I argue urgently that we Lib Dems should not enter into any formal pact with anyone, but should remain in opposition to a minority Conservative and Unionist government.
I won’t pretend that last night was not horribly disappointing, as First Past The Post radically distorted our representation as usual. I went through this disappointment before, in February 1974 , in the election that first brought me in to political activity. Then, there was an even greater buzz about Jeremy Thorpe than there has been about Nick Clegg – and Thorpe was a spectacularly charismatic figure.
Third party politics really had seemed utterly dead in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Thorpe had inherited a parliamentary party that really could squeeze into a taxi, and Thorpe’s style, underpinned by Jo Grimond’s genuine radicalism, was an achievement more stunning than anything the Liberals or Lib Dems have managed since. It seemed to represent a re-ordering of the political system to accommodate the radical social changes of the 1960’s (and remember it was Liberal MP David Steel’s private member’s bill which liberalised abortion).
When Thorpe’s Liberal Party’s opinion polls rating during the first 1974 campaign hit the 23% level the Lib Dems gained yesterday, that was a quadrupling of support. When the actual percentage share at the ballot was 19.3% it was a huge letdown – and incredibly, 19.3% gave the Liberals just 14 seats – probably the most infamous result FTPT has ever delivered. 19.3% of the vote for 2.3% of the seats!!
That election morning was worse than this one. I had, age 15, worked almost every single non-school hour for 4 months leading up to the election, and had not slept for 96 hours, being out delivering leaflets. I shall never forget the burning sense of injustice.
The second election in October 1974 led to the Lib-Lab pact, which actually was highly succesful for three years in rescuing a near Greek economic situation. But the Liberals got no credit for it. The “Winter of Discontent” actually occurred after the Liberals withdrew from the Lib-Lab pact, but nonetheless the Liberals were swept backwards by Thatcherism in 1979.
That could easily repeat now. A Lib-Lab pact to claw back the dire economic situation would almost certainly be followed in time by a massive Tory backlash for keeping New Lab in power and losses of Lib Dems seats.
On the other hand, we have the scenario I blogged as tempting before yesterday’s vote:
a Cameron administration, with a tiny majority, propped up by some Northern Irish bigots, would inflict such pain on the majority of our society that, before falling after a few years, they would put the Tories out for a generation at least.
In so doing, they would greatly enhance the cause of Scottish and Welsh independence, and with the Lib Dems the second most popular party and the challenger in the large majority of Tory seats, the Tory demise would sweep in a radical change in more promising circumstances.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2010/05/crisis_is_a_gre.html#comments
I rejected this scenario in favour of a good Lib Dem performance yesterday – but given the actual result, I believe the above is the best scenario we have. Let the Tories run a minority administration with unpleasant allies, restraining their excesses. In the next general election the Lib Dems will poised nationally to pick up a huge bonanza of Tory seats. Cameron will meantime be in the minority government position that killed Callaghan and Major electorally. But he will also face the problem that the electorate always punish anyone who inflicts an unnecessary election on them.
So play it long and cool. Resist the tempations of instant power and ministerial limousines, and especially resist blandishments of referenda on electoral reform in which the entire Murdoch and Tory media empires will again be deployed against us to devastating effect.
Craig said:-
“I argue urgently that we Lib Dems should not enter into any formal pact with anyone, but should remain in opposition to a minority Conservative and Unionist government.”
I wager that the Libs will soon be in bed with the Tories. Politics makes strange bedfellows.
It would be worth propping up Labour to get PR. You never know if we’ll get another chance at it; for all we know it’s downhill from here back into the world of red vs blue.
P.S. – You’re mentioned with praise in Ahmed Rashid’s Descent into Chaos; I was listening to the audiobook when leafleting the other day.
Given the millions of seemingly hypocephalic people wandering the country somehow miraculously having the coordination to put an X in Labours box at an election, Im all for passing a test as a requirement for being eligible to vote.
The fewer tabloid worshipping morons involved in such a wide reaching decision that impacts so many lives the better.
We would be alot better off without those proddie bigots thats for sure!
Paul and Revicurse,
yes, let’s test them on their ability to use the apostrophe.
Clark,
But I knw quite a few of them. Thatcher, Howe, Rifkind, Garel-Jones, Mellor, Gale, Parkinson, Chalker, Clarke to name some. That was not their motive. What the Tories really are and want is quite objectionable enough, without your having to morph them into fascists. This ultra left mythologising is hopeless.
I don’t believe that any significant proportion of Conservatives want to abolish democracy. However, I wouldn’t dismiss the deleted evidence of Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta, which is of course open to interpretation as are the reasons for its deletion, even though it is still available. We don’t however want to discuss that.
What we should be discussing is how to use the current position to radically improve democracy in this country, assuming that we actually think democracy is a potentially good system of government.
Currently Page 3 of the Sun has undue overwhelming influence. Those who control the media, control what people think.
I agree with Craig, that the Lib Dems would be doing themselves a massive long term favour to remain in opposition.
Tony
I predict that the Lib Dems will do a deal with the Tories. As soon as the results were announced, Nick Clegg hinted pretty broadly that he was open to negotiations, and an hour or so ago Cameron made a speech inviting him to negotiations. They both want it.
Such a coalition would have a chance of survival beyond a year. I suspect that any minority coalition government that the Tories formed with the DUP etc wouldn’t survive longer than a few months, and we’d be into another general election before the end of the year. If I were Cameron, I wouldn’t waste time, if I couldn’t forge a stable alliance with the Lib Dems.
Clark,
I run and own a manufacturing company, Thatcher is the kind of person you love or hate, very few people say ” oh well she was ok i suppose” Did manufacturing suffer under thatcher… yes… and no. The old hugely inefficient union dominated industries died a long overdue death, we where left with the best manufacturing companies. Many new manufacturing companies came from the destruction of the old industries, new aggressive and highly efficient. Sadly there was very little support for these industries during Thatcher, and we lived or died by our own hand. No government since has done a damn thing to help manufacturing in this country. If you are a service industry its all there for you, but manufacturing is getting very very hard now. The amount of legislation we have to comply to is crippling. Slightly off topic I agree.
This labour government inherited an economy that was is ok shape, and they have stolen its life blood to pay for their own communist agenda ( note i say communist not socialist) Your pension is worthless, your taxes are too high, your freedoms are GONE. I will never forgive the labour party for the last 10 years.
Today I asked around my office who voted what and why..I have young staff, some of which voted for the first time yesterday, the frightening fact that non of them understood anything about the partys was bad enough, but when asked why they voted for who they did the answer was unanimous… because my parents did !
Has British politics become like supporting a football team now ? You support someone because thats who your dad supports ? Scary but it would seem that way.
I really want to see a LibDem/Conservative government, at its best it could be a truely wonderful thing for this country, admitedly at it worst it could be a total disaster !
I’m with you Mr Barnett.
Depends what Nick and Dave are told to do, erm, sorry “advised” to do.
Trouble is that lots of ‘nulabor” would probably change sides for a fiver.
david at May 7, 2010 4:17 PM
I think you will find the SNP has helped manufacturing businesses in Scotland.
However, it is small beer and I agree with you overall.
Craig, apparently Jeremy Thorpe wanted to be Home Secretary but the Cabinet secretary advised that there were certain matters in his private life that would be rather tricky.
I think this is a good result for Labour. The hyped-up Tory victory has not happened. The Libs have done disastrously badly. The poll shows that electoral reform is essential. The Tories have to try to form a government and the Libs will either have to jump into bed with them, and confirm their whore-like tendencies, or there will have to be another election very soon. Meanwhile Labour can mount a competent opposition and not be held responsible for the massive cuts that the new government will have to make. A year from now the Labour years will seem like a golden age. Mind you, I would very much like to see Vince Cable as chancellor.
david,
Thatcher virtually shut down Manufacturing in the North of England. The company I was working for wasn’t some old lame duck. We were state of the art and 10 years ahead of the US competition.
But the Thatcher/Reagan/Friedman neo-liberal Globalisation policies have been completely devastating to the entire World economy and massively reduced the real living standards of most families in the UK and US, whilst turning much of the Third World into a heavily polluted slave labour camp.
When I was a kid, society was such that a typical Mother could afford to stay at home and bring up the Children, just on the Father’s income. One of the main reasons why society is collapsing is due to the outsourcing of Parenthood, enforced by the economic realities of avoiding abject poverty.
I however congratulate you and your manufacturing company on its survival.
Tony
“I would very much like to see Vince Cable as chancellor”.
I don’t think I’ve ever said this before, but: I agree with you eddie.
Thank you, Craig, for your idea of putting the UK through 4 or 5 years of Tory torment solely in order to advance your LibDem party’s prospects.
And that’s ‘long and cool’ in your eyes. You’re steadily losing touch.
eddie and MJ, me too.
Would call me Dave ditch George though?
It’s hardly ‘ultra-left mythologising’ to speculate that some Conservatives would not have cared two hoots if poor people were forced off the electoral roll by the poll tax. It was a consequence which might easily have been anticipated, in fact.
When Lord Hailsham refers to FPTP as an ‘elective dictatorship’, is he ‘ultra-left mythologising’?
The more I see of politics, the more I find politicians’ attitudes to their electorate cold-blooded, self-serving, cynical and entirely disgraceful. There are some notable exceptions, but they seem increasingly rare.
Craig,
I do not think of Tories in general as facists, though you yourself have pointed out some of their unpleasant alliances in Eastern Europe. I just think that some of them must have realised the effect the Community Charge would have upon voter registration, and were insufficiently concerned about that.
David,
yeah, elections do seem to be treated as a rather naff spectator sport. I just think that the Tory reputation for being good for the economy is misleading. The economy does what it does – that’s the problem; neither Tottenhan nor Arsenal do enough to control it. But given globalisation, maybe that would require international co-operation?
Down at the harbour this morning, among the fishing boats and yachts, I had a difficult time explaining the UK election to the people in the bar/cafe, what did it all mean?
What did it all mean? Too close to tell, I suppose. Whilst I come from a similar background to Cameron, and nowdays people think I’m even posher because of my accent and appearance, I simply can’t stand the hypocracy and dishonesty of the ruling class. Their extraordinary short-sightedness, economic irresponsibility, the unsustainable nature of our plundering of the earth’s resources, the colossal waste that’s part of our consumer society, the ghastly genocide inflicted on the species we share this planet with…
Foreigners just can’t seem to see how the UK is a democracy when Labour and the Liberals can get almost the same percentage of the vote, yet Labour gets five times as many seats. This system seems wildly unfair and anti-democratic to most people I talk to.
I have difficulty explaining its advantages and the positive aspects, though I do try to spin it as well as I can, as an exercise.
Whilst I like the ideas behind democracy and the principles involved, I find myself becoming increasingly sceptical about how modern “democracy” functions in practice. Whilst democracy might have worked in ancient Athens, a city-state where only about 20% of the population actually were allowed to vote; I’m not sure about democracy of a vast, mass scale.
I think, in a nutshell, that the level of democracy in a society is proportional and related to the level of economic equality and social justice in society. This includes a high degree of educational equaltiy as well.
This connection between democracy and equality was well-understood, which is why there was so much opposition to democracy from people like us, and why we saw democracy as a direct threat to our entrenched positions and power. However, today this realisation seems to have been deliberately swept under the carpet.
My brother, for example, who is a powerful person, part of what’s called the “Market” gets to “vote” almost everyday on government policy, unlike most people. Strangely he doesn’t vote in elections, because he doesn’t think that would be fair. This attitude is somewhat ironic.
To be honest, I don’t really see that the three major parties are that different from each other. To me they seem like three factions of the same basic party. Progressive conservatives against reactionary conservatives. But maybe I’m missing something important here?
“But maybe I’m missing something important here?”
Nope, you’re right on the money writerman.
This election has been like three kids on the back seat of a car squabbling about which one has the right to have the toy steering wheel.
Eddie?
Is that really you, advocating electoral reform? After the way you replied to me when I advocated the same?
MJ,
The problem is the kids can cause the car to crash by distracting the driver.
Any idea who he is and where he is trying to take us to?
Tony
writerman, dead right.
The “markets” as you call them literally don’t care. They back all sides and all outcomes. They have done this since we bankrupted ourselves defeating Napoleon. Don’t forget Dubya’s grandpa funded the Nazi’s (see Union Banking Corporation) until the Feds froze their assets in 1942 – some special relationship ’39-42, eh.
Anyhow, the Lib-Dems find themselves in a fortuitously strong position and need to grab the chance they have with the Tories. To side with Nu-Lab would undermine their position on Iraq and lose all semblance of public trust.
If they can secure electoral reform with Cameroon they should grab it now.
And, doubtless, will reap some benefit in the not too far distant next election.
Britian, the “Mother of Parliaments” is supposed to have just discovered that the way they do their elections is all wrong and that they should adopt some new-fangled European system of proportional representation to ensure a perpetually hung parliament in which every decision is a compromise and no election results in any but a handful of the rascals being thrown out.
It would also insure the election of odious carpet-bagging fools like Nick Griffin of the British National Party, a self-described Welsh nationalist, who under a system of proportional representation was elected to the European Assembly with a mere 6% of the vote in his North West England constituency.
Under present circumstances, the best solution would be a Liberal-Conservative merger under the name Democratic-Conservatives, which would end for a generation all further consideration of proportional representation.
The Liberals would get the Foreign Office and a couple of important domestic portfolios, e.g., the Home Office and Health, where they could direct their reformist zeal on worthy projects, while the Tories get on with the business of restoring control of the countries borders, cutting the bloated bureaucracy and transferring resources to the productive sectors of the economy.
Technicolour,
thanks. I was starting to wonder if I was a nutjob!
Don’t worry, it’s just the election. Normality will be restored just as soon as we are sure what is normal anyway.
Posted by: tony_opmoc at May 7, 2010 5:14 PM
Lol. I think the driver is called Maurice but David tells him where to go 😉
writerman,
I make no moral judgements, but I have met some of your brother’s underlings and to my great surprise I was distinctly unimpressed, and I am being kind.
But doesn’t he get bored with playing God?
I too didn’t vote, for the first time in my life, but probably for different reasons to your brother.
Tony
Tony: I think the driver is called Nathaniel and he’s heading for North West Ontario (I think that’s what it stands for).