On the last Sunday before the election, here’s a quick selection of the must-reads from the Sunday papers. Five years ago on this Sunday, we woke up to favourable comments in the Observer and Scotland on Sunday. Would anyone recommend voting for us today or would the papers revert tot type?
The Observer, presumably for its own reasons, has a very unbalanced look at coalition options after the election for the Liberal Democrats. The article barely even looks at a deal with Labour and has a number of sitting MPs, including David Ward, saying that the coalition with the Tories might continue. They might have done well to look at my article on the party’s processes so that they didn’t assume that it was all in the MPs’ gift. Oh, and a member of the LDV team gets quoted.
In news that will surprise nobody, the Observer backs Labour. Unlike its sister paper, though, which advised tactical voting for the Lib Dems in places like the South West, the leader ostentatiously ignores us.
Funnily enough, the Sunday Times (£) talks up Liberal Democrats slating the Tories to try to persuade Tory voters not to vote tactically.
Clegg has said he will deal first with the largest party, but in a sign that a repeat of the coalition may be difficult the Lib Dem Tim Farron last night warned that his party should be prepared to “walk away” if it does not get what it wants, branding Conservative instincts as “wicked”.
He said a Tory government without the Lib Dems would be “a horror story”, creating an “uncivilised” country “that we should be ashamed of”.
Farron said his party would inject “compassion and basic humanity and civilisation into an otherwise wicked Tory administration
In news which will surprise nobody, the paper backs the Tories but urges Tory voters in Lib Dem Labour marginals to vote tactically for the Liberal Democrat.
But Peter Kellner finds room to hope for Liberal Democrats, finding strong recovery in key seats.
We find that Conservative support is holding up better in the party’s key marginal seats than in the rest of the country, and also that the Liberal Democrats are recovering strongly, albeit from a low base, in the seats they are defending.
The upshot is that I have increased the number of seats that I expect the Lib Dems to hold, and reduced the number of seats that Labour is likely to gain from the Conservatives.
Scotland on Sunday bottles out of endorsing a party, but has this to say about the Liberal Democrats. We are most definitely in the game:
The Lib Dems are more important than the SNP at this stage because Sturgeon has said she would only side with Labour. Nationalist votes are therefore not up for grabs by both sides. Nick Clegg has said he is willing to do a deal with Miliband or Cameron, so his party’s votes are in play. Most observers expect Clegg to offer his MPs as support to whichever party has most seats. This seems to be the Lib Dems’ new constitutional role in a hung parliament – to help the largest party bolster its legitimacy and stability by taking it as close to the finishing line as possible, or, if possible, over it. Another reason the Lib Dems would be favoured over the SNP is that any resulting government could claim UK-wide legitimacy, rather than support from just one part of the country.
The fifth imponderable is whether such a move does indeed get to that magic level of 323 seats. If it doesn’t, then the SNP – along with the Democratic Unionists, the Greens, Ukip, the SDLP and lone MPs such as George Galloway and Sylvia Herman – all come into the calculations. But there is little doubt that the party that can win the support of the Lib Dems will have an initial leg-up that could prove vital, and possibly conclusive.
The Sunday Herald has a profile of Gordon, where Christine Jardine faces up to the challenge from Alex Salmond. The headline, which suggests that even tactical voting might not add up to enable Christine to win has Salmond extrapolating fro a national poll. The body of the article notes that the poster war is much more evenly balanced.
The Herald also looks at the reasons behind the SNP surge and finds the entirely unsurprising conclusion that it’s all about emotion not logic.
“VOTERS aren’t listening to arguments about policy, they’re filtering it out as white noise,” says researcher Geraldine O’Riordan.
They’re going with their heart. It’s about who they want to be a voice for Scotland.”
Her conclusions follow a series of focus groups for research firm TNS, set up in one of the first attempts to understand an unprecedented surge in SNP support which pollsters predict will lead to a momentous reordering of the Scottish political landscape in five days’ time.
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social
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15 Comments
I still want Nick to do a rostrum thumping speech listing our 2010 manifesto achievements – similar lifted Brown’s support in the last days of the campaign and he delivered it in such a way it made it difficult for editors to shorten the piece.
Excellent article, as always from Andrew Rawnsley in “The Observer”; “Voters are being asked to go to the polls wearing blindfolds”.
This election campaign has been dire: from all the parties. I cannot wait for it to be over, and I do not think I am alone in that sentiment: except that all the indications are that when it is over, it won’t be.
@Nick Collins – couldn’t agree more. All of the campaigns have been dire. It seems as though the professional campaign managers have all come from the same narrowly defined areas of advertising and PR and they all use the same tactics and techniques. They are a fungible resource: Any Lib/Lab/Con strategist could be moved to another party and you’d not know the difference. It’s no surprise that the polls have not really budged in the last three months.
I watched Nick Clegg on the Andrew Marr Show this morning. Is he seriously preparing to give Cameron his EU referendum? Support for the EU has been Liberal policy for as long as I can remember, and this man is going to junk it? That would be my red line!!!!!!
@David North we must have watched a different programme, then. In the version of the programme I say Clegg set out what Liberal Democrat policy on a European referendum was.
In any case, why do you automatically assume that any referendum would lead to withdrawal of the EU? Were there to be a referendum should we not actively be making the case for staying in? Why is it problematic to ask the question? And were the referendum to decide to leave, should we not accept the democratic will of the people?
A referendum is playing with fire: like staking your house on a horse in the Grand National.
@Nick Collins but the voters of the country are all adults and if they choose to leave, and it all goes horribly wrong, then they have to live with the consequences. To argue otherwise is to argue against the principle of democracy.
@TCO
Clegg was asked if he would stop a referendum. Put it this way – he did not say yes.
“To argue otherwise is to argue against the principle of democracy.” Sheer cant.
Referenda have more to do with deamoguey and ochlocracy than they do with democracy (that’s why they appeal to the likes of Farage and Cameron; if you want to ally yourself with them, be my guest.). It was a mistake to pollute our system of representative democracy with them.
It’s not ‘democracy’ to have a referendum on the basis proposed. It’s just stupid and desperate and this should at least be a Lib Dem red line.
Stuart 3rd May ’15 – 7:05pm
“Clegg was asked if he would stop a referendum. Put it this way – he did not say yes.”
I think we have to accept that Cameron & NC have been operating in concert since the coalition ended. Both want another coalition between the two parties. Cameron because it keeps his right wing in check and NC because he likes being in government.
Their plan – if they can get enough seats – is that the L/Ds agree to another coalition – but only if the EU referendum is dropped. Cameron agrees – saying he had no choice. NC agrees – saying an EU referendum would be too dangerous for the economy. Job done!
Both are reckless by nature and both are more concerned about their personal careers than the parties they represent.
It might work – but the numbers and the prevailing system are heavily stacked against them.
Clegg’s greatest fear is not the loss of Lib Dem seats; rather he fears being squeezed between a rock and a hard place – namely the Labour Party and his own angry party members. Clegg’s fear is not that the Lib Dems won’t be in a coalition government; it’s that he won’t be.
Paul in Wokingham 3rd May ’15 – 4:21pm
“All of the campaigns have been dire. It seems as though the professional campaign managers have all come from the same narrowly defined areas of advertising and PR and they all use the same tactics and techniques. They are a fungible resource: Any Lib/Lab/Con strategist could be moved to another party and you’d not know the difference. It’s no surprise that the polls have not really budged in the last three months.”
I couldn’t agree more Paul – although we have probably suffered the most from a series of seriously clichéd slogans that have remained abysmal since 2010.
Where have been the other Lib Dem faces and voices? Tim Farron, Vince Cable, Lynne Featherstone, Charles Kennedy, Steve Webb, Jo Swinson, Andrew George etc. Far too much has focussed on, whether we like it or not, one of our weakest assets.
All parties have fought very controlled, presidential-style and completely overdone ‘red-line’ issues opening up ground for UKIP to point at us as all being the same.
The only way is up!
Vince Cable is wrong to suggest a Labour government would be better for business. I can understand a position of equal apprehension, but not that a Labour win would be better for business simply because of the EU.
If Labour win they will not see a need to reform and the anti business and anti investor campaigners would grow in confidence.
The Observer piece is very interesting talking of Teddy Roosevelt dealing with inequality with state intervention. It makes a strong case against the economic policy of the Conservative party and points out that with near zero interest rates, now is the time for the government to invest. It identifies inequality as the most pressing issue that has to be addressed to save capitalism.
How can a liberal not agree with it when it states, “The balance of power between the competing interests in Britain needs to be tilted away from the powerful towards the less powerful”?
@ Eddie Sammon
There is a strong case to be made that having a Conservative government that will, come what may, hold an EU referendum in 2017 is going to be bad for business from now until the referendum and if the UK votes to leave will be catastrophic for the UK economy and business.