The Lib Dem dilemma
Bubble — By Daran Hill on May 13, 2010 12:55 pm
Didn't annoy any Lib Dems yesterday, so am trying much harder today
The decision to coalition is already having an impact on the way the Assembly operates, and that’s without any big decisions on budget having been made. Anyone who watched plenary yesterday will have been struck by the change in tone. Several Lib Dem members hardly looked comfortable in the new reality. But it is here to stay and they will have to get used to it.
There is a real dilemma for the Lib Dems at the heart of all this, and that is how they now position themselves electorally on the ground. We heard much during the election campaign on how the party was recruiting new members on the back of Cleggmania. I wonder quite how many have left or are leaving on the back of the last 48 hours?
Certainly the other centre left parties in Wales may be disappointed with the shape of the new government, but they are far from disappointed with the prospect of being able to capture more disaffected Lib Dem voters. Leanne Wood made an audacious and amusing bid on Twitter this morning for Lib Dems to join Plaid.
Labour feels the same. As one wise Labour sage said to me yesterday (and Marcus Warner won’t be able to work out who) “We have at last got our foot on the throats of the Welsh Liberal Democrats and we intend to keep it there.” One can’t help thinking that when it comes to the Assembly elections next May that they may have a point. The Lib Dems confounded expectations last week by failing to pick up Swansea West or Newport East, and their final tally in Wrexham was pretty poor too. It now seems like one hell of a tall order to pull off any gains like that next year.
Kirsty Williams once predicted that the Lib Dems could win 31 seats in an Assembly election. My Labour sage told me yesterday that the Lib Dems are more likely to get 3+1 next May. Ouch.
Tags: coalition, Nick Clegg, Welsh Liberal Democrats
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6 Comments
An interesting dimension will be the Liberal Democrats relationship with Cheryl Gillan – perhaps not traditional allies but now on the same side of the fence:
An issue that’s sort of explored here:
http://tinyurl.com/38yelna
Judging from the reaction in the Pontypool pub I was in on Wednesday night, the only dilemma for any LibDems who want to campaign round here in the near future is whether to keep the car engine switched on for a quick getaway…
The Lib Dems can only lose a maximum of three seats in Wales and probably only one of them to Labour.
In Scotland and the West of England aren’t they the equivalent of Tory LIte anyway.
The LibDem future is probably more in their own hands now than it has ever been.
And with boundary changes and a reduction in MPs favouring/balancing things up for the Tories who’s to say that in 2015 the electorate won’t give them enough support to fetter what could be a full blown Tory government.
I don’t think people need to worry much about the future of the LibDems in the UK.
Labour however faces a real possibility of being out of Government in Westminster for a decade.
Watching Simon Hughes last night on Question Time only confirmed my view that the Liberal Democrats are in for a torrid time in the next few years. Hughes held his own but you could see that he was uncomfortable and the cuts haven’t even started. Having said that unless there is a real moment of principle such as the decision by the National Government in 1931 to abandon free trade I can’t see the Liberal Democrats walking out.
Although no one can guess what effect the referendum on AV will have on the coalition as throughout the country Tory and Liberal Democrat hammer each other. If they survive the tensions of the referendum the Liberal Democrats are locked in an embrace to the death with the Tories. They really can’t win. If the economy improves then all the credit will go to the Tories and they wouldn’t need the Liberal Democrats after 2015. If it doesn’t then they will take as big if not bigger hit at the ballot box than the Tories as the voters punish the coalition for the savage cuts on public services.
For leading right wing Liberal Democrats, such as Clegg and Laws, their own hope of survival will either be to join the Tories before the next election or hope that Cameron can devise a 21st century version of the Lloyd George coupon.
In the meantime the losers will be Liberal Democrat candidates in next year’s Assembly elections and in future council elections. My local Liberal Democrat candidate will I think regret for the rest of her political life the manifesto commitment that ‘You Get Vince Cable if you vote Liberal Democrat’. She didn’t tell the voters of Ogmore that they were also going to get some pretty right wing Tories into the bargain.
Christ, I never thought I would say this but….’I agree with Jeff Jones’.
Simon Hughes looked at sixes and sevens last night.
The problem for the Lib Dems, regardless of what policies they might have got out of this deal, is that it goes against the grain of their supporters and members. The fact is that a significant amount of people vote lib dem because they are purpotedly different and certainly anti-Tory.
The Lib Dems policy reversal on key issues are far more damaging than the ones they got in. The student vote is kaput – they have gone from promising to abolishing tuition fees, to now waiting on the Browne review (which will propose a lifting of the roof on fees).
On immigration they have gone from calling for an amnesty (which I think has merit enough to at least look at), to now have an in the words of Nick Clegg ‘an abitrary cap’ on immigrants. They have gone from supporting Britain going into the Euro to guaranteeing no further transfer of power to Europe. From calling for the replacement of trident (but still a nuclear weapon) to supporting it being renewed.
All coalitions involved diluting policies, One Wales is no different (Although Leighton’s laptops was a highlight). But I don’t think I can recall a deal where a party has had to do such 180 turn on issues that we clear vote winners for them.
Now those who argue that they had no choice, bollocks. They could have provided a stable offer of a deal on key issues, allowed the Tories to begin deficit reduction and then made that deal hold for two years. The fact is that they wanted Ministerial positions. If their argument is that we would have had another election, then so be it, are they not democrats? I sense they knew that they may lose even more seats, sounds and smells like old politics to me.
We have Nick Clegg being the next John Prescott – I would love to see the years of parody the Lib Dems offered over the D.PM’s position. Why is Clegg any different?
The only way the Liberal Democrats have been able to maintain any significant levels of support throughout Britain was by getting a mixture of tactical voting from Labour Supporters, students worried about the size of their loans and people who were ‘anti-political’ and open to suggestion to go along with their vaguely leftist hoopla as a ‘least worst’ option. Having alienated their left-of-centre/anti-Tory/anti-everything supporers so ostentatiously by throwing in their lot with the Tories, the Liberal Democrats will soon be down to the hardcore support they held back in the days when Jeremy Thorpe was ordering a hit on Norman Scott’s dog. If you can call it a hardcore? The people I mean are nudists, all-year round sandal wearers, committed vegans, people who ‘run’ ethno-tat shops (which are usually shut due to illness), sheep farmers living in areas without internet access and small town solicitors with obsessions over civil liberties because they were once wrongly arrested for indecent exposure. Oh sorry, I forgot all of the above (except the sheep farmers) hate the Tories as well. At least the sheep farmers will continue to support the Liberal Democrats in Wales, won’t they Lembit?