We’ve heard the jokes. It’s unfair of the government to say people can meet in groups of six: how are the Liberal Democrats expected to meet such a high threshold? Or, when physical meetings are allowed again the Lib Dems are expected to ignore the one-metre plus rule: members will be instructed to spread out to make meetings look full!
Such banter is understandable. It’s hard for a third party at national level to grow and make itself heard in a first-past-the-post-system. Even harder if it makes mistakes and isn’t as well organised as it should be, like it was last December. But for anyone who wishes to rid the country of Conservative rule, such banter is dangerous. It propagates the idea of Lib Dem irrelevance when the party’s performance at the next election is likely to be anything but.
The recently-published Labour internal review of that party’s own drubbing explains why. Labour now needs a swing of 1997 landslide proportions simply to become the largest party. To gain a majority of one it needs to add 123 MPs, which would mean increasing its parliamentary representation by 60 per cent—something that no major party has ever done in the post-war era. It must deliver these results in a context in which it has only one MP in Scotland, and any fight back there must start from third place, behind both the SNP and the Conservatives. Worse, Labour has to put a lot of energy into defence: 58 of its current seats being vulnerable to a small swing to the Tories. A Labour majority next time, then, may not be impossible but nor is it even remotely likely.
In that context, the fact that the Liberal Democrats came second to the Conservatives in 80 seats in England is significant. And if the party can be revitalised enough to win dozens of them, the chances of removing the Tories from office will massively increase.
This does not, as some seem desperate to suggest, mean the Lib Dems and Labour should simply jump into bed together. Despite the scale of its challenge, Labour is not yet ready to accept it cannot win alone. And mistrust between the two parties, at least at rank and file level, also runs deep. I know. I’ve been a member of both.
There are people in the Labour Party who will never forgive the Lib Dems for the coalition with the Tories. And there are Liberal Democrats who will never forgive the Labour Party for the invasion of Iraq, for running the financial system between 1997 and 2008 but not seeing the financial crisis coming, and for allowing the stain of anti-Semitism to take hold. These enmities and divisions are historical and political realities to be lived with and they cannot be ignored.
But neither are they the only pertinent facts staring us in the face. Both Labour and the Lib Dems are still adjusting to painful defeats. Each has baggage but both also have a historic opportunity to change, perhaps in complementary ways. And while each has a mountain to climb, Paddy Ashdown and Tony Blair showed it was possible for each to aid the other to the anti-Tory summit without the need for a formal electoral pact.
A tacit agreement not to campaign actively in constituencies where either party is a distant third would help. As would an understanding, whether explicit or not, to focus all national media attacks on the Tories—not each other. Local election campaigns where the Lib Dems and Labour face off against each other can still be robust, even while crisis management monitoring ensures things do not flare out of control. Representatives from each party should also be open to supporting cross-party campaigns, such as Build Back Better, that identify common ground and position the Conservatives as the political enemy.
None of this is inconceivable—or even new. Back in 1997, by concentrating all fire on the Conservatives Blair and Ashdown quietly created a two-against-one frame for the election which helped Labour prevail in the most unlikely places and the Lib Dems to double their seats, as the Tories were reduced to a rump. Going much further back to 1903, Herbert Gladstone and Ramsay MacDonald quietly agreed that the Liberals and nascent Labour party would not impede each other in various seats, and helped paved the way for one of the greatest ever defeats of the Tories—and the dawn of a great reforming age—in 1906. The secrecy of that arrangement would be neither practical nor desirable today, but progressives of different stripes who are united in despair at the capricious chauvinism of the Johnson government should rekindle the same spirit.
Anyone with an interest in ending—and at the next election rather than the one after it—the aching, gut-wrenching sense of powerless one feels in the face of this government’s malevolence and incompetence must wish Keir Starmer well in his attempt to strengthen Labour’s position. And that same sentiment should also lead progressives everywhere to will the Liberal Democrats to succeed.
For that to happen, the party needs to re-state its core purpose, as articulated most persuasively in recent times by Paddy Ashdown, of offering the country a progressive, non-Socialist alternative to Conservatism which puts the interests of citizens at its heart. It needs to overhaul its organisation and campaigning capabilities. It needs to engage in a period of intellectual ferment capable of generating the ideas needed to meet a future that is unfolding before us at break-neck speed. And it needs, when choosing between Layla Moran and Ed Davey in the current leadership contest, to have in mind that the next leader’s primary task will be to lead and coordinate the entire transformation process.
So, you see the Lib Dems as a joke if you want to. But since both candidates in the Lib Dem leadership race have stated they see the future of the party on the centre-left of British politics, a better course would be to get behind them. If the Lib Dems can get back on track, the days of Tory government will be numbered. If not, it’ll be the Tories that have the last laugh. Again.
