The BBC have an interview with Ian Swales, the Redcar MP who turned a 12,000 Labour majority into a 5,000 one for the Lib Dems.
The interview may not be the toughest he’ll face, but it covers the throny issue of a Lib Dem MP in coalition with the Conservatives but representing a traditionally Labour area.
But what about the thousands of traditional Labour voters who defected to him last May?
I didn’t find it too tricky last May to find Swales supporters who felt they hadn’t voted for him to see the Tories in government.
Equally, I found others prepared to give the “new politics” a go, and Ian Swales insists that’s still the case.
He would like to see a robust and independent party conference in September – one which is prepared to challenge Coalition policies as well as mark the party’s successes.
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29 Comments
Being one of those who voted Mr Swales, along with many friends and family members, I am still shocked and angry by the coalition formed with the tories.
Mr Swales may believe otherwise, but I am 100% certain that if those who voted him knew that his success would facilitate a tory government, and all their subsequent policies, he would have been a distant distant second even to a hated Labour candidate.
I hadn’t heard this result until now. It should give hope to those of us who live in “unwinable” seats. We need to spend the next 4 years working at maintaining the difference between us and the Conservatives in the public consciousness so that come the next election, we won’t see a massive back lash against us in traditional Labour areas.
What can we do to show the public we are working WITH the Tories, not for them and that we have our own policies to stand for but that it was right to temporarily go into coalition for the good of the country? I guess making the coalition work would be a start.
BF
there isn’t a “tory government”, there is a coalition government.
“there isn’t a tory government, there is a coalition government.” – and that is better, if only a little.
The Tories wanted tax cuts for millionaires and we blocked them. We wanted tax cuts for the very lowest paid and we got them. If it wasn’t for the Liberal Democrats in the coalition, the Tories would have had all their own way. We have achieved something good right from the start.
@crewegwyn
I guess that depends on your view.
Despite all of the evidence to the contrary. That tells us all we really need to know.
“I am still shocked and angry by the coalition formed with the tories.”
Why?
I just don’t get people who say this. For the LibDems to be in government they were almost always going to have to be in coalition with either Labour or Conservatives. Nothing they have ever said permanently ruled out going in to coalition with the Conservatives, as that would have effectively proved them to be Labour-lite, and not really having any point as a separate party. They have never promised or indicated they would do this.
Clegg always said that the party with the greatest mandate from the public would get the chance to form a government, which obviously means get the chance to make the LibDems an offer. The Conservatives were obviously going to end up with the largest mandate from the public, which they did, in votes and seats.
They offered the LibDems the best deal, including giving up numerous areas of policy including on Europe electoral reform, CGT, income tax, IHT, Nuclear power etc. They shared many policies with the LibDems including deficit reduction, localisation, support for civil liberties, house of lord reform etc. Labour on the other hand refused to budge on policy and made little effort to accomodate the LibDems.
What possible reason would any person have for assuming the LibDems would not go into coalition with the Conservatives, when they have never said or even indicated this, and they have so much common ground and areas they are both willing to compromise over?
The LibDems have been completely honest about this. If some people had it in their heads that the libdems were solely labour-lite and would never dream of talking to any centre-right party, then that is a fantasy they have created entirely in their own heads, and in fairness is not one the LibDem leadership has done anything to encourage over the last few years or directly before the election.
He got in off the back of a huge protest vote against an unpopular Labour MP and the Corus business.
Don’t paint this as some heroic victory the circumstances were all in his favour. Next time they will all be against him.
I’m amazed that before casting their votes, people didn’t stop to think that the Lib Dems would very likely be in coalition with the Tories. Given what Clegg said about mandates, and how it looked as if the Tories would be the largest party in a hung parliament – we shouldn’t be surprised.
Just got to sell our successes in government to the sceptical Labour voters. (And I think we may need to stop bashing Labour in a couple of months)
I wouldn’t unpack my bags if I were Swales.He is precisely the sort of Lib Dem MP who will be punished at the next election. The joint Tory/Lib Dem political press conference was a PR clanger of epic proportions by the Lib Dems and I’m amazed no one in the party thought through how it would be perceived
“I wouldn’t unpack my bags if I were Swales”
This was a comment quite a lot of Labour MPs and supporters said about Simon Hughes back in ……………… early 1983.
I rather doubt all the claims that they didn’t. Consider: if you were in a Labour stronghold constituency, and you moved your vote from Labour to the Lib Dems (who were very clearly wanting a coalition arrangement with somebody, if possible), isn’t it pretty obvious what you wanted to happen?
It seems rather likely that the handful of “I voted against Labour but I really wanted Labour” people did not, in fact, vote against Labour, but are just trying to manufacture resentment.
@Andrew Suffield
You mean they wanted a Labour coalition with the Lib Dems, and are now complaining because the numbers didn’t make that possible?!
@Rich “He got in off the back of a huge protest vote against an unpopular Labour MP and the Corus business.”
Which makes the FORGEMASTERS #labourbingo all the more idiotic
@Andrew Suffield “Consider: if you were in a Labour stronghold constituency, and you moved your vote from Labour to the Lib Dems (who were very clearly wanting a coalition arrangement with somebody, if possible), isn’t it pretty obvious what you wanted to happen?”
Indeed, if someone wanted to vote for Labour, they should vote Labour, Clegg has made it quite clear that he is not encouraging tactical voting, plus if someone voted for us to keep X out, surely they didn’t expect their vote in their constituency would decide the government, even if it had worked?
And even that’s beside the point here, because they were in a Labour constituency. There is no way anybody there voted tactically as a crypto-Labour. Everybody who voted against Labour wanted them out.
@Mark “This was a comment quite a lot of Labour MPs and supporters said about Simon Hughes back in ……………… early 1983.”
Simon Hughes didn’t go straight into a coalition with the Tories. Do you think he would have been there all this time if he had?
@Mark
Simon Hughes has never had to carry the electoral can for massive cuts in services and public sector jobs.Indeed, no Lib Dem has – until now.
Andrea Gill wrote:
“Clegg has made it quite clear that he is not encouraging tactical voting,”
????!!!! Every election leaflet I delivered carried words like: “It’s a two-horse race. Labour cannot win here.” Yet Nick Clegg has made it perfectly clear that he is not encouraging tactical voting.
In order to defend Lib Dem support for Cameron’s Tory government, the few who make a habit of doing this are increasingly going to work for the Ministry of Truth.
Tactical voting is when the voter makes a Bet that voting for his/her preferred party will not see them elected, and makes a guess of which of the other parties are the two front runners and votes instead for the one the individual voter prefers.
Of course, with the Alternative Vote, the voter doesn’t have to do this. The vote can go first to the party he really likes, and if that doesn’t work, the voter has the option of using lower preferences to continue influencing the result.
We don’t know how much Ian Swales’ vote was made up of diehard LibDems, and/or disgruntled or disheartened Labour and Conservative voting tactically. If it had been an AV election we would know more, and there is a lot of campaigning time between now and the next election.
I doubt the damage will be limited to traditional Labour areas. Even in the most Tory areas there are a signifcant proportion of the population who have always been inclined to Labour – and the LibDems have always adopted their usual two faced act in order to get them to vote against the Tories on the basis that Labour stood little chance. I for one will now no longer ever give my vote to the LibDems in local council elections when there is no Labour candidate standing, and although I support AV my 2nd preference will only be going to parties which are honest about their intentions post election, have a Keynesian economic outlook, and do not support changes to the taxes, benefits and public spending that penalise the less well off more than the better off.
PS In the election the LibDems were very keen on stopping tax evasion and blocking tax loopholes. Could someone explain why the Government is now placing a higher priority on the smaller problem of benefit fraud – and the deafening silence on LibDems on tax evasion and avoidance. It’s not as though the matetr falls outside Danny Alexander’s remit is it?
Those are aimed at floating voters, to encourage them to not consider Labour as a serious candidate. They do not imply support for tactical voting.
From 1997 to May this year we had a Tory Government calling itself New Labour. Just break out of the tribalism & look at the policies. After winning in 1997 Gordon Brown stated he would & did follow Tory economic policies for two years. The gap between rich & poor widened, probably more than it would if we’d had a ‘real’ Tory Government. It is now being claimed that the disaster of PFI on the NHS could not have been foreseen. This was a Tory policy eagerly embraced by Labour & the disaster was foreseen. Freeing up the banks to wreck the economy & the sidelining of manufacture was Tory policy also eagerly embraced by New Labour. The possibility of economic disaster was foreseen & not just by Vince Cable. The Tories were even more gung ho than Labour to invade Iraq. I could go on for pages. The electorate is not so stupid that it couldn’t see this but was indecisive about what best to do. We now have the spectacle of the right wing of the Tory Party, the Labour Party, and much of the press focused on the single objective of bringing down the coalition. If they have to cut Cameron’s throat so be it. Look what they did to the blessed Margaret. For the first time for decades we have some small vestige of democracy in Government where different views have to be reconciled instead of just ignored. Overall the results so far are not bad (or as bad as they would be if we still had the traditional elected dictatorship). Making the coalition succeed is the overriding priority if we are going to pull this great country out of the present mire. The Labour Party lost in May because it had forgotten what it was supposed to stand for & is now in total denial that the outcome was in any way its own fault.
Andrew Suffield wrote:
“Those are aimed at floating voters, to encourage them to not consider Labour as a serious candidate. They do not imply support for tactical voting.”
I never thought I would see a Liberal Democrat write such tosh. OF COURSE those messages are aimed at Labour voters and are intended to encourage tactical voting! Everyone knows that. When I was an election agent, I aimed those messages at Labour voters to encourage them to vote tactically. I pleaded with them on the doorstep. So did Chris Rennard. So did Peter Chegwyn. So did virtually every Lib Dem election agent there has ever been. If you don’t believe me, read Chris Rennard’s book. It’s all in there. On what planet do you reside?
The Tories wanted tax cuts for millionaires and we blocked them
thats great news to thousands of public sector workers losing thier jobs
“Those are aimed at floating voters, to encourage them to not consider Labour as a serious candidate. They do not imply support for tactical voting.”
Good grief, we truly have gone through the looking glass. What utterly disingenuous rubbish!
Some people here seem not to have thought through how first past the post (or AV) elections. Lib/con seats being held by lib dems reduces the liklihood of a tory majority (but doesn’t can’t make a labour one more likley), Lib/lab seats being held by lib dems lib dems makes a labour majority less likely (but doesn’t make a tory one more likley).
If no one gets a majority then which of the two main parties enters goverment is detirmined by perceptions of what the electorate is more likley to accept, the distribution of seats between the main two parties (How big a majority would a particular alliance have if any), the efforts made by politicians to cooperate including the offering of appropriate concessions to one another. In all of these areas Labour failed.
The only impacts the result in redcar could have had would be on the lib dem/tory ratio for ministerial appointments and to increase the legitimacy of the lib dems and so may have helped us in securing concessions from the tories.
If we did not exist then there’d be a conserative majority at the moment.
So… you’re actually the person that you’re complaining about. I’m not sure why that’s supposed to be convincing.
Like Sesenco, I have also used that line in a Tory held seat to influence, yes, floating voters, but of course old AND new “tactical voters” who say they support Labour. These will be a mix of those who have voted Lib Dem for many years, and those whose support has previously been withheld, hence the “old” and “new” descriptions. Unlike ySesenco, I don’t believe you live on another planet, Andrew, I think you are being disingenuous!