Get ready for another coalition government
Coalition government made and unmade the Liberal Democrats. It made them, because it put Liberal Democrat MPs into ministerial office for the first time. And it unmade them, because it turned the party out of Parliament almost altogether. In 2010, just before they entered coalition, they had 62 MPs. In 2015, after a term of it, they were reduced to only eight.
So Sir Nick Clegg, in suggesting that the Liberal Democrats enter coalition again in the event of a hung parliament, is thumping a bruise: memories of 2015 are painful, even ten years on, among the party that he used to lead. 'Politics without power is like a car without fuel'. What's he up to?
There is no great mystery about Sir Nick's motives. Politicians are defensive of their record – and had he not entered the coalition he would be remembered as a minor party leader, rather than as Deputy Prime Minister. But there is more to his intervention than a backwards glance at his legacy. Sir Nick is also looking forward to what may happen after the next election.
British politics is fragmenting: five parties now compete for votes in England – Labour, Reform, the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats, and a de facto alliance of Greens, independents and Islamists. The political logic of electoral disintegration is a hung parliament. So Sir Nick's intervention is nothing if not timely, however inconvenient it may be for Sir Ed Davey.
And inconvenient it certainly is. For Clegg is posing what, if the Liberal Democrats claim to be a serious party, is nothing less than an existential question for them – namely, what on earth are they for in the first place? What do they exist to do – other than publish leaflets with misleading bar charts and post placards that proclaim 'winning here'?
Or, to cut to the chase, what's the point of Sir Ed – last seen challenging Sir Keir Starmer in a TikTok dance video? Does this former Cabinet Minister – Energy Secretary under the Coalition, no less – now exist only to tumble from paddleboards in Lake Windermere, or to hurl himself in bungee jumps from cranes? Is he no more than a walking, talking photo-op.
Perhaps so – and in a Parliament in which Labour has a vast majority, Reform are rampant and the Conservatives are vanishing, Sir Ed's attention-seizing irrelevances are, on the whole, a net plus for his party. A hung parliament would be a different matter. The Liberal Democrat leader would have to put aside childish things.
A minority party has four options in a hung parliament: to enter a coalition, give a government confidence and supply, bring it down – or simply dither. The Liberal Democrats chose the first in 2010. Then, their partner was the Conservatives. At the next election, their option would surely be, in the event of a hung Parliament, Sir Keir Starmer and Labour.
Here's the crunch – for Sir Ed, at any rate. There is no gain from failing to make up one's mind. Nor, as matters stand, for pivoting back towards the Tories: after all, the Liberal Democrats have prospered by presenting themselves, post-Brexit, as a pro–Europe, southern-based alternative to the Conservatives. A revived alliance with them would be unthinkable.
Electoral reality would suggest propping up Sir Keir – in return for as many concessions as Sir Ed could squeeze out of him. Customs union membership? Proportional representation? A written constitution? Who knows? But Sir Ed understands the terms of trade between the senior and junior partner in any arrangement – none better.
Coalition would mean office, red boxes, ministerial cars, and jobs for the boys and girls. Confidence and supply would bring none of those things. But it would keep more distance between Sir Ed and Sir Keir. And so appease that segment of Liberal Democrat voters whose hearts may be on the Left, but whose wallets are on the Right, and are reflexively suspicious of Labour.
But Sir Nick has raised a bigger question than the future of the party he used to lead – as it calculates the trade-offs between ministerial office and parliamentary numbers. Namely: what would other parties do in the event of a future hung parliament? We have the Liberal Democrats on the Centre-Left. What about the parties of the Right?
If Reform are the smaller of the two Right-wing parties, might they enter into coalition with the Conservatives? If the Tories are the smaller, would they let themselves be swallowed up by Reform? Or would both parties rather endure another term of Sir Keir than work with each other? In encouraging us to think ahead, Sir Nick is doing us a service.
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