The future of the Liberal Democrats: new dawn or false hope?

This article was written for the Vibe magazine (before the resignation of David Laws). Read more at www.the-vibe.co.uk

In the short history of the Liberal Democrats dating back to the alliance and eventual merger of the Liberals and the Social Democratic Party, leader after leader, from David Steel to Nick Clegg, has declared the realignment of British politics to be within reach, only for their hopes to be dashed again and again with each general election.

Thursday May 6 was no exception. The party endured a miserable night, losing five seats and several of its most well known MPs including Evan Harris, Susan Kramer, and of course Lembit Opik. Yet just ten days later, I along with over 1650 of my fellow Lib Dem members assembled in Birmingham to sign off on a coalition agreement with the Conservatives that would make Nick Clegg deputy Prime Minister.

Since then, speculation has been rife about the coalition’s chances of surviving a full five year term in government. However, much less has been said about how this landmark agreement will alter the British political landscape in the future, if at all.

Those who claim Britain was not a three party state before this election, cannot possible make the same claim now. Yet, when David Cameron and Nick Clegg call time on the coalition five years from now to call the next general election, the Liberal Democrats will still be entering the contest with just 57 parliamentary seats to their name. If this is the great Lib Dem breakthrough we have been waiting for, it must surely be one of the stealthiest breakthroughs in history.

So, what lies ahead for the heirs of Gladstone and Asquith? I’m no political soothsayer to be sure, but it seems three factors will prove critical in shaping the party’s future: first and most obviously, the status of the coalition; second, the unity of the party itself; and third, the outcome of Nick Clegg’s attempts to secure electoral and political reform.

Can the coalition stand the test of time?

So far the coalition government has managed to divide up cabinet posts and put together a sweeping legislative agenda for the Queen’s speech, which is a lot further than most people thought it would get when the deal was first announced.

However, coalitions are not as anathema to British politics as they may seem. Between 1885 and 1900, Britain was governed by a succession of coalition governments and again, intermittently, between the middle of the First World War and the end of the second. Similarly in the aftermath of the last election, the need to address the national deficit against the backdrop of a hung parliament left both the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives with little choice but to enter into coalition with each other lest they incur the country’s wrath for leaving it with an unstable minority government.

Furthermore, both sides seem broadly happy with the full coalition agreement except for a few mumblings on key policy issues such as nuclear power and the Human Rights Act. The real test will come when the government is forced to respond to events it could not possibly have anticipated when drawing up the agreement, such as a foreign policy crisis.


United we stand, divided we fall…

Revisiting that Birmingham conference hall for a moment, even as person after person stood up to speak in favour of the new coalition agreement, the lingering doubts about the party’s future hung in the air like the last residue of an odour that refused to go away. Those doubts were best expressed by Charles Kennedy in an article for the Observer, published that very morning, in which he professed his desire for a progressive alliance with Labour.

Back in 1997, an alliance with anyone but Labour seemed unthinkable. Indeed, under Paddy Ashdown’s leadership, the very real possibility of a Lib-Lab coalition prior to Tony Blair’s landslide victory prompted the party to construct the Gordian triple lock, designed to prevent their leader from unilaterally making any deals that might compromise their independence. Of course a lot has changed since then. Labour’s record on the economy, civil liberties, social mobility – not to mention Iraq – over the last thirteen years made any claims that an alliance with them would be a progressive one frankly laughable.

Yet, as Kennedy’s article highlighted, the party’s diversity remains its Achilles’ heel. I once asked a councillor in my home borough of Camden which party he would choose to support if the Liberal Democrats did not exist, to which he deftly replied: “If the Lib Dems didn’t exist, I think I would have to invent them”. Many of our fellow members across the country, however, continue to identify themselves as anti-Labour or anti-Tory, creating obvious difficulties for any leader who ever chose to get in bed with one or the other.

Several commentators have also asserted that the history of Lib-Con coalitions does not bode well for the party. In an article for the Financial Times, author Peter Clarke wrote: “Historically, Liberals have learned that it is easier to walk into a coalition with the Conservatives than to walk out of it unscathed”. He was of course referring to the schisms within the Liberal Party in 1885 over Irish home rule and then again in 1931 over how to address the Great Depression. In each case, the party split into two or more factions, one of which would join the Conservatives in government leading ultimately to the permanent defection of its members.

However, I remain optimistic, primarily because defections have worked as much in the party’s favour as against it. For example, just as Salisbury’s Conservative government was reliant on the defection of Liberals to his party, the founding of the Liberal party itself in 1859 was a result of Conservative defectors, including William Gladstone, joining with the Whigs and the Radicals in response to the Corn Laws. Similarly, the Great Depression saw much of the party’s social democratic wing defect to Labour, only for them to return to the Liberal fold 50 years later.

More importantly, perhaps, the decision we took this month to enter into coalition with the Conservatives, was taken collectively by the party with near unanimous support across the parliamentary party, the federal executive, and the membership – only 12 people actually voted against the deal in Birmingham.

Furthermore, although there have certainly been some defections amongst the rank and file membership, especially to Labour, in the time since the coalition was announced, the party has received double as many new members as it has lost, according to leading Lib Dem blogger Mark Pack. Most of these people are young, open-minded, and enthusiastic about the new politics promoted by Nick Clegg during the election and are more likely to identify themselves in the same way as my councillor friend, who is incidentally one of the youngest councillors in Camden, than they are with those who grew up amidst the massive political polarisation of the Thatcher years.

Looking to the future: PR or not to PR, that is the question

In spite of all the upheaval of the last election, the biggest obstacle to long-term success for the Liberal Democrats remains the electoral system. The Queen’s speech went some way to rectifying this by promising a referendum on the Alternative Vote (AV) for elections to the House of Commons, while the coalition agreement went even further by promising pure Proportional Representation (PR) for the House of Lords.

The difference between the two in not immaterial: first off, AV is not a system of proportional representation, it’s just a watered down version of First Past the Post, our current system, where the winner still needs an absolute majority, but second, third, and fourth etc. preferences are counted too. However, if the study conducted by academic John Curtice from the University of Strathclyde is anything to go by, it could go some way to bringing the party’s share of seats in line with its share of the popular vote. His projections show that if each of the three main parties had secured as much of the popular vote as predicted by the polls in the last week before the election, the Liberal Democrats would have won an estimated 217 seats. Labour would have won the most seats with a total of 238, while the Tories would have finished a poor third with just 163 seats despite winning the most votes.

The reason for this outcome is that the Lib Dems tend to be most people’s second choice, whereas the positioning of constituency boundaries would have helped Labour secure more absolute majorities, albeit by smaller margins, than the Conservatives. So, as you can see, AV would be more proportional for some than for others, although you can bet your bottom dollar that David Cameron will take the opportunity to redraw those constituency boundaries to deny Labour their continued advantage.

The full democratisation of the House of Lords, meanwhile, may remain some way off, but a commitment has already been made to significantly alter its composition so that each party’s share of the popular vote is directly linked to their share of seats, resulting in the recent flurry in the number of newly appointed Lib Dem Peers: pure PR.


Conclusion

Amidst all the speculation, the underlying truth is that in spite of our previous dalliances with coalition governments, and the possibility of contesting the next general election under a brand new electoral system, it is impossible to accurately predict what lies ahead for the Liberal Democrats. However, as the coalition continues to buck expectations of its immediate demise, and the party membership continues to stand resolutely behind its leaders, with new people joining all the time, there is good reason to be optimistic.

Indeed, the only side of the coalition experiencing any difficulty placating its base is the Conservatives. David Cameron began an epic battle with his back-benchers for the soul of the Tory party with his attempted takeover of the 1922 committee. If the past has shown us anything, it is that divided Conservatives are just as prone to defecting as anyone else and historically, as in the case of both William Gladstone and Winston Churchill, they have turned to the Liberals. So, perhaps a bigger question is who will win that battle and how will it affect the coalition and in turn the country?