Last Friday, I published an article on this site about why Lib Dem hopes of an alliance, formal or otherwise, with the Labour Party was complete fantasy. Near the close of the article, I added the following as an afterthought:
“I close with something I’ve said many times before, but worth repeating here: all of the Lib Dems’ target seats are Tory-held. In order to win them, they need to convince Tory voters to vote Lib Dem. Labour voters are never going to vote Lib Dem tactically in big enough numbers for lots of reasons. This means the space for the Lib Dems is very Orange Book shaped.”
Since I put the article out, many people have come back to me and disputed my claim, adding I hadn’t explained this very point well. It is true I hadn’t elaborated enough on what was a big thought – which I why I will now talk about where I think the political space lies for the Liberal Democrats, why it is Orange Book shaped – but also why the Lib Dems will not occupy this space, which calls into question the very basis for the ongoing life of the Lib Dem party.
2010 was the fork in the road for the Liberal Democrats. Once the Lib Dems went into coalition with the Conservatives, future electoral success was skewered in one direction. We could sit here and debate for days on end whether going into government with the Tories was a good idea or not; the point is, that is what actually happened. It cannot be undone. Once that government was formed, the Lib Dems’ fate was sealed in a way almost no one involved with the party understands.
With the Tories and Lib Dems in a government whose headline policy was cutting pubic services (although never even close to the level rhetoric suggested), all factions of the left united around the Labour Party. The Lib Dems had removed themselves from this grouping, probably for all time but at least a generation, by forming the coalition government. Part of this was how the left views issues of purity, but a bigger reason was that hating the Lib Dems just became an indelible part of wider leftist culture. The coalition government made left and right voters think differently about the Lib Dems from then on: no longer Labour’s little cousin, right of centre voters appreciated what the Lib Dems had done in forming the government as much as left of centre voters hated them for it.
Many Lib Dem activists like to point to 2015 as the ultimate failure of the Orange Book project. Yet there is another way of looking at the result. Having made their bed with the Tories, the Lib Dems needed to lie in it or be destroyed. They refused, running a campaign in which they told the public they might form a government with whomever of the two big parties got the most seats. With the left having abandoned the Lib Dems completely and now the party saying they might form a government with the Labour Party if that presented itself as an option, this left the party with almost no one on the political spectrum to appeal to. What I’m really say here is, had the Lib Dems ran a campaign in 2015 that said they would only form a government with the Tories and wouldn’t consider one with Labour, they probably could have held on to another 15 seats, making coalition Mark 2 possible.
Now, you might be saying, “Yeah, but that isn’t what the party is all about”. Which is fine, but a completely different point to the one I’m making. I’m simply saying that had the Lib Dems run on a “Coalition 2” ticket, I think they could have got it. Which doesn’t suggest the Orange Book strategy didn’t work – just that, in the end, the party didn’t want to follow it through to its bitter end.
After the near wipeout for the Lib Dems in 2015, the party retreated into a shell. It alienated most of those who had joined during and immediately after the coalition years, falling into a strategy that they have never fully abandoned since, which I would label “Please, lefties, forgive us all of our coalition sins”. This was reflected in 2019 by the torturous answers Jo Swinson gave whenever asked about the coalition years, when she would inevitably fall into a jeremiad about “all of the mistakes we made”. What has been tragic is that the Lib Dems combined this apologising for their time in government with lame attempts at centre-right rhetoric, like having a massive pop at Jeremy Corbyn, which has just confused everything further.
The Lib Dems were given a massive opportunity by the combination of Brexit and the 2017 general election resulting in a hung parliament – which they blew in impressive fashion. A big Orange Book shaped hole opened up in British politics, almost like magic, where those voters who were liberal, pro-European, yet had voted for the Tories in the last couple of elections suddenly felt politically homeless. The Lib Dems attempt to step into this hole that should have been tailor-made for them was cringe-worthy. To a business community that was largely anti-Brexit, the Lib Dems threw a whole bunch of left-wing anti-business policies, making them understand that even in a world where the leader of the Conservative party had said “fuck business” and with Jeremy Corbyn waiting in the wings, the Tories were the only party who would even be close to their interests. The Lib Dems spoke about being the sensible party of moderation that was pro-business, anti-Brexit, all while standing on a policy prospectus that ranged from centre-left to far-left. The party hoped that Brexit was enough to lure in Tory voters in key target seats; as we know, it was not.
Lib Dem MPs like Layla Moran point to how they have been able to rally enough of the left vote around them to beat the Tories. Yet this is like Rebecca Long-Bailey seeing how solid her vote was in Salford and assuming that Labour would do well nationwide; it is confusing the local for the way things are nationwide. The left will not return to the Lib Dems. I have said this many times before and it is more true now than ever. If you want evidence, look at the last three general election results.
Yet here’s the thing: I know the Lib Dems will not go down this path, or if they do for some weird reason, it will be done in a half-arsed, ramshackle manner that will only make the party’s electoral fortunes even worse. The reason for this is a simple one: it isn’t where the activist base is politically situated. The average Lib Dem activist is actually objective very left-wing, at least this is my experience of things, having been around the party for almost a decade and a half. Tim Farron, Vince Cable and Jo Swinson, the last three Lib Dem leaders, were all people who would fit comfortably into Labour’s soft-left faction if you stripped away party partisanship. I know sometimes they said things that didn’t sound like it, but if you looked at what they really believed in and where their manifestos ended up, this is what you must conclude. Jo may have said a whole bunch of things about being pro-business and anti-Corbyn, but they came across as hollow; the one time she sounded like she was talking about something she really cared about during the general election campaign was when she addressed trans-rights.
The problem for the Lib Dems is that the only space in politics available now is a centre-right alternative to the Tories. I don’t even think now that Brexit is going to happen that the space for this is that huge, but it exists; there is room for a party that is genuinely pro-business, fiscally responsible, socially liberal and can credibly say “I told you so” when Brexit bumps occur, particularly with a Tory government that is splashing public money around all over the place. Also, this party could threaten the Tories in many seats in the south of England, seats where the Lib Dems came second last time and have a base from which to push forward. Alternatively, there is no room at all on the centre-left for another party, least of all one that was in government with the Tories for five years within very recent memory. Whomever the next Labour leader is, they will not open up space on the centre-left for the Lib Dems. Long-Bailey as leader would simply offer up more space in the centre, which would fit an Orange Book type party; Starmer will make the party safe again for many on the left who didn’t like Corbyn, uniting the centre-left at least for a few years. If Labour goes too far right for some, the Greens are a more credible escape valve for lefties than the coalition-tainted Lib Dems.
But again, none of this matters; the Lib Dems will go where the activists want them to go, and that is seemingly to tread water in an overcrowded centre-left pool full of voters who hate them. Lib Dem eternal optimism will mean that the activists are convinced the left will come back to them, somehow, someday. Meanwhile, British politics goes on, mostly without the Liberal Democrats.
Nick
As the author of the orange book
I dont think it has sunk in yet
The day the glove puppet signed in blood that coalition with the despised tories
They died they ceased to exist
They are bereft of life
If you delude that the party can survive as yellow tories then Clegg is the messiah
Get me another drink
2010 combined Tory/LD vote share = 59%
2019 combined Tory/LD vote share = 55%
Tories just won a thumping majority. They’re not despised at all.
Or the lib dems could recognise a pro-business, pro- environment space as there for the taking?
The lib dems should consider making an offer to the greens. Treat them like labour treats the co-op party– allow joint tickets in constituency elections, allow policy influence , and allow motions at their conference.
This would automatically increase the platform and profile for green ideas which would give the lib dems some clear definition. (The lib dem 2001 manifesto ‘green thread’ idea may serve as a starting example)
Currently green political thinking is trapped in an overly ideologically left place, when the role of businesses, of 3rd sector organisations, isn’t really talked about sufficiently. A link up with more liberal thinking would help that.
It’s win win as it would help libs and greens (or lib green coalition or whatever one wants to name it) have more parliamentary representation and that could be really valuable in getting change to actually occur.
Time for the both parties to get serious about making environmental change actually happen. If both parties are being genuine when they say we don’t have much time then it is even more imperative that something like this happens isn’t it?
Or the lib dems could recognise a pro-business, pro- environment space as there for the taking?
The lib dems should consider making an offer to the greens
Um, the greens want a zero-growth economy. It’s hard to see any possible way to spin that as’ pro-business’.
i think M is mistaken in lots of ways. I agree Greens aren’t nearly pro-business enough in lots of ways,but nor are lib dems,and they also arent green enough. Which is why there is currently a pro-business, pro-environment space. But the green party might say that is more a Green new deal party than a zero growth party. They might not want to use econimc growth as the single measure of prosperity ( neiter does Joseph Stiglitzfor that matter) , but that’s not same as zero growth. It’s true they used to say that, but they appear to have grown up a bit since then.
The key pointis that there is the political space that would strengthen the chance of green change which unless the green party is not serious about actually achieving change , it should recognise, and it would give definition to the lib dems, who presumably are already serious about green change. Plenty of soft tory voters are concerned about the environment. So it seems win – win to me.
The next General Election is probably more than 4 Years away, a lot can happen in that time. I expect the slow (very slow) underlying Libdem recovery to continue.
We dont yet know for certain which route The Government are going to take over Brexit, things could look very different by the Autumn if they go for No-Deal.
What we cant do is say things we dont believe, we have to go with our real Values.
If the Orange book is the best we can come up with the Liberal Democrat Party should disband
It already has
They dont know yet
Still on the denial bit
When keir takes over in April
The headstone will too for the whig party
Off topic, but why do so many of the crazier commenters post in a kind of weird faux-haiku format? Is it that most of them are bots, or something else?
Haiku format
What’s that a New Zealand dance
As long as you can read you can understand
corbynites spit bile
brexiteers smugly revel
centre cannot hold
You are wrong the centre will organise under labour and keir
The tories will be in trouble as brexit unravels
The liberals will be reduced to green party level
Sorry Nick, but there isn’t a Orange Book shaped hole for the Lib Dems to step into, just a Black hole for their hopes and dreams.
We have never won Conservative seats by persuading Conservatives to vote for us first. We won by first by being better than Labour, especially at representing the unrepresented, the non-Conservatives. Once we had done that, and won their votes, we won over wavering conservatives who saw we were doing a better job at running their council than the Conservatives were. David Penhaligon, Ronnie Fearn are two straightforward examples to look at first. Likewise Kingston on Thames.
Just look at the facts of history and learn its lessons. Don’t fit your narrative to a what you want to believe. That *is* what Rebecca Long Bailey does.
If after studying the facts, you still believe you are right, there has been a paradigm shift and the only way for Lib Dems is to go to the right, you will have to accept (perhaps in about 40 years time of total failure) that it was the Orange Book inspired Coalition strategy adopted by Nick Clegg that destroyed the only hope for realignment our country had.
Nick Tyrone: I think your analysis is too left-right one-dimensional. Yes you could and probably would argue that this is the reality of British politics, however I do not think a Liberal party can carve out anything other than a Liberal niche. That said, the party does need to accept that it has to be a broader church and find a space for centre minded, not so strongly Liberal fugitives from Conservatives and Labour.
My take on this is that it would be easier to be a broader church if the Party as a whole were more confident and outspoken in its advocacy of Liberalism and Liberal values. I think that there is a timidity that often affects the Party which engenders distrust towards defectors from the two big parties.
I do not think a Liberal party can carve out anything other than a Liberal niche
About what proportion of the UK electorate do you think are Liberal, in the sense that they share the core values of the current Liberal Democrat activist base?
I would guess about 10-12%, maybe 15% at a stretch.
If you refer to “core values of the current Liberal Democrat activist base”, your guess could be about right, however that is narrowing it down. As I commented “the party does need to accept that it has to be a broader church and find a space for centre minded, not so strongly Liberal fugitives from Conservatives and Labour”, while retaining distinctly Liberal roots.
Right but aren’t ‘carving out a niche’ (Liberal or otherwise) and ‘being a broader church’ mutually exclusive?
That is, to carve out a niche you identify a particular group and focus on people like them; but to be a broad church you aim to attract people of lots of different kinds.
If you’re trying to design a product, you can either make it so that it absolutely perfectly solves the problem of a few people, so they will all buy it, but at the cost of making it less useful to everyone else, so they don’t — ‘carving out a niche’ — or you make it more generally useful, so not all of that group buy it (some find some other product fits their needs better) but on the other hand some people outside the group find that it isn’t perfect but it will do, and buy yours.
You can achieve success in either direction, but you have to commit to one or the other; if you try and do both at once you will end up with something to generalised to get everyone in the niche to buy it, but not general enough that it works for anyone outside the niche. And then you go bust.
Same with a political party. You can try to get (say) every environmentally-minded ultra-woke leftie in the country to vote for you (there’s your 12%), at the cost of turning off absolutely everyone else. Or you can tone down the intersectionality and appeal to people outside that core, but in doing so you’ll lose some of the core to the Greens or someone else who outflanks you.
But what you can’t do is try to do both at the same time. I mean maybe you can for a while, if you can somehow manage to send different signals to different groups (is this what’s called ‘dog-whistling’?). But if you then end up in power you’re going to have to make choices an those choices will inevitably put you on one side of the niche/broad divide and you’ll lose whichever one you don’t choose (or I suppose you can even in power continue your attempt at constructive ambiguity but then you just piss off everybody).
If you acknowledge that you can get into power with ambiguity ( and all governments do ] then your critique is just bloody minded purity. It’s perfectly possible to be pro environment and pro business for example it’s just no one has yet articulated that position . That’s why it’s called a political space . Your critique is logically flawed but common to those who think politics is the same as other enterprises . It isn’t. Successful political parties often carve out niche first for definitional purposes ( new labour cummintarianism for example ] and this then quite naturally evolves into the broader church.
Hi Nick. Read this with interest. We won in OxWAb not by just galvanizing the left but also bringing swathes of centre right Tories to us. I’ve never said it’s just about the left at all. But instead about a progressive alliance of voters based on our shared values. It is also true that we can’t have won without the left and so what you need is both. Before comparing me to Rebecca Long Bailey I really would appreciate you understanding what I’ve actually been saying. Best.
Or the lib dems could recognise a pro-business, pro- environment space as there for the taking?
The lib dems should consider making an offer to the greens. Treat them like labour treats the co-op party– allow joint tickets in constituency elections, allow policy influence , and allow motions at their conference.
This would automatically increase the platform and profile for green ideas which would give the lib dems some clear definition. (The lib dem 2001 manifesto ‘green thread’ idea may serve as a starting example)
Currently green political thinking is trapped in an overly ideologically left place, when the role of businesses, of 3rd sector organisations, isn’t really talked about sufficiently. A link up with more liberal thinking would help that.
It’s win win as it would help libs and greens (or lib green coalition or whatever one wants to name it) have more parliamentary representation and that could be really valuable in getting change to actually occur.
Time for the both parties to get serious about making environmental change actually happen. If both parties are being genuine when they say we don’t have much time then it is even more imperative that something like this happens isn’t it?
Don’t worry about the Tories or Labour.
The Lib Dems should be the anti-Farage party.
He sees them as his real enemies.