Nick Clegg has presented the Labour Party with an historic opportunity, which our new leader must seize

By Jack Kiffin and Larry Smith

For the first time in living memory it is worth paying attention to the Liberal Democrat conference. As well as learning to cope with the increased press attention and a greater number of lobbyists in attendance, the party is adjusting its long-held positions to the reality of sharing power with the Conservatives. Before proceedings opened earlier this week, Nick Clegg asserted that:

”The Lib Dems never were and aren’t a receptacle for left-wing dissatisfaction with Labour. There is no future for that, there never was.”

While this is, of course, partially an acknowledgement of the new political reality his party faces, it is also symptomatic of what appears to be a radical reorganisation of the political landscape.

As much as the Deputy Prime Minister would like to pretend otherwise, the Liberal Democrats have a long history of appealing to dissatisfied Labour voters. Since the Social Democratic Party formed its electoral pact with the Liberals in 1981, Labour supporters, disillusioned for any number of reasons, moved to and from the Alliance and its successor party. Despite a general preference for “anyone but the Tories” among left-leaning voters and a subsequent increase in tactical voting, the progressive vote became permanently split. In light of Clegg’s statement at the weekend, there is suddenly an opportunity to re-establish the base of support Labour held from 1945 up until the late seventies, the true centre left.

As leadership contender Ed Miliband has rightly noted, nearly 1.5 million people who supported Labour in 1997 have switched to back Clegg’s party over the course of the past thirteen years. This has, over time, had a disastrous impact on our party’s ability to hold constituencies across the South and East of England, areas that will be vital for us to win in order to return to government. In several seats the Conservatives gained in these regions at the last election, a Liberal Democrat vote that had grown during the previous decade held steady to exceed the majority by which the new Tory MP was elected. In Suffolk, Peter Aldous gained Waveney by just 769 votes as his Lib Dem rival Alan Dean polled around 6,800. In Essex, Robert Halfon took Harlow by 4,900 while the party’s candidate took 6,000 votes, and Jackie Doyle-Price snatched victory in Thurrock by a mere 92 despite the Lib Dem’s Carys Davies receiving almost 5,000. While some of these voters will take time to win back, it’s already clear that many who decided to defect to the Lib Dems and then stick with them a second time could be persuaded to return to the fold: a ComRes Poll published earlier this month showed that 22% of people who voted for the party are now prepared to vote Labour, up 15% from findings taken in August. As the impact of spending cuts begins to bite deeper, this figure could rise even more dramatically.

If Labour chooses not to take this opportunity, it risks not only failing to pick up the support it needs to win back power but once again losing what should be a key part of its vote to another party masquerading as a plausible alternative for centre-left voters. Over the past decade the Greens have been quietly making inroads in areas where they have deliberately chosen to fight against us. Caroline Lucas gained Brighton Pavilion with an increased vote share of 9.4% as Labour’s Nancy Platts saw her party fall back by 7.5%. Charles Clarke lost his seat of Norwich South to Liberal Democrat Simon Wright as the Green’s Adrian Ramsey more than doubled his vote at our expense, and Labour slumped into third place as Tony Juniper polled nearly 4,000 votes and saved his deposit in Cambridge. With a growing campaign operation and the immense publicity that ensued from their leader’s election to parliament, the party has clearly stated its intention to move onto this territory should Labour fail to reclaim it. Lucas told the party’s conference earlier this month that “many Labour supporters know that their party will never again truly represent them, for all those who still believe it’s important to defend the vulnerable, to stand up to big business and vested interests” and that the Green Party was their “natural home.”

In the fifteen years before Tony Blair and Gordon Brown assumed the leadership of the party, we publicly struggled to move away from the left and establish ourselves at the centre of British politics. New Labour was a subtle and successful response to changing political realities. It saved us from the wilderness, bringing us three general election victories and the list of achievements with which all party activists are familiar. However New Labour was successful because it reflected political reality, not because its ideology was immutably popular. We must not allow a tactical position to become an ideological one. As the political landscape shifts, so too must Labour.