James Graham, Lib Dem blogger and frequent contributor to the Guardian’s Comment is Free website, has a must-read piece today, titled ‘Not dead but…’.
James co-founded the Lib Dems’ Social Liberal Forum, and has in the past advocated closer relations between the party and Labour as a progressive force to take on the Conservatives, so he is by no means a natural cheerleader for the Lib/Con Coalition, as his blog-post makes clear.
It’s his take on Labour’s misfiring oppositional tactics, though, which I think are well worth highlighting here:
My fears that Labour would end up getting trapped into a mindset of “what’s bad for the coalition is good for us” have proven to be well founded, and it is an infection which has spread across the board, even among some relatively sensible types. A perfect example is AV. Leaving aside the rather tedious row about boundary changes (which, aside from some of the legitimate social justice issues at stake, amounts to two parties with a rather inflated sense of entitlement arguing about which party should be given the greatest unfair advantage), the idea that losing the AV referendum will damage the coalition is quite mistaken. It will certainly damage the Liberal Democrats, but we’ll have nowhere to go. Our only recourse will be batten down the hatches, refocus on Lords reform and a handful of other reforms, and hope for the best. It will be the Tory right that will hold all the cards, not Labour. The idea that suddenly we’ll decide to pull out of the coalition and meet our doom in an early general election is pure fantasy.
By contrast, what better way to undermine the Clegg-Cameron love in than for Labour to champion AV, and win? The Tory right will be damaged, Labour will come out smelling of roses and the Lib Dems’ influence within the coalition will increase. For many Tories, that will be simply unscionable. An unruly Tory backbench will make Lib-Lab cooperation in Parliament far easier. This is the prize Labour have within their grasp; yet they are so obsessed with ‘betrayal’ they simply can’t see it. I can only look on in despair.
It’s an article which should give thoughtful Labour members, who believe in pluralism and progressive politics – and I’d still like to believe they are in the majority – some pause for thought.
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20 Comments
I think James Graham’s analysis is spot on. The Labour leadership seems stuck in a ‘oppose everything’ mindset. And if they go down this road, it will indeed push the Lib Dems to the Tories.
However, there is a ‘conservative’ element in Labour who oppose electoral reform. Many of their reasons may be self-interest, but some of them simply like the simplicity of FPTP.
“what better way to undermine the Clegg-Cameron love in than for Labour to champion AV, and win? The Tory right will be damaged, Labour will come out smelling of roses and the Lib Dems’ influence within the coalition will increase.”
I can’t think of a way the AV referendum could possibly be better.
A better way to stick it to “the Tory right” would be for the Lib Dems to stop voting their measures through Parliament.
AV would be beneficial to the Labour Party in that it would reinvigorate Labour in areas where we have already eliminated them through tactical voting. It would also benefit the Conservatives by fragmenting anti-Tory support in their areas.
Let me explain. Under FPTP, Labour gets less than 10% of the vote over large chunks of the South-East and South-West. Under AV, Labour might get up to 25% first preference votes in these areas, leading people to believe that Labour is a viable option in those constituencies and thereby weaking the Liberal Democrats and dividing the opposition. The one party set to lose big time through AV is the Liberal Democrats. Which is why Cameron is prepared to put up with it.
I read the other day, probably here, comments by a Labour member willing us, so repelled by Labour’s derision, to move closer and closer to the Tories, in the public perception leaving only one remotely viable Left alternative; cynical and partisan, but I could understand the logic. At the present time Labour have nothing worthwhile to contribute and their delivery is not condusive to being listened to; we’d like them to become discerning and constructive, an ally not a foe, but realistically that might be asking for something they’ll never realistically deliver.
@Sesenco RE AV; it’s actually the intention and major benefit of AV to eliminate the tactical voting arising from the ‘can’t win here’ mentality and to allow voters, without risk, to express their genuine preferences before their pragmatic one; more honesty in the expression of political will will reignite local debate and campaigning, create more civil and constructive dialogue instead of offensive diatribes, and allow our politicians insight into where the public’s genuine feelings lie.
In your example, there’s nothing to lose from genuine preferences being expressed first; unless one party wins outright before votes are reallocated, those with most support will continue on until that with the greatest accumulated votes is elected. That might be the Tories, Labour or Lib Dems; but more importantly it will be the party with most popular support and legitimacy, not someone no-one really wanted but voted for tactically.
Labour are a party without a leader or direction at the moment, so you’re pretty much attacking an empty shell of a party.
An empty leaderless shell catching up slowly in the polls regardless.
There’s a danger if Labour does back AV and then it fails. That would be a blow.
As I understand it individuals will be choosing whether to back AV or not, out of conviction rather than tactical gain, so Labour won’t have a vested interest in either the Yes or No vote and the party won’t really gain in prestige from either result.
>An empty leaderless shell catching up slowly in the polls regardless.
Protest votes against the government, rather than votes for Labour, is no surprise. The Tories were polling really high a year or two before the election, on course (it was predicted) for a big win. But a lot of that was ‘we’re fed-up with Labour’ and slipped away by May.
Anti-Tory feeling was massive in the 80s, but they kept on winning, till Labour got its act together.
If Labour had won and implemented the cuts it was so vague about, I wonder where the protest vote would’ve gone to?
Anyway, given Labour’s track record on reforming the voting system, I can’t see Labour or the Tories championing anything. They’ve had big majorities before under FPTP and expect to take it turns to enjoy them in future. The millions of people whose votes are effectively worthless as a consequence has never seemed to bother either party.
Those who like FPTP are presumably the ones most upset that altering constituency boundaries will decrease their chance of winning under that system. They might want to think the AV issue through a bit more.
As an ex-Labour member, from a strongly Labour family I have to say (again) that most Libdems dont get Labour at all. The glue that holds Labour together isnt political at all, its an identification with The Working Class & The Unions, That is the lens through which Labourites see everything, including AV. As the number of people identifying themselves as Working Class slowly declines ( its around 52% now) Labour doesnt just shrink with them, it becomes less stable, more prone to sudden “Political” swings & crises.
We should be prepared for Labour to crumble quite suddenly & with no warning.
Bit silly really to suggest that winning the AV referendum would undermine “the Clegg – Cameron love in”. Wishful thinking? Losing the referendum will be painful, but, of course the Lib Dems would just have to regroup and put STV on their manifesto for 2015. Eventually they will win through.
Could I suggest that the Lib Dems should at some stage meet up with the smaller parties (Greens, UKIP, SNP, PC, APNI, etc.) and with the ERS and come to an agreed choice regarding electoral system for the HoC? Surely such a coalition would have a louder voice, than each going it alone?
There’s a huge flaw in Graham’s analysis, which is that Labour – leaderless though they are – have *not* come out against AV. Chances are they will support AV in the referendum campaign; and Jack Straw has practically *pleaded* with the coalition to put forth a sensible referendum-only bill which Labour would be happy to support.
Lib Dems keep attacking Labour for being unconstructive and unreasonable. Yet when Labour put forward a perfectly constructive and reasonable proposal, as they have done about the referendum bill, they are villified for it and expected to simply do as they are told.
This whole farrago is a classic piece of divide and rule on the part of the Tories; and the truly disappointing thing is that so many progressive types like Graham have fallen for it.
Stuart, bullshit. Labour’s ‘legitimate’ objection is that they want to maintain their built in electoral advantage arising from out of date and unfairly drawn constituencies where fewer votes are required to elect a Labour MP than any other, and where they hold more of the smallest 100 seats, each significantly smaller than the average size, than all other parties combined. Their unjust indignation on this issue is like a child being caught cheating, refusing to admit it, and then refusing to play anymore.
How about you actually go and find out what the objections are? It would be novel for you to find out what the issue is before wading in, I’d like to see it one of these days.
Ad hominem? How lovely for you Mike.
Andrew: Labour have put forward many objections, if you care to lok them up. When all this was discussed here a few weeks back, even a lot of Lib Dems agreed that some of the objections were entirely reasonable. In particular, if I remember rightly, there was a large majority who agreed that there shoul be a separate referendum bill. Why couldn’t the coalition have put some of this “new politics” guff into practice, and actually put forward a bill that was acceptable to all?
Stuart: if you look at the range of different measures included under one bill during the last (Labour) government, particularly those to do with police and justice matters, it seems to me that it’s been very common in recent Parliamentary times to have bills that cover more diverse a range of topics than method of election and boundaries for Parliamentary elections. Fair enough if you or anyone else has consistently thought legislation should be chopped up into lots of smaller bills, but I can’t find any examples of Labour MPs giving principled reasons why they previous voted for bills that covered a much broader range of topics and now think it’s an outrage this bill isn’t split up. Have you spotted any?
Mark: Point taken; and I do confess that I am not familiar enough with Parliamentary procedure to know whether or not Labour have a real alternative here but to reject the bill altogether.
However, I do think that the boundary aspects of the bill are so objectionable that I can only applaud Labour for making a stand over it. There are issues here which go way, way beyond the simple “Labour whingeing about losing their advantage” interpretation that Andrew likes to make. Will Straw has written a decent summary of Labour’s main objections :-
http://www.leftfootforward.org/2010/07/electoral-reformers-should-oppose-the-coalitions-gerrymandering/
I’m not sure even Will Straw believes what he wrote; read the comments.
I’m genuinely unconvinced by the boundary reform, but surely it is always reasonable to ask for a bill to be broken into bits? You may question the motives for asking such a thing, but if the issues are not genetically related, why should they be artificially conjoined? I don’t see why we must vilify Labour for wanting this.
Andrew: Just out of interest, do you support the exemption in the bill for those seats in the highlands and islands? Those seats sure have a tiny number of constituents compared to everywhere else in the country!
I was doing a bit of analysis on the constituency data last night and what became very clear was that the really big losers from the boundary reform will not be Labour but the smaller parties – Plaid Cymru, the SNP, the SDLP, the Ulster Unionists etc. Being one of those Labour supporters the OP refers to who believes in pluralism, I can only say that this is yet another reason to object to the reforms.
As young Straw rightly points out, you can’t make FPTP “fair” by redrawing the boundaries. I think you and I would both agree that we need a much fairer and representative electoral system; but Cameron’s boundary wheeze has got nothing to do with that whatsoever.