Demands and Concessions: The perils of a Lib-Lab deal for our government and our party

The Paul Richards column

Many believe a ‘hung parliament’ means the politicians burying their silly little differences, getting round the Cabinet table, and engaging in a kind of political love-in. Woodstock comes to Westminster.

The reality is of course very different. People hate the compromise, horse-trading and skulduggery that even majority government entails. Hung parliaments elevate arm-twisting and bribery into a governing strategy. Even with a small majority after 1992, John Major was held to ransom by a cabal of Euro-sceptics who he described as ‘bastards’ and his allies were compared to mental patients. In the late 1970s, Callaghan was dependent on the votes of Ulster Unionists and Liberals. In the final confidence vote in 1979, he attempted to buy the votes of two Unionist MPs with the pledge to build a multi-million pound fuel pipeline between Ulster and the mainland. The deal faltered because only a pen with green ink could be found to sign the agreement, and the Orangemen refused. Ann Taylor was sent out to find another colour ink.

Imagine a minority Labour government propped up by smaller parties. In our idealistic moments, we might imagine some kind of ‘progressive alliance’. Tony Blair’s thesis, heavily influenced by David Marquand’s The Progressive Dilemma, was that the two progressive parties of the twentieth century – Liberal and Labour – were tragically divided, allowing the Tories to dominate. In the mid-90s Blair often cited Liberals Lloyd George, Keynes and Beveridge to support his case. Paddy Ashdown’s Diaries make it clear that without the Labour landslide, and despite Gordon Brown’s fierce opposition, Blair might have invited the Lib Dems into government.

It would be nice to think that we could forge some kind of deal with the Liberal Democrats, and make the twenty-first century the progressive century.

But this is no longer the stuff of academic discussion. Labour will need a unified negotiating position within a fortnight, starting with some red lines in the sand. The NEC must be fully involved, not just the previous cabinet, because it is not merely a decision about the future of the government; it is about the future of the party.

If you were Nick Clegg, would you really want to throw away your status as living saint by entering a Lib-Lab government with a Labour Party which has just come third in the national vote? We can expect the Lib Dems to come in hard, with some tough demands. They will want Lib Dem members of the cabinet. If I was Clegg I would insist on at least three posts, including Vince Cable as Chancellor of the Exchequer, and a veto for myself over all domestic policy. Cable, after all, won’t be the first former Labour special adviser to become a cabinet minister.

They will insist on a shopping list which may include the electoral reform referendum to include PR systems which go beyond the Alternative Vote (AV), the inclusion of Trident in the strategic defence review, a review of illegal drugs classification, and a replacement for council tax. They will want the government to be called something other than ‘Labour’, to avoid the taint of a party which is widely perceived to have lost.

Clegg has two options in the negotiations: he can either enter the discussion on May 7th with a view to getting a deal. Or he can come to the table with a series of impossibilist demands designed to destroy the Labour Party, and replace it with the Lib Dems as the main rival to the Tories. His hands will be tied by the ‘Southport Convention’ which sets out the process for the Lib Dems to enter a coalition, including approval by the MPs, the federal executive (their version of the NEC) and even a special conference. It could take many days, even weeks, whilst the public watch horrified and the markets go bananas.

Clegg may insist on Gordon Brown’s removal as Prime Minister, knowing the civil war that would be unleashed inside Labour. Inside the much-reduced Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) after May 6th will be Labour tribalists who would no more work with the Lib Dems than the Tories. There will be others who would welcome the chance to vote through liberal legislation on crime, defence and taxation after years of New Labour rectitude. There will be others for whom scrapping Trident is the kind of dangerous leftism they’ve spent their political lives fighting against.

And how should Labour’s leadership respond? Weighing heavily in the mind of our current Scottish Labour Prime Minister is the last Scottish Labour Prime Minister. As a student of Labour history, Brown will know that Ramsay Macdonald’s decision to enter the national government in 1931 earned him a place as Labour’s Traitor-In-Chief, and split the party top to bottom. Up to that point Macdonald was a popular and respected Labour leader, instrumental in the new party’s successful rapid growth. If Gordon Brown led Labour ministers into some kind of national government, and tore up the Labour manifesto, how would the PLP, NEC, union leaders, and local CLPs react? At the very least the absence of a machinery to validate such a move would create internal opposition. There would be not unreasonable demands for a special conference next month. At worst, the party would once again split.

So if outright formal coalition is almost impossible to imagine, without it eviscerating the Labour Party, what about a minority Labour government? Each parliamentary vote would be subject to deal-making and daily coalition-building. It would be as far from the ‘new politics’ as you can get. Minority government means government by Whip: coercion, threats, blackmail and bullying.

It would pass extraordinary power to small groups of Labour MPs. Any Labour MP who could muster a platoon of 20 other MPs to operate en bloc would become an awesome power in the land. A Labour government reliant on a coalition including Ulster Unionists, Plaid Cymru, the SNP and the Campaign Group would have all the stability of an Icelandic volcano. The terrible spectre of terminally-ill Labour MPs being wheeled through parliament on stretchers to vote would once again be with us. It would lead inevitably to another general election in Autumn this year or spring next year.

To those hoping a coalition or minority Labour government will deliver progressive politics I would say, look to the historical precedents, and be careful what you wish for. The opinion polls suggest that is where we’re heading, but it won’t be pretty, and it won’t be progressive. Far better for Labour is to fight to win, and once we have, watch the Tory Party sprawling on the ground, choking in its own blood.