Nicholas Lewis
Established Member
Labour wont go for that as they believe they have a right to power so unless the bulk of the electorate vote for Lib or Greens to indicate they want change (they wont) things will stay the same unfortunately.
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Keir Starmer and the Labour Party
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PR tends to lead to Coalition Governments, and I'm not sure that the 2010-2015 government was very successful, with the Tories hamstrung from doing what they wanted to do by the Lib Dems - who were also convenient for being blamed by the Tories.
Likewise, if Labour went into Coalition with the Lib Dems, they may well ask for PR as the price for supporting Labour
Nicholas Lewis
Established Member
Coalitions have served Germany pretty well since 1950 I would suggest. Personally i thought 2010-15 was good parliament but the liberal voters were the fools when it came to 2015. You can't be for PR unless your prepared to accept you won't get everything you want but you'll certainly get closer to it
They will but Labour, even the moderate ones, don't want to do that so its going to be an interesting conversation which seems more likely to happen than not but suspect it will be kept behind closed doors until the election is over.
brad465
Veteran Member
He doesn't need to, if the figures being speculated in the next migration statistics' report coming out in a fortnight are to be believed, we not only have de facto freedom of movement right now, but movement even greater than when we were in the single market (estimates are around 700k for 2022).
The electorate in this country is ridiculous, particularly the disillusioned left, who choose not to vote for Labour because it isn't left enough, letting the Conservatives in.
There are enough votes on the left of politics to wipe the Conservatives out once and for all at the next election under FPTP, but crazily it won't happen because too many people can't bring themselves to decide to vote for the best anti-Conservative party. The electorate in Scotland got the message. Quite why the English electorate can't manage it is astounding.
(For the avoidance of doubt, I am not expressing a personal political view. I am observing that the FPTP system could lead to a particular outcome which people on one side of politics would like to see but are never organised enough to recognise.)
The Lib Dems did incredibly badly out of going into coalition, despite getting some of their policies enacted.
Their supporters weirdly punished them for this, instead of it being a springboard to getting them closer to government. It is absolutely perverse.
It was strange to me, all the press prior to the election seemed to have decided that the LibDems were going to be "punished" for being in coalition, and that people would not vote for them, and they didn't.
Strange because I voted LibDem in 2010, was happy with the result, and in 2015 I was happy with what they'd achieved. Not everything pleased everybody, and there was the thing about student fees I know, but in general terms they prevented the right of the Conservative party from getting their way. So I voted LibDem again in 2015, but instead Cameron won a majority and had to give the right of his party what they wanted ......
EDIT I only surmise that all parties go through phases in which "purity" trumps being in power, and they end up failing to realise that you can be as pure as you want in opposition but it doesn't mean much. Labour has spent 8 or more years working this out, as they did in the 1990s.
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edwin_m
Veteran Member
2010-2015 was a far more successful government than any of the single-party governments since then.
Highly probable the LibDems would ask for a PR referendum as a condition of supporting Labour, and hopefully would be a bit more wily than Clegg when he accepted a wishy-washy commitment from Cameron that was pretty much doomed to fail.
I think the main mistake the LibDems made after 2010 was to get too close to Cameron with the rose garden love-in etc. They should have been unafraid to tell their supporters that in coalition you don't get everything, they had to accept tuition fees for example, but point to cases where they moderated the natural instinct of the Tories. There were also Tory actions that weren't in the manifesto or the coalition agreement, such as yet another set of NHS reforms, that they could have opposed but didn't.
DynamicSpirit
Established Member
To be fair though, doing something that wasn't mentioned one way or the other in your manifesto isn't quite the same thing as, doing something that you very explicitly said you would not do.
edwin_m
Veteran Member
No, but I think it gives your coalition partner the right to withhold support if they don't like it.
This is what won't be understood in coalition governments after a change in the voting system. Coalition is not 'confidence and supply', it is collective responsibility and being part of the combined government.
Depends how you define successful. If you take the Tory manifesto, because the Lib Dems clipped their wings, they could not achieve what they set out in it. (Mind you, as noted above, who does complete all manifesto pledges?)
If I recall, Clegg asked for a referendum on PR which he got, in return for which he would support the boundary change proposals. The referendum took place, PR was defeated, yet Clegg reneged on his support for the boundary changes, which are only now being implemented.
The NHS reforms were not imposed on the NHS - it was a service-led reform, not a politically inspired reform. Apparently. But it certainly did not feel like that at the time
Apologies, because we're veering off-topic now I think, but I hope you don't mind if I correct you a little on this - the proposal for boundary changes in the coalition government was to reduce the number of seats from 650 to 600, which therefore mandated boundary changes, a lot of work was done by the Boundaries Commission here also.
However it was a bad idea in my mind, there would have been an almighty squabble between MPs to fight for seats following the reduction in their number, and it was killed during the coalition by the LibDems as you say.
Unfortunately it refused to die as a bad idea, and carried on for some while after the coalition, wasting even more time and effort, but eventually a few people saw sense and killed it.
What we have now is a periodic review and proposal for boundary changes based on remaining with 650 MPs, which is fine and in fact long overdue because - in part - of the messy diversion via the 600-MP-thing which was just bad and a waste of everybody's time.
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Though both parties had gone into the 2010 election promising to reduce MP numbers. The Tory manifesto said they’d cut by 10%, the LibDems said down to 500.
The LibDems claimed they were betrayed first on reform of the House of Lords, which is why they reneged on supporting the boundary review.
It carried on for a while because these things are set out in legislation, and it needed another bill passed to reset things around a review with 650 seats. For some reason, parliament has been a little busy with other matters…
I do fancy people are getting smart to this though. I do expect tactical voting to play a significant role in the next election, as I think, now, a significant number of us just want the Tories out. (and this is a personal view too...)
I think the problem is not so much people thinking that Labour is not "left enough" but rather, hardcore Labour and Lib Dem supporters refusing to support the other party. But I get the impression now that in England, at least, the main divide is Tory versus anti-Tory and this is the way people will vote next time, picking the most appropriate anti-Tory party for their seat.
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I'd actually have said the Lib Dems should have absolutely refused to support tuition fees. Would the Tories have then threw them out of the coalition? I'm not sure they would as that would put the Tories in a weak position, having to govern as a minority government and being unable to pass things because Labour and the Lib Dems would then gang up against them.
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It arguably would have needed to be part of the coalition agreement.
It might be noted that it wasn't the coalition that introduced tuition fees, they just were increased dramatically and the repayment terns changed. Prior to the 1998 intake the tuition fees were paid by the Local Authority.
Simon Hughes had some very uncomfortable appearances on Newsnight over the issue.
DynamicSpirit
Established Member
I think you are correct on that - at least in England and Wales (In Scotland the unionist vs nationalist divide seems to be just as strong). Tactical voting tends to be strongest when one particular party is unpopular: In 2019, tactical voting wasn't that significant because Labour was just as unpopular as the Tories. But now that Keir Starmer has largely detoxified Labour while the Tories remain deeply unpopular, I'd expect tactical voting will be back in force in 2024.
I would suspect the original mistake by the LibDems was to agree to raising tuition fees in the first place when the coalition negotiations were taking place. From both a tactical and an ethical point of view, they should have pointed out that they had firm manifesto pledges on tuition fees and they therefore couldn't sign a coalition agreement that betrayed those pledges. I would imagine the Tories would in that situation have still given them a coalition agreement because - what alternative did the Tories have? But for some reason that we'll probably never know, the LibDem negotiators just completely folded on that issue. If they hadn't, then I imagine the history of the last 8 years would have been very different since it seems have been the tuition fees more than anything else that caused the huge loss of trust in and therefore support for the LibDems from 2010-2011 onwards, leading to the outright Tory victory in 2015. Not that I'm complaining, mind
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brad465
Veteran Member
Nick Clegg was almost on the same page as Cameron in every way. He essentially threw his party under the bus to be in that coalition and has personally done very well since, arguably getting a better seat on the gravy train than Cameron has so far. While he was leading the Lib Dems there was no chance of the party blocking a number of Tory ideas, and there were very few obvious concessions made in that government. Also Ed Miliband's tuition fee policy after the rise to £9k a year was not that different in the end, where he pledged to cut them to £7,500, which in the grand scheme of things was pointless. I'm guessing scrapping or fully reversing the coalition's increase was not a hot issue overall, despite many Lib Dem voters abandoning them over the issue.
Falcon1200
Established Member
I very much agree; I would not have voted for Labour under Corbyn, ever, and while I still do not entirely trust Starmer (who after all happily served in Corbyn's Shadow Cabinet and campaigned for him to become PM), if they look best placed to beat the SNP in my constituency, they will probably get my vote.
Perhaps, though in remain areas I suspect it was in force. I suspect in Canterbury, for example, people united behind the Labour candidate. Somewhere like Esher, where Raab had a drastically reduced majority, I'm not so sure of, as it's not exactly Labour territory.
I would suspect the original mistake by the LibDems was to agree to raising tuition fees in the first place when the coalition negotiations were taking place. From both a tactical and an ethical point of view, they should have pointed out that they had firm manifesto pledges on tuition fees and they therefore couldn't sign a coalition agreement that betrayed those pledges. I would imagine the Tories would in that situation have still given them a coalition agreement because - what alternative did the Tories have? But for some reason that we'll probably never know, the LibDem negotiators just completely folded on that issue. If they hadn't, then I imagine the history of the last 8 years would have been very different since it seems have been the tuition fees more than anything else that caused the huge loss of trust in and therefore support for the LibDems from 2010-2011 onwards, leading to the outright Tory victory in 2015. Not that I'm complaining, mind
I think that's probably true. Much of the analysis about the 2015 election focuses on Scotland but in my view that was distracting from the real cause. To me, the main cause of the Tory majority in 2015 seemed the big switch of southwestern seats from Lib Dem to Tory, which could well be explained by the tuition fee issue in the sense that a lot of those Lib Dem voters switched to Labour, ensuring the Tory got in by default. Even Bath briefly went Tory, the only time it has done in the period since 1992. If the southwest hadn't switched, even with the SNP taking Scotland the outcome would have been very different.
Indeed, this was what caused me to mis-predict the 2015 results. I didn't anticipate the loss in Lib Dem support, and expected more Labour gains. I think I expected Cameron to get the most seats but well short of a majority, even more so than 2010 - and then an "interesting" situation arising as the Lib Dems wanted to distance themselves from the Tories by this time, perhaps forcing a minority Cameron government.
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Snow1964
Established Member
I think Conservatives will struggle in a big area, a sort of stretched South Western, basically a triangle from Sussex to Cotswolds to Devon.
The problem is Labour is very weak in this area (bar token number of industrial parts of cities), so if Labour don't win back parts of Scotland they will struggle to get an overall majority. I don't know how the parliamentary numbers will pan out, but probably be about 50-55 seats each for SNP and Lib Dem's and about 30 others (Welsh & Northern Ireland parties etc), so going to have something like 15-20% of a Parliament not Labour or Tory.
To some extent having got burnt in 2010-2015 coalition, I think Lib Dem's will be nearer centre left than centre right.
One could say that this would not be such a bad outcome - dare I say it, perhaps the best possible outcome for me personally. I would actually welcome a mix of Labour and Lib Dem ideas in the next government, and of course such a coalition would be more likely to look at changing the voting system.
If I was Labour I would focus on those swing areas where they are likely to be strongest, namely the North, Midlands, Wales and various more urban parts of the south (e.g. Swindon, Medway, Worthing, Bournemouth, Milton Keynes) - and leave the "rural Wessex" area (basically what you describe) to the Lib Dems.
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SwindonBert
Member
There are a few seats where, former industrial areas, where Labour are stronger (e.g. Stroud), but agree that most of the area the LDs will be much stronger, including in west Wiltshire where @Snow1964 is from. It would be political suicide for Labour to concentrate on these areas & not gain constituencies within their grasp such as Swindon North.
I'd certainly agree that Clegg (and Jo "Next Prime Minister of the UK" Swinson) have been the worst Lib Dem leaders. In both cases I think the party took a backward turn, Clegg for supporting Tory ideas too much and Swinson for somehow seriously thinking they could win the 2019 election - what was going on in her mind? If the Lib Dems and SNP had blocked the snap Boris election of 2019, and all opposition parties voted against the snap election proposal, it would not have happened and while Brexit would probably have happened in some form, Boris would have been much weaker and much more beholden to opposition demands. Plus, of course, the "sensible Tory" contingent in Parliament would have been significantly higher.
At the end of the day I'd probably say that all three main parties made one stupid mistake after another during the whole of the period from 2010 to 2019. A period truly dominated by gross incompetence in UK politics.
Gloster
Veteran Member
I have always felt that the coalition and the Liberal-Democrat collapse in 2015 were the result of Clegg’s lust for glory. Having stabbed Charlie Kennedy and Menzies Campbell in the back to win the leadership of the Lib-Dems, he dropped the party’s principles to get (himself) into government. He caught them all out by being a ruthless professional politician out for his own advancement, which may be common in the other parties but is something that the Lib-Dems weren’t used to as it is not a party where ambition has tended to get you far, at least in the last hundred years.
I wonder if Swinson’s claims weren’t so much hyperbolic as intended to ginger up those who were undecided as to whether it was worth voting for them. Too often voting Lib-Dem has been seen as a wasted vote: a bit of hype might get some to move from ‘Can’t be bothered’, to ‘Might as well’.
I wonder if Swinson’s claims weren’t so much hyperbolic as intended to ginger up those who were undecided as to whether it was worth voting for them. Too often voting Lib-Dem has been seen as a wasted vote: a bit of hype might get some to move from ‘Can’t be bothered’, to ‘Might as well’.
Gloster
Veteran Member
And now we are back to the old familiar situation: just as Labour seems to be in with a chance to gain power and actually do something, the infighting starts. Based on various reports it seems that Ed Milliband and others may be going to challenge Starmer, some of the Shadow Cabinet may resign and Corbyn will challenge Khan. The catalyst seems to be the seemingly unconditional retention of the two-child benefits cap, which (in my opinion) Starmer has handled appallingly badly. It is fine to try and make clear that Labour will be a fiscally responsible government, but completely ruling out removing the cap rather than saying that removal is an aspiration to be achieved as soon as financially possible is contrary to the beliefs of many within Labour and quite a few potential supporters. I am afraid that Starmer is just too frightened of what the Daily Mail and Murdoch will think, but any favourable (read: less vicious and hateful) coverage from that side will be offset by a disenchantment among supporters.
Spellcheck, what is a Corbun?
Spellcheck, what is a Corbun?
Apologies if I'm missreading you but the above seems to imply that it's the fault of Starmer aiming to be electable and fiscally responsible (and reaching out to - the horror - people who are not on the left).
Milliband and Corbyn both lost winnable elections because they were perceived by floating voters to be further to the left than those floating voters wanted. Are you saying that Labour should be listening to them now?
While that's possibly true of Corbyn, I don't see it is the case with Miliband - the 2015 Labour manifesto is mostly notable for being incredibly dull and offering almost nothing of interest. I'd say that's the more likely scenario to hit Labour next year if they're not careful.
The issue is that there's a balancing act to be had. I'm broadly speaking a floating voter - on some issues I'm more left of centre and on others I'm more right of centre; I have voted for both Labour and the Conservatives at general elections. And yet even I look at Starmer and think he's a bit right wing for my liking.
I suspect most people think that the country is in a pretty poor state at the moment and that something has to change. At the moment, I can't really see how Starmer would be that different to the current government - which makes him far from an appealing prospect. I don't think I'm alone in that line ot thinking...
Gloster
Veteran Member
The Labour Party does need to present itself as responsible in order to get elected, although some of the papers are still going to lambast them however prudent they are. However, there are areas of policy which seem (to me) to be so fundamental to basic Labour values that going against them is likely to cause fighting within the party, an open goal to the Conservatives, and risks putting off a lot of traditional supporters and potential campaign workers. Categorically ruling out a change to the benefits cap, rather than producing a more nuanced ‘when the time is right’ type of policy, is (to my mind) just such a mistake. I admit to being of the Labour Party ‘is a moral crusade or it is nothing’ persuasion, even though I tend to vote Green.
That was the main thing it had going for it. Better than Cameron's, in retrospect, monumentally stupid decision to hold a Brexit referendum which could pass on 50.0000000001% of votes cast. Better than Cameron's austerity programme. Dull was exactly what we have needed in just about every year since 2010. Bringing to mind the fable about the frogs who want a king, better a Labour log than a Tory stork.
"Strong and stable government with me, or chaos with Ed Miliband" !
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Cynically, those of us on the left are not going to be put off voting Labour if he's a bit too right wing. We're hoping that once in power, he'll move a bit leftwards.
On the other hand, those on the right might be encouraged to vote Labour by him being a bit too right-wing.
It's not good, but I suppose it's the cynical game he has to play to deal with the UK's ridiculous FPTP electoral system.
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