Anyone who read my blog yesterday, or who has passed my
house here at Trevadlock Cross and seen the Lib Dem poster supporting Dan
Rogerson, our now-defeated MP, will understand that I am truly gutted by what
has happened in this election. Far from rewarding the Liberal Democrats for
their efforts to keep the Conservative right-wing from dragging the Coalition
further from the centre, or for their many good ideas and hard work in
government, it appears that they have been punished, while their erstwhile colleagues
have got all the credit for the Coalition’s successes. To a degree, that is
clearly true, though it is most unfair. But why?
First of all, it is the common experience of minor partners
in a coalition (evidenced from across Europe where coalitions are common) to be
slaughtered in a subsequent election. But two further factors are significant,
I think. One is that if you look at the voting patterns across England in
particular, there has been a shift to the right represented by the good
performance of UKIP (thankfully not translated into seats) and the victory of
many Conservatives in Lib Dem-Conservative marginals – for example, the whole
of the south-west, from being a Liberal Democrat stronghold, has gone blue.
Second, the Liberal Democrats' core supporters were alienated by their
involvement in the Coalition, which seemed to many (though not to me) a
betrayal of principle. The notorious U-turn on tuition fees, which the party
acknowledges to have been a mistake on many levels, made this worse, and the
press put the nails in the coffin, making the Liberal Democrats appear to be
perfidious and unprincipled losers – not the kind of image you want going into
a close general election! Paddy Ashdown has bravely said that they will be
back, and that Liberal values are needed more than ever, and although I am not
a member of the party, I agree that their particular contribution to the
political scene is important and I hope they will take courage. Nick Clegg may
seem an obvious target for blame, but a leadership change may not be the best thing at
this stage, particularly as the party has lost many of its key leadership
figures, including those who held ministerial posts in the Coalition. Clegg is
at least in parliament, and I would imagine his position is secure at least for
the moment – more than can be said for Ed Milliband.
Which brings me to the most salient lesson that has come out
of this most surprising election – that is, apart from the fact that
pre-election polls may not reflect the way people vote on the day, and that BBC
exit pollers can deliver accurate predictions! The Labour party ought to have
won this election, or at least to have been the largest party, and they should
have done much better in Scotland. An unpopular government, an austerity
programme that may have improved our debt position and may have turned our
economy around for the present at least but in the process has reduced large
numbers to penury, amid grave doubts as to whether the Conservatives are truly a
One Nation party, whatever their rhetoric, should not have delivered an
increased number of Conservative seats, matched by a few percentage points
increase in the general vote (based on trends – the final results are not all
declared as I write this). That it has done so casts enormous doubts on the
quality of the Labour leadership, some of whom have lost their seats. Their failure has been not to deliver coherent policy ideas so as to make a real alternative to
the simple and obvious stance of their opponents. This must stand as a huge
reproach to them, and the Labour party must address not only the question of
the leadership but also where the party is going, and where it wants to place
itself on a spectrum that now includes support for the left-wing Greens, whose
greater share in the vote has returned its one and only MP to parliament with
an increased majority.
The spread of votes set against the balance of seats – with the
two major parties winning the vast majority of the one-person constituencies
that currently make up our parliamentary democratic system – must raise again
the question, in voters’ minds if not in Westminster, as to whether the
first-past-the-post system is delivering any real democracy. Internet activists
such as 38 Degrees, Change.org, and their local one-issue counterparts have found ways to influence policy outside
the ballot box, which is to be welcomed. Yet the composition of the Westminster
parliament is still of enormous importance. The country voted against the
particular version of proportional representation that it was presented with in
that referendum conceded by David Cameron to the Liberal Democrats as part of
the Coalition agreement five years ago (how long ago it now seems!). But the
question must be debated again. The first-past-the-post system protects us from
extremist minority parties gaining a foothold in parliament, and many will feel
it has protected us in this instance from UKIP, who came second or third in a large number of
constituencies and must have gained a significant proportion of the vote, but only one or two seats. The
disaster for the Lib Dems would have been on a smaller scale with PR, since the
loss of their popular vote looks to have been around 12-15% (bad enough), but the loss of
seats far higher. In a PR system they would have ended up with about 50 seats,
my rough calculation suggests, rather than the 8 or 9 they actually have.
Lastly, by talking up the SNP as an election manoeuvre to
encourage people to vote for the Conservatives rather than Labour - whom they represented,
probably misleadingly, as ready to set up a Labour-SNP coalition in
the event of a hung parliament led by Labour - Cameron has landed himself with
a real constitutional problem. Will we see greater regional autonomy across the
UK, perhaps even some form of federalism? Or will the Scottish Nationalists
merely make a nuisance of themselves at Westminster and demand another
referendum on Scottish independence? Something needs to be done and quickly.
Let’s hope that Cameron has the guts and determination, and the following in
his own party, to do it.
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