The Lib/Dem Gotterdammerung
"Political Betting" this morning recommends the account by Patrick Wintour and Nicholas Watt in this morning's Guardian of the downfall of the Lib/Dems, "The Clegg Catastrophe," as a "must read."
Certainly for political anoraks like me it is compulsive reading.
The most striking thing about it is the similarities between the Lib/Dem collapse between 2010 and May 2015 and the Conservative collapse between Black Wednesday and the 1997 election.
I particularly noted the similarity of a comment I remember being made in 1997 to the conclusion of this article.
The biggest strength of the "First Past the Post" system is that by magnifying the impact of changes in support it effectively gives the electorate a megaphone and forces politicians to pay attention to the consequences if they do things which annoy voters. In general I regard that as a very good thing but it can be cruel at times. On this subject I recall that in 1997 someone wrote along the lines that
The voters politely asked the Conservative government to leave. The electoral system machine-gunned everyone wearing a blue rosette and left them lying, riddled with bullet holes, in the gutter.
Now compare that with this:
“Recently, Clegg was approached by a distressed woman while shopping on his local high street in Putney. Speaking through tears, she told Clegg that his party did not deserve the battering it had received from the British electorate. Buoyed by the heartfelt sympathy from a wellwisher, Clegg told the woman not to worry and thanked her for supporting the Lib Dems – only to be told that she had voted Green.
'People were quite angry,' Coetzee [a Lib/Dem strategist] said. 'They wanted to dish out a slap on the wrist – and then found they’d cut the hand off and were quite horrified by what had happened. Then they went around saying: ‘Oh I’m terribly sorry, I’ve cut your hand off.’'”
But such defeats are an inescapable aspect of democratic politics and anyone who cannot cope with it should not be involved in politics. Democracy is preferable to any other form of politics, not least because in some of them you can end up riddled with real bullet holes, not just metaphorical ones.
Or as Winston Churchill put it, democracy is the worst system there is, except for all the others.
The article covers the attempted Oakeshott coup, the development of Lib/Dem strategy before and after the election and various possible theories about why they did so badly.
Everyone knew even before the 2010 election that if there ever was a hung parliament the Lib/Dems would have to decide which way to jump and any decision would cost them votes.
If they went into any government they would lose the "none of the above" protest vote, but if they were offered a chance to go into government and turned out down they would lose much of their "grown-up" support from people who wanted them to make a real change. If they went into a government with the Conservatives they would lose most of their left-wing support, if they went into one with Labour they would lose the centre-right.
But even so, nobody expected them to lose quite so much support and so badly. And reading through the article what crystallised my thoughts on the issue is that it may have been the impact of the Student Fees issue on Trust.
Labour had previously got away doing exactly the same as the Lib/Dems did on university fees, not once but twice (breaking promises about student tuition fees made at both the 1997 and 2001 elections.) Indeed, when I watched Labour's "incredible shrinking Clegg" PPB my reaction was not contempt for the Lib/Dem leader but for the Labour hypocrites who made and signed off that broadcast, since their own party had twice been guilty of exactly the same betrayal for which they were personally maligning Nick Clegg,
I think the reason Labour largely got away with this and the Lib/Dems didn't may have been a difference in the USP (unique selling point) of the two parties. Labour's appeal is based on support for the idea of what they see as a fairer distribution of wealth, a romanticised idea of support for the ordinary working man, and support for the public sector. Neither Labour nor any other party can avoid taking a hit if the public become convinced that they are totally untrustworthy, or much worse than the other parties, but Labour can survive being seen to break the odd promise if their own supporters and potential supporters think they will deliver what they might call "a fairer society."
The Lib/Dems, however, had made being trustworthy, honest brokers, and more honest than most parties a big part of their pitch. Being seen to break one of their most high-profile promises hurt them badly on the issue of trust, a hit from which they have yet to recover.
Which brings me back to the parallels with between 2010 to 2015 and 1992 to 1997.
The damage to the Lib/Dems reputation for trustworthiness caused by student tuition fees holed them below the waterline in exactly the same way that Black Wednesday wrecked the Conservatives' reputation for economic competence and holed not just John Major's government, but the party, below the waterline.
The good news for the Lib/Dems is that the 2015 election shows that the Conservatives have finally managed to restore our reputation for economic competence, which demonstrates that such holes can eventually be repaired. The bad news is that it took us 23 years to do it.
Four years of excellent economic management under Ken Clarke from 1993 to 1997 was not enough: it took until the economy went off a cliff on Labour's watch and the repair process was seen to begin under a Conservative chancellor that it again became natural for people to regard the Conservatives as the best party to run the economy.
The lesson here for the Lib/Dems is that they need to rebuild a reputation for being trustworthy, which will be very hard in opposition, but they must start by making sure their election promises are things they would be able to deliver.
The lesson here for the Conservatives is that now that George Osborne has with considerable effort in very difficult circumstances, won back our reputation for running the economy well, we absolutely cannot afford to lose it again.
So I'm going to finish this blog post by linking for the second time to an Economist article on being ready for the next recession, which any Conservative who has not yet seen it should read.
You can find this article at:
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21654053-it-only-matter-time-next-recession-strikes-rich-world-not-ready-watch.
Certainly for political anoraks like me it is compulsive reading.
The most striking thing about it is the similarities between the Lib/Dem collapse between 2010 and May 2015 and the Conservative collapse between Black Wednesday and the 1997 election.
I particularly noted the similarity of a comment I remember being made in 1997 to the conclusion of this article.
The biggest strength of the "First Past the Post" system is that by magnifying the impact of changes in support it effectively gives the electorate a megaphone and forces politicians to pay attention to the consequences if they do things which annoy voters. In general I regard that as a very good thing but it can be cruel at times. On this subject I recall that in 1997 someone wrote along the lines that
The voters politely asked the Conservative government to leave. The electoral system machine-gunned everyone wearing a blue rosette and left them lying, riddled with bullet holes, in the gutter.
Now compare that with this:
“Recently, Clegg was approached by a distressed woman while shopping on his local high street in Putney. Speaking through tears, she told Clegg that his party did not deserve the battering it had received from the British electorate. Buoyed by the heartfelt sympathy from a wellwisher, Clegg told the woman not to worry and thanked her for supporting the Lib Dems – only to be told that she had voted Green.
'People were quite angry,' Coetzee [a Lib/Dem strategist] said. 'They wanted to dish out a slap on the wrist – and then found they’d cut the hand off and were quite horrified by what had happened. Then they went around saying: ‘Oh I’m terribly sorry, I’ve cut your hand off.’'”
But such defeats are an inescapable aspect of democratic politics and anyone who cannot cope with it should not be involved in politics. Democracy is preferable to any other form of politics, not least because in some of them you can end up riddled with real bullet holes, not just metaphorical ones.
Or as Winston Churchill put it, democracy is the worst system there is, except for all the others.
The article covers the attempted Oakeshott coup, the development of Lib/Dem strategy before and after the election and various possible theories about why they did so badly.
Everyone knew even before the 2010 election that if there ever was a hung parliament the Lib/Dems would have to decide which way to jump and any decision would cost them votes.
If they went into any government they would lose the "none of the above" protest vote, but if they were offered a chance to go into government and turned out down they would lose much of their "grown-up" support from people who wanted them to make a real change. If they went into a government with the Conservatives they would lose most of their left-wing support, if they went into one with Labour they would lose the centre-right.
But even so, nobody expected them to lose quite so much support and so badly. And reading through the article what crystallised my thoughts on the issue is that it may have been the impact of the Student Fees issue on Trust.
Labour had previously got away doing exactly the same as the Lib/Dems did on university fees, not once but twice (breaking promises about student tuition fees made at both the 1997 and 2001 elections.) Indeed, when I watched Labour's "incredible shrinking Clegg" PPB my reaction was not contempt for the Lib/Dem leader but for the Labour hypocrites who made and signed off that broadcast, since their own party had twice been guilty of exactly the same betrayal for which they were personally maligning Nick Clegg,
I think the reason Labour largely got away with this and the Lib/Dems didn't may have been a difference in the USP (unique selling point) of the two parties. Labour's appeal is based on support for the idea of what they see as a fairer distribution of wealth, a romanticised idea of support for the ordinary working man, and support for the public sector. Neither Labour nor any other party can avoid taking a hit if the public become convinced that they are totally untrustworthy, or much worse than the other parties, but Labour can survive being seen to break the odd promise if their own supporters and potential supporters think they will deliver what they might call "a fairer society."
The Lib/Dems, however, had made being trustworthy, honest brokers, and more honest than most parties a big part of their pitch. Being seen to break one of their most high-profile promises hurt them badly on the issue of trust, a hit from which they have yet to recover.
Which brings me back to the parallels with between 2010 to 2015 and 1992 to 1997.
The damage to the Lib/Dems reputation for trustworthiness caused by student tuition fees holed them below the waterline in exactly the same way that Black Wednesday wrecked the Conservatives' reputation for economic competence and holed not just John Major's government, but the party, below the waterline.
The good news for the Lib/Dems is that the 2015 election shows that the Conservatives have finally managed to restore our reputation for economic competence, which demonstrates that such holes can eventually be repaired. The bad news is that it took us 23 years to do it.
Four years of excellent economic management under Ken Clarke from 1993 to 1997 was not enough: it took until the economy went off a cliff on Labour's watch and the repair process was seen to begin under a Conservative chancellor that it again became natural for people to regard the Conservatives as the best party to run the economy.
The lesson here for the Lib/Dems is that they need to rebuild a reputation for being trustworthy, which will be very hard in opposition, but they must start by making sure their election promises are things they would be able to deliver.
The lesson here for the Conservatives is that now that George Osborne has with considerable effort in very difficult circumstances, won back our reputation for running the economy well, we absolutely cannot afford to lose it again.
So I'm going to finish this blog post by linking for the second time to an Economist article on being ready for the next recession, which any Conservative who has not yet seen it should read.
You can find this article at:
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21654053-it-only-matter-time-next-recession-strikes-rich-world-not-ready-watch.
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