In which I continue the time-honoured internet tradition of providing unsolicited consultancy to political parties which I do not support...
I do not have a "tribal hatred" of the Liberal Democrats - I voted for them in 2006 when I was angry at the Labour Party (this was back when I was the most important person in British politics). And I think a number of the points I'm about to make are shared by a few friends who have been much more LibDem-friendly in the past than myself, including a couple of former party members. So while I would be absolutely lying if I didn't say that I was enjoying the spectacle of their support melting down, lying if I claimed not to be intent on the destruction of their leader's career and probably even lying if I claimed to want them to survive as a political party, I am not lying when I say that the following advice is sincere and not motivated by simple hate.
The point that Liberal Democrats don't seem to understand is that they have entered into a coalition government with the Conservative Party and that there are consequences which flow from that. This is odd, as one of the things Nick Clegg is fondest of telling us all, is that he is in a coalition with the Conservative Party and that there are consequences of that. But "political realities" is a term with general application; it doesn't just mean "I am about to break some promises and there is fuck-all you lot can do about it". Here's the political realities as I see them.
1. The LibDems entered into a coalition with the Conservative Party
2. Therefore, the LibDems lost the presumptive trust of the Labour Party
3. Therefore, arguments based on adding LibDem votes and/or seats to Labour votes and/or seats and calling it "the centre-left" have lost credibility
4. Therefore, one cannot assume as of right that Labour voters will support electoral reforms that chiefly benefit the LibDems.
That's why they lost the AV referendum. (NB: the leadership of the Labour Party supported AV, but this is of marginal relevance since party membership is a small fraction of the Labour vote). Moving on:
5. Furthermore, LibDems cannot presume that they will benefit from tactical voting support from Labour voters.
6. Furthermore, LibDems cannot gain support from voters to their left by changing their policies, because nobody cares about their policies; while they are in a coalition government, they "own" the policies of that government.
This is, to a large extent, why the vote share has collapsed. The median LibDem voter between about 2002 and 2010 was quite likely someone who believed (sensibly, a respectable case could certainly be made for this) that they were to the Left of Labour. Their signature policy was a hypothecated income tax increase for education, along with did-they-or-didn't-they opposition to the Iraq War. Now, their electoral support consists of electoral reform trainspotters, about a dozen people who read the Orange Book and daydream about being Gerhard Schroeder, plus that part of the West Country that doesn't get regular newspapers and believes that it is still voting for Gladstone. They have lost precisely that set of voters who they have spent the last year more or less intentionally losing.
So, if the LibDems are interested in being a political party, rather than a political-party re-enactment society, what do they do? I am taking it for granted that the current strategy of fanning out across the internet looking for "progressive" voters to berate and insult for being too babyish to understand coalition politics isn't a goer - the Democrats can get away with this in the USA but that doesn't mean everyone can. In general, the LibDem political hack base really lacks strength in depth - they have very few ideologues and lots and lots of people (including their leader) who only ever joined them in the first place out of the biggish fish's instinct for a smallish pond, and I genuinely believe that they don't understand how badly they're hated. In my analysis, their only real political asset was the presumptive trust and second-preference of Labour voters, and they need to build that back in baby steps.
Since we've already established that I'm the median voter, how would the LDs go about rebuilding trust in me? Difficult. Currently, they are cemented in my view as a bunch of opportunists. I don't think they're ever going to convince me that the Liberal Democrats are anything else, and I now regard myself as having been very, very naive in the past to think otherwise (in the face of literally everyone I know who has had active involvement in electoral politics telling me).
So, I think the LibDems need to convince me that their opportunism has some good purpose. Specifically, I would need to see evidence of coalition policies that they have ameliorated or mitigated. And, at this stage, I think it would be better if this was presented in as neutral and factual a form as possible, preferably with reference to specific amendments to legislation or to public statements. Things like "we are responsible for Lansley's pause on health reform" aren't really good enough, because that's the sort of thing I would only take from a party that had my presumptive trust.
So, that's my analysis. Any ideas, liberals?
Update: This is the sort of thing I'm talking about (not coincidentally, I think, from someone with no background in LibDem politics). Although I have to say, I regard the actual list of "concessions" it links to as very small beer indeed.
No ideas, but it all reminds me of the recent trajectory of the Irish Green Party. Who will recover to some extent in the long run because they do have actual policy positions and a rump of prominent members who opposed going into coalition (sadly the main one is an anti-vaxxer).
ReplyDeleteThat Staggers post doesn't actually contain a list of reasons. Were you just being coy about linking to Tim Montgomerie?
ReplyDeleteAlso, is "the Orwellian-sounding Office for Fair Access" now its official title?
ReplyDeleteWere you just being coy about linking to Tim Montgomerie?
ReplyDeleteyes. Inter alia, I note that David Allen Green, champion of the libel reform campaign, is basically in favour of a) French-style privacy laws and b) superinjunctions to enforce them. WTF?
There is also the problem of their economic credibility being shot by their enthusiastic embrace of Osborne's cuts agenda (see, e.g., Paddy Ashdown the other day - 'we would never have joined a coalition if we did not believe...'). If this doesn't ruin their economic credibility for you, it certainly (as you point out) ruins their centre-left credibility.
ReplyDeleteOh well, I suppose this is what happens when you have an orange-book leadership with significantly different views than a large part of their (former) supporters. Kind of like the Labour party... who could get away with it, being one of the biggies.
To be clear, there could not have been a coalition without LibDem support for the cuts in parliament. It's the enthusiasm that was damaging - it's not portrayed as the price you have to pay, but (ludicrously) as something "progressive".
ReplyDeleteAnd also the outright lie that "when we took over, we found that the national finances were worse than we had expected"
ReplyDeleteKind of like the Labour party... who could get away with it, being one of the biggies
Very good point, and it is not as if the Blair project didn't do very serious damage indeed to labour as an organisation.
It hs to be said that if the Lib Dems do start to get some serious concessions from the Tories, on pain of electoral oblivion, that'll be a sign of functioning representative democracy and should give some comfort to the people who voted for them in 2010 but who are deserting them now. Albeit heavily qualified by the lost opportunity for blocking a Tory government altogether.
ReplyDeleteEven if they can point to demonstrable concessions, their problem is that noone is going to see them as to the left of Labour anymore, and I suspect that's where most of their increased vote share came from. The kind of people who in Germany (for example) would be voting Green. That space in the party spectrum is now vacant (unless the Greens manage something unexpected), and what these voters will do is anyone's guess.
ReplyDeleteSome time in the next year the Chilcot Inquiry will produce its report. There is likely to be a tussle among the major players about what is in the report and how it is spun: the Blairites, the present government, the FCO, the spooks and the Inquiry team will all have their own ideas about what lessons should be learnt. The present government is likely to want to say that lots of lessons have been learnt while maintaining for itself the maximum room for manoeuvre about going to war and standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the USA.
ReplyDeleteThe post-Chilcot debate will be a key moment for the LibDems. If they don't have a distinctive voice in that debate and if they don't call attention to points that the other two parties would like to brush under the carpet, then the LibDems will have no profile as a distinctive party. They were one of the islands of relative sanity in the maelstrom of spin and illogical arguments in 2002/2003: it will be interesting to see how they play it when the report comes out.
This isn't wholly a question of "left" and "right". It's about whether they are willing to press for learning some difficult lessons or, in becoming a "party of government", they prefer to keep these difficult lessons out of public discussion. There are some sections, at least, of the LibDems who are quite open about turning their backs on what they see as "protest voters", forgetting that these people are protesting about something quite serious.
Guano
Sorry for going O/T, but this: reoffending study currently in news and poss of interest from a stats/analysis POV:
ReplyDeleteThose sentenced to 2 to 4 years in custody had lower re-offending rates than those given 1 to 2 year custodial sentences – the proven re-offending rate in 2008 was 7.2 percentage points lower for those serving 2 to 4 years in custody.
Those sentenced to 1 to 2 years in custody had lower re-offending rates than those given sentences of less than 12 months – the difference in proven re-offending rates was 4.4 percentage points in 2008.
The LD case is also unusual in that they betrayed voters over specific policies and positions (all at once )that they nututured for over a decade.
ReplyDeleteWhereas With the major parties the sense of betrayal tends to be cumulative and often around a percieved position re values .
There is also a percieved enemy that you vote against if you are Lab or Con - I think some of the whining the LD's make about 'tribalism' is because they have no tribe (social base) that is significant.
Speaking as one who grew up in the West Country, we tended to vote Liberal or Lib Dem less out of ancestral reverence for Mr Gladstone and more out of the pragmatic calculation that betwixt the Liberals and the Tories the Liberals were the less bad option.
ReplyDeleteThat hasn't changed. I currently live in a seat where the Tories are first, the Liberals second and Labour nowhere. As it happens I will exercise the luxury of voting Labour next time round because it won't make a blind bit of difference but if I lived in a seat where there was a chance that I could replace the Tory with a Lib Dem or keep a Lib Dem in at the expense of the Tories that would be a no-brainer. I don't think that the Tories with an overall parliamentary majority would be an improvement on the current arrangements dire as those are.
My guess is that either the Tories or Labour will have a majority next time and the Lib Dems will have a large fall in seats but secure some kind of parliamentary representation. After which they will just rebuild, particularly after Clegg goes off to govern New South Wales, or whatever. The only reasonably plausble scenario I can see that would nix that would be if the Lib Dem higher echelons panicked and did some kind of deal with the Tories where they undertook to take the Tory whip in exchange for the Tories not running candidates against them. Which might be inviting in, say, Sheffield Hallam or, say, Twickenham.
First up, irritating Dept of ToldYaSo: I had similar sense of betrayal as DD (and well-founded fear of GB as PM) but I didn't vote for the LibDems precisely because of my doorstep (and college staircase) experience.
ReplyDeleteMore constructively, the LibDems should have gone for confidence and supply rather than coalition. They could have blocked the bonkers bits of Tory health and education reform, and would have had the partial excuse of having to vote for the cuts in the Finance Bill because they had made the C&S precommitment.
Is there any reason that their ministers couldn't resign from the government en masse and go to C&S now? Bit drastic, but if it's that or destroy a big chunk of their electoral base for the foreseeable, maybe worth thinking about. Would probably have to defenestrate Clegg as part of it, however, and invite him to join the Tories if he's so damn keen on them.
Morduant: They can't rebuild very easily, as the support they've lost is unlikely to return. Nobody even moderately to the left is going to vote for them for at least a generation, and that's a tendency that will probably reinforce itself as the left of the party get annihilated electorally, thus strengthening the right.
ReplyDeleteIt was basically a marriage of convenience between liberal right wingers and the old SDP. That marriage has now been made untenable.
AB did indeed tell me so, as did Justin.
ReplyDeleteAs one of the disillusioned leftwing liberals, I don't see any point in voting Labour in a general election. Given that I'm in a safe Tory seat, and Labour have decided they don't want voting reform, I can only conclude they're not interested in getting my vote. So it's either Green (if they stand), whatever emerges from the wreck of the Liberal party, or I won't bother voting.
ReplyDeleteI looked at today's Telegraph editorial on the health of the coalition; there was also a three way mini-debate on Newsnight. It does seem right that the only way forward now for the Lib Dems is for them to calmly and regularly say things like: this is our policy, and we will now negotiate for it. At the moment, the Lib Dems have to negotiate with the Tories over credit as well as policy, but the Tories simply won't allow the Lib Dems to take credit: they won't accept the narrative that says: 'these nasty right wingers were moderated by the Lib Dems'.
ReplyDeletePerhaps this amounts to ending the coalition: I'm not an expert on these things. But whatever you call it, I don't expect it will happen. I think both parties will bicker over credit and what the proper mode of their self-presentation should be, all the way to a major split (and an early election).
But also, this. If that's typical of how Clegg behaves around Cameron - or rather, if that's the sort of 'interpersonal dynamic' that Clegg tolerates - the Lib Dems are stuffed; they won't be able to demand a thing via Clegg. It'd be worth risking getting called a prima donna a few times just to make a bloody point about respect. The Lib Dems have the parliamentary votes that the Tories need, not the other way around. Eternal opposition, not a problem for the Lib Dems. You get the idea.
ReplyDeletebut the Tories simply won't allow the Lib Dems to take credit: they won't accept the narrative that says: 'these nasty right wingers were moderated by the Lib Dems
ReplyDeleteI have the feeling that we are going to see a lot more kabuki policy like the "Business Class University Admissions" fuckshow; ie, Willetts or Gove or someone says something on the Today programme in the morning, then in the afternoon Clegg says "Due To Lib Dem Pressure This Plan Was Averted". It's what you get if your government is run by a PR man.
It was Matthew Turner IIRC who noted that Cameron and Clegg's relationship has more than a little of Raffles the Gentleman Thug to it; Cameron seems to rather enjoy occasionally humiliating Clegg. Which, I suppose, is not a vice I can wholly condemn.
I don't think Cameron is that good an actor; he seemed genuinely angry with Willetts when Nick Robinson interviewed him yesterday (unless he was just genuinely angry with Nick Robinson, which is always possible). I think there is a touch of the public-school bully in Cameron; if it had been staged he would have been loving it.
ReplyDeleteThe big problem for Clegg, in particular, is the "hard choices" bullshit - the self-pitying narcissism of power, which basically says I'm doing completely the wrong thing and hurting lots of people - poor me! And how brave I am to admit it, and how noble I am to stay in power and see it through! They'll understand some day! The trouble with that mindset is that you can't really afford to come down - imagine the hangover.
I'm not sure that the priority lane university admissions thing was staged, though. Didn't the Guardian just phone Willetts and say 'what's all this about parents being allowed to pay extra for a shoo-in'? And then he tried to explain himself. Anyway, what the coalition wants here, if not C&S as AB says (and perhaps 'enhanced C&S', with cabinet posts) is policies with numbers. The Tories say: it's imperative to cut £x trillion. There's a big fuss for about a week, then the Lib Dems proudly announce that it'll only be £0.5 trillion. That way, both parties can claim to have respected principle. There's no point in the Tories announcing some distinct, categorical policy only to retract it in its entirety because it's deemed 'too nasty'. That just toxifies the Tory brand without giving them anything of substance to show their voters.
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, this, from Cameron:
"I don't accept the whole idea that the role of one party is somehow to moderate the other."
is bizarre. What's the point of multi-party democracy if not to have exactly that: one viewpoint moderating another? Even in a coalition. I take it as evidence for either (a) that he thinks there's been a party merger, or (b) that he thinks he's the only person in the universe. I tend to think (b), to be honest.
Phil: you've probably seen this. I wonder what the highlight of Clegg's day is.
ReplyDeleteI don't think Cameron is that good an actor
ReplyDeletehmmm I think we disagree on that point then; I think he's a fantastic actor.
Actually, I think he quite likes being offensive and arrogant to *anyone*. See listen-to-the-doctor, whining about Ed Balls, etc.
ReplyDeleteWhat I would like to know is how the media decided he was such a nice man. They're obsessed by his being "polite", "gracious" etc. The words are used constantly. Obviously it's code for Eton, but a lot of it must be that it's the act.
He's good at playing the charming endowment mortgage broker, but if anyone contradicts or criticises him, he goes up in a full blown, astonishingly queeny diva snit. Psychologically flawed, you could say. We wuz missold. Where's my compo?
What I would like to know is how the media decided he was such a nice man
ReplyDeletePublic boy smarm. It works here, because there's something in the water that convinces an awful lot of people that its the same as charm and graciousness. I'll say this for the yanks - they might be credulous on most things, but that's an act even they can see through.
His "Calm Down Dear" crack sums him up perfectly I think; still an overprivileged, overindulged, under-socialised, adolescent at heart.
What I would like to know is how the media decided he was such a nice man.
ReplyDeleteThey're now in the process of undeciding it, of course. The 'Flashman' meme is propagating pretty well. Remember, in the beginning, he helped the media along by playing out a well coached role as a nice person. The WebCameron: the young dad with a smile and a cheery tone.
And I'd put in a plea for people not to generalise. While I was - and remain - a difficult individual, many OEs were not only easy going and pleasant to know as schoolboys, they still are as adults. It's just that you also get the other sort mixed in: the sort that's domineering when opportunity allows. You'll not change the personality much, so shut off the opportunity instead.
I will second that; in my experience, having a life in which you basically get your own way all the time and have considerably fewer of the inevitable stresses and strains of adolescence and development than the median, is rather good for the adult personality rather than otherwise. If you ever get the chance to live a life of extreme privilege, I would say try it.
ReplyDeleteSometimes I wonder what it must be like to be Samantha Cameron. It's a real test of empathy and imagination, me not being a woman, or married to a Tory politician. But it does seem to me that If she cultivated just a little bit more ironic detachment, she'd give Miranda Hart some competition. Also, I like to think that if she knew this, she'd give it a try.
ReplyDelete(And I'd better leave it there. Apparently the Labour party is officially about Decency, so I need to remember to be that, now.)
Samantha Cameron was bred for her current role. Look at her CV.
ReplyDeletemany OEs were not only easy going and pleasant to know as schoolboys, they still are as adults.
And others are ex-members of the Bulloden club. I'm happy not to generalise, but Cameron's a pretty recognisable type. And its not a type that has apparently changed hugely since the 1920s.
If you ever get the chance to live a life of extreme privilege, I would say try it.
Having seen plenty of poor little rich girl/boy types growing up(along with poor little poor girl/boy types to compare/contrast), I'd say that it does rather depend.
I loathe the effects of private schools as a whole, but also endorse Charlie's and DD's views about the effect they often have on the individual. I work with a former member of the Bullingdon, who is quite charming: I, on the other hand, who had your classic "snotty know-it-all amongst normal people" adolescence, am a bit of a twat.
ReplyDeleteCharlie> I do know what you mean, an old college friend was an OE and remarkably level-headed about it. And a schoolfriend of his wrote a memoir about facing terminal cancer at age 18 that's incredibly level-headed about the whole 'about to die' thing.
ReplyDeleteAnyone know who the "independent academics" listed here are? There don't seem to be any online references to the actual study, just the BBC segment.
ReplyDeleteIf it were actually true that 75% of Lib Dem manifesto commitments were being met compared to 60% of Tory manifesto commitments, that would suggest that Clegg was actually doing rather a good job and the sniping against him was basically misplaced. Obviously, exceptional claims require exceptional evidence, but it'd at least be interesting to see how the study was either flawed or being misquoted.
I suspect that this is simply picking up the extent to which manifestoes are generally filled with anodyne shit.
ReplyDelete(and also, of course, the mere fact that a stupid or evil idea was in the LibDem manifesto is not in and of itself a reason for anyone to congratulate them for it).
ReplyDeleteI'm sure your first comment is right. On the second one, sure, but I'm not sure that if you vote for someone who promises to do a stupid or evil thing, and then they do, you've got any particular right to be cross with them for it.
ReplyDelete