Tag: GE2015

I’m a Liberal Democrat. Our party president, Tim Farron, once described us being like cockroaches in our indestructability.

Today the Liberal Democrat parliamentary party has dropped from 57 parliamentary seats to 8, slightly lower than was achieved by the Liberal Party in 1979. Since 2010 Liberal Democrat local councillors have experienced this level of defeat, as have the party’s Members in the European Parliament. It looked like things might be different for the parliamentary party, but they weren’t.

The writing was on the wall from the moment Nick Clegg and David Cameron stepped into the Downing Street rose garden in May 2010. Our opinion poll ratings plummeted from that moment, before we’d done anything else but form the Coalition.

Today, in May 2015 we lost seats to Labour because of the “Great Betrayal”, we lost seats to the Tories because people thought of the Coalition “I actually quite like this government” and then backed the lead partner, we lost votes to UKIP and the Greens because they are the new repository of the protest vote, we lost seats to the SNP because nationalism trumps all.

The night had virtually no redeeming features. I particularly feel the loss of MPs like Lynne Featherstone, Jo Swinson and Julian Huppert all of whom made significant contributions in parliament on equality, science and anti-authoritarianism. All of whom appeared to be popular local MPs, all of whom were swept aside by the national tide.

Nick Clegg retained his seat, for which I’m rather pleased. Outsiders don’t realise quite how dependent a Lib Dem leader is on their party. The things Nick Clegg took the blame for were the things we as Liberal Democrats had collectively decided. He has been the one that has born the brunt of outrage against the Liberal Democrats with good grace. He is the one, more than any of the three main party leaders, who has talked with the public.

The political landscape won’t remould itself, it won’t be remoulded by online petitions. It won’t be remoulded by the “progressive alliance” engaging in rounds of recrimination. It won’t be remoulded by endless venting on twitter, or invoking the apocalypse. It won’t be remoulded by the lion’s roar, or an idiot with a pair of trews.

It will be remoulded by people like me who spend their spare time doing local politics: sitting in interminable meetings in their evenings, posting leaflets through doors, standing for local elections, helping local people and breaking out once every 5 years or so to fight a General Election.

I’m still a Liberal Democrat. I’m proud of what we achieved in coalition in the last 5 years, it’s been the best time to be a Liberal Democrat since I joined the party in 1988.

I’m going to go back to trying to win seats at elections and making sure the liberal voice is heard.

As something of a political anorak and a member of a political party, I thought I should make some political predictions for the 2015 General Election (polling on 7th May).

It’s difficult to call between Labour and the Tories as to who will have the most seats post election. The polls show a pretty much dead heat, and I don’t see either party making great gains or loses over the campaign. Labour have had a built in advantage which means that they get more seats for the same percentage of the vote as the Conservatives. It’s not clear if Labour’s “Scottish Problem” removes this advantage. My hunch is the Tories will do a little better than the polls are suggesting but both will have something around the 270 seat mark with Labour in the lead.

As a Liberal Democrat eternal optimism is something of of a pre-requisite. I joined the party when it had 22 seats and 22% of the national vote. I anticipate we’ll still get more than that after this election. I’m holding out for about 40 which is in excess of what pollsters predict. My reason for this optimism is that Liberal Democrat votes are local votes, and once in place Liberal Democrat MPs are difficult to dislodge, basically because they do a good job for their constituents (see here). 

The most interesting thing will be the SNP. I’m finding it a bit difficult to believe the predictions of an SNP landslide in Scotland, perhaps erroneously. My thinking is that they lost the independence referendum by some margin outside the central belt. It’s possible that the rise of the SNP vote represents a wider disaffection with Labour, not seeing them as representing Scottish interests in Westminster. I’m really struggling to believe they will exceed 50 seats but this is my biggest opportunity to be really wrong. Dropping the SNP seat count will benefit Labour.

UKIP will get nowhere, I actually have a bet with someone that they will have no further MPs beyond the two they currently have by defection. I anticipate they will poll relatively highly (i.e. above 10%), similarly the Greens who I don’t think will get a further seat. I suspect many will be jolly glad that UKIPs votes don’t convert into seats, perhaps fewer will be pleased when the same thing happens to the Greens for the same reason.

The likelihood is that no one party or even pair of parties (aside from Labour and Tory) will have sufficient seats to form a stable coalition. The key interesting thing is whether SNP or Liberal Democrats will have sufficient seats to make a coalition government, or at least a confidence-and-supply government with either Labour or Tory. It’s difficult to see the Liberal Democrats going for another round of coalition with the Tories with any enthusiasm, I see a fair chunk of the party being happy to try it with Labour. I’m not sure Labour will want coalition, they appear to have ruled it out absolutely with the SNP.

A Labour – SNP coalition would very definitely not be what we voted for, no English or Welsh voter could have voted for the SNP. The SNP is standing no candidates outside of Scotland. The party leader, Nicola Sturgeon, is not standing for a Westminster seat. The votes SNP MPs make in Westminster will often not effect their constituents, only those of English and Welsh constituents (see here). The SNP has shown little interest in matters south of the border other than to blame the English for all their woes, and to ensure that English students in Scottish universities pay English levels of fees whilst Scots, and indeed students from the rest of the EU, don’t. Not a happy guide as to how they might treat English interests in future. I can see a Labour-SNP coalition being quite damaging for Labour since I can imagine both Tories and Liberal Democrats will make a great deal of this lack of mandate.

Left thinking people, on the whole, appear happy with the electoral status quo. And so too do the Conservatives, the clue is in the name. But truly the Westminster system is broken, the Scots benefit from a fair degree of independence from Westminster with elections held using proportional systems at both local and national level. The rest of the UK could do with the same.