Liberal Vision

A miserable night for little compromises

The counting is ongoing, but early election results seem to indicate a bad night for the Liberal Democrats, modest success for Labour, and a good result for Conservatives, holding their own on an already high base. The AV referendum will likely be lost. Not much has changed in Wales, bar a small and anticipated Labour advance.

In Scotland the success of the SNP against everyone, potentially securing a small majority under a proportional voting system, is extraordinary and could be game-changing. Either it will give them the momentum they need for a proper debate about independence. Or it will be a bubble akin to Cleggmania, popped rapidly when they find they cannot possibly deliver pre-election promises made without concession to economics.

The biggest loser tonight though would appear to be coalition politics. The retention of the bipolar first past the post system aside, third parties, the Liberal Democrats in particular, will find little in these outcomes to encourage future collaboration.

Governing alone the SNP have advanced, where Labour and the Liberal Democrats fell back after their coalition government. In Wales Plaid have fallen after co-operating with Labour, and Labour have not advanced much. The Liberal Democrats, across the country, have suffered after co-operating with the Conservatives. In the Council elections smaller parties across the board have lost ground to the two big beasts.

As Lord Ashdown noted last night:

“We believed, perhaps a little over-optimistically, that the British people would understand the difference between compromise and betrayal.”

The party case, ‘we had to do this because of the economic situation’, has received a resounding raspberry in response. Would a future Liberal Democrat leader be quite so keen to do a deal for government, with any party, on this result?

It is important to conclude, that the liberal left preference for a deal with Labour, should not be seen as more attractive by this result. There is no reason to believe that the party’s “first mid-term for 80 years” would have been less painful as junior partners to Miliband and Balls, let alone an ongoing Brown premiership. It would quite likely have been worse, the party is far more exposed to advances by the Conservatives than Labour.

It does though merit some soul-searching as to how the party prepares for and engages in future opportunities like 2010. Are there examples of coalition relationships that have boosted the junior party, and what can we learn from that? Or are we better off on the sidelines until the day one of the major parties faces the kind of collapse that demolished the Liberals in the 1920s?

AV: Liberal Democrats should not panic

Members of the Liberal Democrat party have electoral reform in their DNA. No doubt, for some their first words were not mummy or daddy but single transferable vote (STV) in multi-member constituencies. So winning the AV referendum matters. Fellow Liberal Vision blogger, Andy Mayer set out clearly why he thinks people should vote yes. I have speculated in another place about the alternative vote and whether it will lead to a more liberal society.

Right now the polls don’t look that encouraging for the supporters of change. Polls can be wrong and there is still time to make the case but what if AV is rejected by the voters?

My fingers are hovering over the keyboard as I feel that what I am about to suggest is heretical. I should state clearly I am not arguing for a no vote by writing that members of the Liberal Democrats should not panic if the voters reject AV. In fact, it could turn out to deliver proportional representation in the future.

On Radio 4′s Today programme yesterday, Norman Lamb argued that this was a once in a lifetime opportunity to change the voting system. Some though believe that by adopting AV now Britain will eventually get STV. If Norman is right and the vote goes the Lib Dems way, our electoral system is likely to be set for a very long time.

Liberal Democrats believe our current system of first past the post (FPTP) is discredited. As far as they are concerned it won’t stop being discredited if AV is rejected. There is a belief that the Prime Minister will have to make concessions to Nick Clegg if the vote goes Cameron’s way. One concession might be reform of the House of Lords elected under STV. This will give voters a chance to become comfortable with a different system. If they like it they will be able to compare it to FPTP and make up their own minds about which system better reflects the wishes of voters.  In that situation, could we be looking at another referendum in 10 years or so on STV?

This time period gives the party a chance to prove itself in government, develop policies for future government and perhaps move from the third party to one of the main parties. Right now that may seem fanciful but this sort of thing has happened before.

Barnsley defects to Scotland

Congratulations to Labour’s Dan Jarvis, who has beaten the nationalists into second place, to be coronated the next Labour MP in Barnsley Central. The Liberal Democrats came sixth. 

Were this a small town in Scotland it would not be an entirely unusual result, albeit still bad for the Liberal Democrats.

 The low turnout (37% versus 57% at the general election) was a factor. The 2nd place at the general election was only 17%, some 6 votes higher than the Conservatives.

The headline though is what matters, with echos of the SDP’s 7th place performance in Bootle 1990. The result that finally persuaded David Owen to dissolve the party.

It is hard though to draw any meaningful conclusion from the result beyond a sense that the UK like the USA is polarising. The US split is sometimes characterised as ‘the United States of Canada’ versus ‘Jesusland’, ours as ‘AngloSaxonia’ versus ‘Southern Scandinavia’.

Multi-party Scotland for example has proven curiously resilient to plural outcomes over the last 30 years with Labour regularly out-performing their national vote share, and widely predicted to return as the largest party in May’s Scottish elections.

Even in 2010 Labour secured 42% of the Scottish vote (versus 29% overall) with a swing away from the SNP. This after presiding over a financial disaster on a scale akin to the Scottish banking crisis that precipitated the Act of Union in 1707.

In that context it’s hard to see what trends or political winds it would take for a centrist or centre-right party to win big in Scotland.

Could some parts of the north of England be going the same way?

The North East has 25 Labour MPs and 4 from coalition parties. It’s hard to see that changing much, even with voting reform.

The South East conversely has 75 Conservatives, 4 Liberal Democrats, 4 Labour and 1 Green.

These are regions as divided on politics as Texas and New Jersey.

Such division is a problem for the Liberal Democrats. It means a centre-ground squeeze if we remain coherent, and (at least) two parties if we return to protest-vote opportunism.

Results like Barnsley Central, numerically irrelevant in themselves, will encourage defections and add fuel to the narrative of a liberal split.

There is a further problem in what to do about it. Ending the coalition or ditching Nick Clegg might appease typically Labour protest votes, but not win them back, whilst simultaneously alienating liberal conservatives and independents.

Reversing the tuition fees reversal would deepen tensions in the party (many MPs would be made to look ridiculous) and do nothing to restore public trust. That damage has been done.

Does it mean the party should always sit outside Government until it can win a majority? Maybe electorally, but this is unlikely to improve the party’s credibility as a future government, or make the case for electoral reform.

The unhappy advice surely then is that Nick Clegg must stick to his guns, do more to flesh out what his centre-ground liberal alternative looks like, and weather more Barnsley Centrals on the road to 2015 in the hope events and opponents will provide the opportunities for revival.

Whether or not the party let him do that remains to be seen.

Is Obama a Keynesian?

Very funny. Hat-tip to Alec van Gelder, who you should follow on Twitter:

Term limit new peers to ensure reform

Yesterday’s news that the new coalition will seek to ennoble a significant number of new peers to reflect the vote shares in the last election is an uncomfortable reminder of the realpolitik facing the new government.

It would be very easy to regard this as an entirely cynical measure, paying off worthy servants of the party machines and unlucky candidates for their contribution.

It is also a blunt reality that the House of Lords currently over-represents the Labour party and under-represents the Government. Given no one can be sacked, and no one in the Lords has any democratic legitimacy to be there, should the Government risk their entire agenda being derailed for this?

This was not a position taken by the last Government, who also used an ‘interim measure’, with a promise of future reform, never delivered, to improve their own position.

The most popular option to avoid repeating such an exercise would be to push through second chamber reform at the same time. But there is no consensus between the parties, or within some, on what this reform looks like. More democratic, entirely democratic, revolution, bridging arrangements, term lengths, electoral system, titles, actual powers and so on, the range of views is wide, and the iron law of self-interest would suggest most deeply held by those favouring the status quo. It will take time to build a consensus on how to remove this feudal relic from our constitution.

An easier step towards reform though would be put forward a proposal for term limits for all new peers to the current House. Perhaps 5 years, perhaps more. Perhaps no more than two terms possible for any of them.

This does not then require the current turkeys to vote for Christmas, makes reform in the interest of the new appointments, and puts them under the clock to deliver. It would provide some of the pressure of accountability current lacking.

It is not a very radical step. But that is the point. The new coalition cannot deliver a radical agenda to the peers until there is a consensus. In the interim it needs to dilute Labour’s blocking minority, and it needs to do so in a way that supports the Liberal Conservative reform narrative, rather than undermining it. I’m not sure there are many ways of doing that quickly that stand a chance of passage through the current second Chamber.

Who then gets appointed and how is a different question. Personally I’d like to see a party approval process at least as rigorous as that required for potential MPs, then an open selection process in the manner of a ’amIhotornot’ website where the public can rate the contenders. That’s about as close as we can get to a national primary for a large number of candidates quickly and cheaply. I’d also bar anyone in paid employment by either the government or the parties, unless they choose to resign.

The current Liberal Democrat option is an inward-looking peers panel process of hacks choosing hacks that acts as a suggestion box for the Party Leader, and can be ignored. It is not ideal nor particularly useful.

Lastly I’d say isn’t it about time John Stevens got a peerage? Securing 10,000 votes against the Speaker and pushing Nigel Farage into third place on an anti-sleaze platform is one of the best results by any independent candidate. And it is just possible he could claim to be the only true Liberal Conservative candidate in the election. One who oddly finds himself with a government but no position within it.