“The Lib Dems lied… the SNP want to break up the UK” – Labour First hit back at rumours of progressive alliance

This is the full statement published by Labour First today over reports that former Labour MPs are backing plans for a “progressive alliance” with rival parties in an attempt to oust the Tories at a general election.

Labour First strongly disagrees with the assertion in this week’s New Statesman by former Labour ministers that an electoral pact between Labour and the Lib Dems, SNP and Greens is either necessary or desirable.

The Lib Dems chose to be tied at the hip with a regressive Tory government. There is nothing “progressive” about a party which enthusiastically supported the bedroom tax. They lied to the electorate in 2010 on tuition fees and there is nothing to stop them doing so again. Our former ministers should know better than to buy into Lib Dem spin and to support something which could be rightly seen by vast sections of the population as a stitch-up.

Implicit in the “progressive alliance” argument is the idea that Labour will not ever be able to form a majority government on its own, which was regularly espoused throughout the wilderness years of the 1980s and early 1990s, but which was comprehensively demolished by our overwhelming victory in 1997.

The priority should be making the Labour Party electable, rather than theorising about pacts with parties which chose the Tories over Labour in 2010 or whose sole reason for existing is a desire to break up the UK.