties have been doing for decades; just look at how much the Labour vote has been squeezed in tight Lib Dem/Tory fights – and a deal between parties, which would involve decisions by the parties themselves and would be monumentally stupid.
Rich: I can sort of see the logic of a “leadership pact” but realistically it is more of a liability than a benefit. The biggest danger in Tory/LD marginals will be failing to keep the squeeze on Labour, and that will require us to show how we are better than the Tories and keeping the coalition moderate, not doing deals with the devil.
The question is whether the party would be in any position to reject an electoral pact – IF we got to Autumn 2014 and the opinion polls were as they are now.
My only disappointment is that the percentage is as low as 86%.
@Benjamin
Sorry take a look at the threads, Rich and others were advocating a wholesale Tory “migration” not a tactical squeeze. If this happens, irrespective of result, the PR would be disasterous as it would ‘vindicate’ those saying an informal pact exists even if it didn’t. Let’s be honest the Tories haven’t really treated this as an achievable target seat. Don’t take this the wrong way, I want Labour to lose, but 1 vote would do me with no large scale Tory defections.
I am with Man on the Bus here
I was thinking on this subject the other day and it may be that you have no choice but form a pact if the following, not unrealistic, scenario comes to pass
AV referendum lost, polling at 10% and evidence is that the left has deserted you to Labour/Greens. The only way you can increase the vote is to attack the soft right of your Coalition partners but this will be really difficult to manage – the only option would then be some sort of pact to allow a straight Coalition/ other fight
I do not think that is an unlikely scenario based on what we know now. If AV is lost then it is probable.
The only other option would be to drop Clegg and start providing some opposition to the Tories – potentially even from within a much looser Coalition framework – the Tories do not want 2012-2013 election. The Labour vote will probably be quite soft and if you could get the right message you could get some of them back
I don’t think the Liberal Unionists wanted to join the Tories- but the other things they wanted to do led them in a direction where it was increasingly difficult to tell one from the other and it became expedient, or necessary, to merge.
I think any hope of good relations between Labour and the Lib Dems in the future is wasted. Just can’t see it happening when even the ostensibly left-wing Tim Farron has condemned the idea of even cooperating on a policy review in such strong terms. The only future the Lib Dems have is alongside or within the Tories.
Does ‘electoral arrangement’ include recommending each other as second choices under AV?
I remember attending a Fringe at the Liverpool Conference (2010) when Prof Dennis Kavanagh replied in answer to the pact with the Tories question, that is was best for our L/D Leader to keep equidistant from both Labour and Tories at the next General Election in 2015, so to guage their max commitment to the L/D Election Manifesto.
I would add that one acid test for Labour supporters in their quest for a return to Government, will be seen consistent with their votes in support of the AV Referendum, that would signal on their part, a belief in electoral and `fairer votes’ reform.
It seems likely to me that :-
1. By by the time of the next election remaining Lib Dem support will be overwhemingly in favour of Coalition with the Tories as members/voters like me will have left.
2. The Lib Dems & Tories will both go into the next election defending the Coalition’s record.
3. Lib Dems are likely to become evermore dependent on attracting Tory tactical voters as we are clearly seeing in O&S
Taking these three things into account can anyone really see the Lib Dems supporting anyone but the Tories in a Coalition after the next election ?(assuming there is a hung part;iament)
No one could seriously argue that the Lib Dems are perceived as equi-distant between Labour and the Tories any longer. Whilst in opposition the Lib Dems could play both ends off against the middle (Campaigning for Tory votes in half the seats to “Keep Labour out” and campaigning for Labour votes in the other half to “keep the Tories out”)
Once faced with a Coalition situation the party had to jump one way or the other. It chose the Tories and IMO will be identified as centre[right for quite some time, and those of us who thought we were voting for a left-of centre party will not be rushing back.
@ Patrick Smith
If voting for AV is going to be seen as some sort of acid test for Labour voters then I suspect many of us will fail it. I can’t see what remains of Clegg’s party ever working with Labour, so, although a member of the Electoral Reform Society for 30 years I will not be voting for “the miserable little compromise” as I believe your leader eloquently called it.
@Mike
“I think any hope of good relations between Labour and the Lib Dems in the future is wasted.”
That is a shame. Despite the fact that I am extremely annoyed with the Labour Party at this moment in time and certainly wouldn’t want to join it, I am aware that over the long term we probably have more in common with a reformed Labour Party than with the Tories. What is binding us with the Tories is really deficit reduction at the moment – once that disappears, I hope that relations between us will be better, and that neither side will be too proud to start talking again.
@bazsc
I think that even if things are as dire as they are now, we’ll still not do a deal with the Tories. After all, we have considerable experience of losing elections…
Steve: such “wholesale migrations” have happened dozens of times. Labour lost their deposit at Newbury, Christchurch, Romsey and Winchester and barely held onto it in Bromley & Chislehurst. The Tories have previously stood up better but there have still been major squeezes put on them at Greenwich, Brent East and Leicester South. Not to mention gains on a big swing at general elections.
We campaign for every vote. Sometimes those votes previously went to the Tories, sometimes Labour. Thy doesn’t mean there is any kind of “deal” except the deal we make with the electorate to represent them better than the other candidates will.
I have slowly been coming to the conclusion that a future LibDem coalition with the LP just won’t happen in UK Parly terms. I think it would be an electoral advanatge for the LP to announce pre-election that it would not enter into a coalition with the LibDems as they regard them as a Tory party. This assumes the FPTP system remains – I ain’t going to look at the AV side till we get the referendum result.
The LibDems can be pinned in an electoral corner anyway if the LP offers a confidence and supply agreement. Of course it all boils down to numbers of seats held.
I really think that the LP would see the LibDems as a political liability which will be tainted for at least a generation and possibly longer because of its adoption and support of Tory ideology.
In any case I’m not sure just how many centre-left libs will be left in the LibDems by the next GE – Clegg seems to think that if the economic corner is turned then verything will be fine. That sometimes isn’t how humans behave – they can be very irrational, well as far as politicians are concerned.
I think they may have had their fill of poster personality politicians though after Clegg and Cameron – and with the best will in the workd Ed – you ain’t a poster pin-up thank God LOL.
I think a lot of LibDem activists on the centre-left are waiting to see what happens in May with local elections and the referendum and what the party is prepared to do about calling Clegg to heel. The ex-LP members who joined or voted LibDem at the GE I think have gone already – they might still be counted as members but that’s just a statistic I reckon.
Obviously these are imponderable issues at this stage but if the referendum is lost and council and assembly seats are lost in huge numbers and the party blinks first then I think a lot of the long-term activists will go. I reckon if the referendum is won then there might be a window where the party thinks it can control Clegg and it might actually take action which will help stay the activist exodus. But in reality Clegg won’t be caged and the party will in reality have little option other to tack its colours to the Clegg Masthead and decide to go down fighting – but for what?
Activists hate walking away from a party that they may have given decades of their life to and can be very self-deluding – I know cause I’ve been there – but after the first time it becomes easier 🙂
Btw I don’t think huge number of LibDem evacuees will join the LP – certainly not immediately – as they will suffer burn-out and real dislocation but also a deep-seated anger at being let down by the leadership. A few will return to the party in time but the majority won’t and even if they do their viewpoint is likely to be very different and their ability to ‘sell’ party policy will be seriously impaired because they have experienced leadership sell-out.
In terms of political strategy there doesn’t seem a great deal of difference between having depended on anti-tory tactical voting for our advance over previous decades and on anti-labour tactical votes going forward, except of course that the latter offers potentially fewer gains in terms of seats; the key therefore is to win over soft tories in those already held seats to balance off the loss of tactical labour voters.
Mike the Labour One
I don’t think the liberal Unionists want to join the Tories either.
You seem to have forgotten about the Lib Lab pact.
Seeing as ‘infiltration as a tactic’ is topical atm I’m wondering if 14% of members aren’t really Tory sleepers, (actually that may not be to far from the truth especially if you consider the current leadership)
@ Ian
The point I was making was that in the past you managed to get away with attracting both by campaigning as anti-Tory in some areas and anti-Labour in others. I doubt you will get away with that strategy in future – the number of tactical votes you get from Labour voters after this Coalition will be very sharply reduced and that will have a huge impact in your “Tory” seats. wether there is a formal pact or not it seems to me that the Tories and Lib Dems will go into the election supporting each other in the way they are doing in O&S. My main point is that all the political dynamics lead to the conclusion that the Lib Dems will be close Tory allies for the forseeable future.
@ nige
LOL..careful… you’ll have your comments moderated for thought crime at this rate!
I wholeheartedly agree with EcoJon above. The LD’s decision to form the Coalition, and the actions since, will have convinced many left of centre voters that neither the Labour party OR the LD’s are fit for purpose. Given the apparent lack of appetite for any deal with the Tories, you are left with something of a problem for the future; I very much doubt “Newer” Labour are going to be too happy doing a deal with the LD’s fresh out of them enabling a regressive Tory government!
The more you examine the long term effects of the current Coalition, and the hi-jacking of your party by Clegg and his cabal, the worse the outlook appears!
To Man on the Bus and others who argue that the party would be forced to accept an electoral pact by low opinion poll ratings, the a pact would not benefit the party in such circumstances. Even if the next election were to reduce Lib Dems to having parliamentary meetings in a taxi, the Lib Dems would lose out from a pact because it would mean accepting that result as the ceiling of the party’s ambitions. The party would be reduced to fighting elections as a sub-brand of the Tories, only contesting seats where the Tories let us (the ones where we already have sitting MPs and/or where the Tories have little organization anyway). It might shore up the party’s existing MPs but it would mean we would never win any new seats, and when the existing Lib Dem MPs stand down they would be replaced by Tories. But by then the Lib Dems would have been fully absorbed into the Tories anyway.
If the next election did reduce the Lib Dems to a rump, then as an independent party we could come back from that. As an independent party a disastrous result would be a floor, not a ceiling for us. Remember 1951, when the Liberals were reduced to a rump of 6 MPs, and the Tories won a small parliamentary majority. The Liberals could have accepted Churchill’s offer of a seat in the Cabinet. But had Clement Davies done so, that would have been the end of the Liberals as an independent force in British politics — forever. Instead, he chose the lonely path of independence, and the party eventually revived. And so the Lib Dems would almost certainly bounce back from a 2015 disaster, if the party retained its independence. Moreover, it would not take as long to do so as it did in 1951.
Alex
That would of course be the other option, a brave and principled one.
Whether the party would do that is a debate to have in the future but I for one would respect it
@olly: The Lib Dems and Tories are NOT supporting each other in OE&S. They are standing separate candidates. The Lib Dems are doing as they always do, trying to squeeze the third party with a ” cannot win here” message. The third party in this
[continuing last message
case happens to be the Tories. Whether theTories in this case decide to accept the seat as lost is up to them. If a by-election were to happen in a Con-LD seat, then the Lib Dems certainly would fight the Tories in that campaign the same way as they ever would have done. If indeed the Lib Dems lose a lot of potential Labour tactical voters as a result of the coalition, that is even more of a reason for the party to present itself as a rival to the Tories to get soft Tory votes. If it appears to be “supporting” the Tories, then there would be absolutely no reason for people to vote Lib Dem rather than Tory in LD-Tory battleground seats. And Lib Dems in seats where they have always been fighting the Tories as the main enemy are certainly not going to stop doing so now. Why would they?
bazsc: My point is that even if the next election were to be a disaster for the Lib Dems, independence would still be the most prudent course of action. A pact would be suicidal, leading as it would inevitably to merger and the loss forever of liberalism as an independent political force in the UK. And why would Lib Dem activists in areas where they have always been fighting the Tories suddenly start supporting them locally, just to save a few Lib Dem seats where the Tories are graciously letting them stay? There would be no advantage to them for doing that: if there were to be no Lib Dem candidate, then the Tories would win anyway. The last time the centre party was involved in an electoral pact (as the SDP Liberal Alliance), the Liberals were very resentful about having to withdraw from seats they had spent decades campaigning in to make way for the SDP; there was much bitterness and that was with a party that occupied the same ideological space as them! A pact with a party of a different ideology would be much harder to handle.
“To Man on the Bus and others who argue that the party would be forced to accept an electoral pact by low opinion poll ratings, the a pact would not benefit the party in such circumstances.”
It would be disastrous for the party as a whole, but it would virtually guarantee the re-election of sitting Lib Dem MPs in seats where the Conservatives came second. So don’t expect the parliamentary party to be against it when push comes to shove.
As soon as a party gains power it looses those supporters who were only there to oppose another party, and having never been in government the Lib Dems had built up a very substantial opposition following. They would have abandoned the Lib Dems whether they entered the coalition or won a landslide, fleeing at the first sign of a vaguely difficult or unpopular decision. They won’t be back until there’s a Labour or Green government to oppose.
The next election will be ugly for the Lib Dems no matter what, but more seats can probably be won through an electoral pact with right wing liberals standing as coalition candidates in seats where the Tories doubt their own candidates will win.
Of course as a Tory I’ll be hoping we win a majority with enough eurosceptics to restore our sovereignty and democracy, however unlikely that is.
@ Alex McFie
You know and I know that for years the Lib Dems have got away with playing up opposition to the Tories in some seats and opposition to Labour in others. The tactic sort of worked for years but I don’t believe it will work in future because the dynamics of the situation will make the Lib Dems increasingly seem allied to the Tories. How are you going to suvcessfully put across defending the 5 year record of a Tory-led Government at the next election without appearing to be Tory in all but name. ? How are you going to attract all the Labour tactical voters you need in seats like Easleigh.? I think you are being a little naive if you think those voters will vote Lib Dem again on the grounds that the Tories would have been worse without us.
My main argument is that the situation after the last election required the Lib Dems to nail their colours to the mast and stop trying to be all things to all people. You chose to nail your colours firmly to the Tory mast and ultimately I think that is a game changer. You will not continue to get tactical voters fron both Labour and the Tories in the future. In fact it is fair to argue that the left leaning voters & Labour tactical vote left pretty quickly once the Coalition was formed.
Almost as soon as the Coalition was formed the lib dem vote dropped from 23% to 10-13% and the Labour vote rose from 29% to around 40%. I submit that those were Labour-inclined voters who voted Lib Dem tactically or thought the Lib Dems were left of centre. People keep arguing on here that the party has had low poll ratings in the past I am saying that you will not get the voters that have deserted you back so easily this time (In fact I suspect they will remain with the Labour Party for the forseeable future)
@Charles:
But they wouldn’t count as Lib Dem seats because the Lib Dems would only be there because the Tories let them. And as I’ve explained already, any seats won by the Lib Dems as a result of a pact would be all the seats that the party would ever win, and the party would fade away as its current crop of MPs stand down and are replaced by bona fide Tory candidates with no Lib Dems to oppose them (because there would be no Lib Dem party). The pact would also mean Lib Dems abandoning seats where they are 2nd place to the Tories and may have been campaigning there for many decades, with no chance of ever winning them.
@olly: I was not saying that the Lib Dems could expect to get Labour tactical voters, what I was saying was that if the Lib Dems are to make gains in LD-Con battleground seats, they must give Con-LD swing voters a reason to vote for them rather than the Tories. The only way they can do this is to fight elections as an independent party. And doing so does mean opposing whoever they are challenging, or being challenged by, locally.
Man on the Bus: But it is not the view of the parliamentary party that matters. A pact would require approval of the party membership. [There is also another hurdle, as it would involve changing the party constitution, to remove the requirement that the party stand in every seat at general electins; this would also require approval of the party membership.] And again, Lib Dem party activists are not going to abandon seats that they have been working for a lifetime just to save the skins of a few MPs by allowing these to sit as sub-branded Tories. You and others seem to think that the party leadership could impose a pact on the Lib Dems. That is not how the party works.