Liberal Democrats leader Nick Clegg’s performance in the first of three televised debates in the UK election has become something of a game changer, leading to a surge for his party, now ahead of the pack in one poll, and nudging the Conservatives for first place in others. The Lib Dems can’t win the election, because of the fact that their support is diffused across the nation’s constituencies, and because of the way the parties have adapted their strategies to the dysfunctions of first past the post.
But the third party’s surge has thrown the Labour and Tory camps, particularly the latter, into confusion, forced to turn their guns on the Lib Dems, rather than taking potshots at each other.
The Lib Dems have been channelling voter rage over bank bailouts and the political expenses scandal, and to their credit, are the only one of the three parties the premise of whose campaign isn’t based on lies about the fiscal challenges ahead in the post-GFC UK.
Britain’s election system delivered the Lib Dems 9.6% of parliamentary seats for their 22% of the vote in 2005. If the Lib Dems come first or second this time around, they’re likely to end up with somewhere around 100 seats, and Labour could be the largest party in the House of Commons despite coming third. In these circumstances, a shift to a fairer voting system would be irresistible, and the Tories, who’ve been sticking doggedly to first past the post, could find themselves staring down the barrel of a future where they would be most unlikely to ever form a majority administration again. It’s also becoming more likely that the next British Prime Minister will be Labour (although it may not be Gordon Brown), despite all the doom and gloom predictions of the last couple of years.
NB: Previous LP discussion of the British general election here.
Elsewhere: Guardian coverage of the election here.
Update: Interesting piece on the view of the Lib Dem surge from the Labour and Tory camps.
Update: New post.
A hundred years out of office (the Liberals’ last outright win was 1910): it’s time!
Arguably 104 years, Andrew, since the Liberals won the two elections in 1910 with support from the then small number of Labour MPs and Irish Nationalist MPs, rather than an outright majority of seats.
DeusExMacintosh’s review of the first debate is here:
http://skepticlawyer.com.au/2010/04/16/the-first-election-debate-review/
I’ll do a write-up on the second debate (this Thursday; we’re taking it in turns) to see whether the Lib Dem surge holds.
I will point out that despite Labour’s waffling about voting reform, they’re as disinclined to do anything about it as the Tories. A massive vote to the LibDems/a hung parliament/a combination of the two would provide the impetus for change. I lot of Brits like Australia’s preferential voting system (which they call ‘alternative vote’). The LibDems want proportional representation (like Germany or Israel), which would be a much larger shift.
I’m starting to suspect that we may well be looking at a Tory/LibDem coalition, which would be very interesting, as the LibDem treasury spokesman (Vince Cable) is coming out of the party’s classical liberal wing. He wants to raise the tax-free threshold to £10,000, for example.
Interesting dynamics.
A strong LibDem showing will net them 80-100 seats but will leave Labour with the majority of seats while coming third. They then have to decide between propping them up in exchange for voting reform or going with the Tories who are markedly less interested in creating a voting system that would relegate them to 25-35% of the seats or taking the country to another election.
That should be ‘A lot of Brits’.
Dyslexics of the World, Untie.
@4 – interesting indeed, Leinad.
On one hand, the ‘party of change’ theme disinclines the Lib Dems from propping up Labour. On the other, the Tories would likely not deliver on electoral reform.
Also worth noting that in many consituencies of a middle class stripe, the effective contest is between Lib Dems and Tories, which would make a relationship in government very thorny in the event that FPP survives as the basis of the electoral system.
The Tories would be forced to go at least as far as preferential voting, even if the LibDems do not get their preferred proportional system. We already have preferential voting (‘alternative vote’) in the London mayoral elections, so it’s not as though it’s unheard of.
I suspect, SL, full PR is a bit of an ambit claim by the Lib Dems.
Interesting to see that a proposal for Lords Reform has been leaked, which shows Labour envisaging PR by regions for the upper house. That might be part of a deal with the Lib Dems too.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/apr/19/house-of-lords-reform
Oh yes, Lords reform is seriously on the cards in the event of a hung parliament. What terrifies Labour in particular is that if we make the Lords democratic, it is then politically legitimized as a ‘house of review’, much like Australia’s Senate.
Britain would never be the same again.
Kim, I think it is more that the Tories have been unconvincing. Brown looked across the detail and Clegg looked new and exciting. The Lib Dems are also much more competent than in the past, Cable is seen as a serious man and Clegg has a reasonable profile as well. Clearly the rise of the Lib Dems is hurting Tories most but there is a long way to go. Cameron has sought in the lasdt couple of days to align a vote for Clegg as a vote for an uncertain coalition where Brown retains Govt, this might work, but for now the Lib Dems have enormous momentum. Much like a US primary winner early in a race ….. difference, there is only a few weeks to go.
And I’ll just add that while I think Cameron would be the better PM, Vince Cable far, far outclasses George Osborne as a potential Chancellor of the Exchequer.
@10 – Corin, yep, it’s obviously pretty fluid, and with a lot of things factoring into the movements in the vote.
SL, I’m interested to hear why you think a Tory/LibDem coalition is on the cards. I realise that Clegg can’t stand Brown, but on balance most LibDem mps as well as the LibDem grass roots would prefer Labor to the Tories. Cameron’s “modernisation” of the tories (which really only goes skin deep anyway) has changed that equation a little, but not completely. Just think, for example, about how wildly different the two parties’ views on EU integration are. Do you really think a euroskeptic party could form a coalition with a europhile party? Brown is probably the biggest impediment to a Labor/LibDem coalition, but if Labor came third in the vote there would be a reasonable chance the party would be prepared to dump in to secure government for the next five years.
The LibDems were badly burnt in Scotland when they formed a coalition with Labour in order to keep the SNP out of power in the Scottish Parliament, despite the fact that the SNP won (by far) the majority of the votes. Their vote in Scotland still hasn’t recovered (which is one reason why they’re so loud about scrapping Trident — it’s an attempt to shore up their flagging Scottish support). In the following election they were eaten alive at the polls, and the SNP finished up governing in its own right (albeit only just).
Apart from the fact that Cable (who is the LibDems most bankable commodity) is to the right of the Tories on tax policy (he is quite libertarian), I strongly suspect that if they did to the nation what they did in Scotland, they know there would be serious problems.
LO, you’re assuming that Labour have no history and are being taken at face value. I still think it’s only media outlets who can’t imagine life without Alistair Campbell and his spawn, and that the rest of the country is heartily sick of them. I liked the description of Brown announcing the election looking like “a cancer-stricken farmer looking to borrow against next year’s crop” and wish we had a press gallery that could write like that.
Look, the chances of Tories agreeing to a coalition are in my view remote and if Brown had to go for Labour to retain power, he would agree to a 12 months transition, though the public would never know.
Here’s the intyeresting bit for me, I’m in the very marginal seat of Battersea, held by Labour by 167 votes, now you’d think they would have given up on a seat like that, but I’ve been rung twice by the Labour campaign about whether I am voting and who for. That indicates to me that a sea-change must have occurred in the last couple of months for Labour to consider themselves such a chance that they’ll pour resources so heavily into what could appear on face value a lost cause. I think in a seat like that with lots of council housing as well as affluence that core votes are holding up pretty well, perhaps even better than tories where the people who voted Blair (but not Labour) in the past are now moving to Lib Dems as much as Cameron.
Btw – Cable was a potential Labour candidate in 1979 except he lost pre-selection to none other than Ken Livingstone. I think it was Camden. At the 79 election Ken lost. How I know this random fact is that I read Ken’s biography. At some point cable must have formed a view that Lib Dem offered him a better chance.
if the lib dems get the balance of power, I suspect the Tories will be toast regardless of their electoral reform strategy. The trogs will eat Cameron and Osborne alive on national tv, then shag their puppies and wheel in Thatcher’s corpse to run the party. There are a lot of nasties who have been willing to stay in their troglodyte caves on the promise that Cameron would win them office. It’s slipping away now and they’re blunting their stone-age axes in anticipation of pulverising the Bullingdon club.
If Cameron doesn’t deliver at least a 1 seat majority, Britain can kiss goodbye to “compassionate” conservatism, “red tories” or any kind of Tory except the unreconstructed ones.
Particularly since Cameron demanded these tv debates, and the strategy has backfired on him spectactularly. In the Guardian yesterday we had an ex-(?) editor of the sun admitting that that newspaper squeezed lib dems out of their coverage because they “didn’t want to encourage them.” Cameron’s too-clever-by-half tv debate idea -ooo, how presidenshul! – beamed Clegg’s warm and human face into 9 million homes. Clegg ain’t the messiah, but he’s engaging and smart and he and Vince are winners when they can talk directly to people. It’s like Rudd’s cunning use of tv.
I think Cameron stuffed that one up big time!
SL – I understand the history in Scotland, but the dynamics of this campaign and the likely distribution of votes is different enough that you can take the analogy too far. Cable may be to the right of the Tories on tax policy, but again, he isn’t the party, and you also have to take into account his views on Europe, the euro and social policy. The majority of lib-dem supporters and activits are well to the left of the Conservatives on most policies, and I simply cannot see their being a stable coalition between the two.
Andrew, in no place did I say that Labor was popular. But it is pretty difficult to argue there is much momentum behind the Tories either. The fact that the LibDems have been able to surge so rapidly and by so much is an indicator of how soft Tory support really is. I expect the Lib-Dem vote to drop back a bit, but I think a Labor/LibDem coalition is more likely than a Tory/LibDem coalition.
And sg is broadly right – if Cameron doesn’t deliver at the election, the Tory modernisation project will fall apart within weeks…
I’m not sure that suggesting Cable is to the right of Labour on tax policy is necessarily accurate, LO, in any case. My understanding is that one of the LibDem pledges is to eliminate tax entirely for those earning under 10k (in GBP). I haven’t looked closely enough to see whether that’s through similar mechanisms that we have in Australia (ie thresholds, low income tax offset, etc) as I got the info from reading an article on their Manifesto which mentioned it.
The Strange Resurrection of Liberal England.
In the Guardian yesterday we had an ex-(?) editor of the sun admitting that that newspaper squeezed lib dems out of their coverage because they “didn’t want to encourage them.”
Nice article too, sg. Fortunately, it is also available from the Guardian website.
I think Cameron stuffed that one up big time!
Yes, he did. But if he hadn’t stuffed up, and kept the debate to Labour versus Conservative, we’d be looking at an almost inevitable Tory victory now, rather than increasingly probable hung parliament. It was his mistake, and his alone – god bless him. Reminds me a little of Lord of the Rings. Gollum might have been one of the bad guys, but there would have been no happy ending without him.
I was purely gloating, Mr. Down and Out. I have few reservations about seeing the Tories knifing each other in public, though it would be better for the UK if the survivors were on the Bullingdon side of the debate.
That article really was a doozy. Now the major newspapers must be quailing at the thought that they will be shown to be wrong, or – worse – unable to control the electorate. Poor buggers…
“Fairness is an essential British value. It is at the centre of how the vast
majority of British people live their lives, but it has been forgotten by those at
the top. Instead, greed and self-interest have held sway over the government
and parts of the economy in recent decades. They have forgotten that growth
must be shared and sustainable if it is to last.”
Kim, that is right. The above is a quote from the LibDem manifesto. The words fair and fairness and redistribution are everywhere throughout that document. Cable was involved in its drafting. If SL meant that Cable is likely to be tougher on constraining government expenditure growth and equates that with being right wing, then, well, sure. But tax policy is about more than the size of the deficit and on distributional aspects of tax policy, the lib-dems are clearly more progressive than the Tories, and that includes Cable.
Agreed, LO.
The feedback I get from my Brit correspondents (family Tories and Labour friends) basically boils down to they’d all vote for any outcome that would deliver Vince Cable as Chancellor of the Exchequer.
I think they are problems for the Lib Dems moving into a coalition with either side, but in my views it is more problematic with Conservatives.
They always wanted to be a coalition with Blair except he didn’t need them.
In my view the way the polls are, if Lib Dems got more votes than Labour but Labour got most seats (i.e. more than Tories), then it could be argued that Lib Dems might have claims on the top job …… naaaaaaaah only in a fictional novel.
Or as a friend on the spot said, Vince is the only one out there who sounds like he actually believes what he’s saying.
@27 – Funny you should say that, Corin:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/20/labour-must-boot-gordon-brown
What’s happened to people’s faith in the shiny Market?
@22 –
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/20/liberal-democrat-breakthrough-electoral-insurgency
And just been rereading Alan Clark’s Diaries on the tram to work – as you do. He still comes across, despite or possibly because of his best efforts, as a titanic prick but yet still a brilliant writer. A glancing mention of a Parli committee meeting attended by two “bright young Labour boys, Blair and Brown”.
That was in 1988. New Labour is now toast. And the Tories, stale crumpets spread with frantically labeled free range jam.
Personally I hope the Official Monster Raving Loony Party candidates finally keep their deposits.
This view is widespread among my Tory friends. Vince is very well respected on all sides.
Given Clegg has received so much energy and such a boost from this first debate, it will be interesting to observe what happens in the next two debates. Presumably both Brown and Cameron are going to reflexively change strategy in order to try and curb the threat presented by Clegg.
Whatever happens, the introduction of the debates has proven to be great news for UK politics.
DeusExMacintosh says Vince Cable has bought her vote… for £10,000.
http://skepticlawyer.com.au/2010/04/21/vince-cable-bought-my-vote/
DEM has spent quite some time navigating the morass that is the British benefits system (she is disabled). People who don’t deal with it on a daily basis are often shocked at how intrusive and systematically unfair it is; this provides a useful corrective.
Isn’t this like a shotgun administered to one’s own goolies? The Tories have come up with their idea of a game changer: a poster with the message Let’s cut benefits to those who refuse work. (This already happens under UK Labour, but never mind.) It’s so weird that the journo involved – Simon Jeffery – had to check with Conservative HQ that it wasn’t a spoof. It wasn’t.
I guess that’s David Cameron’s nice guy image smashed, then.
That poster is surely a disaster! Cameron’s been getting his bully-boys to tread ever so softly-softly for, what, 2 years now, so that they can give the impression of distance from the “nasty party” and now they go and wave their troggy ugly bits in public?!
The only possible explanation I can see for that is focus group research, which is telling them that they’re losing previously bolted-on voters. But who to? Surely this isn’t going to appeal to the voters drifting libdemward? Or are they hoping to steal UKIP voters back?
Update: Interesting piece on the view of the Lib Dem surge from the Labour and Tory camps.
Kim, good piece. I’d suggest it likely though that Labour will now cling on in a coalition. It would seem equally likely that Brown will move-on if labour has a poor showing in national vote. I’d suggest if Lib Dems get 25% or more that a Lib Dem coalition with either side (probably Labour) would represent a good reflection of a majority of those voting. The air crisis has helped Labour I think by making them look in control, deploying the navy. Cameron has looked flat footed attacked friom all sides.
Nice little para in the Indy:
Read this for everything you need to know: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/8633655.stm
Update: New post.
The Conservative Party of Canada recently lost a “non-confidence vote” in the House. They had been leading a reasonably successful minority government for past couple of years but now for god only knows why reasons, we are heading for a third general election in the last two years. I’m fan of minority governments. At least for a while, they force the party in power to get things done. Unfortunately, politics still plays a part as it did this time and now we go the polls again. Chances are we’ll end up with another minority government and no further ahead. But, that’s politics