It’s time for the Liberal Democrats to kill off any talk of co-operation with either Labour or the Tories. Otherwise speculation will carry on until the next election.
Sir Ming and his Chief of Staff, Ed Davey, must be heartily sick of having to bat such stories off as they arise, and have made valiant efforts to do so. But it’s time to say, categorically, that we will work on a case-by-case basis in the next parliament. That means an ironclad promise we’d form a coalition with neither Labour or the Tories.
The obvious criticism of this is that it would scotch the possibility of electoral reform or other long-term Lib Dem goals that could have been the price of our coalition participation. It is generally a bad idea to reduce your choices before you have to. But at the risk of predicting the future, I find it hard to imagine any deal could be good enough to taint us by association with either of the other main parties. Labour and the Tories have so much more in common than either has with us. We would have to prostitute too many liberal principles to join a formal coalition with either party.
As long as a hung parliament seems possible, we will be dogged by rumours of how we’ll jump, and alienate potential supporters who fear a vote for us would prop up their less preferred option of the Tories and Labour. We would still have the opportunity to support a Queen’s Speech from either if they conceded enough, but by staying outside a coalition we’d guarantee ongoing consideration of Lib Dem priorities, rather than being bought at the start of the parliament.
We have had some bad luck on this question.
At Spring conference, a senior member of party staff briefed journalists that Ming’s speech could be seen as an outstretched hand to Brown, opening the possibility of a coalition. A little bit of digging around easily reveals that this was not a conspiracy being exposed through indiscretion, but a classic case of human frailty.
We know that Ed Davey and Ming denied the reports, and that the member of staff left shortly afterwards. What is less well-known is the fact that the senior staff member had floated his idea of presenting the speech as “coalition talk” beforehand, and been slapped down. The later briefing was thus a direct contradiction of clear instructions, and even contradicted Ed Davey’s own briefings on the speech.
The ensuing “Harrogategate” was thus an error of judgement by one individual, who appears to have been alone in wanting a coalition with Labour and mistaken in thinking he could promote that opinion in Ming’s name. Such human mistakes will happen to any party from time-to-time, and we’re not going to escape them until we remove all speculation.
Ming rightly emphasises ‘more Lib Dem votes, more Lib Dem MPs, more Lib Dem victories’ as his only priority, whenever asked the coalition question. By ruling out a coalition with either of the other parties, we would sacrifice a small, long-term possibility of a too-good-to-be-true deal in favour of the certainty of assuring voters’ anxieties over our intentions. We’d work with both parties on a case-by-case basis as a moderating influence to their misguided New Tory Labour consensus.
I think a promise to “keep them both honest” in government, by constructive opposition to the Tories and Labour, is a far more saleable position than promising no preference and waiting to see what the election brings. We take something off the table, which is a bit of a shame, but the consequences of leaving a coalition with either party open is too grave to contemplate.
Picking up on a debate on this site today, I don’t think ‘equidistance’ means positioning itself in policy between the other two parties. Our principles and parties are far more consistent than either Labour or the Tories, and we should never change them in response to theirs. We should maintain an ‘equidistance’ of equal hostility to both illiberal philosophies of socialism and conservatism, and the parties that unswervingly advance them.
Some members fear that ruling out a coalition would drive the public into seeing the next election as a straight Labour-Tory fight, in which we were irrelevant to the outcome. This would not necessarily be the case, and I think the strategy of emphasising the similarities of the other two is the key. That’s not foolproof, and it’s not without risk. But every option for our party is dangerous and problematic at the moment. Killing coalition talk is the safest and most principled, I’d say, in the current climate. Therefore, I hope Ming will use his speech at Brighton conference to rule out any formal coalition deal.
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16 Comments
Well it’s not a very consistent message, is it? We’re quite happy to be in coalition in Scotland and Wales, but when it comes to Westminster, no way hosé. Why can’t we just say that we will consider the situation for the first time on the morning after the election, which is frankly the only sensible thing to do anyway. Perhaps if we worked a little harder on developing a coherent political identity, we wouldn’t find ourselves playing to the opposition tune so much, which is exactly how Sir Ming’s media interview looked today – another thoroughly unconvincing performance to add to his collection.
As a matter of urgency, we need to get ourselves a new leader, create the “narrative,” and then start acting like we’re actually going to win the next election outright. Reach for the stars, and we might get the moon. Presently, we’re hardly even reaching for the clouds.
Why did Brown bother asking in advance? He should just have announced his full list of Ministers once he got in, including both a Lib Dem and a Tory in each department, and said that people who didn’t want the job were free to resign.
Those approached need to ask themselves what it is about them that Brown found so attractive politically. The Lib Dems also need to ask this about each of them, as well as what the point of their own party is if it is going to pass up offers of Ministerial office, even including at Cabinet level. Everyone needs to ask what the reply from Ashdown, never over-troubled by self-doubt, would have been if Brown had offered to make him Foreign Secretary; also, to consider that, just as Sarkozy gave the Foreign Ministry to Kouchner, the only prominent French Socialist to support the Iraq War, so Brown has tried to bring in Ashdown, a pioneering neocon cheerleader from the Yugoslavia days, and who recently surprised no one by coming out as holding the same views on Iraq.
The Tories need to ask themselves why nobody bothered to do try and do a deal with them (although I suspect that that would have been Phase Two, and might yet be Phase One And Only instead). Labour Party members need to ask themselves why not one of their number – MP, Peer, or able to be raised to the Peerage for the purpose – was deemed capable of doing any of the Ministerial jobs in question, including one at Bevan’s NHS. Labour MPs, in particular, need to ask why, at least where these particular positions (and how many more after this?) are concerned, the man whom they gave a clear run for Leader would rather have a Lib Dem Peer than ANY of them.
And we all need to ask ourselves and each other what we are doing to replace this whole sorry lot with proper parties and proper politicians, speaking and acting for us.
Any political sense you might make, Laurence, continues to be undermined by your harping on about the leadership. Get over yourself.
What, you think Sir Ming has covered himself in glory, do you? Frankly, the only good thing to come out of this dismal episode has been to raise the profile of the philosopher Wittgenstein.
How is it we can be pro-PR and yet refuse to consider any talk of coalition at Westminster. Our support for PR means we *must* be willing to be involved in coalition.
Support for PR does not mean we must be willing to be part of a coaliton at all.
There are loads of parties in countries with PR that are not part of a coalition.
Is this an independent blog/website or a surrogate for the official party line?
It’s independent, like it says on the tin.
Well, I’d like to see the tin…
Yep. I just looked at the tin. Mark Pack is one of your editors. He’s a damned good man. But hardly independent. Great bloke. But Cowley Street payroll? Correct?
Correct. Mark is a comment moderator for the site. See here for the full team. Please contribute an article if you want. The more the merrier!
Clearly there is more to this than meets the eye. Meral is right – GB has been very tribal Labour and he is taking risks with his own side. Since the days of the project in the mid 90s the issue for Labour has always been whether they would realise that they needed to change the voting system to keep the tories out of majority power for most of the 21st century (as they were in te 20th) – NOW is the last moment for them to do this before they lose their majority.
It would clearly enable Brown to draw a line on the past, in a surprise move as he did with the Bank of England. AV on existing constituencies would be very easy to introduce and is the only change that realistically will get through the house of commons (with or without an hung parliament – vested interest is always in a majority – turkeys and Xmas etc). (yes I know its not PR – but what other first step is there?
So the issue for the LDs is are we a party of purity destined for permanent opposition but influence through our position in the 2nd chamber and through having our best policies stolen and implemented by others – or do we have the courage of our convictions to believe we could implement our own policies better if we are in government ourselves.
Radical Liberalism requires real Liberals to be in government – it will not be done by others at 2nd hand. So the issue for me is not whether we go into government – but when and on what terms.
If Brown’s experience of government has taught him that top down statism has failed and that a new settlement is required – then we should be in there making it happen for real, not carping from the sidelines about how they didn’t really ‘get it’.
Mostly a good piece. The suggestion though about Harrogategate hat our former Head of Press wanted a “coalition with Labour”, and manipulated the media to that extent is a very foolish one.
Our former Head of Press is the current Chair of No2ID, was briefly a Conservative and has a very long track record fighting libertarian causes. I can think of few people in the party who have less of an interest in cosying up to Gordon Brown.
As to the ‘new’ information about pre-briefings, and being ‘slapped down’. It’s new, because whoever briefed you for this story, made it up. No doubt to make an implausible personal attack, sound plausible.
In substance what happened in Harrogate was certainly human error, but not from one person acting alone.
Someone should have spotted the risk in the ‘5 tests for Gordon’ part of the Leader’s speech and someone should have pre-briefed the press team. The Head of Press I believe freely admits bungling the inquiries when they did come, and got the raw end of it. He resigned as a result.
And that should have been that.
It strikes me as deeply unwise for whoever briefed you to the contrary to be inventing such a graceless cock and bull story. It will hardly add to our credibility on communications matters.
™Someone should have spotted the risk in the ‘5 tests for Gordon’ part of the Leader’s speech and someone should have pre-briefed the press team”
Anyone should have spotted that!
The significance of this story is more than just symbolic, it sets out the territorial divisions between all 3 parties and identifies the new battlegrounds of power and principle.
Brown simply doesn’t have the broad electoral appeal of Blair’s ‘big tent’ approach and is finding he cannot cement support however hard he tries – he still remains suspiciously undemocratic!
Speculation over the size of any future potential Labour majority must be weakening by the hour as the age-old divisions in the Labour-left alliance are driven wider by the desperation to assert and cling onto power.
By contrast Cameron holds the dogs of his party membership in abeyance only while he has momentum – ‘Dave’ is skating on the thin ice of an Ealing by-election collapse.
As ‘No Overall Majority’ becomes ever more probable, conservative ambition is far more likely to succumb to it’s first principle (that of gaining and holding power) and sacrifice it’s principle members for the sake of supporting a government, even an ailing one.
Now that the polarized cold-war ideologies have been forgotten and become fluid the country is historically ready for the long anticipated reallignment of democratic opinion.
Britain’s democratic identity is something neither Brown nor conservatives will ever fully accept, but our support for the system of democracy is a strength we should never forget.
The perception of Ming’s public unattractiveness is a demonstration of our prinicpled approach to our belief in democracy (whether we voted for him or not) and it is this that wins respect and votes.
can anyone please explain to me what, exactly, happens at the FE on Monday ? We have heard reported that the whole issue of the Ming Campbell’s handling of the affair is to “be discussed”. But what does that mean ? what real powers does it have to do anything ?