May’s local elections confirmed what opinion polls had been indicating for several months: that England now has five political parties attracting between 10% and 30% of voters. Nationalist parties in Scotland and Wales make six serious parties: an even more crowded field.
Of course it’s possible that over the next four years UK politics might return to its traditional two-party model. But that doesn’t look likely. Neither Labour nor the Conservatives any longer command the automatic support of a large proportion of voters, nor the mass membership that used to provide local organisations throughout the country. Other divides apart from class and wealth cut across old loyalties: young versus old, graduates versus school leavers, libertarians versus socially-engaged. The old dream that a ‘realignment of the left’ might enable us to replace Labour, and the more recent hope that we might push the Conservatives out of contention as one of the two main parties both look illusory. The result of the 2029 election may largely depend on how effectively different parties target specific constituencies, and whether the Conservatives and Reform can construct a formal or informal electoral pact. And it might then require more than two parties to form a majoritarian government.
After our experience between 2010 and 2015, many Liberal Democrats will groan at the prospect of any form of participation in a government in which we were not the largest party. But we can’t dictate what election outcome we would prefer, and we need to be prepared to make the best of a different pattern of politics as it emerges. Established party systems have withered in most other democratic states, as similar social and economic changes have transformed their electorates. Say that we double our number of MPs in 2029, to become a major player in any post-election scenario, perhaps with more MPs than one of the two ‘established’ parties: what would we do then? We’ve just seen an opinion poll put us ahead of the Tories. We HAVE to think ahead.
I suggest some themes that ought to feed into our thinking and campaigning if the current pattern of disillusion with Labour and the Tories persists.
- Attack the ‘two-party system’ as part of what is wrong with Westminster democracy: two competing elites, largely financed by a limited number of vested-interest unions and wealthy donors, that no longer represent the diversity of Britain’s society and culture.
- Defend the record of the 2010-15 Coalition (yes, I know this will stick in the gullet for many). It provided stable and cooperative government. The Tory promise in the following elections that they could instead provide ‘stable single-party government’ brought chaotic factionalism, repeated ministerial and prime ministerial turnover, and nonsensical promises of higher spending and lower taxes. If Labour’s single-party government continues to drift, the appeal of a different sort of government will grow.
- Don’t be scared of asking ‘what will you do if…’. We can now throw the question back at other parties, for them to answer. Who believes that the Tories can win a majority in 2029? Or Labour? So what would they (or Reform, let alone the Greens) do?
- Make sure we have credible answers to our own approach to tax and spend, and a range of well-thought-through and distinctive policies that could be implemented in government (unlike the tuition fees pledge of 2009-10).
- Differentiate ourselves clearly from Labour, to avoid being caught in popular disillusionment with the current government but also to create enough space for hard negotiation if needed. Labour is a deeply centralist party, which sees government as doing things for people; we should underline that we prefer strong local democracy and citizen participation.
We’re well on the way to addressing some of this agenda, now that our new MPs have settled into Parliament and are working as a coherent group. Defining ourselves as the anti-populist party against Farage and Trump is gaining traction. So is our clear commitment to closer cooperation with the rest of Europe, the only realistic alternative to following Trump’s USA. We have a party leader with valuable experience in government, dealing with environmental issues – which we should be making more of, as a rising concern to the younger voters we want to attract. But there’s much more work to be done on how we finance better public services, redress the imbalance between the South-East and our country’s poorer regions, cities and towns, and make a successful transition to a low-carbon and digital economy in a turbulent global context.
It’s four years at most until the next election. Its outcome could be chaotic, with many contenders and commentators unprepared for what follows. Over the next two years the party, outside as well as inside Parliament, needs to put in some hard work in preparing ourselves for what might emerge, and preparing the electorate to trust us and stay with us if we find ourselves again sharing power.
* William Wallace is LibDem peer, a former vice-chair of the Federal Policy Committee and convenor of the party's 1997 manifesto team.
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Is Kier Starmer the new John Major?
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I have to take issue with the idea of defining our party as ‘anti-populist’. First, from the voters’ perspective, it straight away puts you in the ‘elite’ camp where you enjoy the company of some pretty unsympathetic business and political characters. Secondly, it risks cutting you off from the grievances of the working class.
The working class have had a crap deal from Austerity which, I think we need to remind ourselves, started during the Coalition. It wasn’t just the scrapping of tuition fees, it was the hollowing out of social services and welfare and the shifting of the tax burden to local authorities.
The Liberal Democrats have moved on from the Coalition, thoroughly denouncing successive Conservative governments. Although some still nurse a grudge against the party, most voters recognise we would never enter a coalition with the Tories again.
Yes, Labour is instinctively centralist, but we need to recognise that the BIG questions of the economy, NHS and social care cannot be answered locally.
Meanwhile, Farage is offering a £20,000 personal allowance and the ability for couples to pool their allowances, which would be a boon to those with families and caring responsibilities. He doesn’t say how they’d pay for it, but voters care that Reform has recognised their pain in a way that the other parties, including ours, have not.
The “Polls” are clear enough – Reform come top around 30%
however
if we look instead at preferred Prime Minister, Farage comes bottom.
Its not that Farage is much less popular than his Party, He still gets 25% to @9%, its just that few Voters outside Reform prefer him to The Other Leaders.
In fact British Politics looks very different if we look at the order Voters put possible Prime Ministers –
Starmer
Davey
Badenoch
Farage
Note that We come a close second on that score, does that give us a clue as to how the relative positions of The Parties might look in 2029 ?
To combat populist authoritariansim requires that established political parties cooperate to prevent the rise of a Trump like figure taking over the UK’s political and civic institutions. We have already had some experience (under Boris Johnson) of the abuse of Royal perogrative powers What is the royal prerogative?
A Reform government seems likely to implement the Trump playbook in seeking to undermine the independence of Universities, freedom of speeach and assembly, the Judiciary, EU treaties, immigrant visas and the rule of law in general.
On the question of tax and spend a higher personal allowance (or tax credit/reducer) along the lines proposed by Reform or equivalent to the national miniumu wage, could be implemented if copuled with tax reform to combine income tax and employee NI into a single flat rate and supplemented with a Land Value Tax deliverd by assessing imputed rents on owner-occupied housing at this combined flat rate.
I agree with a lot of this. But there are two things I’m nervous about:
Defending the coalition… Yes, I agree it’s good to defend the coalition and we should be proud of what we achieved in Government. But by the time of the next election, it’ll be 14 years since the coalition ended. Voters mostly aren’t interested in things that happened so long ago. Could you imagine David Cameron fighting the 2010 election by defending John Major’s record, or Tony Blair fighting the 1997 election by defending James Callaghan’s record? (Both would be similar timescales). In 2029 the coalition is unlikely to be at all relevant as a political issue.
Ditto contrasting our local and Labour’s centralising tendencies. All very true and good, but how much do voters care about opposing centralisation?
Some suggestions:
A strong military and economic alliance with the European states in the face of Trump and Putin. It links Farage with the failed policy of Brexit and the unpopular Trump and Putin. We showcase the 8 or 9 MPs with military experience to counter accusations of being unpatriotic.
Find a way of defending/advancing the rights of minorities/women that doesn’t make everyone else feel threatened and does not involve distortion of language or unacceptably prevents free speech.
We talk to business (especially SMEs) about government enabling them to compete effectively in delivering innovation, profit and jobs. Breaking up of monopolies/oligopolies and taking on vested interests generally.
Ensure the environmental costs of consumption have to be paid by the people/businesses doing the damage and ensuing that that damage is put right as part of the cost of that consumption. That should help incentivise reduction of damage in the first place.
“libertarians versus socially-engaged” can we please STOP calling them “libertarians”? Most so-called “libertarians” only support liberty for people like them, for whom they seek freedom from any and all consequences of their actions. That’s NOT liberty, it’s LICENCE. Freedom, by definition, cannot interfere with the freedom of anyone else. There is no “freedom” to take away anyone else’s freedom. Trump, Truss & co seek to give people like them such licence, which is why it is WRONG to call them libertarians. They are LICENTIALISTS.
@Alex: I’m not sure that’s really true of libertarians. Take a look at the program of the American Libertarian party: https://lp.org/platform-page/ It’s actually very liberal, and in a lot of ways the very opposite of what Trump and Truss stand for in (for example, they believe in complete freedom of movement), although you’re right to identify that the weakness of libertarian philosophy is that it doesn’t really address when one person’s freedom impinges of someone else’s. I’m not entirely sure which group William was referring to when he mentioned libertarians, although I certainly wouldn’t describe either Reform or the Tories as ‘libertarian’
We do need to accept that the next government is likely to be Reform led if things carry on as they are. It’s not just that the polling figures at this particular moment are bad, but that they are rapidly getting worse as we can see from the graph in the link below.
Both the Tory and Labour vote shares are in rapid decline. The Tories are in even faster decline than Labour.
So the chances of Starmer and Badenoch surviving until the next election can’t be good.
So what’s the worse that can happen? If the Tories are facing electoral oblivion the party will either disintegrate with many individual MPs jumping ship to Reform in a bid to keep their seats, or, and more likely, a deal will be made to form a Tory/Reform electoral coalition.
How should Labour and the Lib Dems respond? The only way they’d have any chance would be to form an electoral coalition too. They may well even be joined by the few remaining ‘moderates’ in the Tories.
The French political parties underwent radical change due to the rise of the National Front/Rally and it looks like something similar could happen here too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election
We need to combine credible policies on the issues that matter to the electorate with a vision for the longer term. Many voters like to imagine that we will be competent at the bread and butter of politics especially keeping the public finances in good order. The issues that will determine how many will vote will be longer term and more global like combatting climate change, tackling poverty and inequality and dealing with present and future conflicts.