Tory voters are, by and large, happy with the coalition, because they’ve got what is basically a Tory government. So they turned out to vote again. Libdem voters were not happy, because it isn’t what they voted for, so they didn’t vote for them again. There was no ‘unfair emphasis’ on them

Too True.

Rightwing Tories certainly harrumph and moan. Some on the rightwing fringe go off and vote UKIP but the vast majority don’t. They’ll place their x against the Conservative candidate every time.

Here on the centre left – we get an atrocious leader like Brown or a divisive on like Blair and off we all trot to the Lib Dems like the brainless idiots we all are.

Only problem is, that lets in the Tories again so we’re all left impotent with rage, just like this morning in fact!

Thursday was horrific for the progressive movement in this country. All the centre left’s worst nightmares coalesced in one day.

So expect a decade of this impotent rage.

And if you think the economy is going to ride to the rescue, forget it. It’s not clear that Labour under Ed Miliband is going to reap the political benefit that Osborne’s disastrous handling of the economy is going to bring about.

Agree.

People just didn’t vote.

I can’t think of one lib dem who would turn to vote Tory as the kind that would is actually very happy with the coalition…so? Doesn’t make sense.

I wasn’t in an area to vote but of course voted ‘Yes’ and would’ve voted for a Lib Dem-only because I still don’t trust the Labour party and the Tories-like hello?

I did say this and warned away to party members. Many agreed but I do recollect that many of us of centre left, especially those who were part when it was the social democratic party, were quitened down and really patronised. ‘You don’t get politics’. ‘We have to grow up’.

I just backed off but I’m not a person lead by absolutes or extremes. I’m still centre left.

I think you touch on the essence of what happened, Lib Dems have done well being political chameleons until they showed their true colours by joining the coalition. Now people have a better idea of what they are and they are leaving them.

I just wish Labour recognised that there is a progressive gap in English politics and did something to fill it. The continued silence from Miliband is increasingly worrying.

In all fairness they still garnered 15% of the vote. That’s hardly a party that ‘doesn’t exist’

I don’t know if I agree with this.

I agree that basically left-leaning libdems have left the party – and that’s what has hurt them.

But I don’t agree that with a very few exceptions, most Libdem voters have traditionally been disaffected left-wingers.

Most Lib Dems I know now – indeed all – are right wing. They are laissez-faire economics – they are small staters – they are not tory but they are right wing.

That wasn’t the case before because half the party was aligned to its more social democrat aspects – but those aspects have now been jetisonned and so have those drawn to them.

What is left is – in essense – the old Liberal Party. And the old Liberal Party was a right wing party by post-war consensus standards. Indeed even before the post war consensus its only left wing achievement was the pension act – pushed through by 50 labour MPs, such was the lack of commitment to that particular cause of the Liberals themselves.

The principle weakness in this line of argument is explaining the success of the Conservatives on Thursday. Outside Scotland there were swings from the Liberal Democrats, and indeed all third parties, to both the Conservatives and Labour.

The loss of a nomad tribe of ‘left-wingers against being in Government’ can only explain one half of that equation. Why did a large number of former Liberal Democrat voters go back to the Tories?

Secondly in Cananda the decision by the centrist liberal party to tack to the left under Ignatieff has been a disaster, facilitating a majority Conservative government, and new left in second place. That a centre-ground squeeze has happened in both countries is not evidence the liberal centre-ground doesn’t exist, only that it’s a hard pitch to fight.

The Liberal Democrat party brand is damaged as a result of decisions taken before and after the coalition. Tuition fees for example was a policy reeking of opportunism, regressive and highly unlikely to survive a fiscal downturn. Who seriously was going to argue to feather the beds of middle class children whilst cutting benefits and social care? Or raising fantasy taxes, that even if possible would still have been better spent on the vulnerable?

The pledge was naive. The reverse even more so. The damage to the party though was done by all levels of the party, the policy activists, the local campaigners etc. not just the leadership.

This is an important fact when discussing where the Libdems go from here; because in a sense, Nick Clegg is currently trying to lead a party that doesn’t actually exist.

He and the rest of the Orange Bookers seem to be under the impression that the Libdems are a centrist party based around a high minded commitment to ideological liberalism. Last year he went out of his way to explain that he was not leading a party of the left, and never would be.

The problem with trying to make this a reality is that most Libdem voters obviously did not see their relationship with the party that way.

With a very few exceptions, most Libdem voters have traditionally been disaffected left-wingers. They have been former Labour members who admired the party’s anti-war stance, social democrats who liked its former commitment to progressive taxation and well funded public services.

They have been students attracted by the party’s policy on tuition fees. They are not generally classical liberals who see the beauty of laissez-faire economics and liberation from state control – that constituency was absorbed into the Conservative Party a long time ago.

If anyone in the Lib Dems ever doubted this, the proof is in the pudding, and after this set of elections that pudding is now all over Nick Clegg’s face. The Libdems are a party of broad, socially liberal, centre-left, or they are a party with no seats.

There is no such thing as “Liberal England”, and if the Orange Bookers don’t stop chasing its shadow then they’ll run the party off a cliff.

That’s probably the most sensible thing I’ve read for a long time. I’ve been increasingly dismayed by the Lib Dems direction of travel ever since Charles Kennedy stepped down.

Since then the party seems to have been captured by the tiny “Orange Book” clique, who are totally unrepresentative of most Lib Dem supporters and voters. They seem to have believed that the way forward for the Lib Dems is to strip the party of any distictivness and become yet another identikit centrist thacherite/neo liberal party exacty like the other two. Ironically just as that mode was becoming discredited. As we have seen, their rule has been a disaster for the party!

After this disaster is over. Hopefully we will see the Lib Dems return to being the centre-left social liberal/social democratic party that the vast majority of their supporters want it to be.

@ 8 Graham

“After this disaster is over. Hopefully we will see the Lib Dems return to being the centre-left social liberal/social democratic party that the vast majority of their supporters want it to be”

Considering how tainted the Lib Dem image is now going to be among left-wingers, it might be better if its centre-left members break off and start a new party. It’s hard to win votes when you’re seen as totally untrustworthy.

@6 margin4terror

But I don’t agree that with a very few exceptions, most Libdem voters have traditionally been disaffected left-wingers.

Most Lib Dems I know now – indeed all – are right wing. They are laissez-faire economics – they are small staters – they are not tory but they are right wing.

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.

In other words. If the Lib Dems do decide to revert to being “the old Liberal party” they’re going to lose at least 40% of their supporters and voters, and it’s unlikely they’ll pick up many Tories to make up for it.

@7

I don’t think you need to go as far as Canada for an example that doesn’t exactly support your position. In Scotland an avowedly left of centre part took votes from all 3 of the other major parties, and effectively stifled any Green party progress.

M4E @ 6 is correct; the LD’s are on course to diminish into their classical Liberal predecessor, and perhaps that is a good thing. It isn’t only in Scotland that a sea change has occurred in our politics; the poor judgement and choices of the LD leadership have had a number of serious effects: closing the door on electoral reform for a generation; making a dissolution of the Union more likely, and throwing the continuing weakness of the Labour party into stark relief.

What is needed isn’t a revived fight for the liberal centre ground, or a need for the Labour party to move to the centre…. it’s a realisation that the centre left itself needs a realignment. If Labour isn’t fit for purpose, and the rump LD’s now effectively represent the centre, perhaps what is needed is a fourth choice. If it worked in scotland, there is no reason it can’t work here.

@ 10 Graham

The problem is that people define terms like “left” and “right” however they like. Liberalism is a socially leftist and economically rightist philosophy, and many laissez-faire voters may prefer to use the “left” label to describe themselves simply because the “right” label has overtones of nastiness and authoritarianism.

@11 In Scotland you have a disconnect between promises made and paying the bills. Centre-left dominance in that context is not surprising… particularly when you add in decades of grievances of London Conservative governments on single issues like industrial policy and the poll tax.

Nationalism also distorts the debate. The SNP is a merger of two parties one of which was right of centre. That wing has died back but it leaves a core constituency of market liberals who favour a dynamic free trading Scotland outside the UK with no natural home.

Oddly, given both those points, independence is quite likely to lead to a resurgence of a Scottish centre-right. With the Tories quite wedded to unionism it leaves quite an opportunity for the Liberal Democrats. Hard to see what opportunity, if any they have on the unionist centre-left.

@7 Andy Mayer

I’m not sure that Lib Dems did switch to the Tories? It’s possible that I’ve missed some very timely polling evidence of how people voted yesterday and their past vote, but I wouldn’t confuse the swing from Tories to Lib Dems with the same people voting for different parties.

All we know is the votes cast – a static Tory vote and a massively reduced Lib Dem vote is a ‘swing from Lib Dems to Tories’ in a Lib-Tory marginal, but with a lower turnout. It’s one of the drawbacks of looking at things in terms of swing.

Graham

Thing is – that article is from a year ago – and it has a major flaw in it.

Firstly – pollsters are already finding a major slide in the number of people who voted Lib Dem in 2010 (some as low as 18% now) – showing just how out of date analysis of Lib Dems a year ago is when considering what the party is now.

That reflects the fact that actual left wingers have not just left the party – but now lie in large numbers about ever having ever supported it.

Likewise – given their poll ratings of 10% – and the reasonable assumption that this reflects a left-wing flight from the party – it seems slightly odd that you would imagine there is much left wing support left to lose.

More importantly though.

The flaw in that survey is that it asks lib dem activists whether they are left wing or right wing. It doesn’t ask what policies they support.

I know a number of lib dems. They genuinely do believe they are left wing. However, they also believe the state shouldn’t pay for school meals for kids, that the NHS should only be free for the poor, that child benefit should not be universal but instead a charity for poor families, and so on.

These are not left wing positions. They are right wing positions.

A lot of people were keen to label Blair right wing despite his claim to be centre-left. It thus seems odd not to at least be open to the idea that although some one thinks they are left wing, they might in fact be right wing.

“And the old Liberal Party was a right wing party by post-war consensus standards. ”

Are you sure? It may have been at the start of the 1950s but by the late 60s it had become the infamous idealistic left-leaning “beards and sandals” party. Indeed the SDP were to the Right of the Liberal Party on some issues. The classical liberal element of the Liberal Party joined the Tories long ago and has only recently begun to resurface within their old home.

Richard

in regards to the post war consensus – supporting a welfare state, the NHS, socialised industry and so on – yes – I’m sure they were right wing.

The sandle-wearing stuff was born out of the same old liberal party ethos of charity not solidarity. A bunch of wealthy well educated people who pitty the poor and the imprisonned does not a left wing party make.

Of course every party has some aspects one could call left wing and some aspects one could call right wing.

And of course those things change all the time. But even in the 80s when the parties merged, the liberal party lost members (and MPs) because they objected to an alliance with left-wingers. (especially the corporatist wing of the liberal party)

One thing I’ll add to the list of things which Lib Dems are (left wing, etc) is left wingers who were concerned with the civil liberties dimension (or lack of) of Labour’s record in government. That’s definitely another dividing line.

It’s irritatingly difficult to discuss the issue in a short blog post becuse of the problems with terminology. (‘liberal’ has about 5 different meanings all of which are relevant to this context…)

@ 16 Margin4Error

“The sandle-wearing stuff was born out of the same old liberal party ethos of charity not solidarity. A bunch of wealthy well educated people who pitty the poor and the imprisonned does not a left wing party make. ”

Indeed – a perfect-world leftwing system would eliminate the need for charity (or at least human charity) altogether. Replacing solidarity with optional charity is essentially a libertarian ideal.

On the history of the Liberal Party – once it was replaced by Labour it certainly got more radical. Don’t forget Peter Hain, who self described as a ‘libertarian socialist’ as leader of the Liberal Students. Although you could debate how relevant the latter-day Liberal Party was.

The still continuing Liberal Party (the people who reformed after the SDP merger) actually has some pretty radical policies – for one thing they advocate complete confiscation of inheritance and a £10,000 payment to every single person who reaches the age of 21 to replace any inheritance that may have been taken, all funded by inheritance.

Chaise

Universal benefits is what it takes. Sadly it is the Lib Dems who are quickest to destroy them where they exist.

Tories don’t like means testing because it takes something away from their core constitutent. Labour don’t like differentiating who gets what because it undermines widespread support and so makes it easier to diminish and eventually scrap.

The Lib Dems are happy to try to make every act of solidairty into charity – and thus destroy it in the long term. (The process has started now with child benefit – which I fear will be gone in 20 years)

Jon

I expect Labour to move to a more civil liberties freindly position over the next year or two.

A lot of Lib Dems have already defected – meaning that a larger part of labour’s support is now that way inclined. That will help balance the more practical outlook of the larger working class membership.

There is also a generational shift under way too – Labour is up in the polls and so winning more council seats. innevitably this means a lot more relatively young councillors elected. They won’t be former lib dems, but younger labour party people tend to be more inclined towards civil liberties too.

It is a big shift for a party though. Labour has never ever been a liberal party. The closest it came in government, ironically, was under Blair – and it was still far from.

As an aside. With the left wing flight from the Lib Dems to Labour. If there is an influx of social liberals into Labour, it could in future provide a stronger counterbalance to the authoritarian/socially conservative wing of the Labour Party which dominated during the New Labour years.

An awful lot of left leaning people who might otherwise have voted Labour were disgusted by the authoritarianism of Blair and Brown.

The Labour Party once had a strong socially liberal wing, especially in the 1960s Labour government with Roy Jenkins et al. But they seem to have melted away in recent years.

@21

You said what I was going to say just before me.

@21. Margin4error

Definitely agree with that, and I do really think that it’s for the best

It is of course true that the Tories are the real enemy. But I’m not sure that the “Lib Dems drew fire from the Tories” argument really works. What actually happened last night? People who previously voted Libdem stopped voting Libdem.

Funny for people like my self who have a disablity the real problem has to be Labour not the Tories. I mean i would be kicked by both parties the question is of couirse who would kick the hardest, Labour.

Purnell is so proud of what he did in labour and so he should be.

Labour has never ever been a liberal party. The closest it came in government, ironically, was under Blair – and it was still far from.

I’m not sure about that. Labour has always been split on that. There has always been Liberal elements in the Labour party, as well as more socially conservative authoritarian working class elements.

Ironically the 1960s Labour government of Harold Wilson was probably the most radically liberal government of the last 100 years (even though a lot of labourites dissaproved) They were after all responsible for Legalising homosexuality and abortion, and abolishing the death penalty and theatre censorship and relaxing divorce laws. Among other things.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Wilson#Social_issues

However the authoritarian wing seems to have dominated in recent years. A rebalancing would be welcome.

Wow – three people agreeing on LibCon

I’ve not been on here for a few months but I assume that’s still rare?

Graham

I tend to think differently about the big acts of liberal intervention (abolishing capital punishment, legalising abortion, etc) because be it Wilson, Callaghan or Blair – their view of those issues is the same and is liberal. Tony Blair might have eased drug laws – but I wouldn’t say he was thus more liberal tham me because I havn’t done so. (not being in government and all that)

With Blair there was a real attempt to marry liberal and authoritarian wings by combining their aims. The “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime” was a liberal statement of intent. It made clear that authoritarian thinking on crime was for after the event – and liberal thinking was the solution before the event.

The party largely backed that – and other similar moves. Ironically Ed Miliband has a chance to return to that tendancy and cement it as liberals move towards the party.

Well, I suppose can you can all hope they revert to be being a meaningless protest party. A plaything of the Labour Party, lied to and played by successive Labour leaders. Don’t think it will happen though.

15% isn’t a disaster in the current circumstances, I expected worse. It’s Ed who took the most unexpected beating of the night.

Tory

15% was a collapse in a local election round that included a number of heartland councils for them.

And Ed didn’t lose. I get that Tories don’t like devolution – but please try to at least acknowledge it exists. Indeed the Scottish result vindicated Ed’s effort to target the lib dems first and foremost. In England it worked and won Labour a lot of seats. In Scotland the leadership there didn’t do the same and picked up no new spport.

Perhaps Lib Dems need to start standing up in public for some of the values they espoused in order to win votes in the general election, like civil liberties.

As far as I can see, the party has been silent about the pre-crime arrests before the royal wedding.

Perhaps a few Lib Dem MPs might be able to find the courage to add their names to the following Early day motion: http://www.parliament.uk/edm/2010-11/1771

Tim

They could of course block legislation that isn’t in the coalition agreement – like the NHS bill – and then they might have some basis for their defence. They could reasonably claim they agreed a package for the national good amid financial crisis and have to stick to it.

Allowing a bill to go forward that breaks both party manifestos just because the tories want to wreck the nhs leaves them beyond salvation

@19 Jon: “On the history of the Liberal Party – once it was replaced by Labour it certainly got more radical. Don’t forget Peter Hain, who self described as a ‘libertarian socialist’ as leader of the Liberal Students.”

A minor correction: Peter Hain was chair of the Young Liberals. At that time there was a lot of factionalism between the “Red Guard” YL and mainstream Union of Liberal Students. Some youngsters were members of both and there were visible tribal lines across the floor at ULS conferences. YL members were notably anti involvement in NUS politics and pro Liberator and Association of Liberal Councillors.

Was expected to be worse than 15% by many. All it means is they can no longer appeal to two different audiences at the same time.

Labour took a complete thrashing though.

The Conservatives were already fighting from the ridiculously high base of 2007. The first opportunity the electorate gets to punish a new government for an agenda of reform and austerity. Margret Thatcher lost hundreds and hundreds of seats in her first local elections. The Conservative have gained seats!

Now lets compare that to Ed. Remember how the fightback into government would begin in Scotland? Scottish Labour has been annihilated by the SNP to such an extent you can no longer count on Scots during a general election. What about the AV Campaign that Ed was leading? The forces of conservatism 69%, the forces of ‘progress’ 31%. The results in England weren’t much better, you will soon be seeing data that shows the Conservatives won the popular vote.

@32: “A minor correction: Peter Hain was chair of the Young Liberals. At that time there was a lot of factionalism between the “Red Guard” YL and mainstream Union of Liberal Students.”

Was that before or after Norman Tebbit felt impelled to disband the Federation of Conservative Students?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federation_of_Conservative_Students

Something to do with their cognitive dissonance, as I recall.

@6 Andy Mayer: “The Liberal Democrat party brand is damaged as a result of decisions taken before and after the coalition. Tuition fees for example was a policy reeking of opportunism, regressive and highly unlikely to survive a fiscal downturn. Who seriously was going to argue to feather the beds of middle class children whilst cutting benefits and social care? Or raising fantasy taxes, that even if possible would still have been better spent on the vulnerable?”

My compliments for a very cogent argument.

I’d go so far as to say that the mistaken tuition fees policy was the overwhelming cause of voter loss. Getting in bed with the Conservatives would have been forgivable owing to Commons arithmetic following the 2010 election. LibDems would have been able to defend the coalition on the basis of tax allowance reform and a few other concessions.

The 2011 rout was an inevitable consequence of a stupid, unworkable policy. It was the political equivalent of Gerald Ratner’s jokes about his company’s products.

The scale of the rout is pretty disastrous for local government in England. Every council has a handful of victorious paper candidates who didn’t really want the role.

@32. Charlieman

Thanks, that was rather interesting!

@30. Tim Hardy

VERY good point, they would have been first to the dispatch box to complain about the pre-crime arrests had they been in opposition.

“Labour took a complete thrashing”

tory (33). LMAO. If you’re aspiring to be a credible Tory spin doctor, you’ll need to be more subtle than that!

Labour’s “complete thrashing” amounted to 800 more councillors, control of 26 more councils, and extra seats in the Welsh Assembly. There was also a little noticed swing to Labour of over 8% in the Leicester South by-election. By contrast, as we move back to a two-party system, the Tory slice of the Lib Dem carcass amounted to only 81 more councillors and 4 more councils. If the former Lib Dem support is reallocated that way in the next general election, there will be an easy victory for Labour.

@34 Bob B: “Was that before or after Norman Tebbit felt impelled to disband the Federation of Conservative Students?”

Different parties, Bob, and a very different era. The FCS situation is still illuminating, however. The “libertarian” wing formed an alliance with the authoritarian Monday Club crowd to squeeze out the wets. Then they turned on the Monday Club crowd which led to Tebbit’s intervention. (The Young Conservatives were run by wets and moderate Thatcherites.)

The “libertarians” still haven’t acknowledged that they were funded and manipulated by authoritarians from outside the Conservative party. They were pawns for people more loathsome than the Monday Club. Somewhat scarily, many of these people are now Conservative MPs and councillors.

“With a very few exceptions, most Libdem voters have traditionally been disaffected left-wingers”.

If you’d used “members” or “activists” instead of “voters” you’d have been nearer the mark.

The real problem for the Liberal Democrats is that most of the anti-Tory tactical vote from Labour supporters has evaporated. “Vote for us to keep the Tories out” just won’t work any more, and it’ll take more than a change of leadership and a screaming divorce from the coalition to change that.

Tory

Keep on repeating nonsensical rubbish like that and you simply discredit anything else you ever come out with.

But in case you have even a remote willingness to learn what you don’t understand…

…In 1998 the tories didn’t recover at all from their abysmal 1994 results. Indeed recently booted out parties rarely do recover at all well in the next nationwide election. Labour has done the unusual this time by recovering significantly following last year’s ejection from power.

All in all – Labour will be pleased with their results on that basis – just as the tories will be pleased with not having suffered much protest vote.

The lib dems lost. obviously.

@27. Margin4error: “With Blair there was a real attempt to marry liberal and authoritarian wings by combining their aims. The “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime” was a liberal statement of intent.”

Blair may have had that vision, but he couldn’t find a decent Home Secretary from his party. Blunkett and Straw were appalling in their own ways, but the appointment of John Reid begs the question whether Blair believed his own policy.

—
Returning to my argument about the LibDem tuition fees policy, I think that its role in attracting young people to vote LibDem has been overstated. It had appeal to many, of course. But most would have voted LibDem anyway.

New Labour never appointed a liberal Home Secretary. Most young voters were unaware of this but they sensed New Labour authoritarianism: National ID cards, drugs policy, incoherent immigration policy, stop and search. New Labour illiberalism was enough reason to vote LibDem and there was no need for the nonsense tuition fees policy.

You’ve hit the nail on the head. Clegg is leading a party that exists only in his (and a few colleagues’ imagination). Those who want a small state, economically liberal party intent on dismantling the welfare state changed the Tory party from within 40 years ago.

Meanwhile many older Tory voters still hobble along to the voting booths, putting their cross beside ‘Conservative’ blithely unaware that it spells the end of the NHS they rely on, the pension and benefits they survive on, and the libraries they are the major users of, complaining about the state of the roads and verges, wondering why they can’t get a GP appointment for two weeks – assuming all our problems are down to Gordon Brown’s overspending and benefit scroungers.

Until now, it hasn’t hit them, but what’s in store will test the notion that we are essentially a ‘Conservative’ country.

charlieman

I fear you may have wandered down the blind alley of opposition vehmence which leads so many young “liberals” to a superficial and facile understanding of liberty.

Tough on Crime is indeed an authoritarian statement – but pointing that out, and along with it some of the “toughs” involved, hardly negates the fact that there was plenty of “tough on the causes of crime” too, a very liberal outlook that we had not seen in government in the UK for a generation.

Fundementally a liberal view of crime is not that we should let everyone off. It is also not that the police should not be allowed to arrest criminals. It is also not just that particular laws (drugs, prostitution etc).

It is rather, that we as a society should give people a stake in law abiding society by keeping them from desperation or despondance that results in criminal behaviour.

It is, in otherwords, that crime can be tackled socially rather than fought by force.

Labour under Blair reflected this liberal attitude very strongly. It drove up education standards at the lowest end of the spectrum. It invested in renewing the homes of people in the most delapedated estates. It created training schemes to give the poor a better shot at a working life. It ressurected apprenticeships across the country. It did these things and many more that the old sandle-wearers would no doubt have approved of.

It did much else that was illiberal in other ways. The war on terror in particular resulted in a lot of public demand for legislation and new practices, a demand the government met. Likewise hysteria about paedophiles resulted in the creation of sex offender registers and requiring everyone working with children to be checked against such lists. Smoking in enclosed public spaces was banned. And so on.

But don’t profess liberal inclination and then focus on nothing but the home office when discussing crime policy. Nothing could be more Michael Howard-esque.

@Margin4error — New Labour had 14 years to argue those points but they didn’t. I don’t recall Tony Blair connecting worthy public expenditure with Tough on the causes. However I do remember penal reformers saying that ASBOs were a stupid idea and that short length prison sentences failed to rehabilitate.

Milord Ashdown was at it recently – How many times are we going to hear that pathetic old mantra “We had to go into coalition with the Tories for the good of the country.” The good of who?
With the Lib Dems still facing extinction ( don’t think this has just been a protest vote only) what will happen to the country and the good thereof when the Lib Dems are no more?
Well on that basis we must accept that the Lib Dems have been all but exterminated in Scotland ‘for the good of the country.’ Lead on Nickduff.

@26 Graham: Ironically the 1960s Labour government of Harold Wilson was probably the most radically liberal government of the last 100 years (even though a lot of labourites dissaproved) They were after all responsible for Legalising homosexuality and abortion, and abolishing the death penalty and theatre censorship and relaxing divorce laws.”

You are normally good at history, Graham. But the Abortion Act 1967 started as a private members bill from Liberal David Steel. And it took ten years to enact the recommendations of the Wolfenden Report, three years after the Labour victory.

Woy Jenkins was a cracking good Home Secretary, I agree. But he was a large L Liberal from a working class background running under red colours.

@1: Here on the centre left – we get an atrocious leader like Brown or a divisive on like Blair and off we all trot to the Lib Dems like the brainless idiots we all are. Only problem is, that lets in the Tories again

The solution to this is called AV. I can only assume that those people in the Labour party who were against it did so on the calculation that another 18 years of Thatcherism was an acceptable price to pay for the chance to eventually get their sole hands on the levers of power on just over a third of the vote.

Either that or they though they’d lose their seats.

@48. Phil Hunt: “The solution to this is called AV.”

Nope, the solution is PR. AV is a miserable compromise and it was wise to support it. AV is better than FPTP but it is miserable.

The coalition has not given Thatcherites control of anything. The coalition is based on the idea that moderate Conservatives manage services. Andrew Lansley is the only Thatcherite that runs a ministry but it is under close watch; Gove manages Education, but he is bonkers not Thatcherite.

Lansley’s head will be the pay off following the AV campaign.

“Lansley’s head will be the pay off following the AV campaign.”

??

You can’t mean that the LibDems did so well they will be entitled to demand Lansley’s head. So you must mean that Cameron will give them Lansley’s head because they did so badly they may feel inclined to leave the coalition.

I’d say that’s a bad reflection of the reality. If the LibDems walk, Cameron could lead a minority govt for a bit, or he could call an election and probably win it. The one thing the LibDems cannot want now is a General Election. Cameron is in command now. He will torture them for a bit, Flashman-style, just for the fun of it. Eg, like having a listening exercise on the NHS reforms which doesn’t accept incoming calls. http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2011/05/05/paul-taylor/read-their-lips/

@50
I’m not so sure I would agree. The Lib Dems are in deep trouble whatever they do.
If they brought down the coalition early, in the short run they would indeed be hammered. In the longer run however they could at least claim to have preserved some integrity and principle, which might eventually help them to recover.

If they stay in the coalition for the whole term however, it is questionable whether the party will exist at all in five years time.

I would say that pulling the plug early on the coalition was the Lib Dems least worse option. And possibly the only one which could save them from annihilation.

I would say they should stay in the coalition for another year max.

And there’s no guarantee that the Tories would win an early election. Remember they were massively ahead in the polls in 2009 but then failed to win a majority.

Charlieman

Again you have focused only on the home office. Maybe that focus is why you never heard Tony Blair espouse the vital role of improving services and the incomes of the low paid and getting more people into work to cut crime. The importance of early intervention and bringing troubled kids into the mainstream was a big apsect too. (It worked as well).

It was never a big headline grabbing case, but it was a case he made repeatedly as PM and before he was elected.

I’m not sure if I can agree with some of the posts upthread. Particularly with the “true colours” statement which keeps getting trotted out. The Lib Dems are emphatically not Tories. They have a distinct set of identities, separate from those which outsiders like to put on them.

The Lib Dems are definitely a party tied together by social liberalism, particularly over issues like civil liberties, human rights. However the split within the party is not necessarily economic, in general I would say they are still economically liberal ie. preferring free trade over central planning. However, there is a strong vein of positive liberty within the Lib Dems which is completely absent from the Tories.

The Liberal party has always been composed of multiple factions, all the way back to Gladstone, various combinations of religious nonconformists, libertarians, free traders, the works.

The point is that the balance between positive and negative liberty is one that occurs within the party. The debates are had by LibDems in local party meetings, and in pubs, and at party conferences up and down the country. It is always worth remembering that the Lib Dems are NOT Clegg or any of the others, but they are chosen by the party. That said, the tribal battering they’ve received from the left is actually pushing the Lib Dems to back Clegg and instituting a seige mentality.

There are loads and loads of totally spot on criticisms of what the Lib Dems are doing in government, policies which are plainly bollocks, and places where they haven’t stood up to the Tories enough. However, most of the attacks from the left started way before that. The Lib Dems always claimed to believe in plural politics, which means respecting the fact that the tories exist, that they were elected by 37% of the electorate, and that the views of that 37% should be taken into account. The visceral hatred of Lib Dems for forming the coalition at all are driving the remaining Lib Dems closer together because they challenge that fundamental part of their identity.

ed

the most important part of your post is the word “remaining”

For the most part the left can live with the “remaining” lib dems banding together with their leadership more closely – because they are such a small number of people and because they are, by and large, not particularly of left wing persuasion. Even those who have remained despite being more leftist than rightist, are increasingly outweighed in influence within their party by those who are more right-ist – since most of the leftist support has left (in England largely for Labour according to the Ashcroft study – in Scotland for the SNP according to the result last week)

As such we have to question how much relevence that particular party has for the left. It no longer seems a party through which a wider coalition of the left would be built or one that would even comfortably sit within a wider coalition of the left led primarilly by labour.

The best aim for the left would be to attempt to syphon off that last left wing support in the libdems and draw them towards left wing parties – instead of a party that claims to be centrist and that in government has served the right.

For anyone who thinks that the Lib Dems days as a party are numbered, think again. This situation has happened before.

Back in the late 1920s, the Liberals split after a coalition with Labour into the ‘Liberals’ and the ‘Liberal Nationals’ (who eventually swapped the two words around and eventually merged with the Conservatives).

Even though the current party contains people who are able to maintain cordial relations with Labour and/or the Conservatives, there is always going to be a group of people who could never bring themselves to defect to either of the big two.

The 15% share of the vote they received on Thursday is probably is probably not far off this core constituency. And I think Ed (post 53) is broadly correct about what these people believe. Any more effort spent on trying to kill the Coalition by attacking the junior partner will simply be a waste of time.

Martin

They are running about 10% nationally – which is probably about the core level.

But it isn’t clear that that core is of much use to the left.

So while it is probably important for Labour to focus some attention on the Tories – they still have a lot to do to cement the support of defecting lib dem voters. It will take time to convince them labour can represent a more liberal outlook on civil liberties. Getting them to jump ship was easy. Getting them to stay on board a different boat is the long term aim.

> Where the ‘drawing fire from the Tories’ argument falls down is that those people who didn’t vote Lib Dem were already not voting Tory.

> They had no further way of punishing or hurting the Conservatives – you can’t literally ‘vote against’ someone in the same way that the ‘drawing fire’ or ‘distracting from the real enemy’ premise implies.

True as far as it goes. But it ignores a couple of facts.

a) Peeling voters away from the party you’re attacking is not the only tactical reason for attacking another party: you can also do it to attract voters who dislike them.

b) In a FPTP system, it isn’t necessary to take votes directly from another party in order to beat them (look at what happened in Scotland, where Labour lost many constituencies due to swings from the Lib Dems to the SNP).

People who stopped voting Lib Dem were indeed already not voting Tory. But they didn’t all switch to Labour. Ignoring fourth parties for the moment, it is certainly theoretically possible that the LibDems did effectively “draw fire” from the Tories.

I’m not proposing this as a model for what DID happen in any given area – I’ve not studied the figures closely enough to make any such claim – just pointing out that it MIGHT have happened, and the OP doesn’t appear to acknowledge that possibility.

Say, in such and such a ward, the Tories have a plurality of the vote. Labour rhetoric focuses on Lib Dem betrayals. Former Lib Dems are convinced by it to abandon their old party, but not sufficiently enthused to switch to Labour. They stay at home. The Tories win again – whereas an anti-Tory campaign might have actually brought those ex-Lib-Dems out for Labour.

This danger is worth bearing in mind for the future. The Tories seem to have hit an electoral plateau. They’re beatable without shedding a single vote. But they’re not beatable if those who oppose them don’t vote. (Not that I’m saying they necessarily should vote Labour. I sympathise with any leftish English voter who couldn’t bring themselves to do that; fortunately, living in Scotland, I didn’t have to.)

As for the Lib Dems’ own plans: well, they’re in a bind now. If they carry on as subservient partners, they’ll get at least as big a kicking in 2015 as they got on Thursday – but if they pull out of the coalition any time soon, they’ll be seen as wreckers driven by childish pique, and they’ll be punished for that. Their best bet is to turn just bolshy enough to regain some credibility, while making sure that they DON’T bring down the government yet. Unfortunately for them, any level of rebellion that’s tame enough for the coalition to last til 2015 will probably be too tame to get any credibility back; while if they actually AIM to stay in coalition for the moment but bring it down in 2012 or 2013, the Tories will realise what their game is and refuse to play. So those options, too, are bad in the short term – but at least they might then retain enough of a foundation to recover from in a few years’ time.

One problem I have is this idea that the Lib Dems are somehow shifting to the right. That core 15% have not become more right wing, the fact remains that most Lib Dems actually have fairly similar aims to most Labour, in their aim is to bring about the most freedom for the indivdiual, including positive freedom. They have different methods, but they do believe that it is the responsibility of the state to support those who are worse off in society in order to bring about their freedom.

The point is that these Lib Dems believe that the cuts are necessary and temporary, most would still prefer to put up the burden of income tax and provide Scandinavian levels of services. This is why the allegations of “turning Tory” are mostly bollocks. Yes they are prepared to work with the Tories because they don’t have the same level of visceral hatred. But they are a distinct group. Lots of those who have left have done so because they believe that the Tory cuts are unneccessary, not because they completely hate the party.

I guarantee, once Labour are back in power and the David Blunkett, John Reid and Jack Straw branch of the party are calling the shots, that many of them will leave. Likewise, those who have stuck with the Lib Dems through Clegg, will no more quit the party than most Labour members who lived through Blunkett, Reid or the rest of the authoritarian left.