There was a very good Peter Kellner article in the Sunday Times yesterday entitled, “The new forecast takes account of Labour’s parlous prospects in Scotland – and the Tory failure to make progress in the rest of Britain”. Despite the Lib Dems not featuring in the title however, they loomed over the whole piece like a shadow. For if Peter’s prediction came true, the Lib Dems would, like in 2010, be in a position to ultimately decide who is and who isn’t prime minister. As Peter himself says:
“On this projection, it is unclear who would be Prime Minister when the dust settles. The Tories would be the largest party; but even with the help of around ten unionist MPs from Northern Ireland, would still be well short of 300 seats. If David Cameron were to seek approval for a Queen’s Speech, he could be outvoted if Labour and the SNP, with 310 seats together, joined forces. The 30 Lib Dem MPs would be decisive.”
Let’s look at Peter’s prediction: CON 285 LAB 270 UKIP 3 LD 30 SNP 40 GRN 1 OTH 21. At first glance, perhaps it wouldn’t occur to you that the Lib Dems had such a strong hand; the reason they do mostly comes down to two factors. One, the weak hands in this regard the other parties have played; two, the voting system.
The SNP, for instance, have said they would only work with Labour. UKIP could only possibly prop up the Tories – and maybe not even that. Besides, three seats isn’t enough to throw your weight around with. The Lib Dems are the only of the parties outside the big two who could believably threaten to work with either the Tories and Labour – and in this strange situation British politics finds itself in, that is everything.
Take the Tories on 285. If they can convince the Lib Dems to form another coalition, that’s 315 – not enough. But a loose arrangement with the DUP would probably get them over the line, just. It would be fragile, but Cameron as sitting prime minister would have first crack at putting together a government and a first crack at the Lib Dems too (who said they’d speak to the largest party in a hung parliament first).
Labour are in a slightly stronger position in Peter’s scenario, however, despite having less seats and not being incumbents, because they have more options, and better ones to boot. A deal with the Lib Dems only gets them to 300, but with the SNP having already said they’d prop Labour up in a loose arrangement, that’s a bone fide working majority of about 30-odd, at least in practice.
Again though, Labour would have to work with the Lib Dems in order for this to work. If the Lib Dems don’t like what Labour has to offer, they have choices: they can go with the Tory option or they can wash their hands of it all and let the rest slug it out. How capable Labour are of doing a deal with the Liberal Democrats, the two parties having been in an all out hate fest with one another for the last five years, we may just get to find out about in a few weeks time.
The strangest thing about the whole situation is that the Lib Dems would only be in the situation painted by Peter, kingmakers supreme, because of the First Past the Post voting system they have long campaigned to remove. Peter predicts UKIP will get 11% of the vote, one point more than the Lib Dems, but end up with three seats – a tenth the number the Lib Dems will have if Peter is right. The Greens get 5% – under a PR system that would net them between 35 and 40 seats. Peter’s seat prediction for them? One.
Under a proportional electoral system, the Lib Dems would actually have more seats (around 65), but their rivals for doing deals with the largest two parties would also have a commensurate number of seats. UKIP would have about 70 and be a major player – a Tory-UKIP coalition might be on the cards, if this were the case. Labour could bypass the Lib Dems entirely because the Greens would have enough seats with the SNP to make it viable, if they chose to go that route.
So one of the great ironies of modern political times might be about to play out: the Lib Dems, the party who has tried to change the voting system since its inception, will now very possibly be put back into power via that very same system. It’s the kind of political irony I enjoy savoring.
All this assumes that the final numbers of seats are as Kellner predicted. If Labour get 8-10 more seats than his prediction, and the Tories get under 280 seats – as many other pollsters have predicted – then the LibDems don’t have so much leverage. They would also be likely to have less leverage if they got fewer than 30 seats themselves – as many pollsters have also predicted – or if Labour does less well than Kellner’s prediction.
Hi Steve:
You make three separate points, which I’ll handle separately.
One is that if Labour got 8-10 more seats than Kellner has predicted, the Lib Dems bargaining position would be watered down. Applying that mathematically, Labour would still only have 280 at best – so still not enough to do a deal with the SNP and be confident of it lasting any time at all, as it still wouldn’t even have a majority.
But let’s say that Labour do much better and get 290 – 300 seats. The Lib Dems still have a lot of power in the discussion because frankly, Labour want to avoid the SNP if at all possible. For many reasons, which I’ve written about copiously before, so I won’t rehash here.
The second point you make is that if the Lib Dems get less than 30 seats, their power begins to unwind the lower it goes beneath that figure. That’s undoubtably true.
Third and finally, that if Labour do much worse, the Lib Dems’ bargaining power diminshes. You have a point here. If the Tories are the only game in town, the Lib Dems have fewer options. Given the Lib-Lab hostility over the past five years, it’s ironic that the two parties fates are so intertwined psephologically, at least within a certain seat range.
Thanks, Nick. My first scenario was not just that Labour got 8-10 more seats, but also that the Tories also got fewer seats than you predict (because, say, Labour did better than expected re the SNP). This would mean that Tories/LibDems plus UKIP and NI parties could probably not scrape together 323 seats, therefore less LibDem leverage. My underlying point is that LibDems have the most leverage when their support, and their support *alone*, makes the difference between Tories or Labour being the main government party. It’s possible that the numbers will pan out that way, but there are several other possible scenarios that they won’t – and your post seems to assume only the first possibility.
Another thought that might intrigue you, Nick. Do you think the LibDems could (even if the numbers don’t work out to give them as much leverage as you suggest) be particularly important as the ‘glue’ between other parties? Really a kind of mediator role. In particular they could play a role stitching together a loose deal between Labour and SNP, given that those parties appear to have worse relations with each other than either of them do with the LibDems. In return the LibDems could negotiate a coalition or support for some of their key policy priorities as part of the mix. I doubt though that they could play the same mediator role in relations between the Tories and UKIP, DUP etc because of the bigger differences in policies.