The Financial Times today reports that Labour will fight only a “minimal campaign” in most of the Lib Dems’ top 30 target seats at the next general election, in “an informal Lib-Lab plan to topple the Conservatives”.
Apparently, Keir Starmer has told colleagues that Labour must “ruthlessly focus” resources on its target seats in the general election freeing the ground for the Lib Dems to be the main challengers in some seats.
Labour is aiming to gain more than 125 seats to reach the 326 required to form a government. The Tories are worried by potential Lib Dem gains in the blue wall southern and rural heartlands after the wins in the Chesham and Amersham and North Shropshire byelections.
The FT suggests the informal Lib-Lab non-aggression pact would leave the Lib Dems to lead the anti-Tory fight in many southern seats, while Labour would focus on winning back red wall seats in the north and Midlands.
An anonymous Lib Dem strategist is quoted by the FT:
“If Labour and the Liberal Democrats spend all their time and money trying to beat each other it’s really not good for progressive politics. We need to fight in the areas where we can win and that is the overwhelming priority.”
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25 Comments
[Sigh].
If we’re going to do this (and I think we should) then we need to just DO IT, and STOP TALKING ABOUT THE FACT WE’RE DOING IT. Every newspaper article or TV report that discusses this strategy is directly undermining it. Whoever is feeding it to the media as a story needs to be put in a locked box somewhere until after the next election.
I agree with TONYH that official Party sources should not comment about this.
The FT article makes it clear that there is no “Pact” of any sort, both Parties are simply going to be Targeting their resources on where they can Win. You could call it Common Sense.
The only sure way to defeat the Con Party is by parties of the Progressive left to cooperate because under FPTP and with the SNP holding sway in Scotland there is no way Labour can win an overall majority at the next election. Party allegiances apart it is in the National interest for the Con government to be removed from office. Of course things would be different under PR – and better too.
Whisper it softly. We wouldn’t want the Tories to find out what we are doing!
“Keir Starmer has told colleagues that Labour must “ruthlessly focus” resources on its target seats in the general election”
This is not a pact. In fact, if Labour act ‘ruthlessly’ in its self interest, there is no need for a pact, for it is blatantly in Labour’s own interest that we defeat the Tories in as many as possible of the around 80 seats where we are second placed. It all depends on whether Labour fight to try to win the next election. In 2019, all too often, Labour’s priorities were elsewhere.
Nor should we pretend there is a pact. Furthermore, we should forestall questions about coalitions by being clear that we are not looking for a pact, but that we firmly reject the Conservatives’ sleaze and incompetency and that we will work constructively in Parliament to raise standards of living, of competency and of honesty in public office.
What Tony H said.
Those of us who are old enough to remember know that it happened between 1992 and 1997. It included cooperation between the front benches in attacking the Tories with Robin Cook and Ming Campbell working particularly well together.
The main reason why I wanted Keir Starmer to win the Labour leadership was that I thought he was more likely than any other candidates to back a Blair / Ashdown-style non-aggression pact. Today’s news gives me hope that it will happen.
@ Martin
It’s not remotely in Labour’s interest LibDems do well. We are trying to get into Government and they don’t want us to because we stop them doing that. They don’t want competition any more than the Tories do.
@Tristan: you are right: the Labour party doesn’t want us to do so well that WE form the government and not them.
However, that’s not the current scenario. We are on 11%. If we mount a serious challenge to the Tories in 50 seats plus the ones we hold, the Tories will be obliged to divert resources and energy into those seats.
And every seat we win from the Tories is one extra possible ally in the Commons, if Labour fall short of an absolute majority.
Where Labour or the Lib Dems are running a distant third in a seat, it would make little sense for either party to spend time and resources on an active campaign in a GE. However, in such circumstances there are relatively few votes for the main challenger party to squeeze. The more interesting question is what happens in seats where either party is a strong third (Wimbledon, Cities of London & Westminster for Labour, Kensington or Somerset NE for the Lib Dems)? There are far more benefits here for the main challenger if the third-placed party ran a passive campaign, but harder to convince them that they should.
I hope we will have some sort of strategy in place if the next election throws up another hung parliament where the only chance we have of achieving anything at all is in ‘coalition’ with the Tories. It could quite easily happen again and we will no doubt be asked the question during an election campaign.
Although we would like to be the third largest party at Westminster, even optimistic projections make this unlikely. This means that there is very little chance of a hung parliament in which a government can only form with our participation.
Furthermore, the Tories have changed dramatically from ten and more years ago, the Conservatives have very much morphed into UKIP Mark II. There is no difficulty in rejecting any prospect of a coalition with the Tories ab initio. We can also clearly acknowledge that Starmer is fit to be Prime Minister, in contrast to Corbyn, who transparently was not.
More difficult are questions about a coalition. The question is really in the hands of larger parties. I think it very unlikely a coalition with Labour would be possible (or even desirable). We should say that in the event of No Overall Control, the third party would have precedence in negotiations, but that we would work constructively with other parties in the interest of competent and fair governance.
Any informal cooperation between us and Labour should respect the fact that there are a (small?) number of seats where both parties are in a position to seriously challenge the Tories, and that both local parties should be free to act accordingly.
Think North Shropshire for starters!
Bad set of results yesterday.
Our popularity appears to have crashed over the last week, Tories picked up considerably, could it be Ukraine, War and rallying behind the government, whatever seems good news for the PM.
@Martin, yes, the party has no ideological basis for post-electoral co-operation with the Conservative party as it is today. And has ruled out, I believe, any such dealings.
We now just need to concentrate on offering liberal policies that are relevant to voters’ everyday concerns. If we do that, we will do better than in 2017 and 2019.
It would be far easier for local parties to tailor their campaigning rather than not stand a candidate if this will result in a non-Conservative government. I certainly don’t want a whacking Labour majority with no commitment to reform. It falls on our headquarters strategists to determine what is the least level of cooperation that will achieve the required result.
I see that Andrew Marr has written about this in the New Statesman. https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-politics/2022/02/the-tories-are-right-to-fear-a-labour-lib-dem-alliance
Though I supported the 2010-15 coalition, I could not support a coalition with the current Conservative Party. By contrast, Keir Starmer appears reasonable. However, I would never underestimate how much many parts of Labour Party viscerally dislike us, for all that many on this website think that liberalism and socialism are naturally on the same side. I’m less convinced, nevertheless I think carefully distanced support of Labour is probably the best way forward at the moment. But I would not expect, or want, anything from them in return except unofficial ‘stand-downs’ in a score of seats or so.
If you look at the history of this country politically, until Blair arrived on the scene, most Labour governments only lasted a short time. The longest was 6 years. There’s every possibility that Labour might win the next election albeit with no majority, helped by the Lib Dems and the Lib Dems may even support Labour in Parliament on key policies, without joining a coalition. This will be good short term for those that want the Tories out now. But in the long term it may be bad news for the Lib Dems. After all, if we do end up with a weak, maybe unpopular Lab govt then the Tories can lay the blame at the door of the Lib Dems and the Tory message will be that to get Labour out you have to get the Lib Dems out, too.
No support for anyone e unless guaranteed PR is part of the deal.
Anyone who thinks Labour can be trusted to deliver PR without being forced need only look at the comments section of the Observer article on this “pact”
In the event of Coalition negotiations with Labour it would not be enough to get Cast Iron Guarantees of Fair Votes. The Labour Leadership might make promises & mean them but still not be able to deliver. We need to see some evidence that their Backbenchers would actually Vote for Reform.
On the Topic, can I point out again that their is no “Pact” – just rational allocation of scarce resources on both sides.
For all you purists..There WILL either be a Tory or Labour government after the next election..Which would you prefer?
Without an agreement with Labour on a seat by seat basis this party will remain an irrelevance with a handful of seats..
Regarding the success in the Chesham and Amersham and North Shropshire byelections…In C&A a survey of Labour //Green voters found that two thirds would vote tactically..In NS, the same (with the added bonus of a scandal hit Tory party and a disgraced MP forced to resign)..They were, also, both by-elections where this party threw the kitchen sink into the campaign……….A GE will be different..
With 13 MPs it’s unreasonable to set conditions prior to a GE but, with a minority Labour government, a loose “confidence and supply” pact is the best way forward (don’t forget the SNP)..BTW; you ‘catch more flies with honey than vinegar’!
epats: Both C&A and NS were won by taking votes directly from the Tories. In both seats the Tory candidate won an absolute majority of votes cast (>50%) at the previous GE. All the talk of pacts or tactical voting is utterly pointless if (as in OB&S by-election) you can’t get the Tories below 50% in a seat.
If the Tories are to lose the next GE, it will be because of previous Tory voters switching to other parties. Therefore, both Labour and Lib Dems will need to take votes directly from the Tories — Labouir in the Red Wall, Lib Dems in the Blue Wall and Blue Fields. Mostly the two groups of seats are mutually exclusive — there are actually only a few seats where both Labour and Lib Dems are credible challengers to the Tories. Simply staying away from each other’s Tory-facing battlegrounds is likely to be more effective than any sort of pact.
Alex Macfie 23rd Feb ’22 – 7:18am……epats: Both C&A and NS were won by taking votes directly from the Tories…..
How do you know?
In C&A the Labour/Green vote fell by around 8,000; those votes alone, if every one of the lost 16k Tory just abstained, added to the GE result increased the LibDem vote from 14k to the 22k needed to win..
In North Shropshire the Labour vote fell by 9,000; those votes went somewhere..…
expats: I’m naturally sceptical of any analysis involving en bloc one-way movements of party supporters as voters tend not to do that in the real world. It’s a contrived scenario, which is only likely to happen in contrived circumstances. As it happens there is a very recent real-world eample of such a contrivance, in the en-bloc abstention by people who would have wanted to vote for a mainstream non-Tory candidate in a certain Parliamentary by-election earlier ths month in which no such candidate was standing. But normally, I would not expect it to happen.
Of course, differential turnout helped the Lib Dems win C&A, the Tories having a poor GOTV operation for mid-term elections. But we also know from our canvas data that previous Tory voters were switching directly to us. It also cannot be assumed that all former Labour or Green voters switched to us. During the campaign the Grauniad ran a rather odd (especially in hindsight) article o the by-election that managed not to mention the Lib Dems at all, but did find a lifelong Laour voter considering switching to the Tories. The Labour vote may have been squeezed, but it didn’t necessarily all go to us.