In the past week, the Conservatives have been talking up their chances of doing a deal with the Liberal Democrats if the forthcoming general election fails to deliver them a working majority. Conservative shadow business secretary Ken Clarke has even suggested that “Nick Clegg is a conservative”. David Cameron meanwhile regularly describes himself as a “liberal Conservative” and has claimed that on a range of policy issues, “there’s barely a cigarette paper between us”.
But in a new report from CentreForum, the liberal think tank, we argue that the two parties’ similarities are being wildly overstated, as are the chances of them working together in a formal coalition if the Tories are returned as the largest party in a hung parliament.
In the early days of David Cameron’s leadership, the prospect of a thawing in Lib Dem – Tory relations looked plausible. The election of a self-styled ‘liberal Conservative’ should have increased the likelihood of meaningful co-operation between the two parties. But four years on, that co-operation has been conspicuous only by its absence.
In part, this is down to a deep rooted mutual mistrust – policy positions may be ever changing, but the culture of a party, and the core instincts of its members and supporters, are not. In part, this is a simple result of electoral imperatives – as long as the success of each party depends on the failure of the other, co-operation will prove difficult.
But it is also the result of something more fundamental: the belief, held by virtually every Liberal Democrat, that the Conservative party has not been engaged in as fundamental a re-invention as David Cameron would like voters to believe. The Lib Dem view is that the Conservatives – with their regressive inheritance tax policy, their ardent Euro-scepticism, their failure to translate their rhetorical commitment to the environment into hard policy, and their refusal to countenance far-reaching constitutional and political reform – are simply not as liberal as they claim.
For all these reasons, it is almost impossible to imagine a scenario in which the Lib Dems could enter a formal coalition with the Conservatives. Not only would they have to exact a political price (in the form of electoral reform) that the Tories will never pay, but Clegg and his colleagues believe that, in the absence of fixed term parliaments, the conditions needed to give a coalition even a fighting chance of survival are simply not in place. The threat of Prime Minister Cameron calling a second election at any stage, blaming the junior coalition partner as he did so, would hang over every negotiation the parties entered into.
It would be a mistake to assume from this that the Lib Dems would, in a hung parliament in which the Conservatives were the largest party, simply revert to ‘business as usual’ opposition. With politics set to be dominated for the foreseeable future by the need to tackle the UK’s massive structural deficit, the over-riding objective for the Liberal Democrats will be to demonstrate that they are part of the solution, not the problem. In a hung parliament, the Lib Dems would wield significant political power, but would have to use that power sparingly. They would almost certainly remain on the opposition benches, but would increasingly have to think and act like a governing party.
The rules of the game could be about to change dramatically.
Julian Astle is Director of CentreForum, the liberal think tank.
‘The Independent View‘ is a slot on Lib Dem Voice which allows those from beyond the party to contribute to debates we believe are of interest to LDV’s readers. Please email [email protected] if you are interested in contributing.
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5 Comments
All likely to be academic unless Lib Dem supporters do all they can do hold the seats they have, whilst trying to pick up some where they are second or a close third, plus voting Tory in the Lab-Con micro-marginals to block another Labour majority and voting Labour in the less-safe ‘firewall’ Lab-Con marginals to prevent a Tory one.
Any association of Parties that can command a majority in the House of Commons can introduce and pass legislation to provide fixed term Parliaments. (If this association included us and either Labour or Conservatives, it would already be assured a majority in the Lords.) You do not even need a formal coalition agreement.
We need only make as a condition for us supporting a Queen’s Speech (or abstaining if such were the figures) the inclusion in it of a commitment to legislation for a fixed term Parliament.
That is why a commitment to fixed term Parliaments needs to be part of the constitutional reform package in our manifesto and to be given the highesdt priority in any negotiations.
As Lib Dem groups in balanced Councils will tell you; first get the mechanics right and then policy influence will follow.
Bill – spot on, the problem being that the Conservatives (the clue’s in the name here…) will not assent to constitutional reform of any kind, certainly not unless its on their own terms, as Labour has amply demonstrated in the last 13 years.
So yes, we need to get the mechanics right first, but to do that we need a government willing to implement real electoral change.
I agree with the foregoing comments regarding fixed term parliaments. However,am I right in thinking that if as leader of the largest party the Prime Minister calls for a dissolution of parliament and a general election the Queen is not bound to agree and can call on the second largest party to try to form a government, Clearly, the possibility of this depends on the number of MP’s for each party, but if this possibility exists it will affect the thinking if the then Prime Minister. Frankly, I am not sure of the constitutional position.
I loathe the Conservative party, mainly because of memories of the Thatcher years, but even today you just have to look at the newspapers who support them; The Mail, Express and the Sun. The whole point about the Tories is that they are not Liberals, that is why some people join them.
I would hate it if we go into coalition with them. My fear would be that we will become similar to the German FDP and become a right of centre party.
Labour are not much better, having taken on the Rupurt Murdoch agenda with their collous disregard for civil liberties and their uncritical alliance with the US, even when George Bush was president.
However going into the next general election, one thing should not be overlooked; the dreadful state of the economy. In one sense even that isn’t the most important issue facing us today; global warming and nuclear proliferation are even more important. But democracy conferes upon us timescales of up to 5 years and whether we will be influential after that depends on the economy.
Because of what is at stake; the need to make difficult decisions, we really should attempt to form a coalition and make sure the decisions that need to be made are made.
This is not a council chamber. We need a stable government where on the key economic decisions the governing parties are working with each other and making the hard choices.
I do not credit Brown with much, after all his philosophy of supporting light-touch regulation got us into this mess. But in 2008 the economy nearly fell off the edge of a cliff, and it was government intervention that stopped this from happening. However there are still serious problems with the economy and it could still go terribly wrong. We need a coalition government to handle this, not a weak minority government where you do not know from 1 day to the next what is going on.
I do not envy the Parliamentary party for having to deal with this. Even though a coalition is what is needed, that does not mean we should be a pushover in delivering it. Our job is to deliver as much as we can on behalf of those who voted for us. That is our responsibility.