In which I consider if a LibDem-Labour realignment could foil the Tories, and if Labour would want to do that deal, if it meant making David Laws de-facto Deputy Prime Minister in the next Labour government.
Over the last couple of posts, I've been thinking about how Labour should handle what I think is the strongest possible Tory 2015 election strategy. This is based on two prongs. First, claiming credit for whatever level of economic recovery is in place by 2015, Second, arguing that Labour generally, and our leadership specifically, represent the worst of the past, and a risk to a fragile recovery.
As we've seen, there is an argument that this Tory strategy cannot, and will not, work. This position holds the Tories, by dint of internal division, electoral weakness or the divisive consequences of their policies, will find it hard to attract more support than they did in 2010. Given that the Tories are currently three points below their General Election performance, I argue it would be complacent to plan the next election campaign on the basis the Tories will be under an almost insuperable handicap.
If we take the Tory Government's electoral threat in 2015 seriously, how can we counter it?
The first option is to change the political situation completely. Instead of being an insurgent, unproven opposition in 2015, we could next go to the electorate with Ed Miliband as a sitting Prime Minister.
How could this happen? Two elements are needed.
First, the Liberal Democrats would have to become substantially dissatisfied with their current lot. Not just some Liberal Democrats, or even two thirds of Liberal Democrats, but almost all of the Parliamentary party. If more than a handful of Liberals felt that they would be better off sticking with the current coalition, they would hold an effective veto on any government reformation.
It's not Ming Campbell, Vince Cable or Charlie Kennedy, Labour need to convince to switch, it's David Laws, Sarah Teather and Danny Alexander. Remember, it would take only ten or fifteen "Liberal Democrat Nationals" to give the Conservatives a wafer thin majority1.
Labour's next Deputy Prime Minister?
Could this happen?
For the first time, it seems at least plausible. Senior LibDems feel let down by the Conservatives over Lords reform and the AV referendum. They feel they have delivered painful changes to their policy programme for the sake of national unity and this generosity has not been reciprocated. They see the Tory backbenches unafraid of their leadership and a Tory leadership unable to deliver a changed Tory party.
As Mark Pack and Nick Thornsby have argued, the actions of the Conservative party have made a re-alignment conceivable, if still unlikely2.
But the increasing unattractiveness of the Conservative party is only part of what is needed. The other essential element is a Labour party that LibDems would feel comfortable governing alongside. Read this Stephen Tall post and the comments thread on LibDemVoice and you will see almost no enthusiasm for a LibDem-Labour alliance expressed.
As a Labour hack I'm probably not the best person to explain why this is, but I would guess the reasons include dislike of our governing record, distrust of our economic position, resentment at our cultural behaviours, historical enmity and continued irritation at our assumption of progressive leadership. Oh, and several practical "how could it work?" objections too.
These last are important. A Labour-Liberal coalition would be inherently unstable, given the parliamentary maths. At most, it would be able to set out a governing agreement, pass a budget and perhaps announce a Queen's speech and an interim spending review. After that, there would rapidly need to be an election to gain a parliamentary majority for this common programme.
To make a deal worthwhile therefore, a Labour-LibDem agreement would have to be binding beyond the next election, no matter whether Labour won a governing majority. It would, in effect, entail an informal "LibDem policy coupon". In other words, we'd have to convince the LibDems we really meant it, and weren't just using them to get the Tories out and us in.
What might that coupon look like?
Economically, a position similar to Vince Cable's the 2010 election – a short term stimulus programme followed by sustained spending restraint, a switch of spend from services to infrastructure and investment.
On non-economic proposals, Labour would have to make some commitment to proportional representation. Probably the easiest for Labour to offer and most meaningful to LibDems would be STV elections to Councils, as has happened in Scotland.
It would be easier to agree a policy programme on some more clearly aligned policy objectives – green power, international aid, investment banks, Banking reform, but I suspect that without some economic and constitutional rapprochement, this alone would not be enough for many members of the LibDems.
So while it might be possible for Labour to develop an offer that was tempting to LibDems, given the behaviour of the Conservative party recently, we would need to show a lot more than a little ankle to tempt the LibDems from their current partners.
So the question for Labour is – do we really want to make common cause at that cost? Or do we want to try to win on our own in 2015? Is it even worth it?
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1 Depending on how willing the Tories are to deal with the unionist MPs
2. Remember though, it is in the LibDem's interests to have the possibility of Labour hanging over the Coalition. They need the Tories to know they're not trapped to get the best deal out of them. So Labour could offer a great deal, only to find the LibDems use that to secure some wins from the Tories. This is another reason why any Labour offer to the LibDems would need to be a comprehensive governing programme, not haggled short term concessions that would actually only serve as a way for the LibDems to lever more out of the Tories.
I still think my suggestion of offering only to help them avoid annihilation as a political party is better than trying to mess up our policies, and give the Lib Dems kingmaking power in local councils across the land.
http://theoldpolitics.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/dear-nick.html
The Lib Dem left, such as it is, joining a broad Labour-led alliance, with the Liberal Nationals informally joining the Tory party – and the 'coalition' limping on as a Tory Government with a Major-sized majority, sounds like an excellent idea to me, mind. No rush.
I think enough Labour people think as you do,( and enough LDs think as I assume the "LibDem Nationals" do), to make your suggestion much more likely than mine. Of course, that means a Tory govt until the next election.
I suspect that there are always going to be enough "Lib dem Nationals" to make this unrealistic. David Laws' enforced resignation is probably the most significantly damaging event in the life of the coalition in terms of making it work for the Tories – he still regularly tops the polls of the LibDem most Tories want to see back in Cabinet, and not just because of instinctive hatred for the likes of Cable and Huhne. Many would readily swap him for Clarke. Remember that his approach as LibDem education spokesman was sufficiently aligned with the Tories pre-election that Gove was willing publicly to miss out on the Cabinet entirely if Laws were to be given the Education Secretary post and I suspect that the Treasury would have been much more robust in defending the last Budget had he been Chief Secretary still.
The legion of "progressive" voters for the LibDems might not like it much, but Orange Bookers like Laws are so significantly much closer to the spirit of the coalition with the Tories than they could ever be to allying with Labour that they have to be insignificant in the arithmetic for coalition with Labour to be realistic. They could certainly ally with HopiLabour, but I'm not sure that HopiLabour particularly chimes with Miliband Labour…
that makes sense to me..
My instinct would be that any advantage to going to the electorate with Ed Miliband as a sitting prime minister would be balanced, and probably outweighed, by the desire of the electorate to kick the third prime minister in a row to become prime minister without actually winning an election squarely in the nutz, unless he had engineered an incredible turnaround. The same calculation also probably helps protect Cameron from his own party, at least until close to the election.
There is another possibility, although probably even less likely and riskier – that the Lib Dems be persuaded that their best chance to avoiding wipeout is to cause an election now.
Even with all the LDs a Lib-Lab Pact needs multiple minor parties on board to get a majority.
Yes- that's why any LD-lab deal would be unstable lasting probably about 3 -6 months before going to the country. This is why I think CS Clark's point above is manageable- effectively Labour and the LDs would be seeking an early GE after a Budget, agreeing a leg programme, and perhaps passing a couple of bills/amendments. It would be the post election deal that would be essential
The problem with this is that the LD grassroots pride themselves in the party’s myth of integrity. The coalition was justified to the party as being odious, but in the public interest. A better Labour offer therefore needs to overcome not just the internal political inertia in the party, but also the parliamentary party’s requirement to sell any new deal to both conference and the electorate as being moral and in the public interest.
I suspect that such a sale would only be possible if Labour’s popularity outshone that of the Tories to the extent that Labor no longer needed to consider a coalition; and I suspect that that won’t happen under Ed. But who knows?
Hopi – an interesting analysis, above and below the line. However, I still don't see a convincing argument to one fundamental question. How could it happen in practice? Your theory looks OK – but if we strip down to brass numbers, there are 646 MPs elected, 640 of whom can vote (excluding SF and the Speaker, who votes only in the event of a tie). So 321 MPs are needed to form an administration that could unseat the government of the incumbent PM.
The Tories have 306 – the DUP, who would almost certainly vote with the Tories if the Lib Dems withdrew, have eight. That means absolutely every other MP would have to vote to overthrow the government. I can see Plaid Cymru and Caroline Lucas coming on board. I'm less certain that Sylvia Hermon (for all I know she doesn't like the Tories and has supported Labour in the past) or the SNP would play ball. Remember, the interests of the latter would be to force an early election in the hope of increasing their representation at Westminster in advance of a referendum in case it goes against them. Moreover, they must appreciate that the return of a Labour government to power – for however brief a time – might see the offer of a promised referendum withdrawn. (Easiest thing in the world for Miliband to extend his arguments on the Lords being a distraction to a Scottish referendum – even though it would be suicidal for the union. But then, I don't credit Miliband with great strategic insight, although he's proving an able tactician.) Meanwhile, would Hermon really want to be seen as the person who was trying to upset the government and holding two major parties and their voters to ransom? It didn't end well for those independents in Australia. My guess is she would abstain.
Moreover, I wonder whether some LibDems, after all they have been put through by Labour, might actually defect to the Tories rather than get into bed with the enemy, weighting the mathematics further against Labour.
A much likelier scenario is that if the Lib Dems were to pull out of the coalition in such circumstances, the Tories would continue as a minority – albeit paralysed – government, and then somehow find a pretext for dissolving parliament and holding an election, as the sole governing party, blaming Labour and the LibDems for the expense and uncertainty of an early election – which might well lead to a sudden spike in borrowing costs, or even another economic contraction. Under such circumstances, wouldn't Labour have a very awkward manifesto to write?
Personally, I think Labour's best chance of winning the next election is to keep its head down for a bit, consider what it really wants to do and why and how, and then in twleve months' time begin a long campaign for a 2015 election. After all, why attack the government when it's attacking itself so well? Miliband, in obsessing about side issues (Leveson in particular, which would appear to be set to be another judicial whitewash) is not actually helping his chances of winning the next election – whatever it does for his opinion poll ratings.
What you don't address is the most difficult question: why would ANYONE want to go into coalition with the current Labour Party that contains Gordon (never comes to the Commons) Brown, Ed Balls and the rest of the shower that f**ked things up and let the Tories in in the first place?
The only route back is to announce some genuinely socialist policies – renationalising the railways would be a good start.
For me, to whom the last Lib Lab pact seems like only yesterday rather than a third of a century ago, this is an awful prospect.
Also, having seen the shamelessly dreadful ways that Libs have behaved in local government coalitions, I think Labour shouldn't touch them in their current incarnation even with a proverbial barge pole. (There are good reasons why the Gang of Four didn't flounce off just to join the Libs, their SDP had very different aims and objectives. The Lib – SDP marriage should be annulled, it can't possibly have been consummated in any way that was legal at the time. QED the Lib Dem party is an abomination)
I could lie and type "I can think of nothing worse than…" but I can think of some things worse; having the Taliban or perhaps George Monbiot in charge to give but two examples.
And I know the Libs can act a bit strangely at times (cf Jim Callaghan noting in 1979 "the first time in recorded history that turkeys have been known to vote for an early Christmas") but what on earth would be in it for them? They've already alienated most of their Tory-hating voters, wouldn't this merely alienate all their Labour hating ones?
Is this Hopi's fiendish plot to wipe out the Lib Dems? Not a bad idea as it goes given that we're lumbered for better or worse, thanks to Mr "everything I touch turns to dust" Clegg, with a voting system most suited to there being only two big parties .
If labour did get in with Lib dem help then they had fracking well have better have a foolproof plan for the economy and not simply tax borrow and spend. For all the posturing about Keynesianism, the last labour govt broke just about every single Keynesian guideline going and John Maynard's theories never envisaged an economy where the state was 50% of the gdp or the govt exacerbating the situation by spending wildly in boom times.
So have a coherant plan, carry it through and choose EITHER a better less bloated state or lower taxes OR the markets will bury labour forever (>7% on uk bonds) no matter how many millions of immigrants are brought in to undercut/gerrymander the british working classes.
I hope there is a Lib-Lab pact, it will serve Labour bloody right.
All the tories need to do to ensure a victory at the next election is to give an in-out referendum on the EU in *this* parliament. They won't do this of course.
As a Lib Dem is crazy to think Laws would be leader!!! No-on in our party thinks that. He's not leadership material and too tied to one wing….he is the no2 to a person like Farron in a 2015.
This would be an incredibly stupid thing for the Lib Dems to agree to do . The Irish Labour Party did something similar in the 1990s, and it lost them support. They formed a coalition with Fianna Fail (thus propping up a failed governing party) after the inconclusive 1992 election, then around 1995 suddenly switched to the other main party Fine Gael. Labour then fought the following election in 1997 on a coupon. Even though this certainly better represented the preferences of Labour voters than the Fianna Fail coalition, it looked bad for Labour, which lost a lot of seats in that election.
So no sane Lib Dem would do what you suggest, even if they prefer to be in a Labour-led government over the current Tory-led one.