Just before the Christmas recess I sat down in the Commons cafeteria opposite a Conservative front-bencher whom I knew. ‘There will have to be a coalition after the next election,’ he told me, ‘bringing you together with Labour and the Greens.’ I realised after absorbing this that he was effectively telling me that the Conservatives could not revive in time to hope for a majority, and that the prospect of either a Reform majority or a Tory-Reform coalition gave him nightmares.
It’s 3½ years at most until the next general election. Plenty of crises and shifts in political moods may intervene to alter the pattern that opinion polls and local by-elections have indicated over the past year – of five parties between 10% and 30% in England, with six or more competitive in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. But it’s wise to anticipate the likelihood of an indecisive outcome. We would probably then have to negotiate – and successfully manage – a multiparty government. The current Labour Government is floundering in large part because the campaign it fought to win its majority did not provide it with the programme needed for successful government in difficult domestic and international circumstances. The circumstances that will face the incoming government – of whatever colours – in 2029 are likely to be even more difficult than in 2024.
Many readers of LibDem Voice will groan at the thought of entering another coalition. But we’re in politics to promote liberal principles, and the most effective way to promote them is to be in power, locally and nationally. So we need to learn lessons from the 2010-15 coalition and from earlier attempts to cooperate with other parties.
To start with, we need to admit that Liberals are instinctively too inclined to trust others, to be optimistic about outcomes and to believe in rational negotiation. David Steel was naively confident that Callaghan would reward the support we offered his shaky government in 1977-8. In 1996-8 Paddy Ashdown was far too trusting of Tony Blair, not appreciating the hard and partisan men behind him. Nick Clegg set out to demonstrate that coalition government would work, without being sufficiently suspicious of those behind Cameron who wanted to push through their Conservative agenda while leaving the Liberal Democrats to take as much of the blame as possible. Next time we have to be harder, more suspicious and more politically partisan.
In the 2010 coalition government the 53 Liberal Democrat MPs served to close the small gap between the 306 Tory seats and an overall majority: too much of an imbalance to stop most Conservative ministers behaving as if they were still the majority party, let alone to change significantly the working methods of Downing Street, Whitehall and Westminster. Parliamentary numbers matter enormously in our flawed political system. If no party in the government has much above 200 MPs, and we have gained well over 100, we will be better placed from the outset. Winning more seats is a necessary precondition for effective shared government.
Labour’s first year in government has been hobbled by its unwise campaign promises on taxation. Our first year in coalition was wrecked by our undeliverable promise on tuition fees. The policies we set out between now and the election will have both to win votes and to provide a deliverable programme for government – not in fine detail, but in terms of our overall economic, industrial and social priorities. Now that our new MPs and our expanded parliamentary staff have found their feet, there’s a lot of work to do. Do we wish to tackle tax reform, one of the major failures of recent governments? Do we want to reverse the privatization of many public services, and/or to rebuild the role of mutuals, non-profits and charities in our public and private economies? What do we foresee as the role of government in the transition to a sustainable economy, against the darkening context of a mercantilist China and a protectionist USA?
Above all for me, we need to set out for others to understand what changes we will insist on in the over-centralised structures of Britain’s executive-dominated political system. Ed Davey many years ago attacked the way government and Parliament handle budgets; the tyranny of the Treasury and the impotence of Parliament in examining strategic choices in public spending would have to be overturned if multi-party government is to work. Local democracy and local government must be rebuilt – including through major changes in rules on fiscal transfers and a review of local revenue-raising. The centre of government would have to change, with a smaller Cabinet to constrain the prime minister and return to collective decision-making.
There’s a lot of work – and thinking – to be done if we want to be prepared for the next election and its possible outcomes. And we will need to spell it out, to the press and the public, in good time before the election overtakes us.
* William Wallace is LibDem peer, a former vice-chair of the Federal Policy Committee and convenor of the party's 1997 manifesto team.
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
Why non-fiction books need their indexes
Changes in status: Local Elections wrap up
What should the Liberal Democrats stand for?
Ben Wood
Ed Sanderson
Jack
Matt (Bristol)
John Grout
49 Comments
the prospect of either a Reform majority or a Tory-Reform coalition gave [the Tory front bencher] nightmares.”
One hopes therefore that the Tory would commit to NOT supporting a coalition supported by Reform. The time will come for such as him to choose – if it has not come already. We must be open to refugees from a Tory party that is so desperate for power that coalition with/support of Reform is a possibility.
.
Persoanlly
Nick might have been naive, but he got 12%? of seats, and got far more of the manifesto into law. Next time, we need upfront guarantees:
1. Single Transferable Vote on single member constituencies. Until delivered, all other pledges to a coalition will fall away (Greens will agreel.
2. Abolition of HOL, > Senate, 100 members, 5 from 20 UK regions, London, Scotland, Wales, N. Ireland, + 16 English regions, based on 5% of population – elected by STV.
Now I need another drink to dream…
Great article. Currently we are promising more spending e.g. on social care and defence while opposing most of Labour’s tax increases. Could our social care pledge be the new tuition fees?
Tax is indeed our Achilles heel. We have become too frightened to tell people the truth, namely that they cannot have the services they want without paying for them. We have allowed the right wing press to hobble our tax plans and have been bounced into accepting that income tax is evil and must never be increased. Hence our current, excellent, parliamentary team oppose tax rises for the sake of it, but never say a word about how it will be necessary to raise primary taxes in order to deliver our promises. We suggest taxes on banks and social media giants and, justified though they are, they avoid hard choices about income tax, without which our pledges on social care and equality are undeliverable.
Willam is right to say we need to develop a platform that we can take into coalition negotiations, even though most of us shy away from further coalitions, because of our previous experience. However, we must also have red lines that we will not begotiate away, Principal ones being STV in multi member constituencies (and no, Ian Leeds, STV in single member constituencies is AV, not STV and it’s not proportional). Any coalition should stay only until fresh elections under STV can take place.
William Wallace is right. If we are to stop Farage dragging Britain back into the 1930s, we probably need a Grand Coalition between Labour, the Lib Dems and the Greens. Neither Labour nor anybody else will achieve this on their own.
Wallace is also right to emphasise the crucial need to play hardball and ensure that Labour do not accrue an excessive share of the power within the Coalition.
It is a plain fact that the junior partner in a coalition normally ends up getting badly screwed by the senior partner. That’s what happened in 2010-2015.
There is a solution. Just don’t have any junior partners!
We need to learn from Ireland. Rotating the premiership between the different parties in Coalition is what is necessary to achieve real power-sharing. Nothing else will do that.
Attempts to negotiate a political programme in fine detail will founder when events change needs. Attempts to demand PR will only alienate the voters, as they did with Clegg’s disastrous AV campaign. We need to concentrate on real power-sharing.
Why does the L. D. leadership not help the nation and its Party by going for taxation reform?
Currently our tax set up favours the wealthy, penalises the poor, failsto collect as much tax as it could and should and generally fouls up our socio-economy
Eg. Why are those who receive income from investmemt/rentiers exempted from National Insurance payments?
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2025/06/28/what-is-screwing-britain/
I am glad that someone has got round to writing this.
To be clear, the Tories have decided that they too are a populist party. That means we cannot go into coalition with them. A left of centre coalition is the only option.
We saw what happened in Germany when this happened. It was chaos and the government collapsed. All that did was open the door to more populist MPs getting elected.
We need the next government to be stable, and so really we should be discussing this with the other political parties now.
The obvious difficulty is that Labour are currently very unpopular and it is not in our interests to cozy up with them.
Politics has always been about hard choices, but they seem even harder today.
An important article – this is the right time to start considering the issues raised.
Allow me to raise two issues I think we need to consider…
Firstly, we need to plan for the possibility of a coalition by making explicitly clear which of our manifesto pledges are non-negotiable ‘red-lines’. This is the essential as we need to give voters a reason to vote for us but, at the same time, be free to sacrifice some manifesto ‘promises’ as a way of delivering red-line pledges. Being up-front from the outset will achieve this and avoid another ‘tuition fees’ disaster. I would suggest that having a single red-line pledge – on STV for future elections – would be the best tactic.
Secondly, the electoral arithmetic may mean that a future anti-Reform/Tory majority may require a coalition deal to include the SNP (whether directly or in a separate deal with the others) – we should be willing to agree to this even if the SNP’s red-line is a second independence referendum, so long as we are able to deliver on our red-lines.
An excellent article. It is pointless trying to put forward policies from a position of opposition, but we need to promote our values and to acknowledge realities; e.g. we do have a problem with asylum seekers and refugees, but we need to give a full background to it and to explain what needs to be done in principle – to get the discussion going. This is not the same as making undeliverable promises. As for tax – we need to start with clawing in what remains . unpaid. Finally, our leadership needs to lend a much bigger ear to members and non-members alike, who have constructive suggestions to make.
@David Allen: Rotating premiership makes more sense when, as in Ireland, it is between the two traditional parties of government, rather than one such party and the traditional 3rd party. That being said, there is no constitutional reason why the Prime Minister should have to be from the largest party in government. David Lloyd-George led the country from the minority faction of the governing coalition after the 1918 coupon election (for the avoidance of doubt, I am resolutely opposed to Lib Dem participation in any kind of formal electoral pact!)
Demands for electoral reform do not alienate voters. The problem wasn’t that, but the way the referendum was instituted and conducted. Electoral reform was achieved in New Zealand via referendum, apparently without alienating voters. The difference there was there was a proper procedure in place, with strict fact-checking and campaigns being forced to stick to the point. With no meaningful regulation of campaigns in our referendum, the No2AV campaign were able to get away with many ridiculous claims and were able to turn it into a referendum on Nick Clegg, precisely when he was under fire over the tuition fees debacle. Any coalition agreement must include a demand for electoral reform. Personally I would prefer without a referendum, as our constitution (such as it is) doesn’t really provide for them. But if we must have it, then it absolutely must use a New Zealand style process to ensure fair play.
The election is in the distance. Everything could change and change again. Foolhardy to talk about what might happen in 2029, we need to concentrate on ourselves for 2026, it is not going to be easy fending off the Greens.
It is right to mention tax reform. In the last couple of years political leaders have refused to tell the public that we are not a high tax country but just below average, as the OBR and IFS have constantly said. Ed Davey and Daisy Cooper similarly have not mentioned it. What we need is a fairer tax system with more taken from unearned income and less from those on low incomes.
Paul Fox misses the point that although we shout loud for more spending on things like social care, we also have been calling for more tax on banks and tech companies (for example). There are so many other issues that need fundamental change too, so we need to bring together all our policies and start doing this now. FPC needs to be involved in this; too often I have found them rejecting policy statements that cross the boundaries of different issues but that is precisely what we need to do now. It is a key weakness in Labour that they deal with separate issues without an apparent overall comprehensive plan. For example, fuel allowance without an overall policy for all things affecting pensioners individually, a farm IHT without an overall policy on small farms or other small businesses.
Yes, William, a significant and vital argument. The only difficulty is with its timing – too early! One of the major factors will be in the elections taking place in four four months time – on 7th May – in Scotland, Wales and many English local authorities. The outcome of these elections will result in a strongly altered scenario – probably one result, based of current polling trends (and four months is not long enough to produce any major switch in electoral support between today and the start of May) is further in-fighting within the Labour Party and quite likely a change in Prime Minister and Chancellor in the hope that fresh leadership might bring about a recovery in the following three years. Labour is now certain to be reduced to the status of an also-ran in the Welsh Parliament (one waits to see whether they will accept the status of a very junior coalition partner!) and will be lucky to retain their current level of seats in Scotland, where Reform seems certain to secure second place); as for England, Reform are on track to repeat their successes of last May in local councils, including many inner city wards. Notable exceptions to this will be in those councils where Liberal Democrats or Greens offer a credible alternative.
Please, William, revive your article (in re-though-out version) once the consequences of the May elections are evident. There will still be three years before the General Election (and no way in which the majority of Labour MPs will tolerate going to the electorate before 2029) – three years in which much can happen.
Two questions:
why aren’t we setting out a stall for a Lib Dem government, having crafted the policies we would implement (this would mean facing the difficult questions over taxation etc mentioned in comments above)?
why haven’t we attracted more defections from the sensible wing of the Tory party, like the colleague William has been talking to. So far we only seem to have had one defection from the Tory group in the Edinburgh parliament and a handful of local councillors.
All the “sensible” Tories have already left!
To introduce electoral reform based on a minority vote holding ransom in a coalition government – will never be a good look …The vast majority who’ve cast their vote are not looking for such change. As a unionst party handing another referendum to Scotland is also another betrayal ….As the media will point out – a coalition of chaos where political parties have abandoned their principles all for a Jag and a leather briefcase…
Any Coalition with Labour can not really be formed by a person who has just led their party in an election where they lost more than 100 seats. Any Coalition formed after an election by someone who was not a party leader at that election will lack credibility. Thus Ed Davey would be the best choice to form such a coalition. Lib Dem preparation for the next election should also include this post election strategy.
Are we mad ?
This article certainly fits one common definition of madness – repeating a previous disaster & expecting a different outcome. We have every reason to believe that entering another Coalition as a junior partner would put us back to square one & throw away everything we have gained in the last decade. This time The Greens would take our place as 4th Party & perhaps there would be no recovery for us.
If we are talking Coalition then lets begin thinking about an Alliance with The Greens*, right now our combined Vote share would put us in equal first position with Reform but Reform are on their way down & The SDP/Liberal Alliance showed that Parties working together can win over new Voters.
Instead of aiming to be Junior partners who get all the blame & none of the rewards how about aiming to be The Government.
* By The Greens I mean The Green Party of England & Wales, The Scottish Greens are a separate Party & Scottish Politics is another World.
> We must be open to refugees from a Tory party …
We need to be more careful with managing switchers
then we were with ChangeUK. In 2019 *none* of
the “new Lib Dem” MPs promoted us on their
personal websites. Greater professionalism required.
@GregHyde. You are wrong. If we make it clear during the election campaign that STV is the price for us entering any coalition, then no-one will be surprised that we expect that to be delivered. And by delivered, I would expect an act of parliament immediately after the election, preferably before the final coalition agreement is signed. The biggest mistake Clegg made was to settle for a referendum and AV. PR IS Labour policy, even if Starmer is not delivering it. In addition, repeated polls show public support for it.
The ONLY way to prevent a repeat of 2015 is to have PR. Even then, our support may take a dive if we are the junior partners, but at least we’d get the seats our vote entitled us to. We should, of course, aim NOT to be the junior partner, but that’s a big ask.
@Paul; Green and Libdems combined loss of deposits at the last GE was over 530. Both look Irrelevant in so many seats across the Midlands North and North East. With the Greens open border policy it will go down like a lead balloon..
Mick : Ultimately you will be holding ransom as a minority party over huge electoral change – change the voting public just hasn’t had as a priority…
@Rif, it is not too early to start examining our priorities as a party. We do this as a way of defining what we believe to be good for the country irrespective of what happens in the May elections. First we bring together all our policies into an up to date coherent policy platform, with a basic message about what we stand for not just philosophically but for the next decade of our nation. Then after May we can use thinking about possibilities for a future government as a way of further sorting our priorities, even if we decide to rule out coalition. It is surely important to have a longterm well thought out set of messages and priorities as a basis for any future decisions. Lack of proper consistent leadership is one of the current weaknesses of our politics as perceived by voters.
@Greg Hyde: You say electoral reform is “not a priority” for voters. Very well, but the corrollary is that they are unlikely to care very much if a government does implement it, regardless of who demanded it.
@Alex; I’m sure voters would prefer that elected governing parties would concentrate on the issues that concern them most. Immigration, economy , NHS, gp appointment, crime & asb, schools , housing, in no particular order. .. Voting reform is a niche subject that vast majority of voters couldn’t give a fig about …Unlike the above
Ian Leeds is wrong to insist on a guarantee for “Single Transferable Vote on single member constituencies.” It must be the Single Transferable Vote in Multi-Member Constituencies, STV-PR. Only STV-PR will deliver a Parliament that is properly representative of the voters.
Remember, with AV (STV in single-member constituencies) a party that wins 51% of the votes in 51% of the constituencies can form a single-party majority government despite having the support of only 26% of those who voted. That is one of the reasons support for the AV referendum was less enthusiastic than it would have been had STV-PR been on offer.
This is a useful and thoughtful article – thanks @William Wallace. We certainly should be thinking about what our strategy might be for a hung parliament.
For a successful coalition Government that doesn’t cause a subsequent electoral disaster for us , I think we need as non-negotiables a couple of things that are (a) distinctive and easily associated to us, (b) will achieve positive results improving people’s lives within 5 years, (c) are sufficiently compatible with Labour/Green values that they could agree to them.
STV doesn’t really fit that bill because it won’t materially improve people’s lives within 5 years, but we should probably still have electoral reform as a non-negotiable because the long term benefits in terms of detoxifying politics are so huge. I think the non-negotiable should be electoral reform rather than specifically STV – we don’t want to get hung up on finer details of the system. And I think AV could be an acceptable compromise. Yes, it’s not at all proportional, but it’s much simpler than STV and does have the huge benefit that, by allowing voters to rank candidates, it encourages cooperation and centrist politics, and disfavours the extremes in a way FPTP doesn’t.
This is a timely article from William: a partly that believes in PR must automatically believable in some form of coalition government. It is important to examine frankly the mistakes we made in forming the 2010 Coalition. among these were:
1. We were bounced into it too quietly. The world will not fall apart if the UK doesn’t have a government by the weekend after the election.
2. We were too trutsing: we expected our partner to support our “red line” proposals (eg PR and Lords reform) or at least remain neutral. We were double-crossed twice in that the Tories actively opposed the modest reform of the electoral system and Labouur failed to support it, even though we compromised and chose their inadequate AV system,and Labour failed to vote for the “time” to discuss HL reform).
3. Our leadership agreed we would not “pick and choose,” but support verything” the government proposed.
Given events in the western hemisphere I suggest significant and quick rearmament, immediate and closer economic and military ties with the European states and rapid moves to net zero/energy independence.
@Peter Wrigley
“Our leadership agreed we would not “pick and choose,” but support everything” the government proposed.”
You can’t have coalition government without this
Continued.
Thus next time:
1. We should insist on taking our time: say that the existing government should remain as caretaker for at least 10 days after an “indecisive ” election.
2. Our negotiating team should include at least two former or existing locale government council leaders who have experience of cross-party government.
3. Our “red lines” should be flexible, for example “electoral reform ” rather than PR by STV in MMCs and “tax reform” rather than LVT “or else.”
4. Rather than commit to support everything we should grade issues along the lines of:
i. on these issues we are in full agreement and will campaign for and vote for them in parliament.
ii. one these issues we prefer alternatives but will support them if our arguments do not prevail.
iii. we cannot support these issues and will not vote for them in parliament, but will abstain rather than bring down the government.
iv. we cannot possibly support these issues (eg compulsory ID cards) and will vote against them in parliament and if necessary bring down the government.
For issues such as in Item 3 above I believe that Citizens’ Assemblies such as have been successful in Ireland could have a useful role to play.
@Greg Hyde: You do know that a party can have policies on more than one issue?
SimonRobinson. What you say is an insult to Scottish and Irish voters, all of whom use STV in some elections and manage perfectly well. Indeed, Scots have 3 different voting systems at different levels of government, Northern Ireland uses STV except for Westminster and Eire uses STV for all elections. Guess who insisted? You got it, the UK.
AV is not an acceptable compromise, because it won’t deliver fully representative government and has nearly as many faults as FPTP.
If we do have to go into coalition then that may be our one and only chance to get STV and we must not miss it. Labour will be desperate not to lose power and the Greens only to willing to get it. Provided we have made it abundantly clear in advance that we will only settle for STV, then the other parties will have to accept it if they want to go into government.
It’s always possible of course that Labour will preempt the question by introducing list based PR before the next election. It is after all their party policy and it might be their best chance of avoiding a wipe-out.
@Mick; Wow how on Earth did you get from anything I wrote to ‘insult to Scottish and Irish voters’? I didn’t say anything at all about Scotland or Ireland! The only thing I said that I can conceivably imagine you might have been referring to was that AV is simpler than STV – which is – by any reasonable definition of ‘simpler’ – factually correct.
We can legitimately debate whether or not AV would be OK as a compromise if other parties won’t accept STV. But please don’t start imagining insults on behalf of other people where there were no insults either in what was intended or in what was actually written.
All this talk about STV, AV and PR generally is just pie-in-the-sky unless the outcome of the next election delivers a government which is willing to implement it.
At the moment the figures for the major parties are something like:
Reform 28% (decreasing slowly)
Tory 20% (increasing steadily)_
Labour 18% (decreasing)
Green 15% (increasing)
Lib Dem 12% (steady)
Things are changing in the direction shown. The most likely outcome is a Tory/Reform coalition and they aren’t going to be that interested in any form of PR.
Of course a lot can change before the next election. But it can be for the worst as well as the better.
@Peter Martin
On the figures you quote, the difference between a Reform/Tory government and a Labour/Lib Dem/Green government could be the SNP which would likely win 40-50 seats on current polling. Since the SNP has a policy of not voting on English only legislation, that party would have to be brought into a coalition, and therefore vote to support the government in all votes, or a Labour/Lib Dem/Green coalition may be unable to govern. Are we willing to allow the Scottish parliament to legislate to hold a second referendum on independence should a majority of MSPs support that option? (As democrats, I think we should, but I suspect the fear of Scottish voters voting Yes next time may persuade us to not allow them the right to another vote, whatever the circumstances.)
Coalition red lines don’t work. They are millstones around the neck of the party proposing them. Here’s why.
You start by acting the tough guy and declaiming that your coalition partner MUST concede STV, or scrapping tuition fees, or whatever. You feel good acting tough.
Then suddenly along comes the election result, and suddenly you realise that a coalition government MUST be formed, otherwise nobody will have a viable governing majority. In most cases, there won’t be a real choice between coalition partners. You will just have to work with whoever can form a viable government (excluding Farage).
At that point, your prospective coalition partner turns the tables and proves themselves the real tough guys. They say “No, you can’t scrap tuition fees, you can’t have STV, and hey, the country is in crisis and it needs a government fast! Are you Lib Dems so irresponsible that you would let Britain collapse just for the sake of some weird electoral systems?” So you give in, as you must. The bigger party turn the screw, as Cameron did by telling Clegg he could abstain on tuition fees but the Tories would drive fees through.
So, suddenly you are in coalition, but you don’t get your red line, and you set yourself up as junior fall guy.
Don’t set red lines. Instead, demand a real share of power, e.g. via a rotating prime-minister arrangement, publically agreed before the election.
Sorry David Allen, they do work. Consider the two coalitions between the Lib Dems and Labour in Scotland. STV in local councils was one of the prices the Lib Dems insisted upon and it was enacted. In fact they got their whole manifesto implemented and had to write a new one.
All I have been saying is that without STV the LibDems would have nothing to gain from a coalition and a lot to lose unless they are the largest party. It’s a simple Act of Parliament, the electoral commission sets the boundaries and returning officers take a crash course of STV. Nearer the elections you also need a public information campaign. There’s already a precedent for that in both Northern Ireland and Scotland.
It doesn’t detract from the day to day problems of government. If it’s been signposted in advance then it will be expected.
The Tories fully expected us to insist on implementing the tuition fees pledge and would have conceded it had Clegg not surrendered on it as he didn’t think it mattered, because the Tories were desperate to be in power.
So – Mick Taylor has pointed to a case where red lines worked: I have pointed to an infamous case where red lines came disastrously unstuck. Rather than just calling it quits, perhaps it’s better to try to think it through more carefully.
I guess that if you telegraph your red line well in advance of the election, and you get some level of understanding that your potential coalition partner might be willing to concede it, then yes, maybe the red line can work. But it’s risky. We wouldn’t want to risk letting Farage run the country simply because their opponents got bound up in conflicting “red lines” and ended up failing to assemble an alternative government.
Too often, we hear politicians claim that bad policies could actually have turned out to be good policies if only they had been better implemented. That’s what Farage says about Brexit, and it’s nonsense. The same can be said for the “red line” on tuition fees.
Wallace says “The policies we set out between now and the election will have both to win votes and to provide a deliverable programme for government – not in fine detail, but in terms of our overall economic, industrial and social priorities.” Not a mention of STV. I agree. That flexibility is what can form a winning coalition.
Taylor says “without STV the LibDems would have nothing to gain from a coalition”. Well, hang on, wouldn’t keeping Trumpism out of Britain be something worth gaining?
Much of the problem with our politics is an outdated and unfair voting system that distorts the results for the two main parties who may no longer be main parties. Any c
Any coalition with lab and greens would mean agreeing to more socialist thinking and the inevitable battering of the economy. If the lib dems find themselves in a coalition they must insist on STV in all elections at local and Commons level and insist on reforming the sick joke of the House of Lords both urgent.
If we have very many fewer seats than a potential partner, we have the option of supply and confidence meaning that they get the ministers but must tailor their policy to get it through parliament. It allows us to achieve policy victories without collective responsibility. We might have red lines on the basis that if they agree to our demands, we will take seats in cabinet and the accompanying brickbats, otherwise we will limit our support to supply and confidence.
In my opinion, voting reform is more likely to come from the rare situation in which no stable coalition of any party can be formed, than from one where a senior partner which is resistant to reform is trying to manage a junior partner that wants reform.
In the meantime the key concern for the Lib Dems needs to be whether the possible size of a ‘right’ bloc in parliament can be reduced relative to the ‘left’ bloc, and how many parties would be in the ‘left’ bloc and whether there would be synchronicity among the policies of the ‘left’ bloc. To which the answers seem to be: a) possibly not, b) more likely three than two, and c) it seems not, as the Greens and SNP are committed to taking an insurgent line and taking chunks out of Labour and the Lib Dems have tried to woo former Tory voters on tax.
Not a lot is in the Lib Dems’ control here. It may be that the best that can be done is prop up a minority Labour party with a coalition that is still a minority. These are uncharted waters that will – again – stress-test the coalition of voters and activists the Lib Dems have stitched back together (and its contradictions and hypocrisies). Personally, I don’t think you can practically do it. Although morally, maybe you should try, as keeping Farage out of power (if viable) is in my view a laudable aim.
Coalition is a tough and complex wargame. Inevitably, each partner in a coalition will make it a leading objective to come out smelling of roses, and come out looking better than the other partner(s). Matt (Bristol) has clearly thought hard about the wargame. Not enough others are doing that yet.
A starting point should be to review the wargaming disaster that was Coalition 2010-15, and work out how to avoid making the same strategic and tactical mistakes again.
Clegg thought he had done enough to gain an adequate share of power by securing the Deputy premiership, multiple cabinet posts, and establishing the “Quad” group of 2 Tories with 2 Lib Dems to manage the implementation of the Coalition Agreement. He hadn’t. Cameron, as permanent PM, was able to run rings around Clegg, every time.
So it has to be made clear to Labour that only a better deal can be fair. I can’t think of a better alternative than an agreed-in-advance rotating premiership, e.g. 2 years Labour then 1 year Lib Dem then one year Green. Fair sharing on policy planning would then naturally follow.
A late but very relevant addition to this thread. Yougov polling shows strong popular support for an anti-racist coalition government after the next election – with Ed Davey potentially being the greatest beneficiary:
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2026/01/09/ed-davey-is-the-choice-of-the-voters-to-be-pm-after-the-next-election/
Let disabled people not forget that the Lib Dems helped the Tories remove disability benefits from many of them.
Now we have Davey saying he thinks many disabled people are cheating the benefit system, he is wrong of course, but it’s clear that whichever party gains power next time that they will hammer disabled people
The biggest problem with forming any coalition is that Labour can’t be trusted. With the notable exception of the Scottish coalitions all the national deals with Labour, most notably the so-called LibLab pact, have foundered because Labour reneged on their side of the deal.
Labour regard LibDems with contempt and at the same time believe we are Labour mark 2 and are obligated to support them rather than anyone else in extremis.
In any coalition we need to get Labour to prove their commitment by getting STV in MMCs on the statute book immediately as a precondition of coalition. Our party, and indeed many of our sister parties in Europe, who have entered coalition as a junior partner, have been hammered at the next election. The difference has been that our European sister parties have had PR systems that have normally ensured they didn’t get nearly wiped out. Unlike the LibDems in 2015 who were reduced from 57 MPs to 8 by FPTP.
So, STV in MMCs must be an immovable red line. We must make that clear in advance and through the next election. Yes, David Allen, stopping facism is very important, but making sure it can never triumph is far more important.
Why not include lessons in negotiation as part of the Party’s offering to members? It’s a shame when all our hard campaigning is neutralised by our ability to make the most of our election wins.