Coffee House interview: Julian Astle

Open any mass-circulation newspaper and you will find plenty of insider’s information about the Tory party. But precious little is known about their coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats. After decades in the political wilderness, most editors reasoned that it wasn’t really worth their while finding out what the party thought. After all, what difference did it make?
 
Well, times have changed. What the party thinks, what it does, and, crucially, what it won’t do, really does matter. So to help us here at Coffee House, Julian Astle, a friend of the Lib Dem leadership and director of CentreForum, the liberal think tank, has agreed to answer a few questions.

Daniel Korski: In a recent YouGov poll the Lib Dem share of the vote amongst 18 – 24 year olds went as low as 7 percent. In the same poll and in the same demographic, UKIP polled 8 percent. Given that on the three historical occasions when Liberals and Conservatives have formed a coalition government the pact has divided the Liberals and been electorally disastrous, and the polls now look awful, will the coalition be the death knell for the party?

Julian Astle: In the short term, I don’t doubt that the party will pay a price for joining the coalition: parties that do unpopular things (like introducing tax rises and spending cuts to eliminate a £150 billion budget deficit) tend to become unpopular. But there are two good reasons for thinking that the future might not be quite as bleak for Britain’s third party as many are now predicting.
 
The first is that history is on their side. The last sixty years has seen a steady weakening of the grip of the two big parties on our political system. In 1951, Labour and the Conservatives received 98 percent of the vote between them. In 2010, they received 65 percent. Why the decline? Because political allegience is no longer inherited and/or class based to the extent it once was. A Britain that could once be divided neatly into two camps – bosses and workers, middle class and working class, bowler hat and flat cap – is today a far more complex place. People’s political views are more fluid and their loyalties less fixed. The genie of plural, multi-party politics is out of the bottle and I can’t see how the two ‘big’ parties can stuff it back in again.
 
The second reason is that being in government for five years gives the party the chance to address its single biggest brand weakness: a lack of credibility. For years, people have told opinion pollsters that they like the Lib Dems but worry that to vote for them is to waste their vote. They worried that the Lib Dems weren’t a potential party of government, that they weren’t capable of taking the difficult decisions that governments have to take. The Lib Dems’ opponents will say all sorts of rude things about them in the future but one thing they won’t be able to do any more is to dismiss them as a party of protest, a party of perpetual opposition.
 
DK: It seems Nick Clegg has taken a “high-minded” approach to the coalition; not wanting to single out policies as Lib Dem, but sharing responsibility for the government’s programme. But how will Lib Dem candidates seek re-election if not on a coalition ticket – and if that’s the case then why not merge the parties or make a formal pact?

JA: Nick Clegg’s strategy is actually pretty simple, and it comes in two distinct phases. In the first half of the parliament, the priority is coaliton stability and unity. It is important to remember that coalition remains a very alien thing to us Brits. The confidence of the public and of the markets cannot be taken for granted, they have to be earned, as does the trust needed for two parties to be able to work together. Establishing and then maitaining this confidence and trust is absolutely crucial if the government as a whole is to function properly and govern well. And govern well it must if either party is to succeed in 2015. Govern badly, and both parties will be in trouble.
 
Once the government has established a reputation for competence, the second phase of the strategy can begin. At that point both parties will have earned the right to engage in a bit more public diplomacy. So when we get to the second half of the parliament, you can expect to hear differences and disagreements aired in public rather more often as the parties gear up to fight the 2015 election as independent political parties. So to answer your final question directly: no, I don’t expect any formal pact between the coalition partners at the next election.
 
DK: Conventional wisdom holds that a successful “Yes” vote in the AV referendum is the result more likely to keep the Lib-Dem/Tory coalition together beyond 5 May. But would a “Yes” not give coalition skeptics in the party a ready excuse to ditch David Cameron in the belief that, in a pact with Labour, they could win an election? Or is a “No” vote more dangerous for the Cameron-Clegg project?

JA: A ‘Yes’ vote would strengthen the coalition, not weaken it. The idea that the Lib Dems would ‘cut and run’ if whey won the AV referendum is frankly ludicrous. They’ve done a deal and they’re going to stick to it.

DK: The tuition fees issue was always going to be difficult for the Lib Dems, given Nick Clegg’s personal pre-election endorsement of the anti-fees position. But what other issues might prove equally difficult in the future? Civil liberties? Europe? NHS reform?

JA: Of all the predictable policy issues the coalition will have to deal with, I can confidently say that none will be as difficult for the Lib Dems as tuition fees. What we don’t know of course, is what the impact of unpredictable future events might be. To illustrate the point, imagine the Lib Dems had gone into coalition with Labour in 2001. They would probably have found it easy to deal with all the predictable policy issues – health, education, welfare and so forth. What they couldn’t have predicted, and what would almost certainly have destroyed such a coalition had it existed, would have been the response to the 9/11 attacks and, in particular, the issue of whether or not to support the invasion of Iraq.

DK: Ed Milliband’s rhetoric has softened towards the Lib Dems. He now seems to be actively courting Lib Dem MPs and activists. The Lib Dem leader may not bite, but how big a part of the Lib Dem elite – the formal leadership and the party’s ex-leaders – are tempted? And if Nick Clegg was to be knifed, who is most likely to wield the blade?

JA: There are Lib Dems who view themselves as centre left politicians who have more in common with the Labour party than the Conservatives, and the last three leaders, Ming Campbell, Charles Kennedy and Paddy Ashdown all fit into that category. But even left-leaning Lib Dems agree that, in the particular circumstances of the 2010 general election, Nick Clegg made the best – if not the only – choice for his party and for the country. What is more, Clegg’s position is hugely strengthened by the fact that he went even further than he needed to to secure the agreement of his party. The fact that the decision to enter the coalition was backed virtually unanimously by the partliamentary party, the party’s ruling Federal Executive Committee and by a specially convened conference of activists stands him in good stead going forward. The truth is, despite the pressures that being in coalition brings, the Lib Dems are a far more united party than most onlookers – Ed Milliband included – realise.

DK: The coalition has nailed its colours to a progressive mast, but it is struggling to explain that its policies are indeed progressive. Labour will argue that by cutting income tax at the same time as raising VAT, the Government has made the tax system less progressive. And even if the economy picks up, not all boats will be lifted out of the water by 2015. Will the Lib Dems regret using the word ‘progressive’ or at least regret not redefining it?
 
JA: You make the decision to promise ‘progressive’ policies sound like a tactical one. It wasn’t. The reason the Lib Dems are in government is to deliver a fairer Britain. To them, the issue is fundamental and non-negotiable. But the point you make about redefining the term is well made. Under the last government, progressive politics became synonomous with the effort to ‘lift’ people above an arbitrary poverty line using the tax credit system. The Lib Dems are extremely uneasy about this approach. Not only does income distribution do little to tackle the underlying causes of poverty they argue, but, by fostering dependency, can actually make the problem worse. The approach the Lib Dems prefer – and the one the coalition is pursuing – is that of extending opportunity, particularly through education and welfare reforms.