A realignment of the left in a hung parliament? That is a realistic possibility, according to Robert Taylor
No current opinion survey comes anywhere near predicting that the Labour Party can hope to win an overall parliamentary majority at the general election expected in May. The best Labour can hope for is to have enough seats in the House of Commons to prevent the Conservatives securing an undisputed mandate. A hung parliament is a real possibility.
Such an outcome would provide the Liberal Democrats with an opportunity to hold the balance of power. In those circumstances, a post-election alliance or broad front of the left is no longer inconceivable.
And yet the infantile behaviour of too many Labour MPs towards the Lib Dems, especially at Prime Minister’s Questions, does not suggest that the party is in any mood to reach out. It is their orchestrated publicly declared contempt for Nick Clegg that suggests Labour’s whips remain at the core of Gordon Brown’s thuggish tendency as they drill backbench lobby fodder into trying to undermine the Lib Dem leader.
But is this sensible? On an increasing number of issues, Clegg is much to the left of anyone on the Government benches and most of the Parliamentary Labour Party. His recent question to the Prime Minister about Kraft Foods’ hostile takeover of Cadbury was the kind you might have expected from the Labour backbenches in better times. Why is the state-owned RBS bank being allowed to lend £7 million to Kraft to finance its hostile ownership bid for one of Britain’s iconic companies?
On the Chilcot inquiry, Clegg was also highly effective in compelling Gordon Brown to attend before the election and explain his role in Britain’s pre-emptive military assault and occupation of Iraq. The Lib Dems have always taken a consistent and principled position in their opposition to the whole Iraq catastrophe. Their MPs – most notably Charles Kennedy and Menzies Campbell – have provided the kind of probing criticism over the years that were necessary in the exposure of what has been one of the worst foreign policy decisions taken since the Suez Canal crisis in 1956.
The Lib Dems also continue to retain an admirable reputation on the defence and furtherance of civil liberties and individual human rights. They have argued with passion and common sense against the often-draconian illiberalism of Labour’s policies on terrorism, stop and search, an end to jury trials and prison expansion. It is the Lib Dems who have denounced the coercive welfare-to-work programmes of the Government and highlighted the widening gap in inequality between the hyper-rich and the rest of us, the persistence of pensioner poverty, the tenacity of child poverty and the conditions of the most excluded in our society. The Lib Dems have often questioned the intolerant Labour attitude to asylum seekers and immigrants, although such a position is not a popular attitude to take. The party has never sought to appease the British National Party and the radical right. The Lib Dems have stood firm against the evils of racism.
Above all, under the often brilliant direction of Vince Cable, their shadow Treasury spokesman, the Lib Dems have taken a radical and credible view of the credit crunch and what needs to be done to restore confidence in the banking system. The party has supported the Government’s general commitment to the strategy of borrowing instead of cutting for the time being in order to minimise the effects of the worst and longest period of contraction the British economy has experienced since the 1930s.
In their views on defence spending, the Lib Dems are committed to the non-replacement of the Trident nuclear missile system and for a long-overdue scaling down in Britain’s overseas military commitments. On the environment, the party favours policies that will tackle climate change and it remains committed to a credible green agenda. The Lib Dems have always been a pro-European party. In the future, they can be expected to support pan-European measures that will strengthen rather than undermine Britain’s commitment to European Union membership. While such a positive EU position may not win the party many votes, it has been consistent and principled.
The Lib Dems do not say so, but much of what they stand for today reflects the values of social democracy and not the free market dogmas of 19th century Gladstonian Liberalism. In this, the party is quite different to its sister parties elsewhere in Europe. In Germany, the Free Democrats are neo-liberal – the most right wing on economic affairs of the mainstream parties in Angela Merkel’s centre-right coalition government. In Sweden, the Liberals are locked into an increasingly unpopular centre-right government that looks like it is heading for defeat in that country’s autumn general election.
For tactical reasons, Clegg’s party may not want to associate itself too closely with Labour either – before or after our own general election. But the Lib Dems have little in common with David Cameron’s Conservatives. Only one issue might persuade them to keep a Tory government in office: electoral reform. The case for at least the single transferable vote is now almost unanswerable.
Of course, the Lib Dems believe they would benefit the most from an end to the first-past-the post electoral system. In the past, they failed to win the support of either of the two main parties for the introduction of electoral reform. Now Clegg and his colleagues are likely to make this issue a condition for giving House of Commons backing to either the Conservatives or Labour in a hung parliament. Labour is being far too timid in promising a referendum on electoral change if it wins the next election.
It needs to go much further. This is not an academic exercise, but a belated act of justice and fairness.
And yet, just how left are the Lib Dems? The party, like Labour, remains an amalgam of diverse and often contradictory tendencies. There remains a strong neo-liberal free market element that is hostile to state action in economic affairs. The party is still opposed to the very existence for a government department for industry and business. This always looked an unrealistic and frivolous proposal. Now it makes no sense at all. The future role of the democratic state needs reappraisal by the left. There should be a new emphasis on local autonomy and citizenship rights. And any left narrative must also challenge the power of big transnational corporations and global capitalism. This means support for an active state. We need a fresh approach to turning the concept of the public interest and public space into policy realities.
At the same time, there must be active encouragement of personal initiatives, experimentation in social and economic policies and a commitment to toleration and compromise.
Whatever happens at the election, we need to encourage a more open-minded approach to our politics. If we move to any proportional system of voting, Britain will have to come to terms with the complexities and compromises that are involved in multi-party democracy. In the devolved assemblies of Scotland and Wales, this is what happens now – as it does in elections to the European Parliament.
What we need to see is a genuine realignment of the left – a hard-headed alliance between a post-Brown Labour Party and the Lib Dems. This might eventually lead to fusion or coalition government. In the beginning, it could mean a short-term programme of proposals on which the two parties could reach common agreement based on shared principles. It would involve electoral pacts against the Conservatives in different constituencies and joint policymaking.
None of this would be easy. The tribal loyalties of our political culture remain strong in all parties and will need to be challenged. Nevertheless, the broad left in Britain constitutes the majority view – and we should not forget this. Cameron’s Conservatives cannot expect to receive more than around 40 per cent of the vote in the next general election. Moreover, the Lib Dems are not their natural allies.
This is why it is so short sighted of Brown and his drilled backbench MPs to persist with their antics of abuse towards Clegg and the Lib Dems. They should treat that party with respect and understanding and recognise they share more in common with them than they are prepared to accept in public. It is true that some Lib Dems in some parts of the country remain hostile to Labour and often act in an irresponsible and populist way. But this is more a consequence of electoral calculation than genuine conviction.
There is an obvious danger that a rushed or shotgun marriage between Labour and the Lib Dems would wreck both parties. After May, however, pragmatism and realism may point to the need for a radical shift towards a new progressivism, similar to that which was achieved before the First World War.
It will never be easy. There will be formidable obstructions ahead. But it is worth trying. Surely no one on the left wants to see the Conservatives once again becoming the dominant political force in our country, as happened in the previous century because petty differences between Labour and the Lib Dems continue to divide the left? The time is fast approaching for the creation of a popular front of the left as the whole vacuous “new” Labour project dissolves.
After all, Labour under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown hollowed out many of the core values of the labour movement. It would not be a betrayal of socialism or social democracy to campaign for a political realignment. On the contrary, the current record and promise of the Lib Dems suggests such a strategy could herald an exciting new phase in British politics when the broad left could once again restore its influence and support.
In the names of pluralism and democracy, a Labour-Lib Dem alliance or understanding might even provide the transformational dynamic to reconnect millions of disillusioned voters with our political system.
