Lib Dems will survive AV defeat

Even if the ballot papers confirm a referendum reverse and election losses, do not expect the Liberal Democrats to go into meltdown, writes Richard Hall.

During the Easter recess, campaigning for the referendum on the voting system stepped up a gear or two. As David Cameron and Lord Reid shared a platform, and Ed Miliband joined Vince Cable together on stage, polls suggested that opponents of a switch to the alternative vote (AV) system were outnumbering supporters. A nightmare scenario was mapped out for the Liberal Democrats.

The painful compromises of coalition would not be soothed by a change in the electoral system. Together with huge losses in English council elections and poor polling in the Scottish and Welsh devolved institutions elections, leader Nick Clegg’s authority would be undermined and the party divided between those who wanted him out and those who wish to see him stay the course. Yet even if the ballot papers confirm a referendum reverse and election losses, do not expect the Liberal Democrats to go into meltdown.

It is worth remembering what the party, in its various guises, has been through over recent decades. Excluded from power since the inter-war years, it has long been an impotent onlooker. The Conservatives and Labour fought each other, but both were united in contempt for the third party. The electoral system, Lib Dems say, treated them similarly. In the 1951 and 1955 elections the paltry sum of six Liberal seats was reward for less than three per cent of the vote – humiliation for a party which had provided the prime minister only 30 years earlier.

Yet as near-monopoly support for the two main parties was broken up over the ensuing decades, the electoral system failed to give them their just rewards. By 1983, winning a quarter of the vote garnered the SDPLiberal Alliance just 22 seats, three per cent of those up for grabs in the House of Commons.

They complained, but could not change it. Denied power in Parliament, refused funding by big business or unions, and ignored by much of the media, they made the best of it by developing footholds in local authorities from which to scale the walls of Westminster. Encouraging tactical anti-Tory voting helped the Liberal Democrats break through to 46 seats in 1997.

Tony Blair promised a referendum on electoral reform, but his two landslides meant that he could not have persuaded his party even if he really wanted to. The Lib Dems adapted again. As Labour ignored the prospect of an anti-Tory embrace, sections of the Liberal Democrats acted on Labour’s authoritarian faults and centralising instincts, and started to make common cause with Conservatives who emphasised localism, civil liberties and a smaller state. This adaptability facilitated a relatively comfortable coalition negotiation, and saw the party through a painful comprehensive spending review and excruciating tuition fees vote.

However, current polls show that many voters think the Lib Dems are selling out rather than adapting, thus the prospect of significant losses at next month’s elections. Political reality suggests that a breaking point will be reached. This far, but no further. Will it be met in May? That’s unlikely.

Parties understand that council seat losses are the price to pay for power at Westminster. AV would, of course, benefit the Lib Dems. But it was never the holy grail. To bring down the coalition and demonstrate that the party was incapable of governing for the long term in response to the loss of a ‘miserable little compromise’ would be folly. Better to show that coalitions can work in the long term, and thus chip away at the strongest argument against a more proportional voting system.

A referendum loss would naturally be a blow to the Liberal Democrats, but most of Nick Clegg’s MPs would acknowledge the difficulty of campaigning for a measure seen to benefit them at a time when their party is being blamed for unpopular government decisions. Clegg and his party would charge into Lords reform with greater gusto. History tells us that they would get on and make the best of things.

Whether this can be said of David Cameron’s MPs is another question entirely. Should AV be approved, those already impatient with the compromises of coalition may not be dissuaded from insisting on hardening immigration and sentencing policy, taking on Europe, and blocking Lib Dem-led moves to bring elections to the Lords. Such concessions would be the least they would expect of a prime minister who had presided over the ditching of a voting system that had very efficiently produced majority Conservative governments.

Richard Hall is the managing editor of The House Magazine.

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