What do the Telegraph revelations mean for the Lib Dems’ future?

By Ben Fox

Labour activists have been given an early Christmas present by that most unlikely of sources – The Daily Telegraph. The Telegraph is using a similar technique to the one it used during the MPs’ expenses scandal, a drip-drip of stories, all relatively minor, but painting a wider picture that Lib Dem ministers in the Conservative-led coalition are unhappy at being used as props to push through unpopular and regressive policies. They are portraying a government that is already on the rocks, with senior cabinet ministers threatening to resign. So, what game is the Telegraph playing and what does it mean for the Tory/Lib Dem ‘shotgun marriage’?

It is logical that the Telegraph group does not want Rupert Murdoch to succeed in his BskyB buy-out. The Telegraph group is already losing to Murdoch’s News International in the circulation war and justifiably doesn’t want it expand and dominate the broadcast as well as the print media. They are right to think this. It would also be a travesty to those who want a free and relatively unbiased press for it to be effectively monopolised by one man.

Secondly, the Telegraph is the one right-wing paper that has been consistently hostile to the Con/Dem coalition. It hates the idea that Lib Dems might be watering down ‘true blue’ Tory statecraft and it has always been suspicious that Cameron is a soft ‘one nation’ Tory rather than a Thatcher or a Tebbit. It could be that the Telegraph hopes to break up the coalition and force Cameron to go to the country to win an outright Tory majority.

But my feeling is that the main achievement of the Telegraph’s revelations will be to push the Lib Dems towards confronting a profound question – what is their future in British politics? All of the Telegraph stories have shown Lib Dem ministers as being very uncomfortable with the right-wing direction taken by a government which is at odds with the centre-left image that most Lib Dems activists have of their party. Do they want to re-assert their identity as a party that is more than mere fall-guys for a Conservative government, perhaps by ousting Nick Clegg and leaving the government? Are they so happy in coalition that they will abandon the idea of working with other parties and enter into an electoral pact with the Conservatives in order to save their seats and prolong the government? Or will they do what Liberal parties have tended to do quite frequently and either split or collapse as a party?

At between 8-10% in the polls, with the first major round of public sector redundancies to come in the come weeks and months, the Lib Dems must know that they will be dealt a savage beating in the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly and local government elections. Cameron already seems to have begun a ‘save Nick’ campaign, almost endorsing the Lib Dem candidate in the Oldham and Saddleworth by-election and floating the idea that if things stay bad for the Lib Dems, Clegg will be appointed Britain’s next EU Commissioner in 2014. Consequently, a pact with the Conservatives has some superficial attraction. After all, most of the first 30 Labour MPs elected in 1906 were helped by a pact between Liberal Chief Whip Herbert Gladstone and Labour’s Ramsay MacDonald which meant that both parties stood aside in some seats to allow a straight fight against the Tories. At the time, it was supremely successful. The Liberals won a landslide and Labour its first MPs, even though their presence sowed the seeds of the Liberal Party’s destruction. But times were different then. Labour didn’t have the money to stand candidates in even 100 constituencies; the Lib Dems put candidates up for election everywhere.

Moreover, a Tory/Lib Dem pact would not necessarily work. Most Lib Dem activists consider themselves to be centre-left. Why would they vote for another Tory dominated government? The removal of Nick Clegg, unthinkable in April when ‘I agree with Nick’ became one of the most memorable slogans of the general election campaign, is now not so unrealistic. If hundreds of Lib Dem councillors, MSPs and AMs are lost in May, as the polls indicate, the clamour amongst activists for him to go will increase. Clegg has gone from being, along with Vince Cable, Britain’s most popular politician to its most unpopular. It’s unlikely that his credibility will ever recover from the breaking the tuition fee pledge.

The other option is that the Lib Dems do what they did in the 1980s or the 1920s and 30s and split or collapse. They could split between the ‘orange book’ Liberals who are essentially Tories wearing a yellow rosette and the SDP-style Lib Dems who pander to the liberal left. Alternatively, they could just completely implode and be submerged by the two main parties. Whichever route they choose, the Lib Dems are stuck between a rock and a hard place. They have learnt that choosing to be in government means you have to make decisions that make you unpopular (especially if you take cabinet seats in the most economically and socially regressive government since Mrs Thatcher). They have a huge disconnect between predominantly centre-left activists and a centre-right leadership.

Election results will dictate their fate and whether Nick Clegg will go down in history as the saviour of the Liberal Democrats or the architect of their destruction.