We are, said George Orwell, ‘a nation of flower-lovers, but also a nation of stamp-collectors, pigeon-fanciers, amateur carpenters, coupon-snippers, darts-players, crossword-puzzle fans’. We think we can top that list. We collect statistics on parliamentary voting behaviour.
And over the last decade we’ve noticed the remarkable change that has come over Lib Dem MPs. Out of the 182 whipped votes in the last session of parliament, they voted with the Government on just 22 occasions. Of the votes that occurred on the Second or Third Reading of Bills – what are effectively the votes on the overall principle of the bill – they voted against 94%, backing just one Government bill.
So what? Isn’t this the point of opposition? Except that it hasn’t always been like this. Go back a decade, and you find the Lib Dems sharing their parliamentary favours much more evenly. In fact, in the first Blair term, the split was about as even as you can get: between 1997 and 2001, Lib Dem MPs voted with the government on 557 occasions, but against on 556 occasions. You can’t get much more equidistant than that. And back then, when it came to votes on the principle of government bills, the Lib Dems voted with the Government in 68% of votes.
The ten years since have seen a steady, and almost continuous, rise in hostility towards the government. By the end of the 2001 Parliament, the Lib Dems were voting with Labour on 25% of whipped votes, and against 75% of the time. The figures for the first two sessions of this Parliament are just 18% for, 82% against. Some recent research from the Constitution Unit at University College London revealed a similar transformation in the Lords, where the Lib Dems are effectively the swing voters, from a position where Lib Dem peers were more likely to vote with the government than not during the first Blair term to one in which they were more than four times as likely to vote against the Government by the end of the second term.
Lib Dem MPs we know sometimes complain that this is an unfair way of looking at their behaviour. Because the practices and procedures of the Commons make it difficult for them to map out an independent policy position, in most votes they are forced into making a tough choice between Labour and the Conservatives. And just because on one vote they might vote with the Conservatives against the Government that does not necessarily mean that they agree with them. It might just be that on that individual vote they disagree with the Conservatives less than with Labour.
But given that the Party does have to make that binary choice, over a mass of votes we can still draw meaning from their behaviour. We may prefer to travel in a chauffeured car, but life’s a bitch, and so we’re forced to use trains and buses. And if in one year we travelled by train 60 percent and by bus 40 percent of the time and in another year we travelled by bus 90 per cent of the time and train just 10 percent, then no one would doubt that there had been a change in our behaviour. That is exactly the magnitude of the change to have come over the Lib Dems in recent years. And it’s a long way from equidistance.
Philip Cowley and Mark Stuart are based at the University of Nottingham. They run www.revolts.co.uk, which publishes regular research on parliamentary voting.
22 Comments
Voting against a government proposal does not equal voting for a Conservative proposal. I would be interested to know what proportion of Conservative proposals (amendments, opposition day motions, etc.) the Lib Dems voted for and against. I suspect the party will have voted against – or at least abstained on – a majority.
This is a little facetious. It is hardly surprising that, over time, the sympathies of opposition parties which were initially relatively supportive of a government will harden. And imagine what fun the Tories would be having with us if we supported the government 50% of the time?
It also doesn’t recognise not only that the Lib Dems have changed stance over the past decade, but Labour has too. Or that this analysis equates the vote against the Iraq war (where the Tories supported Labour) with, say, the Census (Amendment) Bill.
But apart from anything else, it is barmy to accuse us of abandoning equidistance, citing 1997-2001 as an example of when we were, when in 1997-2000 we had formally abandoned equidistance. All this shows us is that the Lib Dems have gone from being a relatively Labour-sympathetic party to a Labour-sceptic party. If anything these statistics suggest that the Lib Dems have become more equidistant, not less.
This is the kind of silly article that academics write to justify their wages.
The stats in the Lords are similar – of course they are. Most of the votes that take place are on government legislation and amendments to it. The amendments that get voted on are (in most cases) those that have some chance of getting passed. Thousands of others never get voted on (or in a remarkable number of cases the government agree with the point made and either clarify their position or produce their own amendment).
The truth is that on many issues the New Labour government (front bench) is in trad terms to the right of the rest of the House. We vote against them because they are often centralist, illiberal, autocratic, their proposals are impractical – or just plain wrong.
And by and large on the things we agree with them, there are no votes anyway because even if the Tories don’t agree with them they don’t put the amendmnets to a vote becuase they have little chance of winning without us.
Tony Greaves
“And imagine what fun the Tories would be having with us if we supported the government 50% of the time?”
To prevent any confusion, I should point out that I meant to type “And imagine what fun the Tories would be having with us if we STILL supported the government 50% of the time?”
Whatever else you think about it (and I can assure you I ain’t going to be justifying a penny of my wages as a result of this…), I can assure you that this it not facetious. Tony Greaves’ point is quite right: there are loads of issues that don’t get voted on, but the fact remains that on the votes that have taken place – around 3000 in the Commons in total since 1997 – there’s been a remarkable transformation in Lib Dem behaviour. James Graham doesn’t have to imagine how the Tories would portray you if you voted with Labour 50% of the time – because you can go back to 1997 and see how they did. Hague claimed you’d been neutered, for example. You’ll notice, however, that we don’t try to say what’s caused this transformation. Maybe some of it is the inevitable result of a decade of Labour government, maybe some of it is because Labour have shifted position. Both, though, strike me as interesting in terms of future relations between the parties. Maybe there are other explanations – and wd be keen to hear suggestions. We also certainly don’t claim that you were formally equidistant in the early Blair years (merely that your voting was about 50/50). The point about Tory amendments is an interesting one, and I’ll take a look (although it’ll take ages to do, so don’t hold your breath waiting for a response here…).
This is a rather pointless article.
All it says is that the Government has moved away from positions the LibDems are likely to support (or the LibDems have moved away from the Government – the former seems more likely to me though)
If the party is meant to be defined as ‘equidistant’, then I’d be uncomfortable being a member. Our job is to be liberal, not some middle ground.
(The policy of equidistance also raises the idea of what metric do you use?)
Or more realisitically, the Labour manifesto in ’97 had a large numver of measures in it that we were likely to support, some of them because they’d initially been LD policy, others because rolling back some of the worst Tory laws was generally agreed as necessary.
That some of the ’97 manifesto was never implemented (especially some of the more radical constitutional reforms) and have now quietly been forgotten by Labour is partly that.
In ’97, we were united in opposing the Tories, and a large number of people that voted LD then were doing so to get the Tories out knowing they’d support Blair if it came down to it (I was one of them, and wasn’t a member). After 10 years in office, it’s natural for us to be more opposed to Govt measures, especially as they’ve moved further and further away from the consensus that did exist back then.
It’s the duty of opposition parties to opposed, critique and attempt to improve Govt legislation. Harder to do that when it was a lot of policies we’d proposed, easier to do it when it’s policies made up by Brown’s lot on the back of a fag packet.
We can’t conclude anything from this change unless we compare it to changes in Liberal voting behaviour during the course of previous governments. So what were they?
To go back to this analogy:
And if in one year we travelled by train 60 percent and by bus 40 percent of the time and in another year we travelled by bus 90 per cent of the time and train just 10 percent, then no one would doubt that there had been a change in our behaviour.
Wouldn’t it be fairer to say we’d changed our destination rather than our behaviour? Ie we no longer support Labour because they’ve changed since 1997, not us? If the trains aren’t going where you need to be any more, you need to take an alternative mode of transport.
You also say in the last session, we supported just one government bill. How many did the Tories support?
Rather than seeing this data as a move away from Labour, might it not actually be the case that the Tories are getting closer to Labour, underlining our ‘grand coalition’ hypothesis?
“James Graham doesn’t have to imagine how the Tories would portray you if you voted with Labour 50% of the time – because you can go back to 1997 and see how they did.”
Well, duh, that’s my point. The Tories can’t get away with that now.
“We also certainly don’t claim that you were formally equidistant in the early Blair years (merely that your voting was about 50/50).”
Well, I would question that as “equidistance” was a specific policy at a specific time. Bringing it up now to a Lib Dem argument is all about pushing buttons. As a term, it doesn’t even adequate describe the phenomenon you are exploring.
Voting for the government 50% of the time and voting against the government 50% isn’t “equidistance” because it most certainly isn’t claiming to be equally distant from two other parties. You aren’t claiming that the Lib Dems voted with Labour 50% of the time and the Tories 50% of the time, not least of all because there were several votes when the Lib Dems voted against both.
All that shows is that, according to voting analysis, the Lib Dems were formally neutral with regard to Labour between 1997 and 2001 and are formally anti-Labour now. I don’t argue with that, but it has nothing to do with equidistance.
A simple terminological blonde moment, or deliberate cheekiness? Either way, it’s a flawed argument.
To answer the query about Lib Dem voting in previous parliaments, I’m afraid we don’t have masses of it (we’re sad, but not that sad), but we do have data going back into the Major years, back to 1992. There’s a graph showing the transformation in this briefing paper, which also gives more detailed data on the last ten years:
http://www.revolts.co.uk/A%20long%20way%20from%20equidistance.pdf
You’ll notice that in terms of the party’s voting, its relationship with Labour is now similar to that which it enjoyed with the Conservatives in the mid-1990s and vice versa.
As for the Tories, we give figures on the voting of the Tory front (and back) bench here:
http://www.revolts.co.uk/Daves%20Dissidents%2005-07.pdf
Anyone looking for evidence of grand coalition building will certainly find it in the (declining) figures of the number of occasions the Tory front bench votes against Government legislation.
One other observation: as I said above, I’m happy for people to argue that the transformation is all the result of Labour moving away from common ground after 1997. (In fact, the shift away from Labour-Lib Dem voting consensus began in the Commons before 1997, which strengthens that point – since you can argue that it was Blair that moved the party away). However, the trend is almost year-on-year (with only very minor exceptions). Have Labour really got ‘worse’ (in your eyes) year-on-year?
And as a robust PS, well, duh, if that was your point, then why didn’t you say that…?
As for the period when the Lib Dems were 50/50 for and against Labour — no, we never said that you were splitting your favours exactly evenly. For the record, there were 1279 votes in that parliament. There were Lib Dem free votes in 137, and 34 saw the Lib Dem front bench abstain.
Of the remainder, the Lib Dems voted with Labour and the Conservative in 3% of votes, and against Labour and the Conservatives in 14% of votes. They voted with Labour versus the Conservatives in 47% of votes, and with the Conservatives against Labour in 36%. But the overall split, of for and against the government, was 50/50.
Can I please have back the 5 minutes this took to read?
Really bad case of academicitis.
“we never said that you were splitting your favours exactly evenly”
But that is exactly what you are suggesting by referring to “equidistance”. Either we’re equally distant from the other two parties, or we aren’t.
“However, the trend is almost year-on-year (with only very minor exceptions). Have Labour really got ‘worse’ (in your eyes) year-on-year?”
In me eyes, yes, they have. In ’97 I wasn’t a member but voted LD to get the local Tory out. In 2001, I voted Labour to keep the local Tory out (I’d moved). In 2005 I didn’t vote, in 2006 I was so annoyed and fed up with them that I was prompted to join the LDs. I also proposed the idea that a serious tactical voting campaign should be run to get them out, and that’s me as someone who self-identifies as a liberal socialist and distinctly on the notional “left”.
Blair shifted Labour into the centre both on both economics and personal freedoms/liberties (the HRA for example), but in office he (and they) have shifted further and further “up” towards an authoritarian “state-knows-best” position and abandoning their attempts at a fairly ‘liberal’ position.
They started good, but their constant attempts at triangulation have driven them to a position so far opposed to decent Mill-style liberalism that any sane liberal has to oppose them.
Yes I agree with Matt that they’ve got worse since 1997. There was a certain amount of hope after we got rid of the Tories, and its been slowly dissipated by mistakes both large and small ever since. You could argue that they’ve been driven into it in order to protect their right flank from the Tories, but the fact remains that they have taken hardly any liberal positions in recent years, prefering to leave that to us. Instead it has been the Tories who have had to start taking more liberal positions to protect their flank from us – e.g On ID cards. Its not surprising that we have been voting against the Govt more and more. Thanks for the interesting research, Phil. (P.S. Any research jobs going?)
1997-2001 is the oddity though as for at least 2 of the 4 years of that Parliament we had an agreed common policy platform on several major government bills. That is quite a rare (unique?) position for a UK opposition party to have been in.
What I don’t understand from this is why anyone is justified in saying “in most votes [the Liberal Democrats] are forced into making a tough choice between Labour and the Conservatives”.
This is just nonsense and shows, I believe, the rather narrow unable-to-accept-more-than-two-party-mould of the author.
Surely, Parliament actually forces us into making a choice between voting for or against the Government; nothing more.
What the Tories, the DUP, Plaid, SNP, UUP, Sinn Fein or even George Galloway do is entirely a matter for them. The policy of “equidistance” is a policy that plays into the hands of those who want to categorise us as either pseudo-Tories or pseudo-Labourites because it imagines that in some way we either have to be one or the other. When really, we’re actually just trying to get it right. Nick Clegg should adopt this approach and use it to to say how pleased we are that the Tories think we’re right so often in how we vote in parliament, and perhaps they would like to join the opposition party that actually has some policies and a sensible Mayoral candidate!
I promised I’d look up figures on Conservative amendments, in response to George C’s comment:
I would be interested to know what proportion of Conservative proposals (amendments, opposition day motions, etc.) the Lib Dems voted for and against. I suspect the party will have voted against – or at least abstained on – a majority.
We don’t have data (yet) on this for the whole of the decade, but for the last session (2006-7), there were 36 divisions on Conservative Opposition day motions (including Government amendments thereof). Of these, the Lib Dems supported the Conservatives in 32 divisions, and with Labour against the Conservatives in just four divisions. The same period saw 39 divisions where the Conservatives put down new clauses or amendments to the detail of Government bills on the floor of the House. In 35 cases, the Lib Dems voted with the Conservatives against Labour; in only four cases did the they vote with Labour against the Conservatives.
So it’s not just that you now vote against Labour more often than in the past. You also now vote overwhelmingly with the Conservatives, even on issues – motions and amendments – that the Conservatives put forward.
I’m grateful to George C for raising the point – even if the answer is not what he expected – as it’s helped strengthen the argument somewhat. Also grateful for the other interesting points raised in response. Less grateful for the more abusive – but I’m assuming that you’re just being rather defensive about something…
Philip, what’s the corresponding figure on LD Opposition day motions? To what extent to Lab / Cons vote with us?
“what’s the corresponding figure on LD Opposition day motions? To what extent to Lab / Cons vote with us?”
Is exactly what I was going to ask…
It’s harder to spot trends on Lib Dem Opposition Days – since there are far fewer of them each session. Obviously Labour will vote against (since they’re the ones being criticised). As I recall, the Tories often abstain, but will look it up and get back to you — but can’t promise it today. Loads of work on.
Not really sure what it’ll show one way or the other, mind you.