More than 6,000 Liberal Democrats assemble in Liverpool this weekend for their first party conference since entering the Tory-dominated coalition – almost half as many again as were at last year’s conference.
The gathering comes just a month before the October 20 Comprehensive Spending Review expected to be anathema to many Lib Dem supporters and activists.
Acting Labour Party leader Harriet Harman last week told the TUC that at least 10,000 Lib Dem members have defected to the Labour Party, contributing to a swell in new memberships of 32,000 since the coalition Government was formed in May.
Against this backdrop, Nick Boles, the Tory MP for Grantham and Stamford and one of the first in his party to push for David Cameron to be leader, published a book advocating a formal electoral pact between his party and the Lib Dems ahead of a 2015 general election.
Mr Cameron, an advocate of the “nudge” theory of politics and behavioural management, joined with Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg in disavowing any such pact, but both the timing of the call and the closeness of Mr Boles to the Cameron camp prompted wide scepticism.
Mr Boles’s call, in his book Which Way’s Up?, anticipates the unease next month’s cuts are likely to generate among many Lib Dems.
Mr Boles advises that the Prime Minister and his deputy announce their parties approve a binding agreement to fight the 2015 election as coalition partners.
Should the alternative vote be rejected in next year’s referendum, the pact would see the Lib Dems’ 50 or so MPs (seven of their existing seats may be lost to predicted boundary changes) contest the seats they already hold without Tory opposition.
In marginal seats held by Labour, only the best placed Lib Dem or Tory would stand. Should AV be adopted, the pact would oblige both parties to tell their supporters to give second preference votes to the other party.
Locking the Lib Dems into the pact would pre-empt not just the unease caused by next month’s cuts but also secure the junior party against an anticipated backlash at next May’s local elections – when the AV plebiscite is also expected to be put to the people.
The blogger Toby Young, using figures from Democratic Audit, has calculated that, assuming the proposed reduction of MPs from 650 to 600 happens, the Tories would only have to agree not to field candidates in 50 seats, while the Lib Dems eschew 294 constituencies with agreement on how to divide up Labour-held marginals.
