Point 10 is complete rubbish and most of the rest of it is just special pleading to be nice to the Liberals. If there is a Yes vote on AV, Clegg will have won a huge gain for his party but ONLY if the coalition lasts until 2015. If there is an election before then it will be first past the post. So the one thing GUARANTEED to keep the coalition in place for 5 years is a YES vote. Equally, the thing which will most weaken Clegg and strengthen those within the Liberals if it turns out that his who grand bargain has been for nothing. I know the site is called Liberal Conspiracy but there is no need to act as if you are part of it.

@ 1 Daphne

Firstly, AV goes beyond short-term politics – it could still be having a positive effect on the country in 100 years’ time.

Secondly, while you’re right that a No vote could harm the coalition by weakening Clegg, a Yes vote could do the same thing by weakening Cameron. He’s already unpopular among the Tory right and resented for failing to win an election against an extremely unpopular prime minister. Losing the Tories their unfair advantage would be another black mark against him among the grass roots.

Daphne,

I am not a Lib Dem so I do not see how this can be special pleading. If you take a look at the longer version of this article over at OurKingdom, you’ll see I’m quite robust in my views about the Lib Dems and how they came to be in the coalition. Treating them as a monolith, however, just makes Cameron and Clegg’s job easier.

Hopefully, the coalition will be divided whoever wins the AV referendum. However, I fear that if the Lib Dems are defeated they will sit tight rather than face what could be a disastrous election for them. Some Tory MPs on the other hand, are already talking about an early election if they lose the referendum, precisely because it will give them a last shot under first past the post.

All of these points are spot on I’d say.

Point 10 is nonsense. Right now the *only* thing the liberals are potentially getting out of this coalition is voting reform – aside from that, it’s been nothing but concessions to Tory policy and a destruction of the Lib Dem base. A loss in the AV referendum would kill off much of the rationale for staying in Coalition – I’d say if you want this government to fall apart, you need the Lib Dems to lose the one remaining reason they have for not rocking the boat.

Of course, that means not all leftist goals may neatly harmonise – but hey, welcome to reality.

@Tom Griffin

This is a generally good piece, however, you make the common mistake of assuming the Lib Dems are composed of orange bookers and social liberals. Being an orange booker and a social liberal are not mutually exclusive, unlike being an Old Labourite and a Blairite.

Lib Dems are more of a Venn diagram than a linear scale. For example, some of the contributors to the orange book are quite distinctively social liberals. The party itself doesn’t really have an ideological divide. However, there is a distinctive policy difference in each particular area. For example, when it comes to education, there are some who support a free market based approach while other support more of a state driven approach.

What progressives need to do is to adopt a multi-faceted approach. In each distinctive area, civil liberties, education, health, foreign policy, etc., they need to work out which Lib Dems are being progressive and which ones aren’t and act accordingly – you can’t expect one group of Lib Dems to share the same ideological position on all issues and another group to share a different ideological position on the same issues.

@5

You are very wrong. You may disagree with us, but many Lib Dems, myself included, think we have got a lot out of the coalition – even if it’s not as much as we like.

http://www.whatthehellhavethelibdemsdone.com/

Don’t forget, the Guardian’s policy analysis concluded that 65% of our manifesto would be delivered.

The loss of the AV referendum won’t destroy the coalition as a) Nick Clegg has already said that it wouldn’t make him pull out of the coalition and b) because there is no appetite within the party for pulling out simply because the people of the UK decide not to change the voting system. We’re democrats, the clue is in the name, that means we will respect the choice of the nation on this issue.

@ 7

Hmm. Good site.

A loss in the AV referendum would kill off much of the rationale for staying in Coalition

I have no idea why people keep repeating this without offering a valid reasons for it. There’s no bloody reason for this.

Paul Sagar,

Obviously everyone will make up their own mind on AV on the merits. I personally am pro-AV, but I only included it here because having written the preceding nine points, the logic seemed to me inescapable.

I think it would be a mistake to underestimate the blow to Cameron within the Conservative Party if he were to preside over the introduction of AV, nor the boost to his authority from actually winning a national vote outright, and the corresponding blow to Ed Miliband within the Labour Party.

George W. Potter

I accept that the internal debate within the Lib Dems maybe a bit fuzzier than the labels imply, and not all contributors to the Orange Book are necessarily Orange Bookers in the sense I have used it here.

Having said that I think that all political parties are reluctant to acknowledge when internal divisions harden into factions, certainly Labour was with the Blairites and Brownites.

I think there is a significant question whether the interests of those in the current Lib Dem leadership most identified with the coalition coincide with that of the party as a whole, looking towards the next election and beyond. Part of Labour’s job is to pose that question as clearly as possible.

@7

“we will respect the choice of the nation on this issue.”

Hm, like the Lib Dems respecting the choice of the nation for slower/reduced cuts? Or like they respected their own members over tuition fees? The problem with the LD bits of this article is that it assumes the hierarchy in charge of the LDs aren’t morally corrupt & self-serving egomaniacs. As someone who once upon a time voted Lib Dem (though thank god not at the last election) I will never trust that party with my vote again until they clear out the Tory wannabes at the top.

A “no” vote would mean smug triumphalism on Cameron’s part and yet more cringing on Clegg’s – and no change. A “yes” vote might shore Clegg up a bit but it would also seriously undermine Cameron’s position and that of the Tory party and the government as a whole. A “yes” win would piss off far more politicians than a “no” and partly for that reason could bring about far-reaching change in the entire political situation – even before the effects of the new voting system itself kicked in.

AV gives far more of us a say in who represents us and allows us to vote both truthfully for the party we support and tactically against the party we most oppose. For a party to do well under AV it must be popular enough both to pick up plenty of 1st and 2nd places in the initial tally and to hoover up alternative preferences in later counts. A party which fails in either respect is unlikely to do well. While AV is a good way of showing who you like it’s an even better way of showing who you hate. Bye-bye LibDems?

When Clegg turned his back on the Social Liberal tradition of Lloyd George, Keynes, Beveridge, Grimond, even Ashdown and Kennedy, the party lost its distinctive face and function, maybe its soul. Will it find a new role? Will anybody care?

11. Join The Green Party

13. BlueRock

I just did. After 50 (really!) years as a Liberal (Democrat) supporter, voter, sometime member and even councillor. Bit of a wrench, but I was very uncomfortable with the direction Clegg was taking the party in anyway, and as for going into coalition with the Tories – didn’t he see how much more power (and fun) the party could have had giving conditional support to a minority government from the opposition benches?

And as for their connivance in the health service “reforms”, on which the electorate has never had the chance to vote and which are opposed by everyone who knows anything at all about health care, well… If they had an ounce of honour they’d refuse to vote for them even if it meant bringing the government down.

I broadly like the Greens, but I’m not sure about their leader. If people had met her demands on AV it would have scuppered the whole thing, suggesting that either she’s irresponsible or doesn’t really know what she’s talking about.

@15

Or that she knew it wouldn’t work but wanted to show up the Lib Dems? I dunno, I quite like Lucas tbh.

Did you see the people who were marching the other saturday? They were all people with huge vested interests in screwing everyone else for their little patch of shite.

Genuinely vulnerable people have always been screwed, regardless of governing party or parties. To try and paint the ‘left’ as more caring is simply ridiculous. The co-alition is just tinkering on the edges of nowhere. If any one is really motivated to be offended by the government then they’re being disingenuous to those non partisan people who were screwed by the last government. Pensioners were incredibly skinted by Labour, house prices inflated out of all fucking proportion to reality. All governments fuck people and without an alternative then I just don’t get what the whinging is all about.

I wish people would realize how limited the levers available to government are. When Osborne or Pickles or any other guy announces ‘cuts’ then it’s so infrequent as to be unheard of that the cuts take place in the right areas. Uurrghhh…i’ve been living in Ruin too long to be able to get disgusted at any one party any more; it just seems so petty.

@ 16

I like her apart from that one thing, but it’s a fairly major black mark for me.

I think pretending that the Labour Leadership is going to be pivotal in the possible fall of the coalition is wishful thinking on the same scale as the Orange Book right wingers surrounding Clegg pretending everything is fine and the voter will forget the next few years at the first sign of postive growth figures.

The Lib Dems will be the ones who have to decide Clegg’s fate and no amount of cajoling from Labour will decide it. It’s more likely that Labour pushing too hard to split the coalition will have the opposite effect so letting nature take it’s course is far better strategically.

Though I must admit the very idea of Clegg being leader at the next election and trying to launch a manifesto, with the deafening noise of the voter asking which of his policies are expendable or outright lies, is riotously funny.

If you can’t use Clegg to support AV because he’s so toxic a mere year out, exactly how do you think you’re going to use him to fight an election after all the cuts and NHS ‘reforms’ have made him radioactive ?

Clegg should realise that some of the ‘noises off’ about a Leadership challenge aren’t all froth as he was one of the ones who stuck the knife in Ming Campbell’s back. Clegg knows what it sounds like to brief against a Leader in private and we’re beginning to hear the first murmurs of it.

“Genuinely vulnerable people have always been screwed, regardless of governing party or parties. To try and paint the ‘left’ as more caring is simply ridiculous. ”

Yeah, how ridiculous to paint those who generally favour more social spending and better provision of services to the needy as “caring”. They’re obviously just as bad as those guys who want to sell off the NHS and make the unemployed earn their benefits at £2 an hour.

14. Jonathan Phillips

> I just did.

Excellent to hear.

> After 50 (really!) years as a Liberal (Democrat) supporter, voter, sometime member and even councillor. Bit of a wrench…

I’ll bet it was a wrench! But good on ya. Mine was less traumatic – but still feckin’ annoying: joined the LDs 18 months ago, stuffed envelopes, tramped the streets pushing flyers through letterboxes… and ended up with… what? It bears no relation to the promises I read or the people I believed I was voting for. Clegg and Huhne are quislings in my eyes and it will take the LDs a *long* time to recover from their treachery.

> If they had an ounce of honour they’d refuse to vote for them even if it meant bringing the government down.

We keep being told “you need to accept compromises in a coalition”. What compromise have the Tories made? Did they let Clegg choose the colour scheme in the downstairs bog at No. 10?

Green politics are succeeding in Germany, no reason the British public cannot also wake up to the same reality. And with AV (fingers crossed) on the way, we won’t be shackled by ‘tactical’ voting any more.

Cheers,

David.

@20 – just because a Government’s support comes from a given area does at no point mean that the government acts like that.

All parties gerrymander, they all do; it’s in their best interests to do so. What i’m saying is it’s just a different kind of fucked for the most vulnerable depending on who’s fucking them and what their vulnerability is. There’s no point in ascribing a particular ‘blame’ to any given party or group of parties – economics has shifted so much that it beggars belief how we got here.

Mr S. Pill

“The problem with the LD bits of this article is that it assumes the hierarchy in charge of the LDs aren’t morally corrupt & self-serving egomaniacs. ”

It’s certainly compatible with that assumption. It’s also compatible with the assumption that some of them might be egomaniacs with a longer time preference than the next election.

I’m not arguing for being soft on the Lib Dem leadership. If anything, I think there needs to be closer scrutiny of the interests the Orange Bookers represent and how they came to be the dominant force in the party. Perhaps thought, that would raise issues that are common to all the major political parties, and so be less comfortable for our political class than blind partisan anger.

NeoCon Clegg

“It’s more likely that Labour pushing too hard to split the coalition will have the opposite effect so letting nature take it’s course is far better strategically.”

Making policy based on spite would be just as much of a mistake for the Lib Dems as for the Labour Party. In practice, if Labour is mounting an effective opposition and articulating a viable alternative, I don’t think the Lib Dems will just be able to stick their fingers in their ears.

@Chaise Guevara
1 Yes, AV does have long term implications which in my view make it worse. But it’s dishonest to try to sneak it in as a short term tactical way of splitting the coalition if the actual impact is to weaken it.
2 A No vote weakens Clegg inside the Liberal Democrats, which is what the other 9 points are supposed to achieve. The idea that the Tories would go for an early election when they are 6 points behind in the polls and new constituency boundaries have not been set is ludicrous.
One of the things which damages the Yes campaign is the way it is prepared to say anything just to get votes. But then again, it is being pushed by the Liberal Democrats.

@ 22 Dick

OK, but you didn’t say “nominally left-wing parties”, you said “the left”. Which would include all those people voting for higher public spending on services for the vulnerable.

@ 24 Daphne

1: I wouldn’t want AV just as a short-term way to defeat the coalition – if that was its main aim, you’d be using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. I only bring up its potential to harm the coalition when people suggest using FPTP in the same way.

2: You’re working on the assumption that the Tories are master tacticians. While this may be true of their leadership, their grass roots are likely to be a lot less pragmatic, and could well topple Cameron due to their anger over his failings or fear about AV, even if that was a very bad idea.

Tom Griffin

“Making policy based on spite would be just as much of a mistake for the Lib Dems as for the Labour Party.”

Which is what I’m taking issue with.
No matter how it’s spun if Labour bases too many policies or tries too hard to split the Lib Dems from the Tories it’s going to p*ss off a great many Lib Dems and NOT just Clegg’s right wing Orange Bookers. It would be seen as spite on the part of Labour by many Lib Dems and would be counterproductive. It’s also too complex and cumbersome to have to run any policy past a Lib Dem “smell test” when you already know what the answer is.

“if Labour is mounting an effective opposition and articulating a viable alternative”

That’s what needs to happen because right now it’s sporadic at best.
Miliband looks like a man perpetually caught between attacking the governments policies and trying too hard not to annoy the Murdoch press and the Mail.
Hit the government hard and hit them repeatedly.
You build momentum against the cuts and damaging policies by attacking them whenever airtime is available.
The Lib Dems will have to look to their own problems a hugely unpopular leader soon enough because the more the public turns against the damaging effects the cuts will have, and damaging Tory idealogical policies like the NHS reforms and free schools, the more pressure there will be on everyone in this government.

A year has passed and the time for naval gazing is over.

The ConDem coalition are in power and they now own the economy and the policies they are driving through. If they don’t want the job now then they shouldn’t have run for election because the public aren’t going to put up with the ConDems blaming Labour for everything they choose to do in government. “It’s Brown’s fault” is not going to win very many votes at the next election because he was kicked out of power in 2010 already for it being his fault. The next election is going to be about THIS government and what it has done.

@Daphne Millar
If anyone is “prepared to say anything just to get votes” it’s the No campaign, which is nothing but a shameless farrago of misrepresentations, half-truths and downright lies. For a list see http://bit.ly/ifQQIr. Don’t start poking about looking for motes in someone else’s eyes when yours are full of beams.

@Chaise Guevara
If you’re saying a No vote might make the Tories mistakenly call for an early election I say “Bring it On.” Then after the election is over we can take a proper look at everything.
There is an important strategic question for Labour in all this. Does it decide that the coalition is going to hang together for fear of an election leading to Labour winning or does it think it can be broken And if it can be broken what does that tell us about the reliability of the Liberals as a coalition partner in future?
If the coalition CAN be broken it’s worth doing. But a No vote is the only way of that happening.

@ 29 Daphne

I don’t get it – you don’t like AV being brought in as a short-term way to break the coalition, but you’re happy to keep FPTP as a short-term way to break the coalition? I have to say that sounds hypocritical.

In any case, the importance of AV goes way beyond the coalition. We have a duty to our future selves and to later generations to take this opportunity to make sure we have the fairest voting system available. To my mind, that’s currently AV. If you genuinely think FPTP is fairer – not more likely to benefit the party you like, but fairer – then you’d be right to support it, although I’m not sure how you’d justify that. Opposing it because you think it might benefit your side in the next half-decade is very short-termist and unfair on those who will suffer the consequences of a No vote throughout the foreseeable future.

@Chaise Guevara
i do think that FPTP is better than AV, which produces the lowest common denominator as a result. But as you say, you don’t get it. My objection here is not to AV as such. It is to the pretence that voting Yes is a way to increase the chance of the coalition breaking up. That is simply untrue. All the waffle in the world about future generations does not alter that fact. I would have had a lot more sympathy with the author if he had said “i had 9 things and I couldn’t think of a tenth, so I threw in AV to make up the numbers.

@ 31 Daphne

“i do think that FPTP is better than AV, which produces the lowest common denominator as a result.”

Better that than a candidate most of the voters actively hate, surely? Which is a very real possibility under FPTP.

“But as you say, you don’t get it. My objection here is not to AV as such. It is to the pretence that voting Yes is a way to increase the chance of the coalition breaking up. That is simply untrue.”

Understandable, but to be honest it’s impossible to know either way for sure. You can form theories, and unsurprisingly your theories will probably back FPTP and mine will back AV, because that’s how people think.

“All the waffle in the world about future generations does not alter that fact.”

Right. Because future generations aren’t important and anyone who cares about them is “waffling”. It’s only Daphne Millar who matters, yes?

I would have thought, in so far as the AV referendum would have an effect, that it’s not what the result is but whether there is one that makes the difference.

If there’s a Yes vote, the Lib Dems have got something that they wanted, and so they have a reduced incentive to remain in the coalition because there’s less they can get out of it.

If there’s a No vote, the Lib Dems haven’t got anything they wanted, and the Tories can’t (and won’t) give them it some other way, and so they have a reduced incentive to remain in the coalition because there’s less they can get out of it.

If the vote is postponed due to a major natural disaster or land invasion of the UK, or the counting is interrupted by a claim that the West Midlands ballot papers were accidentally printed with two ‘No’ options, the Lib Dems have more incentive to remain in the coalition until the vote is rescheduled.

The main incentive for the lib dems to remain in the coalition is actually to demonstrate to both the public and the dinosours in the other parties that coalition government isn’t the major evil the hysterical wings of both parties have spend decades saying it is. By remaining in the coalition the lib dems demonstrate (amongst other things) that:

(1) They can be equally as stable as single party governments
(2) That small parties can be part of a coalition without demanding things the others find unpalatable – with major constitutional issues going to referenda anyway.
(3) That the larger part of a coalition can still implement manifesto commitments without being held to ransom.

OTOH, walk away now or in a few months and the lib dems are finished. Their only hope for survival is remaining part of the coalition, and squeezing as much as possible out of it whilst hoping the economy recovers by 2015.

@cim
The important pont which those wanting a Yes vote either ignore or conceal is that the decision is set up so that the Liberals have to stay in coalition until 2015 to get their check cashed. Elections before then will be on the FPTP system and all the signs are that they will lead to a total slaugfhter of the Liberal party. That would cause me no grief at all. By all means say that yopu are willing to put up wiuth another 4 yars of ConDem government in order to get a change in the voting system which will hewlp the Liberals; but don’t try to pretend that your choice is anything other than that.

35/Daphne: Elections before then will be on the FPTP system and all the signs are that they will lead to a total slaugfhter of the Liberal party.

Certainly on current polling it looks like the Lib Dems are likely to lose all but 1 or 2 seats under FPTP.

However, AV doesn’t make a great difference to that – on their current polling, and any plausible set of second preference transfers, they’ll only keep 2 or 3 more seats under AV – and possibly no extra seats at all. (If they could pick up a huge proportion of transfer votes, then they would do significantly better under AV. On the other hand, if they were popular enough to pick up that many transfer votes, they wouldn’t have so few first preferences)

The thing that will keep them in the coalition – win or lose the referendum – is that they’d currently get wiped out at a snap general election. Once that goes, having won or lost the referendum won’t make much difference – AV is perhaps worth 2-3 points in the polls to the Lib Dems, but not 10-15. If they think they could get 5-10 points back in the polls by breaking the coalition, that’s potentially worth it even if the snap election is then an FPTP one.

(And the boundary review – and therefore AV – could come into effect in late 2013, so on a Yes vote a general election than 2015 could still marginally benefit the Lib Dems. Again, I doubt the effect would be decisive)

By all means say that yopu are willing to put up wiuth another 4 yars of ConDem government in order to get a change in the voting system which will hewlp the Liberals; but don’t try to pretend that your choice is anything other than that.

I never said any of that, so I don’t know how you inferred it. My reasons for voting Yes have nothing to do with whether or not it will help the Lib Dems.

Why the hell do so many people go on about whether AV will benefit any particular party?

The point is that as many people as possible should get an MP they feel they can support, rather than having one imposed upon them by a minority of their fellow constituents, and that we should all be able to vote honestly for the party we support, even if we know it won’t do well, and still be able to keep out out someone we particularly dislike (see http://bit.ly/fgHxR0). It’s called democracy – FPTP comes much closer to being dishonesty: pretend to support someone you don’t for fear of letting in someone worse, and make do with MPs chosen for you by other people.

Why shouldn’t voters have the extra power AV gives us, even if it does alter the party balance in ways some folk don’t like? I don’t like the party balance we get now!

Next time round I shall want to get rid of our LD MP without fear of letting in the Tories. Voting Labour would help do this, but that would be dishonest, since I’m a Green Party member. But if I vote Green my vote will go to waste. Etc. etc.

As cim says, the LDs have had it, whichever way the vote goes – even if they brought in Dr Frankenstein to reanimate the corpse. So let’s all vote Yes so we can piss off the Tories as well!

@Planeshift

Point taken, but the strategy was wrong. The LDs needed first of all to show they could behave responsibly while holding the balance of power,where appropriate playing Lab and Con off against one another and forcing both to behave more “reasonably”, to look to the “true national interest” etc.etc. That would have secured their position in such a way as to ensure they held the b.o.p. in the next parliament as well – and then perhaps go for coalition, or perhaps another minority government. As it is it was obvious from the word go that the LDs would get the blame for whatever went wrong and the Cons would take the credit for whatever went right.

Minority governments are not necessarily ineffective – cf Canada (FPTP), Denmark (PR) and New Zealand (PR) – and they have the advantage of bringing compromises into the open.

“forcing both to behave more “reasonably”, to look to the “true national interest” etc.etc.”

Unfortuantely that is exactly the rhetoric both parties have been using – coming together in the national interest etc.

@Planeshift 39.

Yes, of course. I was really using the words ironically – thinking about ways in which the LDs could have made themselves look good, rather than actually benefiting the long-term national interest etc. (when did any government last do that?).

But maybe if we had a minority government in a parliament of minorities decision-making would be more open, make more reference to actual evidence, and be just a little less yah-boo-sucks.

I’ve got a few more ways:

Build mass strike action, permanent protests and sit ins against service and welfare cuts, privatisation, jobs losses, wage freezes and pension theft;

Demand an immediate general election on the grounds that the Coalition has no mandate, lied during the last one and are the product of an anti-constitutional political coup;

Vote No to AV to give Clegg a bloody nose, demonstrate discontent with the Coalition and deprive it of a project of pesudo reforms with which to distract the middle classes whilst it craps all over the poor.

@41. David Ellis

If you really want to bugger up the government, vote Yes on 5 May. A Yes vote will piss off far more members of the government than a No vote and could even put Cameron’s leadership in jeopardy. And it wouldn’t save Clegg anyway – the Tories hate him (even though he put them into power), and so do most other people (even life-long Liberals like me)

Voting against something because you don’t like some of the people who support it is pretty short-sighted. Do you like the BNP, the Conservative Party and Margaret Beckett? Cos if you don’t you really ought to vote against FPTP, on your reasoning.

As well as being a good way to show who you really support (without any risk of your vote going to waste), AV is a brilliant way of showing who you hate – just put them well down in your numbering. Yes to AV – more power to the voter!