No amount of stage management in Liverpool this week could disguise the three-way schism within the Liberal Democrats. Nick Clegg and his merry band of ministers are enjoying the perks of power-sharing, but their troops are beginning to feel the downside of getting into bed with the Tories.
Open-toed sandals and shaggy beards may be banned from the conference stage, but activists were openly questioning the betrayal of election promises, notably the strategy of spending cuts which will impact most heavily on the poor and disadvantaged. No amount of vague waffle about purging tax avoidance can disguise that. This is now a party split into three – the leadership, the disillusioned believers and the ambitious chancers who would fit easily into any party of power. And it is difficult to see how Clegg can bring them together. The Lib Dems have always been a party of political opportunism, but the sheer brutality of the coalition agenda has shocked rank-and-file members who believed they had a coherent, moderate and decent philosophy.
Liverpool bucked the national swing at the election, with the Labour parliamentary vote remaining relatively firm and the Lib Dems losing the city council after 12 years. Former council leader Warren Bradley, who this week narrowly beat off a challenge as group leader, is well aware of the feelings at street level which has seen the Lib Dem poll share plummet.
Before the conference, he confessed that he felt physically sick at the effect of the Building Schools for the Future axe and expressed fears that the coalition deal could spell the end of his party within five years. More recently, he suggested that the coalition’s acceleration of public spending cuts threatened to set back the regeneration of the great northern cities by 10 or 20 years. That sort of plain speaking, generally away from the microphones, was reflected in Liverpool’s cafes and bars this week. Expect a surge of defections to Labour following the leadership election.
That should be welcomed at grassroots and council level, but not above. There is a strand of thinking within the Lib Dem yuppie luvvies that the coalition could keep them in the ministerial car pool for a generation. Clegg himself appealed to that strand in his opening conference question-and-answer session. He promised that the pact with the Tories is for one term only and raised the tantalising possibility of a post-election coalition with a rejuvenated Labour Party. Senior Lib Dems are hoping to keep channels of communications open and aim to stress “shared values” with the Opposition. To which, the Labour leader’s reply should be short and to the point, with the second word being “off”.
The Lib Dems’ true colours have been exposed, with broken promises on schools, housing, National Insurance, fuel duty, health service targets, police funding, council tax, corporation tax and political reform. The electorate knows by now that they cannot be trusted and so should the Labour leadership.
Liverpool’s Labour council leader said: “Many people voted Lib Dem at the election thinking they were voting for a progressive party that believed in social justice. Instead they’ve said one thing and done completely another. How are we supposed to believe a word Nick Clegg says when he has shown just how quickly he is prepared to abandon his own flagship policies?” Spot on. A future Lib-Lab pact? In your dreams, Cleggie.
