You know, when you see that Neil Clark has written a piece for the Guardian arguing that, from his perspective, this government is even worse than Margaret Thatcher’s you might expect to be entertained but you don’t anticipate him making sense. But, lo, here he is:
This overstates things somewhat but the general thrust is reasonable. Then again, this is where I think Clegg should lead his party so I’d be happy for it to happen. Doing so will cost the Lib Dems some support since I doubt that this kind of fiscally conservative-socially liberal cocktail will appeal to more than 15% of voters. However, it at least gives them something to sell that’s greater than merely appealling, as they have in the past, to disillusioned Labour supporters.[…] Clegg, and his fellow Orange Book Liberals, are actually more keen on market forces and globalised capitalism than the so-called Tory wets were. In last year’s election, the free market fundamentalism of the Liberal Democrats was ignored by many commentators and voters who saw their opposition to Labour’s security measures, and their advocacy of electoral reform, as evidence that the party was progressive. But progressive parties don’t enthuse over plans to privatise Britain’s motorway network, as the “moderate” Vince Cable did, nor do their leaders make speeches in which they bemoan the fact that “we have nationalised education, nationalised health, and nationalised welfare”. Under Clegg’s leadership, the Lib Dems have moved from being a genuinely social democratic party – one which fought the 2005 election on a manifesto to the left of Labour – into a British version of Germany’s pro-market FDP. That’s why the Lib Dems of 2011 can quite happily vote for the effective destruction of the NHS, the sell-off of the Royal Mail and support Osborne’s spending cuts.
The paradox, mind you, is that this kind of party might be designed to appeal to “elite” and metropolitan opinion even as the Lib Dems will most probably be a provincial, rural party. Their seats in university towns are evidently threatened and so too are many of their metropolitan seats. That leaves two (relative) strongholds: the south-west of England and rural Scotland. True, this latter is threatened in this year’s Holyrood election but liberalism is well entrenched across much of rural Scotland. Similarly, whenever the Liberals have been strong they’ve been strong in the south-west. It stands to reason that this may be their last redoubt again.
This disconnect between the type of party the leadership wants to lead and the party its supporters think they are voting for is not unique to the Lib Dems but it’s striking nonetheless. The SNP, for instance, still awaits a major breakthrough in the central belt and is strongest and safest in rural areas not much interested in or even enamoured by the party’s determination to present itself as a credible left-wing alternative to Labour.
Still, there you have it. Politics is full of contradictions and it can surely accomodate a party of metropolitan swells supported by us hicks in the sticks. That’s one theory of the Liberal Vision anyway…
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