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Monday 21 May 2012

The Blundering Parties

Tuesday, 11th May 2010

The biggest blunderer today was, I think, Nick Clegg but one can make a case arguing that each of the parties played their hand badly on Monday.

Oh, sure, in one sense Labour must be enjoying this: Tories in a fury, Liberals suddenly interested again and, who knows, perhaps there's a faint glimmer of hope that something may yet arrive to rescue the party and keep it in office. But Labour's good mood reflects a short-term tactical stroke, not a strategic victory. Gordon might have wrong-footed the Tories today and damaged prospects for a Tory-Liberal arrangement but that's it.

Labour's overall position had not, I suspect, improved greatly not least because, despite all the talk and the hype, it remains difficult to see quite how they really can push through a deal. Technically the numbers are just about there if, but only if, all the little boats join the flotilla. But it's hard to see what purpose such a government could serve beyond trying to push through a bill changing the voting system in advance of another general election. And passing that kind of bill will be extremely difficult.

Nor can it possibly make any real sense for the Liberals to negotiate a programme for government without their knowing who is going to be Prime Minister once the Labour leadership contest finishes after the summer recess. (Paranoid thought: there'll be a new Labour leader but Gordon will remain as Prime Minister! Surely not...)

So Labour's triumph today - and let us accept that it is a victory of sorts - seems futile and may, in the end, be seen as a rather juvenile act designed to thwart rather than advance progress towards building a government. It may not play out like that but there seems a chance it will and for all that BBC presenters ignored all manner of constitutional niceties yesterday it is the case that plenty of people, not all of them Tories or, like John Reid, Gordon-haters, will think that there's something rather off and not quite on about the way Labour behaved on Monday.

You could tell the weakness of the Labour case by the feebleness of the talking points their people were armed with: sure, the Labour-Liberal combined vote is just over 50% and sure, combined, the parties won more votes than the Tories. But they didn't win as great a share of the vote as a Tory-Liberal combo nor as many votes either, did they?

But it was striking to see them all repeat this argument and telling too. Because it revealed something about the Labour psyche: they really don't think the Liberal Democrats are a real party at all. Rather they're Labour's confused little brother. Superficialy different but really just the same and, most importantly, always under Labour's protection.

If Liberal Democrats think they'll achieve much in a Labour-controlled ministry they are, I'm afraid, kidding themselves. True, Labour never cared for sharing power with the Lib Dems at Holyrood and there was much grousing about their junior partners but I'm struggling to remember a single significant liberal achievement in their eight years in power.

Still, Clegg was the real loser and not just because the longer these shenanigans endure so more people may find the idea of electoral reform less palatable than they might have thought just a week ago.

Worse for Clegg, he looks conniving and duplicitous. You cannot credibly say "I think the Conservatives have the first right to govern..." and then open formal negotiations with the Labour party while you're also conducting formal negotiations with the Conservatives. It's one thing to keep Labour to keep Labour abreast of developments, quite another to be seen to be trying to play the parties off against one another.

If talks with the Tories break down then, sure, go and see what Labour have to offer. But wait for the first set of talks to fail. This kind of multi-room negotiation during which only the Lib Dems know what is going on does not seem likely to impress the average punter. And all for a cause - electoral reform - that whatever it's merits is a sideshow compared with the task of repairing the public finances and reforming public services.

If Clegg was bounced into this by his own recalcitrant backbenchers then this too makes him look weak and held captive by the most reactionary forces in his own party. That's not so good either. Anyway you look at it, I think, Clegg seems a smaller politician today than he did three weeks ago.

If this was just a ploy to persuade the Tories to up their offer then fine, Clegg has achieved that. But at some cost to his reputation and that of his party and, for that matter, to the stability of any deal he may yet make with the Conservatives.

As for the Tories, well, Cameron has been remarkably calm. At present if there's no Tory-Liberal deal then it seems as though the party will not hold him responsible, preferring to train their guns on the Lib Dems and Labour. Nevertheless one does wonder if he really had to offer a referendum? Maybe he did but it was unfortunate that it seemed as though Cameron was reacting to Lib Dem demands rather than anticipating them. Some Tories, I suspect, wonder what part of the family silver he will sell next to get a deal, any deal.

Then again, perhaps the Tory leader is playing a longer, subtler game. All this positioning and manoevering today wasn't so much about what happens this week or even in the next few months. Every part of it had an eye on the next election. And in that contest at least I'd argue that the Lib Dems are now in both a weaker position than they were on Friday and a tougher one than they needed to be.

A new politics led by the refreshing change of the Lib Dems? I fancy fewer people will buy that sauce today than would have last week.

Nevertheless, while unamused, the Tories may still feel that a Tory-Liberal arrangment is still the most likely outcome. Just not as likely as it seemed a couple of days ago...

Filed under: Brown (180 more articles) , Cameron (227 more articles) , Clegg (61 more articles) , Coalition (2076 more articles) , Election 2010 (598 more articles) , Labour (2134 more articles) , Lib Dems (101 more articles) , Tories (273 more articles)

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brent

May 11th, 2010 2:06am Report this comment

A feeling analysis, but (though I'm just a kibitzer from across the ocean) aren't you overlooking a basic fact, namely that politics is or ought to be about something other than arithmetic? There would be, as you note, more bodies in a Tory-LibDem coalition, but is there any programmatic logic? And if the Lib-Labs make a smaller but more coherent majority coalition, isn't that of some significance?

ndm

May 11th, 2010 2:07am Report this comment

-- The biggest blunderer today was, I think, Nick Clegg

This is perhaps a bit unfair given that his is by far the most difficult task. He is the one dancing backwards in high heels while the Conservatives and Labour lead the dance.

joe

May 11th, 2010 2:16am Report this comment

Brown is just bluffing. He knows perfectly well that his backbenchers will never support P.R., A.V., A.V.+ or any other permutation.

DavidDP

May 11th, 2010 3:59am Report this comment

Sorry, ndm, but Clegg has made an absolute hash of things today.
This should be meat and drink to the LibDems, given they've been arguing for coalition style politics for years. Not only that, but he's wiped out the "new politics, lets come togather" USP he crafted in the election campaign by talking to Labour on the quiet.

Cameron will have been seen to have been as conciliatory and compromising as possible with the referendum offer (that's why he did it Alex-I'm sure it was clear to him by that stage the the LibDems weren't going to accept anything from the Tories), and Clegg knows it. To some extent, he's been slaughtered by those in his party that don't like the Tories, but he's been comprehensively outplayed.

Rhoda Klapp

May 11th, 2010 7:05am Report this comment

So strange, that of all the times Nick Clegg was asked in the runup, what he would do in the event of a hung parliament, he never said he couldn't deliver his party because of its absurd rules. He never said they didn't really have the guts to go for power or responsibility. He never even said he would negotiate purely on the grounds of party interest and not in the interest of the country.

(If your party's over-riding desire is PR, and you get it, what's the point of your party afterwards?)

WASHBROOK

May 11th, 2010 8:05am Report this comment

The equity markets open shortly.
Another down day looms.
The US$ index sharply up this morning at $84.616.
GOLD£=814.44
Euro Gold 948.82
$GOLD 1207
All fiat currencies are weakening.
With regards to the FTSE100.
From the low of March 9 2009 FTSE100 moved up by 66.2% on an intray day high in April only to close well down on that day.
Since the low in March 2009 the 5000 level has touched 3 times on that level.
W.D.Gann says on the fourth attempt if 5000 is breached next stop 4520.
Fasten your seat belts.

Ian Walker

May 11th, 2010 8:14am Report this comment

Small tactical mistake from Cameron not to swing his party behind STV rather than AV - looking at the Electoral Reform Society's simulations I think the slightly reduced number of seats would be more than compensated for by wiping the smile off Salmond's face when a whole tranche of Scottish Tory MPs destroy his whole argument.

Judging by the unity of the party (apparently Cameron got a standing ovation at the start of the meeting) he could have convinced the party that four solid years of power would be worth it, and had Hague said STV instead of AV last night, we'd have the keys to Number 10 by lunchtime today.

Gus

May 11th, 2010 9:02am Report this comment

Nick Clegg yesterday looked like a man not at all comfortable with what he has doing. It's pretty obvious that he couldn't control the lunatic fringe in his own party.

DeeJay

May 11th, 2010 9:06am Report this comment

Dave should develop some clear blue water between the Conservatives and the other parties. This could easily be achieved by making it clear to the public that the Conservaives are ready for minority government. Yesterday's undignified shenanigans by the other parties and some of their unelected supporters brings further discredit on UK political process.

Michael Sweeney

May 11th, 2010 9:17am Report this comment

These shenanigans will put the voters off PR. It will also turn the English increasingly agains the Scots. The fact that Scotland returned 41 Labour MPs and only 1 Tory is a sad reflection of a country that many of us south of the border still love and used to admire.

Ian Walker

May 11th, 2010 9:51am Report this comment

Michael - you mention PR and Scottish Tories - worth pointing out that 400,000 Scottish voters wanted a blue MP and got one. 1,000,000 voted Labour, and got forty-nine.

It works both ways. Salmond's "no Tory mandate in Scotland" diatribe would be destroyed under PR.

Ben G

May 11th, 2010 10:10am Report this comment

Long-term Tories lose out. Labour has succeeded in stopping a Tory-Lib coalition.

Now we'll get a minority Tory govmt which can be thrown out when Labour has regrouped under a new leader.

Prediction - Tory minority & election in 18 months.

Snowman

May 11th, 2010 11:11am Report this comment

Alex, in ain’t mostly about numbers but about colours: you mix red and pink, and it’s an acceptable shade of red; mixing blue with pink? Hmmm. The key to any party’s success and ultimately its survival does rest with the rank and file, and it’s here, as I keep pointing out, that the Lab and Lib supporters were propping each other in the marginals. The Lab/Lib deal would please more of the 53% voting for the two parties than the Con/Lib pact, I reckon.

Ian Walker@ 9.51:

You may find that the 1-2-3 AV system could skew the ratio even further against the Tories, but it's fairer because more votes count.

Ronnie

May 11th, 2010 11:24am Report this comment

Michael Sweeney and Ian Walker.

I suggest you have a look at the results of the last elections to the Scottish Parliament and them enjoy a period of quiet reflection.

Charles

May 11th, 2010 12:40pm Report this comment

I think Cameron did need to offer a referend um, but that he doesnt expect to have to deliver.

All his comments "big, open offer", referenda etc need to be seen in the context of the electorate. He is conveying the message that he *gets it*: no one one a majority & the voters want parties to work together. He comes out of this looking very reasonable, the LibDems squallid and Labour desparate.

Sounds like a great line up for the next election - and all those juicy LibDem/Tory marginals...

Ian Walker

May 11th, 2010 12:52pm Report this comment

Ronnie, the Scots vote very differently in the Holyrood and Westminster elections, because they know full well the difference between the two.

THX1138

May 11th, 2010 4:45pm Report this comment

SIX cabinent posts and Clegg is deputy PM? And you call that a blunder!

Judy

May 11th, 2010 6:58pm Report this comment

I hope Cameron holds that AV referendum as soon as humanly possible, while this farrago of LibDem double dealing and Labour pimping is still very fresh in the voters' minds. It will be decisively defeated, and it will kill of any possible whingeing about electoral reform for the forseeable future.

I must say I do like the idea of the sort of elected House of Lords where it would be possible to vote out Michael Martin, the Baroness with the flat in Windsor, Prescott and other similar rogues. But not one with party lists. We want House of Lords and Commons primaries! Constituencies all the same size. Compulsory voting as part of the agenda of the Big Society-- civic duty like jury service and all that.That should enable the public to demonstrate exactly what they think of the LibDems, Labour, the SNP, the Greens, the BNP and Respect. Even more decisively than they did last week.

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