Given the fact that the Lib Dem election campaign had failed to launch right from the start, and that many (myself included) were predicting electoral meltdown for the Liberal Democrats, a net gain of three seats could be viewed as a positive result for the party in context. However, I feel alienated from most Lib Dems’ general sense of “hope” arising from this election; I just don’t see it.
The party lost five seats and gained eight. The national vote share for the party went down even further from the very low 2015 level. Apart from where the party managed to hold or gain seats, the situation was generally dire: there are seats where the Lib Dems used to be the main challenger where deposits were lost, and constituencies the Lib Dems held very recently in which the party came fourth. This wasn’t a rebuilding of the Liberal Democrats we witnessed on June 8th; it was a clinging on for dear life. And the victories seemed to come where they did for two main reasons: one, a Remain Tory vote going to the party probably because of Brexit, which despite a poor pitch to these people, there was enough of a desire for such an option to be on the ballot to make Lib Dem victories possible (helped by the Tory vote being lower than expected overall); two, the SNP meltdown meaning that in seats where the Lib Dems were the only realistic challenger to the Nats, the party could capitalise. There were secondary reasons which were very important as well: decent targeting this time out, as well as incumbency/people returning to fight seats they had lost in 2015 helping name recognition win out.
I don’t wish to be overly negative here, but my thoughts at present are that the Lib Dems will take all of the wrong lessons away from this result. Tim Farron’s leadership wasn’t sufficient during the campaign, and his speech following the result was titled “Challenging the Conservative orthodoxy”, which was mostly a rant against the Tories with nary a mention of Labour at all. For those of us genuinely scared about what a Corbyn premiership would have entailed (and might still entail), this was a massive oversight.
Part and parcel of this is a sort of “good riddance to Clegg/at least that’s the end of the Orange Bookers” thing going on within certain sections of the party. After Thursday’s result I remain more convinced than ever that the Lib Dems trying to be a soft left party, in competition with Corbyn’s Labour and the Greens, will not work long term. When I look at the two factors that helped the Lib Dems stay afloat seat wise, they are both extremely transient: who knows where the Brexit debate will be by the time the next election takes place, leaving this plank very vulnerable, and if the SNP melts down totally or rebuilds itself from here, either way the Scottish Lib Dems could be in a bad position in a new four-party politics up there.
The biggest thing I took out of the election result was this: two party politics is back with a vengeance in England and Wales. And the split that animates that from here might well be those who would be happy or at least fine with Corbyn being prime minister, and those who are horrified by that prospect. I don’t see how that bodes well for the Lib Dems at all.
I’m hoping that there were a number of Lib Dem voters thattactics ally voted to stop May rather than through a pro-Corbyn line. The clear call forate ending Freedom of Movement may count against Labour in the next election. The Tories will clearly have a better campaign next time & drop the vitriolic personal attacks & go on the manifesto.
I know the fallout from last time, but frankly, if the LibDems are not going to consider coalition (with anyone), what is the point of them? As you say, it’s not like ruling it out has helped.
Nick –
I think a clue is in your statement: “And the split that animates that from here might well be those who would be happy or at least fine with Corbyn being prime minister, and those who are horrified by that prospect. I don’t see how that bodes well for the Lib Dems at all.”
A few years ago an old Liberal party activist, (he joined the party in the mid 1950s, which was an unusual thing to do at the time), told me that the Labour party used to ‘frighten’ a section of voters. I recall being puzzled by this. Good old Mr Wilson – frightening? I didn’t really believe it. But I do understand it now.
For the first time, I have felt something of that fear about the Corbynite Labour party. Remember those red flags on May Day and those large menacing election crowds? And Nick’s is not the first comment I have seen along these lines. Note journalist Stephen Pollard’s article in the Daily Telegraph article [9 June 2017] headlined: “To the millions of people who voted for Jeremy Corbyn: you scare me”. Strong words.
The electorate is now more polarised, (except perhaps in Scotland for others reasons), than at any time since the elections of the early 1950s. It shows in the woeful Liberal Democrat performance. While Labour is in its current mode, I doubt the Liberal Democrat vote will recover much. But that shouldn’t be an excuse for not holding a root and branch review of what the Liberal Democrat party is for, how it organises itself and how it communicates its message, locally and from the centre. It would be foolish just to carry on as before because otherwise the Conservatives will be the main be beneficiaries of the votes of scared electors whose main concern is to keep the Corbynite Momentum socialists well away from the levers of power.
I, for another, fear for the future. The rich west is in decline and the scales of fate are tilting eastwards. The UK is in a dire situation with the USA and a large part of western and southern Europe not far behind. The word ‘populist’ is a euphemism for ‘extremist’ as the population listens to ever more polarising voices.
But these, too, will fail. Hero of the hour Macron, will turn into as much a President Disappointment as was Obama. Trump will fail to deliver his promises of greatness restored (and by a very large margin). Corbyn, should he ever hold the economic reigns will be disastrous.
What will emerge to replace this generation? Will their failure lead to the people returning to the beige and inoffensive arguments of the centre and a search for moderate opinions? Or for the ever more extreme?
My particular anxiety is that a Corbyn / McDonnell administration will lead to the mass departure of global businesses, the wiping out of life savings and the evaporation of the bizarre promises of “millions of new jobs”.
What follows that if not a “White Terror” and an extreme right wing movement?
Politicians, including the LibDems (maybe especially the LibDems have a duty to lead a vision of a new future of reform and rebirth and not put their faith in some anodyne soft left dreamland.
As a long-term lib dem member I’ve found myself very conflicted lately. It seems to me that the essential thing is keeping the tories out of #10. In my lifetime every tory government has been worse (in my opinion) than every labour government. That includes the 2010 coalition enabled, I think in retrospect wrongly, by the lib dems.
In this election I think it’s clear that the electorate in large part adopted the idea of the progressive alliance/coalition of chaos/anyone but the tories. The lib dems did well in constituencies where they were the only realistic challenger to the tories, but our vote collapsed wherever it was a tory/labour contest. We tended to lose out in fights against labour, probably because Corbyn had a far better campaign than we did.
I think those voters did the right thing. I’m only sorry now that we didn’t work with Labour and the greens to actually beat the tories – which we would have done in many more seats with a proper working agreement.
Of course there are still things that we don’t agree with Labour on. But the gap between them is so very much smaller than it is to the hard-brexiting, nhs-privatising, benefit-sanctioning, weapon-dealing, human-rights-trampling tories. It’s time for us to decide which way to jump.
We only do well, really, when people are fed up with Labour. Right now they’re optimistic with Labour.
People felt betrayed over the coalition because they didn’t realise we weren’t some soft-left party. Had we gone into coalition with Labour, the same would have happened from the right. But a polarising election meant people retreated to their core positions.
At least now we know what our core vote is. Sadly, it’s not very big. And we’re diffuse. That’s a massive massive problem.
Time to stand up and be different.
The electorate needs an alternative to socialist Labour or a Tory party beholden to its right wing. There’s a massive gap and opportunity for a centre left party or there would be were it not for fptp. And there’s no reason in principle why the lib dems can’t regain the vote share it had in 2010. However the conditions for that to happen depend on circumstances outside our control. In the meantime we should hang in there but not without the aforementioned root and branch review including the leadership.
“I remain more convinced than ever that the Lib Dems trying to be a soft left party, in competition with Corbyn’s Labour and the Greens, will not work long term” – nailed it.
if i were lib dem leadership i’d note how it has been business and the private sector that has done as much if not more to make Britain greener but that part of that sector is not represented ( not since Ed Davey was in govt anyway) and is unlikely to be by other parties – similarly conservationist, nature and heritage lovers ( National trust and RSPB have enormous memberships) aren’t really represented either. Similarly what people used to ( still do?) like about lib dems is that they stood up for people on a locale basis and they believe in decentralising power. Also the charity sector as neither overly market nor overly state, is underepresented too.
Lib dems could distinguish themselves by being more prominently localist, by promoting the business side of the wider green movement ( a very good ideological match for the lib dems i’d say) , and being more conservationist and third sector orientated than the more urban focused labour party and privatising/profiteering tory party would.
The above could in fact serve to some degree as a core vote strategy.