Why the Liberal Democrats were Always Going to Sell Out, and Why it’s not their Fault
The Liberal Democrats were always going to sell someone out. It’s not really a surprise that it was students. Explaining why the Liberal Democrats may seem like a good party to vote for has long been tricky for anyone involved in another party. Using the privilege of perpetual opposition at Westminster, Liberal Democrats were able to create a policy platform with a very wide appeal.
Not content with being the natural party of small farmers in the Scottish Highlands (who’ve always voted Liberal), Liberal Democrats created policies to court huge swathes of society. The aim was to build up ‘vote banks’. These vote banks would then yield the votes that could turn the Liberal Democrats into a party of government – albeit as a minor partner.
And vote banking turned out to be very successful. From winning only 11 (Liberal) seats in 1979 on 13.8% of the vote, Liberal Democrats took 62 seats in the 2005 election on 22%. This was based on vote banking and ‘community politics’ – dealing with small issues that were important to local people, such as potholes or dog mess. By bringing together various groups of voters Liberal Democrats were able to win constituencies.
Community Politics: Liberal Democrat Alan Dean pointing to a pavement, thanks to Glum Councillors blog
The techniques used to build vote banks included the “penny on income tax for education” to appeal to parents and teachers. Opposition to the Iraq War appealed to British Muslims and anti-militarists. The commitment to abolish tuition fees appealed to students. And a local income tax was proposed to replace Council Tax, freeing pensioners from local taxation and creating another vote bank. These allowed Liberal Democrats to build winning coalitions in a wide range of constituencies.
The process of vote banking took place at a time when ideology was on the wane. This allowed Liberal Democrats to assemble a coalition that was, in many areas, free from ideology. What ensued was a range of campaigns and policy positions designed to take advantage of political opportunities.
While these policies were undoubtedly sincerely held by sections of the party, for others they were designed to ensure electability. And the policies were bundled together with an explicit message that Liberal Democrats weren’t like other politicians, they were honest and trustworthy. They didn’t break promises. So far so good.
But there was a huge problem with this. For the Liberal Democrats to win in seats like Richmond Park in wealthy West London, or leafy Edinburgh West they needed to appeal to different groups of voters to those that elected them in student-filled Manchester Withington or Bohemian Hornsey and Wood Green in London. And that’s before you consider the rural seats Liberal Democrats hold. This worked while Liberal Democrats were in opposition, but it was guaranteed to come crashing down once they entered government at a time when money was tight.
Of course the Liberal Democrats made things substantially worse for themselves by joining a Conservative-led coalition hell bent on making massive ideological cuts. They then exacerbated an already bad decision by going along with (and sometimes even championing) those cuts. This made the difficult task of retaining credibility in government almost impossible.
Once it became clear that when Nick Clegg said “Say Goodbye to broken promises,” what he meant was “I’ll break promises as is necessary to cosy up to the Tories.” Liberal Democrats claimed to be different to ordinary politicians; they claimed they wouldn’t go back on their word. They then spectacularly went back on their word on one of their most distinctive policies. This meant their climb-down went beyond the policy at hand – it became an issue of trust. The Liberal Democrats showed not only that they didn’t care about students, but that they couldn’t be trusted to keep their promises.
Government is, of course, very different to opposition. It’s very difficult to please everyone while in government. You have to make decisions that demonstrate your priorities. And when there’s not much money that sometimes means you can’t deliver for one of your vote banks. Students were always the most likely to bear the brunt of this. A low electoral registration and turnout rate and the widespread perception that young people were apathetic meant if one vote bank had to go, it was always going to be students.
But the Liberal Democrats can’t be held to blame for this. To win lots of seats in an un-proportional system any third party will have to create these vote banks. For the Liberal Democrats to win outside their heartlands in rural Scotland and Wales they needed to build a broader coalition. That coalition was always going to include some groups that couldn’t hold together through a period in government.
And this is significant beyond the Liberal Democrats. It shows that the temptation to be opportunistic, to stay in the centre and to vote bank cannot carry a party successfully through government. This is particularly true when that party is a small party. But even the Democrats in the United States have found that building a centrist coalition is very difficult as President Clinton would certainly have attested to. Much better to have build a stronger base in social movements. They needed to change the political culture, rather than pandering to different and mutually exclusive vote banks.
While it seems like the Liberal Democrats are likely to follow their Australian sister party out of parliament, the temptation to replicate their approach to politics should be avoided. Many Greens will be keen to win the votes of disaffected Liberal Democrats. But mimicking Liberal Democrat techniques will only lead to the same electoral suicide as the Liberal Democrats are about to suffer.
It’s right that Greens should appeal to some of those Liberal Democrat voters. The way to do that is to take firm positions on issues. It’s to make clear what we stand for, and to make sure we don’t end up in a position where we’ve over-promised in an attempt to be popular. Tricking the electorate by saying that you’re in favour of things that you’ll abandon once in power is a dead end strategy. Similarly centrist opportunism will result in wipe out, sooner or later. To borrow a phrase, those who keep to the middle of the road get run over.
Greens must build a movement, we must change the political culture. And most of all we must avoid falling into the trap of populist issue-following. It isn’t working for the Liberal Democrats and it won’t work for Greens.
At the heart of that must be offering leadership to the student vote. There are thousands of student votes there for the taking, and our approach must be to prioritise the Green principle of free education. And we must never waver from that stance, or the fate of the Liberal Democrats awaits.
“unsubscribe from feed”
– click –
This is a response to the points made by Kev, Ian and Chris above.
I’m quite clear that the choice here was not about whether to sell-out, it was about who to sell out.
My argument is that it is the sort of centrism that Lib Dems profited from that is the problem. To some extent Chris is right to say they shouldn’t have gone into government, but should have made an arrangement short of government. But the point of a political party must, in the end, be to get into power. There was no way the Lib Dems could make their policy platform stack up in government.
And that’s the point. They chose not to offer leadership on issues. Instead they, as Bob points out, chose to face in different directions in different places. The strategy of segmenting the electorate and making pledges to each segment *inevitably results* in this sort of sell out.
And that’s what’s important for Greens. We’ve got to put a coalition together – and we’ve got to lead it. Not just make promises, but actually create a movement. This should link the damaging impact of corporate capitalism on people and the environment, and should reject the obsession with the profit motive. Free education will be integral to that.
So, while it’s satisfying for us to believe the Lib Dems sold out because we might think they’re worse people than us, if we follow their strategy, we’ll follow their sell out.
Peter
Chris, I think the lib-dems selling someone out was, as Peter argues, inevitable. You are right to say that the policies that have been abandoned were popular, but the problem was that different polices were popular in different areas.
Take for example Lib-dem economic policy – found here – http://www.libdems.org.uk/economy.aspx
“We want to offer real help to the millions of families trying to make ends meet, so we will get wasteful government spending under control and give the economy a boost by cutting taxes for people from the bottom up. We will also crack down on big business and the super rich who exploit tax loopholes and do not pay their fair share.”
Both these statements may form part of a coherent policy, but in practice the message of the second sentence – lib-dems will crack down on tax evasion and avoidance – would get emphasised by the lib-dems in places like the Edinburgh muesli belt. This is not just because this message would be more effective at winning votes from labour or the SNP ,but because it is probably what the local activists are more comfortable with. However, in the south east of England, where the lib-dems are competing with the Tories, it would probably be the first half that gets more mention – lib-dems will cut taxes and government waste. If your dislike of the Tories is not based on differences in economic policy, but because you dislike their social conservatism and Europhobia, then this is the bit of the policy that you would feel most comfortable explaining on the doorsteps.
However, given that the only way lib dems were going to have any chance of implementing any of their economic policy would be via coalition with either the Labour party or the Tories they were always going to have to choose one bit over the other.
If they are in coalition with Labour they can drive forward on tax loopholes, but are unlikely to be able to do much in the way of tax cutting. In with the Tories, as we have seen, you get government spending “brought under control”, but little to tackle non-doms. Indeed you even get Philip Green advising a lib dem minister on what to cut!
And there are not just two vote banks for the Lib-dems to deal with, as Peter says. The lib-dems have previously successfully juggled the concerns of small farmers in Scotland, Wales and (as Tom points out) South West England, students and small ‘g’ greens in some parts of cities (like south Edinburgh or NE Leeds) as well as the suburban middle class in other parts of cities (like west Edinburgh or Sutton in London) and so on. However, when you get into power you have to let some of the balls drop.
But the lesson from this for Greens shouldn’t be to only articulate polices that appeal to our existing vote base. We have to reach out to new voters – but not by making our polices so incompatible that were we to have any power we would end up having let one of those groups down badly.
Interesting article but I don’t buy into the idea that a sell out was inevitable.
If the policies were popular enough to get them elected it stands to reason that dropping them would be contentious.
If they played well in the media to begin with then a U-turn is a scandal too good to resist.
I would also argue that issues like tuition fees, PR, immigration, policing, welfare cuts, closing tax loopholes, etc – policies that have been abandoned – move beyond the votes of special interest groups and seriously impact upon families up and down the country.
As you mention, their reputation for honestly can no longer be sustained. It is obvious that they stand for both everything and nothing. The same as every other party that chases the centre-ground. That loss of trust is by far the biggest casualty in all of this. There is no way back from that.
The sell-out was far from inevitable. If these were policies strong enough for them to win seats, then it stands to reason passions will run high enough to lose seats now they’ve abandoned them. Whether they believed in the policies or not, they should have been switched-on enough to see that it was in their long-term interests to see them through.
The sell-out was a choice. A very bad choice. A smart Lib Dem leadership would have worked on a policy-by-policy basis with the Tories, not form a coalition.
The whole situation has done them nothing but damage, and for what? 5 years in government (if they’re lucky). Would have been much more sensible to stick to their guns (even if they actually couldn’t care less).
As a current (though only just!) LibDem I can confirm that I doubt the majority of the party I know would seek to join the Tories – it really was through gritted teeth that the coalition was formed. If the party splits, and I think it’s a possibility but not as much of one as some might suggest (too much was invested in bringing it together to just let it break up), then the majority will likely become independent, or re-join the Labour Party. Some will certainly go Green, a small number might go Tory, and there will be some who might wish to keep going as the LibDems (they would probably wish to be the Liberal Party, but since that party still exists they wouldn’t be able to!)
Peter,
Thanks for this. I, of course, would disagree with at least some of it (whether language or substantive point), but I have never seen the “they promise different things in different places” argument articulated so well, and it should make those of us who feel ideologically LibDem stop and think about what we should have done, and how we can re-develop from here.
One thing I will raise though (some of my disagreements may, of course, be symptoms of our current situation so I won’t go into all of them) – I understand the argument over centrism and using that as a way of ensuring blocks of votes, but we did have some policies that weren’t centrist, or at least weren’t opportunist – being pro-immigration, indeed, arguing for an amnesty on illegal immigrants, was hardly a populist policy (but it was, nonetheless, the right one), and it seems to me arguing for a tax increase was hardly populist either – although it was one of the issues that attracted me to the party and I almost quit when we dropped it! (Oh, plus we have a heartland outside of Scotland and Wales as well – it’s called the South West of England.)
As regards the final paragraph – be careful on your wording. You spend the piece arguing against using block vote tactics and then seem to argue for exactly that in your final paragraph. The “student vote” is not a single block – here in Cambridge we have active Con, Lab and LD student groups, and Greens too I’m sure. Be clear on what your priorities and policies are and if they speak to people they’ll support you and possibly even vote for you (especially north of the border where you have at least some form of PR).
Hmm, not sure this comment follows a consistent argument, but anyway, I hope the points make sense on their own.
Like the cartoon by the way!
Mike,
I agree with you fully. Here’s to some top quality baking…
Ian, thanks, you’re right here. The pledge and the ‘no more broken promises’ were both manifestations of the desperate campaigning Lib Dems got into rather than providing leadership.
I think there might be 3 or 4 splinters from the Lib Dems, including one that goes (back?) to Labour including Charles Kennedy.
Rupert, thanks – looking forward to that piece!
Peter
Great piece. And, as an ex-LD, I thoroughly agree.
BGS will be putting up a piece I’ve just penned, later this week about how Greens can maximally exploit this situation (Advt.).
… oppose an increase in tuition fees. When a party goes into coalition some of its manifesto promises have to go, but a personal pledge is a personal pledge. The Lib Dems have been found out at last for thie duplicitous practices. My guess is they won’t recover and what’s left will merge with the Tories in England.
Going back on manifesto promises and being seen as a party to desert students is not the issue. It’s the fact that all Lib Dem candidates personally signed a pledge to opp
Btw I totally agree with you that ‘Greens must build a movement, we must change the political culture. And most of all we must avoid falling into the trap of populist issue-following.’
The political damage the LibDems complicity and duplicity has caused is immense. I cant imagine the next time there’s a low turn out among young people any Liberal politician having the guts to stand up and complain.
Of course Liberalism itself is an ideology but its one that seeks to pretend that there is no such thing as real power and vested interests in society. Society can be changed by ameliorative actions and by fine tuning, say, electoral process, which is in fact just a different icing on the same cake.
What we want is the cake itself and control over the bakery…
Hi Mike,
Yes, good point. I meant unifying ideology. The issues were all in themselves ideological, but there was nothing that created a platform on which issues were chosen. Except perhaps electoralism…
Peter
Interesting piece Peter, thanks.
I largely agree with you – though I would say that there is no such this as being ‘free from ideology’