The recent elections confirmed what opinion polls have been saying for some time. Unless something radically changes, we are heading towards a Reform UK government, possibly with Conservative support.
To illustrate what this would mean, consider just one of Reform’s flagship policies: the retrospective removal of indefinite leave to remain. People who were told by the British state that they could settle here, people who have lived here for decades, people who have worked, brought up children, bought their homes, integrated into local communities – our friends, neighbours or family – would be deported, by force if they resist. Only those with high earnings would be spared.
Most British people, I believe, would be horrified at that prospect, but under first-past-the-post, you don’t need a majority. 27% may be enough. This website shows a projection of parliamentary seats based on current opinion polls. The margins of error are wide. Most voters dislike Reform, and might be willing to vote tactically, but with a five or six-way split, in a changing situation, predicting the strongest alternative in each seat would be almost impossible.
Everyone can see the problem, but no-one seems to be proposing a realistic solution. The tribulations of the Labour Party would be laughable if the stakes were not so high. There has been much talk about progressive alliances, but these have always foundered on stonewalling from the Labour leadership.
There is, however, one possible alternative, which should now be taken more seriously. Since the election of Zack Polanski (love him or loathe him), the combined support for the Lib Dems and Greens has consistently been greater than for Reform or any other party. Separately, the gains made by both parties were modest; neither could expect to win a first-past-past-the-post national election. In the rest of this article, I want to make the case for a temporary alliance between the two parties to fight the next general election.
The first point to make is that we don’t have to agree on policies, philosophy, personalities or campaigning approach. I am not suggesting an existential alliance like the one between the Liberals and SDP in the 1980s. The two parties would remain separate but agree to stand down candidates in half of the constituencies in England, and possibly in Wales. The Greens in Scotland are a separate party committed to independence, which would make such an alliance more difficult there.
Each party would be free to campaign on its own manifesto, subject to a joint agreement on a few key principles. These could include: changing the voting system, rejoining the European Union, stronger action on climate change and the environment and opposition to racism and Reform UK. On areas of disagreement, we would negotiate, if the strategy leads to a potential government, which might also include the Labour Party. As things stand, all parties will have to face the prospect of negotiations, whether they have made an pre-election alliance or not.
The success or failure of such a strategy would depend on the size and distribution of the combined vote. This could potentially be tested through focus groups, but ultimately involves a risk. We might lose some conservative-minded voters but could also gain votes, particularly from Labour. Whatever the impact on voting share, the impact on seats is likely to be positive. Whether it would be enough to stop Farage and form a government could partly depend on how the Labour Party responds.
There is considerable support within the Labour Party for changing the electoral system, but its leadership has always clung to the belief that they will benefit from first-past-the-post. A Lib Dem-Green alliance would focus their minds on the consequences of that refusal. If they want to avoid a progressive alliance campaigning against them, they could avert it by changing the voting system before the next election.
I will be interested to read the comments on this post. If members feel “I don’t want to work with the Greens because…” my question would be: so what is your alternative? Do you imagine that the Lib Dems will win an overall majority at the next election? If not, do you know of a better way to avert this potential disaster for our nation?
* Steve Melia was a parliamentary candidate in 1997 and an advisor to the UK Climate Assembly in 2020. He now splits his time between Railwalks.co.uk and Greentravelwriter.co.uk.
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
Northern Ireland debates the future of its railways in 1957
Church Green video
Thinking of standing for election or re-election next year? Helpful questions to consider
Endometriosis and acetylation
Jeff
Nonconformistradical
John Peters
David Raw
Henry
25 Comments
I agree that we may well need to work with someone/anyone to stop Farage..
In the local elections in my area LibDem votes totalled 520.. Green/Reform votes were in the thousands; Reform beat the Greens by a handful of votes..
Reform ended up controlling the council with 41 councillors; the main opposition are the Green Party with a mere 13 councillors..Tactical voting could have drastically altered the result..
This is all a bit premature, so please don’t frighten the horses, Mr Melia.
Let’s first see if the English Green Party Leader can extricate himself satisfactorily from a number of personal difficulties to do with his attitude to women’s bodies and hypnotism, payment of council tax, electoral registration and his general veracity. Both Greens and Lib Dems might also have Leadership changes in the no too distant future which would effect everything.
A bit of further advice to the Lib Dems is for heaven’s sake get your heads and activities going again outside the pre-occupation with so called cosy ‘Middle England’. You will not suffer vertigo if you travel past York occasionally and as far as I know Sir Edward has always returned safely from his occasional explorations north of the Trent.
I doubt the Greens would be interested.
They have already said today that they are going to go all out in the Makerfield by election even though it is just as obviously a Lab/Reform head to head as the Gorton and Denton was obviously a Green/Reform head to head.
At a lower level they put out a string of glossy leaflets in our 7th May triple Council by election, claiming they were set to win, complete with spurious Bar Chart showing them neck and neck with Reform. In fact they had no chance and in reality fought it out with Labour for a more distant 3rd and 4th place. But the increase on their previous 3% of the vote was enough to stop us beating Reform by, for example, 21 votes, 35 votes and 81 votes.
Other commentators have given a number of similar recent examples from London and elsewhere.
The Greens are not remotely our ‘friends’.
“Love hin or loathe him?” Loath him
Would the Greens be interested? I have noticed that several Green members were disappointed by the scale of their gains in the recent elections. I think they were on a high, imagining that they would sweep all before them, and reality is now starting to kick in. They are in the same situation. Just look at those projections. Whether we like them or not is almost beside the point. Are we all willing to acquiesce at the prospect of a Reform UK government? If not, how are we going to stop it?
I would resign from the party if it did any deals with the Green party.
A letter in today’s Guardian from the well-known Bernie Evans advocates a Green Labour combination. We may have to fight to be the preferred partner. I agree with David Raw that it would be wise to “carr quiet” for a while and see how things unfold. But we should keep the prospect in mind: it make a lot of sense
An excellent idea but why so unambitious ?
Why assume in advance that we could not negotiate a full agreement for Government ? There are going to be a lot of Libdem/Green Coalitions formed in Councils across England after last Weeks results, let’s see how those negotiations go.
Why assume in advance that such an Alliance could not “Win” ? A joint platform launched at the right time ( Summer 2028 ) could get significantly more than just Our Votes + Theirs, we could enthuse a wider group – we only need 5% more than the next biggest Party to get a Majority.
“ The two parties would remain separate but agree to stand down candidates in half of the constituencies in England, and possibly in Wales. The Greens in Scotland are a separate party committed to independence, which would make such an alliance more difficult there.” Despite being the Greens of England and Wales, the Greens perversely favour Wales becoming an independent nation. If it is impossible to do a deal with the pro Independence Greens in Scotland then this applies to Wales as well. Perhaps a more detailed analysis of Green policies is needed rather than a broad brush white washing of their hardline policies such as giving up the UK nuclear deterrent, opposition to nuclear power and remind me what is their position on Nato?
…consider just one of Reform’s flagship policies: the retrospective removal of indefinite leave to remain.
By definition, it’s not retrospective. Indefinite is not the same as unlimited.
Short term alliances have previously just give us the worst of both worlds, they give the greens a massive leg up so they can then east away at our support in future.
Much better to have a permanent alliance or merger if we’re sure we want to work with them. And TBH I’m not sure there’s any party besides I would be keen on us forming a government with now or in the long term, given how horrifically authoritarian labour always are.
That said it does seem to be getting to the point now that a short term alliance might amount to the greens doing us a favour rather than the other way around.
Between the two parties they lost well over 500 deposits at the last GE – you only need to look at where those deposits were lost to realise that both parties have a mountain to climb in post industrial working class towns – Labours Red Wall which is currently facing a collapse in it’s support amongst socially conservative voters.
“ The Greens in Scotland are a separate party committed to independence, which would make such an alliance more difficult there”
If the purpose of an alliance with the Greens is to prevent Reform being elected to power, my conclusion from your unwillingness to work with Greens who support Scottish independence is that you would prefer to see ReformUK candidates elected than pro-independence candidates. Is that really your position?
I can see that a concerningly high number of people in these comments have bought into the aggressive and deliberate smear campaign the right-wing media has wielded against Zack Polanski. The Media does this every time someone comes along with the potential to actually meaningfully change things and actually offer positive and Liberal change, the Media slaughter them
They did it to Corbyn and it’s the same playbook now with Polanski.
The Greens are our friends and our allies who are actually standing up for what’s right. It’s time we did the same.
To be fair though, Corbyn made himself a sitting duck for attacks by the right-wing media, with his questionable political associations and outdated student revolutionary politics. In comparison most of the attacks on Zack Polanski are weak and often hypocritical.
@TaraFoster. The media can’t attack you for doing things if you haven’t done them. Mr Polanski has been extremely careless in respect of council tax, not voting, attacking the police and in some of his attitudes to women nd hypnosis and changing his excuses.
This is a man who wants to be PM. It doesn’t say much for his ability to do that job if he is so casual about the small stuff.
Remember the old adage. If you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen.
@Tara Foster: I see this a lot from achingly roght-on lefties, that Jeremy Corbyn was “smeared” and lied about. In fact, pretty much all the thinbgs that he was attacked for were words and deeds that were on the public record, in Hansard, in the national press and in left-wing publications that he had contributed to over many years. Remember, he entered Parliament in 1983 with previous outside Westminster before that, and had a long, long record to rake over. This wasn’t some naive newbie saying unwise things. it was an experienced politician who had acted according to his beliefs. Unfortunately for him, once he became LOTO the public became a lot more interested in his history than when he was a mere backbencher, and they didn’t like what they saw.
@tara – Leaving aside Green policies like leaving NATO and rent controls the many anti semitic comments by green candiates are a matter of public record. They are not our allies and certainly not our friends
@tara – Leaving aside terrible Green policies like leaving NATO and rent controls the many anti semitic comments by green candiates are a matter of public record. They are not our allies and certainly not our friends
Sure, to form an alliance with the Greens, the Lib Dems will have to hold their noses and put up with numerous small failings – a few antisemitic candidates, carelessness with council tax, etc.
Then again, to form an alliance with the Lib Dems, the Greens will have to hold their noses and put up with a number of failings – the austerity Coalition, Thorpe ‘s antics, Farron’s stance on gays, etc, etc.
OK, let’s all duck out of an alliance. Too difficult for the likes of us. Farage maybe won’t be too bad, for white people anyway, that is.
@DavidAllen. You may be old enough, as I am, to remember the Thorpe affair, I suspect very few people actually do. And he was acquitted. Farron’s error was not to state that his religion didn’t affect the way he voted on social issues. He voted pretty much the LD line on both gay and trans issues. (I think he supported hotelier’s rights not to accept gay couples).
Maybe there is still an issue with a few people about the coalition. But Labour u-turned on student fees twice and apparently that’s all right, but we are never to be forgiven?
There are big reasons not to trust the Greens: Nato; a leader who is economical with the actualities; anti-semitism; anti police stance etc.
There may have to be tactical cooperation to defeat common enemies. Green intervention has prevented LibDem candidates taking seats off Labour and helped losing them to Reform, usually by a loy fewer votes than the Green total. There will be seats where one or other party has a clear advantage and in those tacit agreements like in 2024 make sense.
After Labours drubbing last week it seems Streetings political nous is to rejoin the EU. It shows just how out of touch so many of them are with a significant portion of their voter base. Not surprising from a London mp with his back story. Those touting Rayner as a potential candidate really need to get a grip on reality .
@Tarafoster I am not saying “don’t do a deal in Scotland” because of dislike of independence. I just stated that their support for independence would make it more difficult. If a pro-independence party joins a voting arrangement and then gets what they want – independence – then you would lose them. I don’t think that’s likely in Wales.
Sorry, that last comment should have started @gwynwilliams. On your other points, I would refer you back to the original post. There was no “whitewashing of their hardline policies.” This is not about policy agreement. It’s about combating the problems caused by our voting system and avoiding a worse evil.
I have been thinking the same thing for some months. I feel that by working closely with the Greens we would stand a chance of reforming the UK. This would entail sacrifice, compromises and hard work. But what worthwhile has been achieved without them? At least worth a strategy paper and discussion by The Federal Board.