Indeed. One-sixth of their GE vote defected to Labour almost within days of the formation of the coalition, although that has remained pretty static since.

Presumably both you and your father (nine years ago) didn’t regard the Greens and UKIP (respectively) as “business” parties – both have now had (just) enough electoral success for them to claim that they are without looking wholly ridiculous.

If the Greens can’t replace the LibDems in the “university” seats (Oxford, Cambridge, North London, possibly Bristol) to go with their efforts in Brighton and Norwich I’ll be much surprised.

Beyond that much depends on how the coalition parties decide to play the next election. Although I don’t expect a formal pact (the activists wouldn’t stand for it in either party) I do foresee up to two or three dozen “pairings” where one of the co-alition partners has, say, over five times the vote of the other in each pair of seats. (Someone else can draw up a list of likely suspects…)

The point of this would be to provide legitimacy for a second-term Tory-LD coalition in the event that Labour is the biggest party in the next Parliament – otherwise Clegg (or more probably his successor as LD leader) would have to give “confidence and supply” to a minority Miliband administration which would be free to go back to the country as soon as the polls warranted it.

Interesting theory. But you mustn’t forget that a lot of people in the past have not voted Lib Dem, even if they’ve agreed with the party, because in the final analysis they don’t think the party is capable of governing. A successful stint in a coalition will comprehensively disabuse this notion. So while the Lib Dems will probably lose some lefty voters to Labour it may gain many new centrist voters from both other parties who’ve wanted to vote Lib Dem in the past but have stopped themselves from doing so.

Frankly, if we get AV, then it doesn’t matter. We’ll end up with a bunch of parties, some of which will bear some relationship with existing ones, and some of which won’t.

They are pissing away their election manifesto faster than Opik Limpet pissed away his credibility as an MP .

VAT, Tuition fees, you name it the Lie Dems no longer stand for it. These clowns never thought they would be in govt, and now the smell of a leather seat in a ministerial car and a nice warm office have shown that their oh so tedious “people are fed up with the usual politicians” shtick is all hot air. Vince Cable has gone from being man of principle to Dell boy Trotter in a few weeks.

They are all tories now.

You are probably correct about coming in at under 20% – but they got 40+ seats in 1997 on less than 18%.

The big thing the coalition has done is to undermine the “fear of a hung parliament” argument which was played so effectively by the Tories last May. The result was that in LD-LAB battlegrounds the mean yellow vote share was down on 2005 or the change was below the overall increase in vote numbers.

Tory supporters simply would not vote tactically. That might well change in 2015.

Given the likelihood of a hung parliament next time then the big question in the campaign will be whether the blues or the reds will come out with most seats. My guess is that this will encourage tactical voting by Labour supporters in CON-LD battle-grounds.

On top of that the LDs are getting toughened up simply because they are in government and their front-line people will be the better for that. Cable, for instance, yesterday played on a sticky wicket and came out well.

“A successful stint in a coalition will comprehensively disabuse this notion. So while the Lib Dems will probably lose some lefty voters to Labour it may gain many new centrist voters from both other parties who’ve wanted to vote Lib Dem in the past but have stopped themselves from doing so.”

We may see this effect but rather than people being impressed with the Lib Dems ability to govern I would say it’s more likely to be people being able to vote for the coalition without voting Tory.

[2] When would you expect to see that reflected in the polls, Tom?

[3] This is of course the Great Unknown. At first I thought the AV Bill was a joke – either the Referendum would have a minimum turnout clause (which turnout would not reach) or else it would lose. To-day I am less sure – I can see the likes of Billy Bragg, Esther Rantzen, Martin Bell and Wyre Forest’s Richard Taylor (whose bacon it would surely have saved) stumping the country for it and getting a fair bit of “sofa TV” exposure… who of that calibre – as opposed to tiresome Party hacks – got to put up against them?

[5] Good to see you here, Mike. There was a lot of variation in Lab-LD battlegrounds, with Redcar being at the opposite extreme and Kitty Ussher probably only holding off the LDs in ’05 thanks to the Independent splitting the anti-Labour vote. I suspect there will be even more next time, and of course if we get AV…

Dear or dear.
Still deluding ourselves are we?

as an ex-LD member from Cleggs constituency I have smelt the coffee.

In terms of seats you will be in single figures (low ones) for 20 years.

And the cut haven’t even been published yet!
As for Scotland being a hot bed of LD support..lets wait for next May shall we……

“Opik Limpet”

Sally, you have outdone yourself

Of course, as a coalition themselves, the Liberal Democrats may be suffering some stresses. The former Social Democrats may not like where they are heading. But the key thing here is that the largest chunk of the party are not former Social Democrats in the main, but Liberals. In the south-west and in Scotland voters do not vote Liberal Democrat because they are ‘centre-left’, but because they are liberal (i.e. not socialist, not conservative, belief in independence and freedom – pretty small state). Go to Cornwall or Moray and try to find consensus for big government and you may see the difference.

Of course, this need not be true of all Liberal Democrat constituencies – some may be traditionally Social Democrat. The so-called ‘university’ seats spring to mind (ignoring the fact that students tend to actually reflect national trends in support pretty well, with raised support for Greens). But you make a huge mistake if you assume Liberal Democrats are simply Social Democrats.

And another minor problem for Labour is that if they reposition to appeal to their increasingly disengaged core vote, most of the support they have taken from the Liberal Democrats is likely to go straight back.

I voted LibDem partly because I hated the heavy handed over-legislation of Labour under Blair & Brown, the curbing of our civil liberties, cops hassling photographers & killing bystanders like Ian Tomlinson, but partly because I liked their policies – scrapping the tuition fees, exploring alternatives to Trident, proportional representation, green industry investment to create growth, and so on – it wasn’t *just* a protest vote. Yes, Labour had alienated me, but Nick had won me over. I did agree with Nick – but it seems now that Nick doesn’t agree with what he’d said. He’s tossing away all his promises, and now I know for sure he has no intention of delivering on anything we voted him in to do. He won’t even slightly stand up to the Tories – and fair enough, I should have done my research properly: he & Vince Cable & others wrote a book called the Orange Book, a few years back, extolling the virtues of free market economics. Had I known this at the time, I would have had alarm bells going off, because essentially the book reveals his true intentions. Clegg is at heart a Tory, even if he’s leading another party. He won’t stand up to them because he is one of them in all but membership card.

Now, don’t expect me to agree with everything Labour says & does, but Nick Clegg’s betrayal of his electors has shown that the only alternative, if we want decent education, decent housing, a decent economy & safe streets, the only way we will get these things is by joining the Labour Party & taking an active role in shaping it over the next few years so that it represents our wants & needs when we get Labour back in at the next general election. If (like me) we disagree with ID cards, the Digital Economy Act, the mis-use of anti-terrorist legislation to quell dissent, the best place for us to get rid of them while protecting our welfare state & our livelihoods is within Labour and its affiliated organisations.

On top of that the LDs are getting toughened up simply because they are in government and their front-line people will be the better for that. Cable, for instance, yesterday played on a sticky wicket and came out well.

Mike – I’m not sure if Libdem voters will see it that way. That video of Nick Clegg saying he’ll stick to his promises looks pretty foolish now…

You’re right that Coalition-paranoia is less of a problem. But that may also make the possibility of a Labour-Libdem alliance easier.

Actually I think the main bulk of Lib Dem activists are centre left. According to an opinion poll. http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/may/10/liberal-democrats-conservatives-coalition

43% described themselves as centre-left or left wing.
29% described themselves as centrist.
And only 9% described themselves as centre-right or right.

And that is reflected amongst Lib Dem voters:

39% of Lib Dem voters described the party as being centre-left or left.
33% of Lib Dem voters described the party as being centrist.
Only 5% described the party as being centre-right or right.

I think the real mystery is how the Lib Dems have allowed the leadership of their party to be taken over by the tiny and utterly unrepresentative ‘Orange Book’ crowd, who’s ideas belong to the right wing fringes of the party.

11

I feel your pain.. but I’m not sure I agree with your conclusion. It’s deeply depressing, but I’m just not sure the Labour party is worth joining, that it has changed all that much, or that it represents a realistic vehicle for promoting a radical, progressive agenda. I only wish that it did!

Graham @13,

The problem here is of course what these labels mean – I self-identify as right wing, but spend too much of my life agreeing with folk round here about issues so could equally self-label as central-left.

I actually think that the right/left divide is a bad way to look at liberalism anyway, since it is opposed to authoritarianism of any species, and the right and left both tend towards this (apart from libertarians/anarchists of course, who have no leaders, and follow the teachings of these non-leaders very carefully…).

10- The old Liberal Party before the merger with the SDP was also left-leaning if you look at their old manifestos. The beards and sandals brigade were certainly not liberal free-marketeers, although I agree they were suspicious of big central government. The classical liberals (now we would call them the Orange Bookers) had mostly left and joined the Tories decades before.

@15 Absolutely. Liberal/Authoritarian is not on the same axis as Capitalist/Socialist. Labour were Socialist/Authoritarian, Tories were (last time around) Capitalist/Authoritarian. At the moment we have a government that’s Liberal and a short distance on the Capitalist of centre (depending on where you put the centre – it’s massively socialist compared to the USA and further to the capitalist side if you compare it to France).

I was fed up with 30 years of Authoritarian governments and voted Liberal. If the centre moves in a Liberal direction then I’ll probably care more about the Socialist/Capitalist divide next time.

7 @ Mike – I wouldn’t expect the voters to reward the Lib Dems for being responsible in government for a few years – not until the furore over spending cuts has died down and people have gained some perspective.

But don’t forget that the Lib Dems remain on 18% with ICM / Mori – it’s just the prevalence of YouGov polls that reflects badly on the party (and as Mike Smithson so regularly points out, YouGov messed up its GE polling!). Also look at council byelections since May – the Lib Dems are massive net gainers of seats, not losers.

@14 I think it’s currently the only poker game in town, & if it’s ever going to change for the good it’ll do so in response to members’ lobbying faster than non-members’. It’s not perfect, but the LibDems don’t keep their promises, the Greens hardly field any candidates & so are never going to get in. What else is there to do but climb aboard & take part, contribute & be heard?

The Lie Dems have become the fags for the Old Etonian’s. And there is nothing the public school boy likes better than a bit of bulling and humiliation. Almost every day a Lie Dem govt spokesman is being sent out to eat another tory shit sandwich.

“Go out there and tell the public that the new student finance bill is progressive you little Oik“. “Tell them the budget is progressive you snivelling little shit.” Go on eat that shit sandwich in public as the media play video’s of you saying the complete opposite only months ago.

This is massive tory humiliation of the Lie Dems and they, like a poor little new boys they have no idea how to say no. But the only way to stop the bully is to stand up to them, but do the new boys have the balls? Seems not.

The key points that make things unpredictable in terms of seats are, I think:

-the AV referendum
-the fact we don’t know what the relationship between the coalition parties, or indeed where Labour will stand, by the time of the next election

Any of which could throw things up in the air.

But while I think the seat numbers are unpredictable, I think the vote share will pretty clearly go down. I don’t buy this argument that now we’ve seen the LibDems in government, more people will feel it’s worth voting for them. That may happen in a few cases – but I think the loss of the protest vote will be far more significant.

However unhelpful left/right labels are in terms of issues, I think most people do identify with one or the other. That means there’s a strong tendency to default to the party on your side of the fence – just look at the number of lefties going back to Labour apropos of nothing except “they’re out of government, and they’re not the Tories”.

So I suspect the numbers of people thinking “I don’t like the coalition so I’ll vote Labour” or “I do like the coalition so I might as well vote Tory” will be far, far greater than the number who think “That Vince Cable’s been alright. Might as well vote LibDem.”

And your think the Labour party are a party of ideas, values, integrity? After Tony Blair lied to everyone, introduced tution fees, increased the size of the state and to privatise anything he could get his blood-soaked hands on?

Fact ‘New Labour’ and Lib Dems are both right-wing parties. EVERYONE is a Tory now:

http://www.politicalcompass.org/ukparties2010

The only questions of import are do you want an increasingly authoritarian anti-civil liberties state with Labour? Do you want to go back to the Victorian era with the Tories or suffer lies of the Lib Dems?

Personally I am voting siding with the Greens http://www.greenparty.org.uk/ until the revolution comes.

Then the corporate careerists of: Blair, Clegg, Cameron, Milliband, Cable will know what the working class really thinks of them.

Methinks sally needs to take a chill pill.

20. sally

You’re having a better day, Dim-Libs in a tory Government. Well observed.

@22

“Personally I am voting siding with the Greens http://www.greenparty.org.uk/ until the revolution comes.

Then the corporate careerists of: Blair, Clegg, Cameron, Milliband, Cable will know what the working class really thinks of them.”

And what are you going to do after this revolution of yours? Put ‘the right people’ in charge? Or are you just planning to put a load of public figures up against the wall then return to democracy so people can return to the same voting patterns and elect the same sort of people?

25. Chaise Guevara

Lets get back to good old fashioned adversarial politics, coalitions suck.

Mr. Elledge, I agree with your post, but can you maybe post a bit more on Jade Pagoda? It seems to have died.

Regards,
J.

@ 25

I was thinking of actually expanding democracy and having ownership in the hands of the wealth generators i.e. the workers, rather than their bosses who own them (bankers/capitalist/tories).

Something along the lines of the 1917 October revolution with the workers have ownership of the means of production and electing their officials on the basis of small scale ‘soviets’ actually.

@26

Also there is class warfare being conducted by the rich and no-one is noticing or caring.

The arch-capitalist Warren Buffet agrees:

“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

New York Times, November 26, 2006.

Also the banks are gloating about we are a ‘plutonomy’ a society designed from top to bottom for the rich:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/6674234/Citigroup-Oct-16-2005-Plutonomy-Report-Part-1

Bring back values, principles and integrity back to politics. Stop the lies, spin and manipulation

@28

“I was thinking of actually expanding democracy and having ownership in the hands of the wealth generators i.e. the workers, rather than their bosses who own them (bankers/capitalist/tories).

Something along the lines of the 1917 October revolution with the workers have ownership of the means of production and electing their officials on the basis of small scale ‘soviets’ actually.”

You’ll have to educate me as to the details there. But at first glance it sounds like you’re contracting democracy rather than contracting it. Democracy is already fully expanded in this country, unless you want to extend it to children.

Also: how are you defining ‘workers’? We’re mainly tertiary sector these days. Don’t get me wrong, I’m amenable to the concept of the shared-ownership commune, but I’m not sure how you’d create and enforce it without fucking civil liberties over in a huge way.

“Lets get back to good old fashioned adversarial politics, coalitions suck.”

But unified governments blow! Good man.

@30 (i.e. me)

“you’re contracting democracy rather than contracting it”

*rather than expanding it.

Jesus. Proof-read, you idiot. Don’t let your posts be marred by typos and spelling errers.

They’re not “more than a third party” in Scotland. They’re the fourth party, behind the Tories as well as Labour/SNP, and a PR election in May 2011 will also see them squeezed by the Greens.

@11

“I should have done my research properly: he & Vince Cable & others wrote a book called the Orange Book, a few years back, extolling the virtues of free market economics. Had I known this at the time, I would have had alarm bells going off, because essentially the book reveals his true intentions. Clegg is at heart a Tory, even if he’s leading another party. He won’t stand up to them because he is one of them in all but membership card.”

You obviously haven’t done any research at all, you propagandist.

Read this series of blog posts about whether the Orange Book is actually “right wing” or not:

http://joeotten.blogspot.com/search/label/orange book

Also, just to correct some of your lies: Vince and Nick did not write the Orange Book; they contributed two chapters out of many, as did some of the left-leaning Lib Dem MPs. AndClegg contributed to Reinventing the State, which was a response to the Orange Book.

There is nothing left-wing about millions of poor people paying through taxes for middle class kids to go to uni and have a great time for free.

“Interesting theory. But you mustn’t forget that a lot of people in the past have not voted Lib Dem, even if they’ve agreed with the party, because in the final analysis they don’t think the party is capable of governing.”

ROFL!!! This notion that there are millions of Liberals just waiting for the LibDems to become a party of government before voting for them is bollocks. Your vote has already collapsed despite your profile being higher than ever before, you’ve broken probably your best known policy and your leader sits like a nodding Churchill dog beside Cameron every week.

“A successful stint in a coalition will comprehensively disabuse this notion.”

It has/will disabuse any notion of the LDs being honest. Do you really think that voters will get past the massive lies that you’ve told even potentially 5 years later.

“So while the Lib Dems will probably lose some lefty voters to Labour it may gain many new centrist voters from both other parties who’ve wanted to vote Lib Dem in the past but have stopped themselves from doing so.”

You’ve picked up ~2 million voters from Labour since ’97, that is almost 1/3 of your total vote – how is that “some”? You’ve dropped from 23% to ~12% in the polls since May you’ve not lost some of you vote, you’ve lost half! Many ex-LDs I’ve been canvassing main political opinion is loathing of the tories, they vote against them rather than for Labour or LD, don’t under-estimate how toxic the Conservatives are in sections of society.

@28

Surely Feb 1917 would be a better template if we must emulate the failures of history… Oct ’17 was ruined by the Bolsheviks.

*opens can, releases worms, laughs manically*

@35

I know loaaads of people who never voted LD until this election because they (the voters) didn’t think they’d (the LDs) get in. They all regret it now, of course.

@37

Yep, there is a big difference between a protest vote and not voting for a party because they’re not “a party of government”.

The LibDem tribalists are reduced to double think and frankly fucking weird (sexual?) attacks on Labour. How far the sanctimonious shit heads have fallen, so much for non-tribal pluralism.

http://www.libdemvoice.org/pmqs-ed-miliband-finally-grows-out-of-pampers-21607.html

I suspect the Libdems will get hammered in the next election. But the experience of actually negotiating a coalition (rather than just talking about it) and actually being in govt may enable them to come back stronger and perhaps with clearer ideas about how to maintain principles in a coalition.

Let’s face it when Labour had their first chance at govt in 1924, it didn’t go well and they got hammered in elections a few months later. But they came back again.

Alternatively they may get hammered and still hold the balance of power.

Yes, the libdem membership are all in shock at the moment. Being in govt is not much fun and seems to involve awful betrayals. But the Labour membership (many of them) didn’t enjoy much of what their party got up to – wars, racism, daily mail ideology, privatisation.

[35] Your canvassing experience is no doubt true, Chris, of the areas in which you’ve conducted it. I doubt it is true nationally.

Polls suggest that the LibDems have lost more voters to the Tories than to Labour – people like Jonn Elledge’s Dad, perhaps, for whom the coalition is the ultimate detoxification of the Tory brand (which is why Cameron prefers it to governing alone, and why the Tory Right will want another Party leader the moment they secure a Parliamentary majority for themselves alone).

[38] In terms of national vote, almost certainly. In terms of seats – especially if we vote for AV – who can say?

In my last post [38] should read [39] – sorry

39

I know it’s probably trite to say “I told you so….”, but all of this simply proves the point some of us made after the election that the LD’s were mad to agree a coalition with the Tories. Since the option of a colaition with New Labour was fairly well scuppered by the Blairite ultras, the only sensible option for the LD’s was to stand back and leave the Tories to make a mess of things themselves.

Many people like myself have unenthusiastically supported the LD’s in the past as the “least worst” option, or often in an attempt (ususally unsuccessful) to keep a Tory out. I won’t be doing that again.

I think it is likely the electorate will give them a bit of a pasting at the next election, but as you say with AV there is an element of uncertainty. Shackling themselves to the Tories however may have made it more difficult for them to appeal to people who “ought” to be their natural supporters and will now look elsewhere, so the price of their ill-judged decision may be to deny them the breakthrough they seek and increase support for minor parties.

@42 I think it was a bit of a lose-lose for Clegg, to be honest. Coalition with either party would see the party lose a chunk of its support. Refuse to join a coalition and he’s accused of not being serious. Offer confidence and supply, and lose your independence without gaining anything very much.

He probably chose the least worst option with the hand he was dealt. The party’s strategic mistakes lie further back.

43

I’m just not so sure about this “he made the best of a bad job” argument, or indeed the argument that he would have been punished for not putting the national interest first as a minority Tory government would have been unstable.

Of all the alternatives, a confidence and supply deal would surely have been the best option: it would (at least partially) have answered the potential criticism about leaving the country without effective government, whilst leaving the option open of voting down policies you disagreed with.

The public as a whole, LD supporters and members might have viewed that in a much more favourable light than the current ideological contortions they are having to perform to justify their supine acceptance of the previously unacceptable.

I just don’t buy the Vince Cable line that it’s all a lot worse than they’d expected, and that suddenly we have to “think the unthinkable”. They have gone native with too much alacrity for it to be seen as a genuine, principled response to a crisis situation; either they never really believed in the policies they promoted pre-election and were always going to be quite happy to jump into bed with the Tories irrespective of the fact they got too little in return, or they simply don’t have the political nous to face the Tories down.

They have sold themselves… and more importantly us… far too cheaply.

@44
“I just don’t buy the Vince Cable line that it’s all a lot worse than they’d expected, and that suddenly we have to “think the unthinkable”. ”

That’s because it’s complete nonsense. HTH

34 – link doesn’t work?

@40

I’m canvassing a 3-way marginal that the tories won where Lab and the LDs came a close second and third. It is a bellwether constituency where over the past 13 years the LDs have worked hard to try and build up their vote, a massive drop in the LD vote in the at the locals next May will put them out of contention.

Chris, just tell us where it is FFS…

@48 – Watford, I presume…

@13

I’m both a LibDem member and a left-winger.

However, to my mind Labour isn’t really left, rather a sort of hyper-”clientist” version of the Tories. The party leadership in part might be vaguely “progressive” and some of the members might be left, however, the party overall? Nah.

Labour is to stuck in its rut, sclerotic and reactionary to be truly left-wing.

@50
I’ve been slowly coming to the conclusion that all three of the main political parties (or at least their leaderships) are basically sockpuppets serving the same corporate agenda of privatisation etc.
We’re increasingly a democracy in name only. With a choice of three different flavours of the same shit.
Anyone who expects anything ‘radical’ or alternative from any of the three parties is deluding themselves. They’re all as rotten as each other.