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Monday 21 May 2012

A Tory-Liberal Coalition is Easier than a Lib-Lab Pact?

Wednesday, 21st April 2010

I'm glad to see that more people - Iain Dale, John Rentoul, Iain Martin among them - are paying attention to Labour's eclipse. At present Labour could finish third in the popular vote for the first time since 1922 and yet many people seem to assume that a Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition or arrangement of some sort is the most likely, even inevitable, outcome of a hung parliament. I don't believe this is the case and not only because of Nick Clegg's attack on "desperate" Gordon Brown this morning.

The Liberal Democrats have based their campaign for proportional representation on the grounds that it is unfair that, as they did in 2005, you could win 22% of the votes cast but only 9% of the parliamentary seats. There is some merit to this argument too.

But it would be grossly undermined if the Lib Dems were to do a deal with a Labour party that, say, had 42% of the seats on 27% of the vote. Indeed, the logic of long-standing Liberal Democrat positions is that the party should look to deal with the winners of the popular vote, not the one that has accrued the most seats due to the vagaries and absurdities of the electoral system.

Now perhaps they could finesse their way around this but if Labour finish third and perhaps even if they come second then the Liberals have to dilute or perhaps even betray their principles to do a deal with Labour. Well, you may say, they won't have any difficulty doing that!

And perhaps they won't but doing so will cripple their claims to distinctness and difference. So flirting with Labour is a risky business for the Liberals.

One consequence of the televised debates, too, is that share of the vote now carries more weight, morally though not constitutionally, than simply winning more seats. The election is increasingly framed as a presidential-style contest between the leaders, not simply a battle between parties.

This matters because it makes it more difficult for the Liberals to do a deal with Labour regardless of who happens to be leading Labour. If Gordon Brown can't claim a proper mandate in the event that Labour finish third in votes then nor can anyone who might replace him as leader. No-one will have voted for David Miliband or Alan Johnson or Ed Balls or Harriet Harman to be Prime Minister and even though there's no constitutional impediment that would prevent Labour from ditching Gordon and electing a new PM it's not obvious that the public would wear a second consecutive PM who did not enjoy much in the way of a popular mandate.

The alternative - titter ye not - would be for Nick Clegg to become Prime Minister leading a Lib-Lab coalition but, again, it's difficult to see Labour accepting that.

One of the things - indeed the benefits - of an unwritten constitution is that legitimacy is, in the end, subject to public approval and the electorate's sense of what is and what it not on. This is, of course, a flexible and often inchoate sense that's endlessly adaptable and often difficult to divine. Nevertheless it is real (and will, for example, constrain King Charles from behaving as though he were still Prince of Wales).

So, in addition to compromising his claims to being the Change Chap, if Clegg were to prop up Labour he might also offend the public's sense of fair play. Equally, supporting Labour just so he can get a referendum on PR would be just the kind of pork-barrel, transactional politics that is more of the same and not any kind of "new" politics.Tom Bradby has an intriguing post suggesting that Clegg may recognise this and, thus, decide to leave PR for another day.

All this assumes that Labour do finish third in the popular vote. And they may not! Nevertheless, as things stand I suspect that a putative Lib-Lab pact is much more fraught with difficulty than many pundits suppose.

Which would leave a deal to be done with the Tories. As Danny Finkelstein astutely points out today this ought not to be anathema to Clegg (even if it might be to many Lib Dem councillors). Again, there is enough common ground for this to happen. Consider:

Simplifying the tax code, public spending restraint, education reform, civil liberties, decentralisation, localism, welfare refom - there's enough here to provide a pretty ambitious Programme for Government.

The main thing preventing a Tory-Liberal coalition seems to be the notion that It Can't Happen. But that's what people said about voting Liberal Democrat this time last week. And we have seen how that can change and change quickly.

And, as Sunder Katwala points out, if there's a Party of Coalition in British political history it's the Tories....

Filed under: Clegg (61 more articles) , Coalition (2076 more articles) , Election 2010 (599 more articles) , Labour (2135 more articles) , Lib Dems (101 more articles) , Tories (273 more articles)

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Jeremy Street

April 21st, 2010 2:25pm Report this comment

I'm sorry, but I can't quite buy this narrative you're trying to lay the ground for, whereby the LibDems going into coalition with Labour is some kind of unforgivable betrayal of the public's thirst for change, if not the democratic process itself. Your analysis spends a lot of time on the potential ideological synergies of a Con/Lib coalition while not even bothering with the possibility that many LibDems find themselves more closely aligned with the left. You seem to be dismissing those LibDems who'd choose Labour over the Tories as having some kind of irrational hatred of the right, as opposed to just not supporting Tory policy.

bartimeus

April 21st, 2010 2:34pm Report this comment

Or theres the third option.

Everyone hates everyone else and the country disappears up its own backside.

This is the likely outcome.

Vote BNP or UKIP or LibDem or Green or Labour and reap the whirlwind, utter finacial meltdown.

We owe the financial markets trillions , and the Tories have the only credible political paper to write the IOU.

BTW You can tax the banks to hell , just think where your paycheck or dole goes every week. No banks , no credit , just another route one path to the IMF and bankruptcy.

Sunder Katwala

April 21st, 2010 3:28pm Report this comment

Up to a point: the real question is whether/why the Conservatives can't offer movement on electoral reform, esp if the LDs have several possible options/strategies. There is little in AV for example to offend Conservatives, surely, especially Cameronites.

The argument that a LD-Labour coalition *could not possibly* be legitimate if Labour was third doesn't really stand up, esp from a LibDem/PR perspective, where surely the % support of the parties in combination is the key variable. (It may be politically not the right call but that is different).

If the result were LD 33, C 32, Lab 31 and the seat order were reversed, to Lab, C, LD.

FPTP says you can have a Lab minority govt, and may well offer (which is unlikely) the parliamentary arithmetic for all of C-LD, C-Lab or LD-Lab coalition. It is clear a Lab minority government would struggle for legitimacy. PR says that any minority government is difficult (though could offer a minority option, on the SNP model, to the party with most seats), but again would make any of the coalition options possible.

Those who want to argue that any of the other coalition options are illegitimate need to point to a governing outcome they think would be legitimate: if they can't, they are arguing that THIS electoral system is capable of producing deadlock.

I am not convinced that C 33, LD 32, Lab 31 is very different. The argument against either an C-LD or LD-Lab arrangement representing parties with 55%+ of voters is questionable, esp made in the name of any would-be government with under 35% itself.

Of course C 38, Lab 32, LD 30 is different, even if the major parties end up with very similar seat totals: this is what Clegg is talking about on mandates, but you need to know the result to gauge that.

Jeremy Street

April 21st, 2010 3:36pm Report this comment

@bartimeus

It's touching to see, in this day and age, such enthusiasm for the idea that only by electing a certain party can we save the country. This is very much how Labour supporters felt in 1997, and I for one wish Tory supporters all the best for their coming years of crushing disappointment (assuming they can win at all, of course).

paulg

April 21st, 2010 4:58pm Report this comment

Disraeli,was speaking just over a decade from witnessing the whole of continental Europe blow up in revolutionary flames. As an intensely pragmatic man, he was trying to stave off revolutionary fervour in this country. That is why so often the conservative party has been a party of evolutionary change.

FPTP ensures that a party has an absolute mandate to govern. The Labour party squandered theirs: ignoring their own working class voters, creating millions of dissatisfied people, open to the blandishments of extremists.

That is why the conservatives have had to spend so much time articulating strategies to bring these outcast people back into the mainstream of society; an area of social policy the internationalists who are new labour though they could do without.

A proportional system will open the government o this country to a mix bag of odds and sods, whilst the dear old lib- dems may find themselves as they recently did, polling way behind people who have extremist views.

That is only one argument but there are many more.

Ben G

April 21st, 2010 5:43pm Report this comment

I doubt Lib-Con will work - the Commons maths won't let it. Labour will still have enough seats to make Lib-Con tricky.

It may be true that on electoral reform the "Liberals have to dilute or perhaps even betray their principles to do a deal with Labour", but - crucially - not on economic policy. Dealing with the economic crisis will priority no.1. Cable and Osborne wouldn't work.

So here's a prediction:

Clegg - PM.
Darling - Chancellor
Cable - beefed up Chief Sec. to Treasury.
Miliband (Maj.) - For. Sec.
Johnson - Home Sec.
etc.

Robbie

April 21st, 2010 6:19pm Report this comment

QUOTE: "Equally, supporting Labour just so he can get a referendum on PR would be just the kind of pork-barrel, transactional politics that is more of the same and not any kind of "new" politics."

Is this really true?

To me, pork-barrel politics is parochial, about getting something for a small constituency on the sly. If the Lib Dems really believe that: a)electoral reform would have huge effect on British politics forever after and,
b) that electoral reform is fundamentally fair for all voters,
then I don't see why they should be ashamed of doing what it takes at this rare opportunity when it seems a real possibility.

bartimeus

April 22nd, 2010 2:00am Report this comment

@Jeremy Street

Jeremy , you mistake my comment for a crass support of one party over another. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I will happily admit a deep hatred of Gorgon McDoom , but thats purely personal.

My comments are based purely on who this country owes money too (the financial markets) and who they will accept as guarantors of the debt (the Conservatives).

Any result not to the markets liking will result in Gordo's magic black hole being withdrawn , and rather quickly.

In fact , a Labour government will be fine with me after the election , if only to witness the utter destruction of the Labour party as a force in this country for the duration of my lifetime , bankruptcy is almost a price worth paying.

Wll Rees

April 22nd, 2010 11:49am Report this comment

Lib Dems Southport convention makes any coalition, extremely hard, it might be possible to get 75% of their MP's to go along with being in power with Lab or Tories but they need 75% of their admin body as well. This in a party that stands for opposite things in different constituences.

Most likely a fracture accentuated by ignoring their own internal rules in a thurst for power.

David Bouvier

April 22nd, 2010 2:29pm Report this comment

Hmmm.... Nothing wrong with AV? I see no greater legitimacy in the least disliked of three candidates than the most liked.

But one thing it will do is penalise distinctive or independent with a bit of character compared to bland identikit ones who raise little passion.

Surely what we need to do is weaken party control over parliament, not appoint the blandest of MPs.

And any system that appoints MPs by party rather than as individual increases party patronage and stops us Kicking the Bastard Out.

The net effect of LibDem constitutional ideas is to strengthen the hand of the party organisation and remove the ability of electorates to choose an individual MP, or choose a government platform. It increases alienation because I have little ability to hold a person to account for their actions.

A Tory constitutional agenda needs to be one of increasing direct accountability and parliamentary independence, so that Parliament will hold the executive to account.

To me, a post-election coalition government has exactly no votes in favour of it - and may well have ditched the policies that led people to vote for its constituent parties. Nothing fair about that.

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