Why I don’t support the Lib-Con coalition

24 May 2010

Friends have been surprised that I don’t share the Liberal Democrat party’s general enthusiasm for its coalition with the Conservatives.  So here’s why – three reasons:

• first, I think the coalition agreement is a poor deal for the Lib Dems;
• second, I think the Tories are still a political world away from truly Liberal values;
• and third, there was an alternative – Lib Dems could have provided constructive opposition to a minority Tory government.

A poor deal

Simon Hughes has said that the coalition means Liberal Democrats will be able to deliver on “all of the four major policy priorities that we campaigned for at this election – fair taxes, a fair start for children, investment in a new, green economic future and complete overhaul of our failed political system.” This is spinning for England. You only have to read the agreement to see it is not the case.

The Lib Dems haven’t achieved fair taxes. The major ‘fair tax’ plank of the Lib Dem manifesto was the increase the personal allowance for income tax to £10,000. This number is included in the coalition agreement but  relegated to the status of a ‘longer term policy objective’. In any case this was never a progressive, redistributive measure because it helps middle class, high earners as much as the poor.

This election was a golden opportunity to increase tax on the top earners among rich professionals like bankers and lawyers but instead of them paying a little more, low and middle income public servants will lose their jobs altogether.

The Lib Dems haven’t achieved investment in a ‘green economic future’ either.  The cuts are being quantified – £6bn this year – why not investments in energy efficiency or public transport?  Without numbers, policies are gestures.

The Lib Dems haven’t achieved a ‘fair start for children’. The Lib Dems pledged £2.5bn in extra funds for their ‘pupil premium’ to help disadvantaged kids. But the Tories only accepted a ‘significant sum’. And we can expect this to be outweighed by impact of across-the-board cuts and the costs of the Tories’ plans for their flagship ‘free schools’.

Most fundamentally, the Lib Dems haven’t overhauled the political system. The party’s long-standing goal has been real proportional representation – a system where the share of seats reflects the share of votes. But instead it has accepted a referendum on the Alternative Vote, a system which is designed to create one winner and many losers, rather than a fair apportionment of power. It is a system Churchill described as ‘the most worthless votes for the most worthless candidates’.  The jewel in the crown is a fake.

Same old Tories

The free schools policy is also a clear indication that the Tories remain on a different political planet to the party the Liberal Democrats claim to be.  The policy means that children whose parents are well-organised, articulate and well-informed will be able to create islands of privilege using taxpayer’s money while children of less informed and switched-on parents will suffer. As so often with Conservative policies, whatever the rhetoric, haves get more while the have-nots get less.  Margaret Thatcher must be proud.

It’s true that Cameron and Osborne have set out a programme that is socially liberal, but this is no more than a reflection of the direction society is taking. On other areas the Tory party remains as reactionary as ever.  On Europe, for example, the Tories are part of an extreme right group of Euro-MPs and remain overwhelmingly negative in their approach to an international partnership that has built the world’s largest consumer market and most progressive society. The coalition deal – signed by the Lib Dems – uses the biased rhetoric of anti-EU fanatics in talking of “no further transfer of sovereignty”, which like “bowing the knee to Brussels”, is the weird language developed by anti-EU extremists to convince us we are living in a totalitarian superstate.  The Lib Dems have hitherto rejected this unhinged version of events and put forward the sane version which is that Britain, in common with 26 other sovereign countries, should form part of a stronger team to tackle issues that countries cannot tackle alone, from crime to the environment.

And on the environment, the Lib Dems have thrown their lot in with a party that either downplays climate change or denies it exists. When 140 Tory candidates responded to a poll before the election, they put ‘cutting Britain’s carbon footprint’ lowest in a long list of priorities. 45 mentioned ‘winning powers back from Europe’. But just eight said climate change was important.

In contrast with the Tory approach, I would like to be part of a party that truly believes what it says on my membership card: “The Liberal Democrats exist to build a fair, free and open society in which we seek to balance the fundamental values of liberty, equality and community and in which no-one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity” For me, given the Conservatives’ mind-set, present as well as past, that would exclude working in a coalition.

But unfortunately I seem to have become a member of a party whose actual motto is: “The Liberal Democrats exist to win votes and power, anywhere, anyway, anyhow.”

There was an alternative

The Lib Dem leadership response is that coalition with the Tories was the only option. We’re told there was no alternative that would deliver the stability the market and the nation needed. A minority Tory administration would have been ‘too fragile’ according to Nick Clegg.

Hang on a minute. Why would it have been ‘fragile’? Is it because the Lib Dems would have voted down the government’s proposals? But if Lib Dems would have voted the proposals down in opposition, what are they doing supporting them in government? I know it’s old-fashioned, but I think that if you agree with something you should vote for it and if you disagree with it, you should vote against it – whether you’re in government or opposition. And isn’t it odd that Cameron didn’t say it would have been too fragile. He said it would have been ‘easier’, but was ‘uninspiring’.  Come on guys, make up your minds.

In fact it would have been possible for the Lib Dems to remain independent to a Tory minority government but act in a disciplined and progressive way? We had less public support than the Conservatives – by a ratio of 23:36 to be precise – and we should therefore have accepted the Tories’ mandate to implement a significant chunk of their manifesto, including elements that we would normally oppose. On that basis we could have agreed a Queen’s Speech and budget and that would have provided the stability the markets were said to crave. But beyond that core programme Lib Dems would have reserved the right to support or oppose each bill or vote as it arose.

This would have prevented the Conservatives implementing their more extreme policies, which their mandate is not large enough to justify, and it would have led to sensible negotiations on a case-by-case basis in which the Tories would have had to restrain their proposals to something the Lib Dems could accept. The Lib Dems could have provided scrutiny and challenge, combining with the other parties if needed to vote the government down and assert the interests of the country’s 64% anti-Conservative majority. But it would not have happened every day.

On tough issues, when it was hard for Lib Dems to agree a position, we could have given our members a free vote, encouraging other parties to follow suit, and letting our legislature for once have the practical as well as theoretical power to control the executive.

On such issues one could imagine a major national debate taking place among the media and public with the outcome being unknown until the parliamentary votes were counted.  That, to me, would have been real ‘new politics’, with a new level of transparency, accountability and engagement.  But no. This is what David Cameron and Nick Clegg decided was ‘uninspiring’. So instead Lib Dems have opted to become part of the government machine, being whipped through the government lobbies alongside their Tory colleagues so that the outcomes of the votes are known before they are cast.

Not only that. In the House of Commons we have colluded in a further cynical fix by accepting a 55% threshold for triggering a general election. This protects the Conservatives who only have 47% of seats – and 36% of the vote – and makes Cameron impossible to bring down other than by a Tory backbench rebellion. It rejects the time-honoured convention that a simple majority is a mandate for action.  New politics? New politburo, more like.

I appreciate that a majority of today’s Liberal Democrats disagree with me. They will spin the coalition agreement as a success and  argue that a minority government would have been unstable. Neither of us can prove what would have happened on the road not taken. But I know what has happened on the road the Lib Dems have taken. The party has moved a long way from what it once claimed to believe. There has been a tussle for its soul between the crusaders, with their political vision of a fair, free, open society, and the campaigners, who just enjoy fighting elections and winning power. And the campaigners have won, hands down. I note that old crusaders like Paddy Ashdown and Ming Campbell who tried to make the party’s policies reflect its stated philosophy have been pretty quiet since the coalition formed.

Rather than resign I’ll just let my membership lapse next month, which is kind of appropriate given I feel the party has left me, not the other way round.  I think those of us that fought for what the party might have been in the 80s and 90s now have to accept the game is up. A third of our voters think we’ve sold out on our principles, and unlike most of our members, I agree with them.  Within the party machine, I know that only a handful of people including Charles Kennedy and David Rendel have stood up to the orthodoxy, but I’m reassured to know that my instincts are the same as those of lots of normal people who thought the Lib Dems would never join a Tory government.   Before the election Nick Clegg said David Cameron had “put the Con back into Conservative”.  Those who agreed with him can be forgiven for thinking that he has now put the rat back into Liberal Democrat.