You are here: Home » Comment »

Is it time for Labour and the LibDems to start talking?

August 27, 2012 10:13 am

Author:

Tags:

Share this Article

“…let me be clear: I have repeatedly stated that coalition government will not occur unless it is preceded by a meaningful change in our political system. That is merely stating the obvious.”

– Nick Clegg MP, Lib Dem leadership candidate, letter in the Guardian, 17 November 2007

It’s worth recalling that in the dear long-ago days before the 2010 election, almost all right-thinking progressive folk (apart from me) were in favour of going over to proportional representation (PR) for elections to the House of Commons, in large part because it was thought that only PR would produce hung parliaments and thus coalition governments; and the general opinion was that coalition governments would be a Good Thing, since the LibDems would always be members of them, and the LibDems could be relied on to ensure that coalition policies would be moderate, middle-of-the-road, small-l liberal, consensual, and generally acceptable to sensible fastidious middle-class people who found the tribal politics of the Tories and Labour distasteful.

Well, it turned out that we got the coalition without the PR, contrary to Nick Clegg’s and many other people’s expectation, and now people are complaining that the coalition government is pursuing policies that were not in any of the party manifestos on the basis of which we all voted in 2010, so there is no electoral mandate for these policies. Government policies were worked out in hectic horse-trading (“you can have a referendum on electoral reform if we can go ahead with student fees and privatising the NHS”) behind closed doors between the Conservative and LibDem leaders after the polling stations had closed, too late for the benighted voters to influence them. This was precisely the objection to PR and coalition governments that some of us, a small and much despised gang, had predicted. (There were other objections, mostly also now confirmed by experience, but this was a major factor in our misgivings.)

When it came to it, coalition government seemed less attractive in practice than it had looked in theory before it happened, and even the diluted form of PR offered to us in the referendum on electoral reform was rejected by a healthy majority.

It now seems increasingly unlikely that any one party will win an overall majority at the next election, whenever that turns out to be — and the coalition won’t necessarily survive until 2015, whatever its members say. If the election takes place after the Scottish referendum on independence in the autumn of 2014, there will be hugely important decisions for the new government to take if the United Kingdom is to survive as a single country, whatever the result of that referendum. There will also be a pressing need for new directions in fiscal, social and economic policies. So it’s by no means too early to start thinking about the shape that the next government will take, in the likely event of another hung parliament, and how its policies might be developed. Here are two propositions for debate:

1. Single-party minority government, with the main opposition parties promising to treat each parliamentary issue on its merits but to support the government in votes of confidence and supply, will be better than another coalition. The opposition parties need not compromise their principles in the way that they must do if they are members of a coalition, and a minority government will be unable to pursue extreme or doctrinaire policies without the support of other parties.

2. The most natural and congenial informal partner for the LibDems is the Labour party. There should be the beginning of informal talks now, tomorrow, or next week at the latest, between the Labour and LibDem leaders and front-bench shadow ministers with their LibDem opposite numbers about the broad shape of the policies that a minority Labour government will pursue and to which the LibDems would give general support. This set of informally agreed policies will eventually be reproduced, not necessarily in identical terms, in the manifestos of both the LibDems and the Labour Party before the next election, so that the electorate will know what they are voting for (or against). The Greens and the left-of-centre nationalist parties of Scotland (including the SNP), Wales and Northern Ireland should also be consulted about the general contents of the agreed policy proposals of Labour and the LibDems and invited to promise their general support for them — whether or not there is a hung parliament.

Come on, Ed! Why not?

Related posts:

  1. The Coalition monologues: Why Labour has to start talking
  2. In the coalition politics era Labour should court, not vilify, the LibDems
  3. Far from dying, the LibDems may now grow up
  4. In those Five Days in May, the LibDems made the wrong choice
  5. Labour 2011: New Start, New Opportunities, New Challenges
  • jaime taurosangastre candelas

    This seems unworkable, both in practice (your suggestion (1)), and principle (suggestion (2)).

    (1).  No single larger party (i.e. the tories or Labour) would put themselves in the position of being responsible for governing while every single one of their policies were outvoted one by one.  What would be the point?  It would also be an implied abandonment of the larger element of the electorate which had voted for that party.

    (2)  You are asking for Lib Dem Cabinet Ministers and more junior Ministers to actively negotiate with Opposition figures for a future working arrangement.  The Prime Minister would instantly sack them for disloyalty, and probably collapse the government himself deliberately.  Even if the coalition held together, it is an anti-democratic proposal – “cartel” behaviour.  No matter what the electorate vote for, they are going to get a future Labour / Lib Dem working arrangement?  Why bother asking the people to vote at all?

    You also do not appear to acknowledge the divide in the Lib Dems between those to the left of Labour and those to the right of Labour.  Your assumption about Labour being the most congenial party to Lib Dems is not true of all members.  This is further complicated by the fact that the conservative wing of the Lib Dems is over-represented in Parliament in comparison to members nationally.

    • http://twitter.com/RF_McCarthy Roger McCarthy

      Absolutely agree thus my point about the need for a split

      The complete dominance of the Orange Book faction in parliament is indeed crucial and badly needs an Andrew Rawnsley or whoever to dish the dirt on how they changed the cuddly but ineffective party of Kennedy into the real gravediggers of the welfare state.

    • brianbarder

       There are several precedents for a minority government able to work on the basis of a “confidence and supply” understanding with one or more members of the coalition.  There would be a broad area in which informal agreement with the LibDems before the election could be reached and for which a majority in the house of commons would be assured.  On other issues the minority government would have to negotiate with the smaller parties and if necessary compromise in order to get its legislation through. 

      Talks about all these matters between the Labour and LibDem leaderships — probably exclusing the right-wing LibDem members of the coalition government — would relate solely to the situation after the next general election and would involve no disloyalty to the present coalition.  It would no doubt spur the Tories to start similar discussions with the more amenable of their coalition partners and to start thinking about ways of outbidding Labour’s offers — potentially quite a healthy development.

      I of course recognise the deep divisions within the LibDems and the possibility that the spectacle of the beginning of a loose and informal Labour-LibDem understanding over post-election policies might widen the existing split, perhaps to the point of the party formally splitting, although I would expect both sides of the split to maintain their identities for some time, not being absorbed by either Labour or the Tories.  By making it clear that there was no question of offering the LibDems partnership in a formal coalition, Labour could make its suggestion of a broad informal policy framework agreement much more attractive to the left-of-centre LibDems and much less threatening.

  • JoeDM

    And how many Limp Demoprat MPs do you expect to be around after the next General Election?

    This seems to be an utterly pointless exercise. Coalitions lead to bland leaderless politics, but
    there again, maybe that’s what the pro-EU, wet left, establishment want.

    • brianbarder

      1.  If you read my post more carefully, you’ll see that I’m not suggesting a Labour-LibDem coalition.

      2. It’s quite possible that a LibDem election campaign based on a promise to support an outline programme already agreed with the Labour party, if Labour either has an overall majority or wins the largest number of seats in a hung parliament, would avert the massacre of LibDem MPs which seems likely to happen if they go into the campaign seeking support for their record in the coalition with the Tories.

      • postageincluded

        Why would we want to help them avoid a massacre? Their voters seem inclined to vote Labour more than Tory by 3 to 1. The more their vote collapses the better we do. A Libdem massacre is the surest way to a Labour victory. Or have you other fish to fry?

  • http://twitter.com/RF_McCarthy Roger McCarthy

    No – what is required is that the Lib Dems follow the example set by their Whig and Liberal forebears and split.

    In fact contra the myth that we have always had a two-party system the insistence of the Whigs and their Liberal successors on splitting acrimoniously once every generation or so pretty much defines British political history before the rise of Labour (which itself incorporated various elements of the Liberals). 

    But the last real Liberal split at the parliamentary level took place in 1931 (precisely over the issue of supporting an austerity coalition) so we are now several generations overdue for a new one.

    If Kennedy and Farron ( I am hard put to think of any others) did refuse the Lib Dem whip and began organising a separate party rather than selfishly salving their consciences by strategically absenting  themselves from votes like the final reading of the NHS Bill they would at the very least save their own seats.

    If enough Lib Dem MPs did the math and recognised that they are in parliament only due to tactical Labour votes and followed suit then just possibly the coalition might fall and enough of them might survive an election to be able to hold their first meeting of  the new parliament in the back of the minibus they needed in the 1970s rather than all being able to fit comfortably into a taxi as per the 1950s.

    But negotiations with Clegg and his front bench?

    One can’t say that they aren’t already happening informally at some level but I can think of nothing that would discredit Labour more than a deal with the faction who have already destroyed the NHS and are intent on destroying every other significant achievement of past Labour governments.

    The ball really is in the Liberal Democrats court now – they (the MPs and activists) can play it and save something from the wreckage or they can all go down to ruin with Clegg and pretty much everything that made this country a semi-tolerable place to live.

  • aracataca

    What a bonkers idea. Shouldn’t we give the Fib Dems another couple of years to completely hang themselves first?

  • brianbarder

     Your question about other fish to fry suggests a suspicious frame of mind!  What possible fish?  My only concern is to promote by every possible means the formation of a loose progressive front in the UK, led by the Labour party but covering a wide spectrum of left-of-centre small-l liberal opinion.  My preference will always be for a Labour government with an overall majority able to govern on its own.  But with the enormous weakening of the committed core votes which will almost always go to the two main parties, and the increasing tendency not to vote at all, and the proliferation of serious or semi-serious small parties which attract votes from far left and far right, I believe that we need to recognise the distinct possibility that for some years, perhaps permanently, no one party will be able to win an overall majority in the house of commons.

    That being so, it’s vital to encourage the progressive parties, whatever their differences on specific issues, to cooperate together and be ready to work together to sustain progressive governments on the basis of the highest common factor of principles and policies.  For this purpose the progressive wing of the Liberal Democrats has a useful, perhaps indispensable role.  There are tens of thousands of decent, liberal, progressive people for whom voting Labour is a step too far but who should be open to persuasion to support a left-of-centre consensus.  The natural home for these people is the LibDem party, especially if its right-wing element has broken off and remained in some kind of symbiotic relationship with the Tories, probably eventually being absorbed by them.

    There’s a real danger that if Labour continues its short-sighted and electorally potentially suicidal animosity against the progressive wing of the LibDems, a sizeable number of them may be seduced into supporting a future Conservative-led but socially liberal grouping that could keep the genuine progressives out of power for many years.  We need to recognise our differences with the LibDems, not try to paper them over, but also to stress the very wide areas of policy on which Labour, the LibDems and other progressive parties can and should agree and work together to support.  Labour tribalism is all very well, but if we collude in the extinction of a major potential ally, we may find ourselves out of office for a generation, unable to do anything to help those who depend on a progressive government for a decent life.  There should be room on the left for all kinds of parties and groups able to recognise their natural friends and to distinguish them from the real enemy.

    • postageincluded

      So when Labour’ s core voters seem less committed we ignore them, when voters in general can’t be bothered we ignore them. Presumably we ignore floating voters too and also those former Labour voters who voted Tory in 2010 just to get rid of Gordon. What’ s important is adopting a LibDem freindly line before the election! Conceding before we even know under what terms – if any – negotiations will take place. That seems to me to be a crass error.
      If the electorate can be convinced that the LibDems are a soft right party the Tories are in deep trouble fighting as part of a split right wing – the same sort of trouble that Labour was in in the 80s which your “progressive alliance” would quickly recreate. Labour needs to present itself as the only real alternative, not one of many.

  • brianbarder

     I despair of the mentality that interprets building alliances as ‘conceding’ and offering a return home to disillusioned former supporters as ‘ignoring them’.  Labour is quite plainly not “the only real alternative” and alienating your potential friends isn’t going to make it so.

    Peter Hain is no slouch as an electoral strategist and is evidently singing from the same song-sheet: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/aug/26/peter-hain-labour-lib-dems?CMP=twt_fd.  And please don’t dismiss what he says just because he was once a Young Liberal, as if that had anything to do with it.

    • postageincluded

      Brian, in 2005 and 2010, for a variety of reasons, voters deserted New Labour (Brown, Blair and Hain included) and fled to the pre-coalition LibDems. If that party still existed in the popular imagination your idea might have some merit. Unfortunately it doesn’t, and it’s hard to see how it can re-enter the public imagination before 2015. By openly forming alliance with the post-coalition LibDems, however they reorganise themselves, we associate ourselves with coalition policy – austerity, NHS privatisation, uncle Tom cobbly and all. That is a sure recipe for voter apathy in2015 and Labour failure.

      I am not a knee-jerk anti-LibDem. I’m personally still on good terms with them. I am all in favour of making the Labour party a place where disillusioned LibDems can feel welcomed. I know that there are policies we can easily agree on. Nevertheless I believe that it is a mistake to validate LibDem attempts at pre-election repositioning by making open alliances and agreements. They have publicly made their bed on the right; it is to our great advantage to let them lie there.

      That does not mean, of course, that we should not game plan for every possible result in 2015 – of course we should. But to actively prepare for a LibLab coalition more than 2 years in advance of the election result simply gives hostages to fortune.

  • brianbarder

     Once again, with feeling:  I am not, repeat not, suggesting a Lib-Lab or any other kind of coalition, which is surely clear from my post.  And if Labour emerges from the next election as the biggest party in a hung parliament, and hasn’t bothered to prepare the ground beforehand for a confidence and supply arrangement, not only with the LibDems but also with at least some of the other progressive parties, it will be a great betrayal and a monument to Labour short-sightedness.

    • postageincluded

      You’re talking about having talks now about what the Labour and LD parties should put in their manifestos at the next election so as to inrease the amount they can agree on in government. That is, as far as I can see, a pre- election pact. How does this differ from preparing for a post-election LabLib coalition or pact? The distinction, if there is one, is too fine for me, and will be for most voters.
      Of course, if it could be done secretly it would hold no danger for Labour – but given the advantage new leftish credentials would give the LDs (official or provisional) I’d say the chance of the secret getting out must rate near 1 in 1. This saves us having to worry about the ethics of a secret pact. An open declaration of shared “progressive” principles simply advertises the LDs as an approved alternative for voters who would otherwise vote for us.

  • Pingback: (Not quite) 101 reasons not to talk to the Liberal Democrats…. «

  • robstorey

     

    The majority electorate will want a straight three way fight
    between the three main parties.  “Undemocratic and cynical’ or not,
    to announce publically that Labour – not popular and only ahead in the polls
    because it is seen the least bad option – may be preparing to crawl into bed
    with an unpopular third Party is a risk too far. And why take the risk? Talks
    will carry on behind closed doors and behind is where they should stay.

    The majority electorate will accept whatever the election throws
    up because, when it comes to coalition politics, it gets its way in the end
    (sort of).  The number of seats gained by
    any one party determines the relative strength of partners within any probable coalition.

    Talks at this stage can only be in an informal ‘perhaps/maybe/if’
    such and such occurs, setting. Politicians will have been drinking tea,
    plotting, stabbing and generally talking rubbish.  A word here, a promise there but only the naive would trust the word of another politician, particularly one from another
    party – especially a Liberal Democrat.

    It comes down to the numbers so any talks worth having can
    only happen after the event.   

    I would be content with a Lab/Lib coalition rather than a
    large Labour majority.  The last one gave
    us Blair and I use that to scare my grandchildren.

  • brianbarder

     The kind of understanding between like-minded parties that I advocate falls short of a “pact”.  Labour and the LibDems would simply go through their respective draft manifestos together and identify those items or areas of policy which, if a minority or majority Labour government adopted them post-election, the LibDems would promise to support.  These provisionally agreed areas would be identified in each party’s manifesto but the manifestos would not be the same: each party would continue to publish its own distinctive policy statement.

    There is a huge difference between publishing the results of these informal policy consultations before an election, and revealing them only after the polls have closed (which is of course what Clegg and Cameron did in 2010: the Tories had clearly worked out in detail what they would offer the LibDems in the event of a hung parliament before the election, but kept it secret;  and Clegg refused to say which of the two major parties he would support if there was a hung parliament, in effect admitting that all he was interested in was power, not principles or policies). 

    The difference, obviously, is that if the understandings on policy are kept under wraps until after the election, voters have no way of knowing how to vote in order to influence events in the direction they want.  You can’t anyway “vote for a hung parliament”, but you can vote for — or against — a party that has told you frankly but in general terms what kind of policies it will support and which it will oppose.  Next time it’s essential to pin down the LibDems beforehand.

    Of course this can’t and shouldn’t be kept secret: indeed, the more openness, the better.  It won’t affect the outcomes in the constituencies here there are thumping great majorities unlikely to be overturned regardless of the policies of the contenders.  But in a constituency where only the LibDem has any chance of beating the Tory (which may well be in enough constituencies to determine the result of the election), how is a progressive anti-Tory voter to decide how to vote if the LibDems refuse to say whether they would support the Tories again in a hung parliament, or whether they had agreed to support the main elements in the Labour manifesto?  You and I would probably vote Labour anyway; but the less committed progressive voter would be left in the dark unless the LibDems, or the centre-left section of the LibDems, had come clean in advance.

    Leaving it until after the election to embark on 2010-style bargaining and horsetrading until a brand new set of compromise policies emerges, for which no-one could have voted, is a shocking way to short-change the electorate.  In democratic countries in which coalitions of two or often more parties are the norm, broad agreements on policy issues are expected to be published before the electorate can properly be asked to vote on them: why not here?  We should make sure, as far as possible, that the disreputable post-election events of May 2010 are never repeated.

     

    • postageincluded

       Suffice it to say, if you were saying this to me in the 1980s I would have been your groupie.  But not now.

      The reason that parties on the continent make pre-election agreements is that they have PR systems, so they risk little by losing a few thousand votes to prospective partners. Elections here are won and lost on the basis of a few thousand misplaced votes  – and revivng the LibDem’s democratic credentials would lose Labour those votes, not the Tories.

      To sum up: If the canary is croaking don’t waste time trying to resuscitate it.

  • brianbarder

    The questionboils down to whether it’s in Labour’s medium-term interest to treat the progressive wing of the LibDemsas potentialallies or irredeemable enemies.

    • postageincluded

      They are both, Brian. That’s why we should offer them no succour before the election, while preparing our options for after it.

  • brianbarder

    See Polly Toynbee in today’s Guardian (31 Aug).  She’s not always right but today she’s spot on.  The time to start forging a progressive alliance is now;  to leave it until after the election may be too late, and perpetrates a fraud on the electorate.

    • John_Dore

      Much as I would like rid of the government of fools,  I think you are wrong. It would destroy the Libs perception further. It could only be seen as the ultimate stab in the back for the coalition and as such even more untrustworthy than you already are; either your committed to government or your stabbing your partners in the back.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Mike-Homfray/510980099 Mike Homfray

    I’m sure that informal discussions are going on, but given the likely fall in the LD vote, they may not be needed. 
    It doesn’t appear that the LibDems will emerge from the coalition in a very healthy state, and its coalition between Gladstonian liberals and social democrats has been shown to be an uneasy one. That isn’t to say that the two big parties aren’t equally as divided but in such a small party the divide is stark and seems to be getting wider

Latest

  • Europe Featured You can always rely on the Conservatives to ignore the public when it comes to Europe

    You can always rely on the Conservatives to ignore the public when it comes to Europe

    By Douglas Alexander

    Europe is not often the issue which comes top of people’s concerns on the doorstep. Nor do opinion polls suggest that Europe is a priority for voters when compared to issues like the economy or jobs. But you can always rely on the Conservatives to ignore the public when it comes to Europe. This week saw over a hundred Conservative MPs rebel and vote against their own Queens Speech. They were angry that it hadn’t included a bill which would [...]

    Read more →
  • News Seats and Selections Vicky Foxcroft selected as Labour’s PPC for Lewisham Deptford

    Vicky Foxcroft selected as Labour’s PPC for Lewisham Deptford

    Vicky Foxcroft has been selected by Lewisham Deptford CLP as the party’s candidate for 2015 at a selection meeting this afternoon. Here’s a brief biography: Vicky grew up in the North West in a single parent household, and was the first person in her family to go to university. She has held many positions in the party including Chair of Labour Students, has sat on the National Policy Forum and is currently a local councillor and is Chair of Lewisham [...]

    Read more →
  • Comment Labour’s future schools policy: why accountability matters

    Labour’s future schools policy: why accountability matters

    By Mike Ion

    Stephen Twigg, Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary is one of the more thoughtful and pragmatic individuals to hold this vitally important brief for some time. To his credit Stephen has been out and about these past two years listening to pupils, teachers, parents and governors and finding out more about the challenges they face on a day-to-day basis. In addition Stephen has been looking closely at some local, regional, national and international programmes that have had a demonstrable impact in raising [...]

    Read more →
  • News Seats and Selections Falkirk selection process suspended by the party

    Falkirk selection process suspended by the party

    The Labour Party have this afternoon suspended the selection process for Falkirk, after concerns were raised about “membership recruitment”. We understand that Ed Miliband was “keen to act swiftly” as the selection process was due to formally begin on Sunday. An officer of the party – yet to be confirmed – will investigate. A Labour spokesperson told us this afternoon: “We have suspended the start of the selection process of the Falkirk parliamentary seat. Concerns have been raised about membership [...]

    Read more →
  • Comment Seats and Selections Unions Working Class MPs – the end of a era?

    Working Class MPs – the end of a era?

    By Paul Wheeler

    It is interesting to see that the Labour Party is returning to the vexed issue of its parliamentary selection process. The changes may be well and good.  But maybe we should be asking a bigger question – are we  witnessing the end of working class representation in Parliament? When the Labour Party was first founded it was more simple. Then the explicit  aim was to secure working class representation, and specifically organised labour, in Parliament. Inevitably it became more complicated [...]

    Read more →