Working with the Lib Dems – will they ever learn?

By Luke Akehurst / @lukeakehurst

You would have thought after the Lib Dems showed their true colours by creating a reactionary coalition government with the Tories, abandoning all their key pledges and voting for catastrophic cuts to public services, that the entire Labour Party would have woken up to them being our enemies – and the enemies of ordinary working people – not our potential allies.

You would particularly think the Guardian would have been ashamed of its pre-election advocacy of the Lib Dems.

But it seems some of the advocates of dangerous and deluded deals with them pre-election are still harbouring pro-Lib Dem fantasies.

This article is frankly incredible. It opens:

“Cross-party efforts are being made to rebuild a grassroots alliance that could take Labour-Liberal Democrat co-operation out of the deep freeze before the next election.”

“Grassroots members of both parties are reaching out to each other, in the short term driven by the need for pro-constitutional reformers in both parties to work together ahead of the May referendum on the alternative vote due on 6 May.”

If this is true, it is madness.

I support AV but because I see it as a way of killing the Lib Dems, not resuscitating them – because it will mean they can no longer persuade Labour people to vote tactically for them in areas like the South West (there is no need for tactical votes under AV), so the true weakness of the Lib Dem core vote will be exposed.

I will be quite capable of working in a single issue campaign with LDs on the specific issue of AV without giving any quarter to them on the wider political question of their alliance with the Tories.

We are currently in a position according to last night’s YouGov poll where Labour is 5% ahead of the Tories because the Lib Dem vote has gone down by 12% and ours up by 12% whilst the Tories are still on 37%, the score they got in May.

This proves there is a direct correlation between weakening the LDs and strengthening Labour.

The opportunity exists for a fundamental realignment of British politics where all progressive opinion unites behind Labour and the LDs are left as a tiny right-wing rump in permanent alliance with the Tories.

I don’t know any ordinary Labour members who are “reaching out” to the Lib Dems. They must be figments of the Guardian’s imagination.

Apparently soft-left faction Compass’ position is this:

“The influential campaign group Compass is attempting to create a progressive alliance on the left, balloting its supporters on whether it should open its membership lists to members of other political parties including the Liberal Democrats and the Greens, as well as non-aligned.”

Shame on them and the other people quoted in the article. You have shown yourselves to be utterly, and laughably, out of touch with mainstream Labour opinion.

If there are still progressives in the Lib Dems who don’t support the coalition’s pernicious policies we should be encouraging them to defect to Labour or break-away and form a new party. We should avoid anything that gives succour to the Lib Dems as a party or makes them think that after the destruction they have wrought by getting into bed with the Tories that they will be able to casually rehabilitate themselves as a party of the centre-left.

Luke Akehurst is a Hackney councillor and member of Labour’s NEC – he also blogs here.