This article was made possible by our Patreon supporters!
Special thanks in particular go to our amazing $5 supporters: Vincent Calabrese, Scott Folan, Chloe Hopkins, Stephen Kaar, Henry Ellenger, Harry Jackson, sn and Alex Wilson
To support Stats for Lefties on Patreon from $2 a month, visit https://www.patreon.com/leftiestats
---
With two months left until we are scheduled to leave the European Union – with or without a deal – the question of what the voters want to do about Brexit is a key question. However, different people have many different interpretations of what the public actually thinks. The Telegraph claimed earlier this year that “Every region of England and Wales happy to leave the EU without a deal - except London if extension refused”; one prominent Remain campaigner, meanwhile, claimed that Leave voters don’t support No Deal. But what do the numbers say? And what does this tell us about how a potential second EU referendum might go? Let’s take a look.
“Maybe”: would the public vote Leave again?
After the 2016 referendum, pollsters began asking voters how they would vote in a re-run of that “Remain” / “Leave” referendum. They continue to ask this question (which I like to call the “generic” referendum question) today. Sometimes the question varies slightly (YouGov often asks voters whether they think Britain was “right” or “wrong” to vote Leave, which I think counts), but all of the pollsters’ questions amount to the same query – would you support Leave or Remain in a referendum?
The table below shows average of such “generic” referendum polls in each month since January 2016.
As you can see, for the past three years, “Leave” and “Remain” have been stuck in a virtual tie, with each side being within the margin of error of the other. Leave has not led in the polls, on average, in any month since the 2017 general election; but the lead for Remain has been shaky at best, with Remain never polling above 54% (an 8pt lead) and never achieving a double-digit lead. Not even the chaos of March 2019, when we failed to leave the EU on the designated date, shifted the numbers to any great degree; support for remaining in the EU was exactly the same in April (54%) as it was in March (54%).
Of course, those of us who wish to remain in the EU (which includes myself) would take solace from the fact that Remain has been consistently ahead since March 2018. But as I have argued before, it is highly likely that Remain would lose support during a referendum campaign, which means that we would need a significant pre-referendum poll lead to even win by a normal margin when votes are cast. For example, in March 2016, “Remain” was averaging 52% in polls; on 23 June 2016, “Remain” only won 48.1%, a loss of 4 percentage points over the course of 3 months. If that happens again, Remain’s current 6pt lead would no longer exist, and we would lose again.
So, in short, Remain is ahead on the generic referendum question and has been consistently ahead for over a year; but Remain’s lead is narrow and we should avoid taking a “Remain” win for granted.
“Anything goes”: what if the Leave option wasn’t just one vague word? How would the public vote then?
We have plenty of polling about how the public would vote in a re-run of the 2016 referendum, but we have frustratingly little polling about the two scenarios that are actually likely: a referendum where the “Leave” option is May’s Deal, and a referendum where the “Leave” option is No Deal. But in this section, I’ll look at how the public might vote in those hypothetical referenda.
Most of the available polling that offers a specific Leave option looks at support for Theresa May’s Brexit deal, which is still the only Brexit deal that has been negotiated. The table below shows monthly averages of polls that offered the option of “Remain” and May’s Deal.
May’s Deal is thus less popular in practice than the generic concept of “Leave”; polls in July showed Remain 18pts ahead of May’s Deal. This lead has expanded over time; as recently as April, May’s Deal was averaging 45%, just 1pt less than the generic concept of “Leave”. The levels of support have since diverged, however; May’s Deal is now 7pts less popular than “Leave”. One poll from BMG Research showed “Remain” 26pts ahead of May’s Deal when Don’t Knows were excluded.
So what about leaving with No Deal?
As you can see, support for “No Deal” in July (46%) was almost identical to support for a generic “Leave” option (47%). This is a significant change from last year – in October 2018, “No Deal” averaged just 41% in polls compared to 47% for a generic “Leave” option. One poll in July showed “Remain” on 52% and No Deal on 48%.
In short, we don’t have much polling on specific Leave options, but what we do know is that No Deal fares better against “Remain” than May’s Deal does. Hopefully more polling will be conducted on this question soon.
“Happy Times”: what do the public want to do next on Brexit?
The question of what should happen next with Brexit is a rather different question to how people might vote in a hypothetical referendum. After all, some voters might favour Remain but don’t think that reversing Brexit is the right thing to do. So let’s look at voters’ attitudes to possible Brexit outcomes.
Opinium frequently polls voters asking them to choose between 3 options for Brexit:
-> Going ahead with Brexit on the current timelines even if it means leaving with ‘no deal’"
-> Revoking Article 50 and remaining in the European Union
-> Delaying Article 50 until we have a greater idea of what Brexit would get the most support
The table below shows the results of these polls. YouGov also asked a virtually identical question on 1st April, so I have included that in the table as well.
Since the beginning of 2019, support for going ahead with Brexit even if it means leaving with No Deal has risen from 39% (February) to 45% (July). This 6pt gain for “No Deal” has been accompanied by a rise in support for cancelling Article 50 – but only a 2pt rise. Overall, voters have become polarised on the question of what to do next; support for delaying Article 50 has fallen from 20% in February to 13% in July.
However, these polls didn’t include the option of holding a referendum. So let’s look at the recent polls on that question!
The table below shows the average of polls conducted on the question of a second referendum since the start of 2019. I have only included polls that made clear that Remain would be an option on the ballot, as that is the primary demand of the People’s Vote campaign.
Support for a second referendum has begun to rise within the past two months; in July, the average of polls (excluding Don’t Knows) shows that a narrow majority of voters now support holding a second EU referendum.
“Jolly Days”: conclusion
So what can we conclude from this data?
Well, firstly, the polls show that the public has not turned against Brexit to any great extent. Remain leads in generic referendum polls and is ahead of May’s Deal and No Deal. But, with the exception of May’s Deal, the Remain lead remains narrow and precarious. This polarisation is echoed when it comes to the question of whether voters want a second EU referendum; in July, polls showed that voters favour it by 51%-49%; in May, voters were evenly divided on the question. 3 years of Brexit debate has barely shifted public opinion on the question of whether we should or should not leave the EU, and it does not look as if anything will significantly change this deadlock by October 31st.
Secondly, No Deal is more likely to defeat “Remain” in a referendum than May’s Deal. One poll in July even showed “No Deal” on a worryingly high 48% - the same percentage that “Leave” was averaging in polls in March 2016. Remainers cannot afford to be relaxed, as Vince Cable is, about the idea of No Deal being on the ballot in any future referendum. There is a distinct possibility that Remain could lose again, and if No Deal wins, there will be absolutely no hope left for the Remain cause. Remainers should strongly oppose any efforts to place "No Deal" on the ballot of a 2nd referendum.
Finally, all of this data shows that there are no easy or popular answers to the Brexit crisis. The public are evenly divided on the question of whether Brexit is right or wrong, and it is difficult to see how any Brexit outcome could satisfy significant numbers of people on both sides.
There is much to be debated about how we got to this point. Maybe the voters wouldn’t be so polarised if more Remainers had accepted the result; maybe Remainers wouldn’t have been as energised if Leavers had actually tried to include them in the Brexit process; maybe things would be different if a Labour government had won in 2017, as they would have avoided the incompetent shambles that Theresa May produced.
But with the UK just two months away from a No Deal Brexit, it seems to me that it’s impossible to know with any certainty that a particular Brexit position will solve everything or unite the country. All anyone can do right now is advocate for what they think is right in principle - whether that's leaving or remaining.
And as I’ve said before, when it comes to what Labour should do, that means advocating clearly for Remain.
Wednesday, 14 August 2019
Thursday, 23 May 2019
D’hondt go breaking my heart: final EU election poll average
This article was made possible by our Patreon supporters! Special thanks in particular go to our amazing $5 supporters: Scott Folan, Colin in Cardiff, Heather Mendick, Chloe Hopkins, Henry Ellenger, Harry Jackson, Alex Wilson and Stephen Karr
To support Stats for Lefties on Patreon, visit https://www.patreon.com/leftiestats
---
Well, the unexpected European Elections are finally here. After her Brexit deal failed to pass the House of Commons, and then failed again, and then failed again, Theresa May was forced to delay Brexit until October. And so here we are, electing MEPs to a Parliament that we may not even be a part of in a year’s time.
Unsurprisingly, that uncertainty over whether our MEPs will even take their seats has led to some uncertainty over how people are going to vote. Fortunately, plenty of polls have been conducted to give us a sense of how people are going to vote.
So far in 2019, 39 opinion polls have been published asking voters how they’d vote in the European elections. The table below shows averages of polls in each week leading up to the European elections. Note that only 1 poll was conducted in the week of 29th April-5th May.
And here’s my weekly seat estimate based on those poll averages:
As you can see, the polls have changed a lot in the past month. In early April, Labour was in first place, leading the Tories by 12pts; UKIP and the Brexit Party were averaging a joint 24%, but it was split evenly between the two parties; the Lib Dems were averaging 9% (up by just 2pts compared to 2014) and the Greens were averaging 6%, less than in 2014. Change UK was tied in last place with the SNP, with the two parties on 5% each.
Almost all of that has now changed. In the week of the election, my poll average now shows the Brexit Party 14pts ahead of Labour and set to win 34% of the popular vote, the best result for any party since 1994. UKIP has totally collapsed and could well end up winning a mere 3%. Change UK have declined slightly to 4%. The Lib Dems have increased their vote share by 8pts to 17% and are now neck-and-neck with Labour, who have fallen to 19%. The Greens are doing slightly better than in early April, but are only estimated to win 8% of the vote (the same as in 2014).
So what does this mean for seats?
On a universal swing, including this would lead to the Brexit Party winning 31 MEPs (42.5%), the best result for any party since 1994 (and the best result for any party ever under proportional representation).*
Labour would lose 4 MEPs, falling to 16 seats (21.9%), the 3rd-worst result for Labour in a European Parliament election (after 2009 and 1979). The Lib Dems would win 10 seats, their highest share of seats (13.7%) since 1999, whilst the Tories would collapse to just 7 seats (9.6%), their worst-ever result. The Greens would lose seats, winning 2 MEPs (-1). As very few polls have been conducted in Scotland or Wales, I have chosen to apply a universal swing to those nations too, which suggests that the SNP would win 2 seats and Plaid Cymru would win 1. However, we shouldn't rule out the possibility that the SNP could win 3 of Scotland's 6 seats.
But what about the Remain/Leave balance? Well, it depends upon how one defines it. If one defines the parties by what sort of Brexit they prefer, we get the following:
If one defines the parties by whether their official policy position is for Brexit or not, we get the following:
In short, the Brexit Party is set to win, Labour and the Lib Dems are neck-and-neck, and pro-Brexit parties are set to win a majority of the popular vote.
---
*Although the Tories won more seats in 1999 (36 seats), this was a lower share of seats (41.1%) because the UK had 14 more MEPs at the time than it does today.
To support Stats for Lefties on Patreon, visit https://www.patreon.com/leftiestats
---
Well, the unexpected European Elections are finally here. After her Brexit deal failed to pass the House of Commons, and then failed again, and then failed again, Theresa May was forced to delay Brexit until October. And so here we are, electing MEPs to a Parliament that we may not even be a part of in a year’s time.
Unsurprisingly, that uncertainty over whether our MEPs will even take their seats has led to some uncertainty over how people are going to vote. Fortunately, plenty of polls have been conducted to give us a sense of how people are going to vote.
So far in 2019, 39 opinion polls have been published asking voters how they’d vote in the European elections. The table below shows averages of polls in each week leading up to the European elections. Note that only 1 poll was conducted in the week of 29th April-5th May.
And here’s my weekly seat estimate based on those poll averages:
As you can see, the polls have changed a lot in the past month. In early April, Labour was in first place, leading the Tories by 12pts; UKIP and the Brexit Party were averaging a joint 24%, but it was split evenly between the two parties; the Lib Dems were averaging 9% (up by just 2pts compared to 2014) and the Greens were averaging 6%, less than in 2014. Change UK was tied in last place with the SNP, with the two parties on 5% each.
Almost all of that has now changed. In the week of the election, my poll average now shows the Brexit Party 14pts ahead of Labour and set to win 34% of the popular vote, the best result for any party since 1994. UKIP has totally collapsed and could well end up winning a mere 3%. Change UK have declined slightly to 4%. The Lib Dems have increased their vote share by 8pts to 17% and are now neck-and-neck with Labour, who have fallen to 19%. The Greens are doing slightly better than in early April, but are only estimated to win 8% of the vote (the same as in 2014).
So what does this mean for seats?
On a universal swing, including this would lead to the Brexit Party winning 31 MEPs (42.5%), the best result for any party since 1994 (and the best result for any party ever under proportional representation).*
Labour would lose 4 MEPs, falling to 16 seats (21.9%), the 3rd-worst result for Labour in a European Parliament election (after 2009 and 1979). The Lib Dems would win 10 seats, their highest share of seats (13.7%) since 1999, whilst the Tories would collapse to just 7 seats (9.6%), their worst-ever result. The Greens would lose seats, winning 2 MEPs (-1). As very few polls have been conducted in Scotland or Wales, I have chosen to apply a universal swing to those nations too, which suggests that the SNP would win 2 seats and Plaid Cymru would win 1. However, we shouldn't rule out the possibility that the SNP could win 3 of Scotland's 6 seats.
But what about the Remain/Leave balance? Well, it depends upon how one defines it. If one defines the parties by what sort of Brexit they prefer, we get the following:
- 37% ~ No Deal (Brexit Party/UKIP)
- 33% ~ No Brexit (Lib Dems/Greens/SNP/Change UK/Plaid Cymru)
- 19% ~ Labour Brexit (Labour)
- 11% ~ May's Deal (Conservatives)
If one defines the parties by whether their official policy position is for Brexit or not, we get the following:
- 67% ~ For Brexit
- 33% ~ Against Brexit
In short, the Brexit Party is set to win, Labour and the Lib Dems are neck-and-neck, and pro-Brexit parties are set to win a majority of the popular vote.
---
*Although the Tories won more seats in 1999 (36 seats), this was a lower share of seats (41.1%) because the UK had 14 more MEPs at the time than it does today.
Wednesday, 17 April 2019
Will Change UK and the Brexit Party shake up the EU elections? D'hondt be so sure
This article was made
possible by our Patreon supporters! Special thanks in particular go to our $5
supporters: Harry Jackson, Henry Ellenger and Scott Folan. To support Stats for
Lefties on Patreon, visit https://www.patreon.com/leftiestats
----
With the news that the Conservative Party has begun selecting candidates for the European elections, it’s now looking like a certainty that the UK will indeed be holding elections to the European Parliament. Many Conservatives are dreading the prospect, with Tory Minister Nadhim Zahawi calling the elections an “existential threat” to the Tories. Backbench Tory MP Mark Francois, meanwhile, believes that Nigel Farage’s new Brexit Party are “licking their lips” at the prospect of fighting European elections. On the other side of the Brexit debate, Change UK – the party that is being established by members of the Independent Group of MPs – is hoping to win votes from Remainers.
With the elections conducted under a voting system that ensures parties broadly receive the same share of seats as their share of the vote, Change UK's confidence would seem to be well-placed. However, the United Kingdom’s voting system for the European Parliament is not fully proportional, and the new minor parties may find themselves struggling to gain even a handful of seats.
The UK’s voting system
Members of the European Parliament (MEPs), who co-write EU laws and appoint the President of the European Commission, are elected in the UK using a system of proportional representation (PR) known as “Party List PR”. Rather than nominating 1 candidate in a relatively small area, political parties nominate a long list of candidates in super-sized constituencies that elect 3-10 MEPs dependent upon population. Voters can then vote for the party they want, and the seats in that constituency are allocated to each party in proportion to their share of the vote, using a calculation known as the "d'hondt" equation.
The effect on minor parties
All uses of proportional representation in Britain have tended, over time, to produce better results for smaller parties. The EU elections themselves are a good example of this. Before 1999, European elections in Britain used first-past-the-post, just like elections to the House of Commons; the chart below shows the % vote share in EU elections for minor parties (i.e. other than Labour, the Conservatives and Lib Dems) from 1979-2014. Because Northern Ireland has a different party system, the figures below are for Great Britain only.
With the news that the Conservative Party has begun selecting candidates for the European elections, it’s now looking like a certainty that the UK will indeed be holding elections to the European Parliament. Many Conservatives are dreading the prospect, with Tory Minister Nadhim Zahawi calling the elections an “existential threat” to the Tories. Backbench Tory MP Mark Francois, meanwhile, believes that Nigel Farage’s new Brexit Party are “licking their lips” at the prospect of fighting European elections. On the other side of the Brexit debate, Change UK – the party that is being established by members of the Independent Group of MPs – is hoping to win votes from Remainers.
With the elections conducted under a voting system that ensures parties broadly receive the same share of seats as their share of the vote, Change UK's confidence would seem to be well-placed. However, the United Kingdom’s voting system for the European Parliament is not fully proportional, and the new minor parties may find themselves struggling to gain even a handful of seats.
The UK’s voting system
Members of the European Parliament (MEPs), who co-write EU laws and appoint the President of the European Commission, are elected in the UK using a system of proportional representation (PR) known as “Party List PR”. Rather than nominating 1 candidate in a relatively small area, political parties nominate a long list of candidates in super-sized constituencies that elect 3-10 MEPs dependent upon population. Voters can then vote for the party they want, and the seats in that constituency are allocated to each party in proportion to their share of the vote, using a calculation known as the "d'hondt" equation.
The effect on minor parties
All uses of proportional representation in Britain have tended, over time, to produce better results for smaller parties. The EU elections themselves are a good example of this. Before 1999, European elections in Britain used first-past-the-post, just like elections to the House of Commons; the chart below shows the % vote share in EU elections for minor parties (i.e. other than Labour, the Conservatives and Lib Dems) from 1979-2014. Because Northern Ireland has a different party system, the figures below are for Great Britain only.
One thing that you may have noticed, however, is that until 2014 minor parties tended to receive a lot less seats than their aggregate vote share would suggest, even after the introduction of proportional representation. In 2009, for example, 42.9% of voters cast a ballot for a minor party – but minor parties only won 27.5% of the seats. In 2014, this trend was brought to a sudden end, and the proportion of votes cast for minor parties (43.8%) very closely matched the share of seats that they received (42.9%).
The reason for this was simple: prior to 2014, most votes for minor parties were scattered across dozens of different small parties (in 2009, a total of 8 small parties received more than 1% of the popular vote). In 2014, however, most of the votes cast for minor parties were cast for 1 minor party in particular: UKIP.
This phenomenon, whereby minor parties do relatively badly in European elections despite the use of a proportional voting system, is what I’ll explore below.
Proportional, yet not proportional
Ironically, the proportional voting system used for the European Parliament has often disadvantaged minor parties (relative to their vote share). This has happened because the voting system is not strictly “proportional”. If it was, the Lib Dems’ vote share of 7% would have led to them winning 5 MEPs (7%) in 2014. Instead, they won just 1 MEP. This was because their vote share was so low in every constituency that they didn’t have enough votes to elect an MEP outside of South East England, which has the most MEPs available.
The Green Party of England and Wales frequently faces the same problem: despite winning 8% of the popular vote in 2009 (their highest since 1989), and gaining 274,000 votes (+2.4pts) their total seats (2 MEPs) did not change. This was because, outside of London and South East England, there simply were not enough seats available in the other regions for the party to win.
In the East of England, for example, the party won a reasonably high 8.8% of the vote; in the South East (10 seats), this would have been enough to elect 1 MEP. However, the East of England only had 7 MEPs available, so the Greens fell short. This story was repeated across the country, and for other parties. In the North East of England in 2014, for example, the Conservative Party received 17.7% of the vote; that would have guaranteed it at least 1 seat in London (8 MEPs) or the South East (10 MEPs). But the North East only had 3 MEPs, so the Tories got no seats at all.
The table below shows the average minimum % of the vote required in 1999-2014 to elect an MEP in each region and nation of the UK.
As you can see, the average minimum winning percentage ranges from 7.9% in South East England (10 MEPs) to 23% in North East England (3 MEPs). The fewer MEPs a constituency has, the harder it is for a minor party to win seats. And unfortunately for minor parties, most of the UK’s constituencies don’t have many MEPs.
The consequence is that, despite European elections using proportional representation, major political parties end up winning a share of seats that is often far higher than their share of the vote. In 2009, for example, the Conservatives won 28% of the popular vote in Great Britain, but won 25 of 69 seats (38%).
So what does this mean for Change UK and the Brexit Party?
Effect on Change UK and the Brexit Party
As we have seen above, unless a political party wins 10-15% of the vote in multiple regions, it is unlikely to win more than 1-2 seats across the UK. This is enough of a challenge for the Greens, who as a centre-left, environmentalist, pro-EU party at least have a unique selling point in elections. But for single-issue anti/pro-Brexit parties like Change UK and The Brexit Party, reaching this threshold is going to be hard. There are already other parties (the Lib Dems and UKIP) who appeal to the same voters, and if all of them stand in the same region, none of them could reach the threshold needed to win a seat. Indeed, in Wales and Scotland there will be 4 anti-Brexit parties competing against each other!
This isn’t just speculation on my part. So far, four voting intention polls for the European Elections have been published. An average of the four produces the following results:
This isn’t just speculation on my part. So far, four voting intention polls for the European Elections have been published. An average of the four produces the following results:
As we saw earlier, the European elections electoral system can produce a result for the major parties that isn’t as proportional as one might expect.
The pro-Brexit parties would do much better, winning a combined 27% of the vote and a near-proportional 29% of the seats. But even they could do much better as a united bloc; the joint Brexit Party/UKIP vote would be enough to deliver 34% of seats if their vote wasn't split.
So how does this happen? Once again, it’s all about the constituencies. Take this example from the Yorkshire and the Humber constituency:
In this instance, Labour would win 3 of the 6 seats in Yorkshire and the Humber (50%), despite only winning 32% of the vote in the region. This is largely because the anti-Brexit vote would be split 3 ways; thus, despite winning a collective 20% of the vote in that region (enough for 1 seat) none of the anti-Brexit parties would win anything.
The West Midlands is another good example. Despite being projected to win only 29.3% of the vote, Labour would win 3 out of 7 seats (42.9%). The anti-Brexit parties would collectively win 17% of the vote (enough for 1 MEP) but because they would split the vote three ways, they would win nothing. The pro-Brexit parties, meanwhile, would win a joint 31% of the vote, enough to deliver them 3 seats - but because the pro-Brexit vote would be split, they would only end up with 2 MEPs.
Conclusion
The Brexit Party and Change UK will likely poll well in the European elections. Polls suggest that the Brexit Party is averaging around 16%, a very strong showing for a party created just a few months ago. Change UK, meanwhile, is doing worse, averaging around 5%.
There is no doubt that the two parties will affect the results of the European elections. But if no electoral pacts are formed, then the number of seats won by these two parties could be surprisingly low, simply because they will be splitting the vote of other parties with nearly-identical positions on Brexit.
All of this could change, of course. The parties could well form electoral pacts, or their popularity could increase as we get closer to the elections. But what this data shows is that the voting system for European elections has its own obstacles, just like first-past-the-post – and it would be wrong to assume that the new minor parties will find the European elections very easy just because they use proportional representation. Politics is never that simple!
Tuesday, 29 January 2019
It’s my party and I’ll lose if I want to: why a new centrist party would fail spectacularly
Well, folks,
the myth of the new centrist party has returned once again. It seems that the
saga never ends.
This month, an anti-Brexit Labour MP (David Lammy) raised the prospect of a new anti-Brexit party splitting off from the Labour Party and contesting elections in its own right. Lammy, bizarrely, said that any split would be Corbyn’s fault. Setting aside the ridiculous suggestion that the people who stay in the Labour Party are more responsible for splitting the party than those who actually leave it, the idea of a new centrist party is worth examining.
The idea of a centrist-led split in the Labour Party has been repeatedly suggested ever since Corbyn’s first campaign for the leadership in 2015. We’re not going to dwell today on why a new centrist party might be formed. Instead – assuming that it is formed – we’re going to examine what impact it might have on British politics.
“I Don't Wanna Be a Loser”: people vote for the Labour Party, not their local MP
If a new centrist party is formed, it will almost certainly be composed of incumbent MPs from the Labour Party who will then seek to be re-elected as their new party at the next general election. This was the tactic of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), a centrist party that split from Labour in 1981, and some news outlets have speculated that this would also be the strategy of a new centrist party. There is a problem with this plan, however: when MPs leave their parties, they have a terrible track record of getting re-elected in their constituencies under a new party label.
Since 1950, of 33 MPs to quit their parties and re-stand in the same constituency as a different party or an independent, 27 lost. Just 6 were re-elected, 2 of them in Northern Ireland, which has a different party system to Great Britain. Labour MPs have an even worse track record: of 21 Labour MPs since 1950 to leave the party and stand for re-election in the same seat, 18 lost.
The difficulties that MPs have faced in getting re-elected should not be surprising. Polling conducted by YouGov in June 2017 showed that just 6% of Labour voters supported the party primarily because of their local candidate or MP, compared to 28% who voted for the 2017 election manifesto and 15% who voted for Jeremy Corbyn. Even more recently, polling in October 2018 showed that just 1% of current Labour voters are voting Labour primarily for their local candidate or MP. Given that only 22% of voters can name their local MP, this is not surprising.
In short: Labour MPs who leave their parties historically find it very hard to win re-election. Barely any Labour voters back the party primarily because of their local MP. And very few people even know who their local MP is.
So without a local membership willing to campaign for them, without a large base of supporters in their constituency and without the resources of a major political party, an MP is almost certain to lose if they leave their party and stand for re-election on behalf of a new political party. This makes it very unlikely that any MP would risk leaving their current party and losing their seat. And yet, unless any new party attracts significant numbers of MPs, it will not be taken seriously, nor will it be able to attract the publicity or resources necessary for the party to succeed.
“I Can't Make It Without You”: you can’t wish First Past the Post out of existence
One inescapable reality that any new political party always has to confront is that Britain uses a single-member plurality voting system (“First Past the Post”) to elect its MPs. Winning 5% of the national popular vote, which would guarantee you around 5% of seats in countries that allocate their seats in Parliament proportionally, means nothing in British politics. In Britain, if you want to win seats in Parliament, you have to win the most votes (usually 35-40%) within a specific constituency. This is particularly challenging for parties that only represent a small minority of public opinion, such as the environmentalist Green Party, because most environmentally-minded voters are not concentrated in a single constituency but are instead distributed across 650 different constituencies. This particular problem has also affected centrist parties in Britain. The Liberal Democrats, as well as the Liberal Party and the Social Democratic Party before them, have struggled to win significant numbers of MPs even whilst winning substantial numbers of votes.
The tables below show the election performances (% of votes and % of seats) of all parties other than Labour and the Conservatives since 1945.
As you can see, third parties (and others) can receive millions and millions of votes in British elections (reaching an all-time high of 10.4m votes in 2010) and yet only win a handful of seats in the Commons. UKIP found this out firsthand in 2015. The party won an impressive 3.9 million votes (12.6%), an increase of 9.5 points from their 2010 result. But they only won 1 seat out of 650. By comparison, the SNP achieved a total of 1.5 million votes (4.7%) and won 56 seats. Even the Lib Dems have only ever managed to win a maximum of 62 seats (in 2005).
Yes, the Greens managed to win 1 MP, after over 30 years of trying. Yes, UKIP managed to win lots of votes very quickly after 25 years of existence. And yes, the SNP won a landslide majority of seats in Scotland (after 70 years of existence). But a new centrist party would aspire to govern, or hold the balance of power, in the next general election. That would require a new party, starting from scratch, to win dozens or even hundreds of seats. That simply has never been done before in modern British politics.
“Back Together”: Conclusion
When the Social Democratic Party was established in 1981, its founders declared that “the need for a realignment of British politics must now be faced”. British politics did indeed re-align as a result of the SDP’s creation, but their much-hoped-for centrist realignment never arrived. Instead, the relative success of the SDP/Liberal Alliance in the 1983 election (25% of the vote) only had the effect of splitting the opposition vote and enabling Margaret Thatcher to increase her Parliamentary majority from 43 seats to 144 seats. Thatcher’s overwhelming victory, achieved because the opposition vote was split evenly between Labour and the Alliance, allowed her to not only carry out her policies in the 1980s but also define British politics for the next 30 years. As she famously declared in 2002, her greatest achievement was “Tony Blair and New Labour”.
A new centrist party is incredibly unlikely to succeed, if we define “success” as wielding any kind of formal power (i.e. governing or holding the balance of power in a hung Parliament). But it would almost certainly split the opposition vote just enough that Labour could lose a close election that they might otherwise have won, leaving the Tories in charge. Would that lead to a realignment of British politics? Absolutely – but it wouldn’t be the centrist, pro-EU future that a new anti-Brexit party might want. Instead, the Tories would be fully in control of a post-Brexit UK, with the left marginalised and centrism totally abandoned.
Is that really what centrists want?
This month, an anti-Brexit Labour MP (David Lammy) raised the prospect of a new anti-Brexit party splitting off from the Labour Party and contesting elections in its own right. Lammy, bizarrely, said that any split would be Corbyn’s fault. Setting aside the ridiculous suggestion that the people who stay in the Labour Party are more responsible for splitting the party than those who actually leave it, the idea of a new centrist party is worth examining.
The idea of a centrist-led split in the Labour Party has been repeatedly suggested ever since Corbyn’s first campaign for the leadership in 2015. We’re not going to dwell today on why a new centrist party might be formed. Instead – assuming that it is formed – we’re going to examine what impact it might have on British politics.
“I Don't Wanna Be a Loser”: people vote for the Labour Party, not their local MP
If a new centrist party is formed, it will almost certainly be composed of incumbent MPs from the Labour Party who will then seek to be re-elected as their new party at the next general election. This was the tactic of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), a centrist party that split from Labour in 1981, and some news outlets have speculated that this would also be the strategy of a new centrist party. There is a problem with this plan, however: when MPs leave their parties, they have a terrible track record of getting re-elected in their constituencies under a new party label.
Since 1950, of 33 MPs to quit their parties and re-stand in the same constituency as a different party or an independent, 27 lost. Just 6 were re-elected, 2 of them in Northern Ireland, which has a different party system to Great Britain. Labour MPs have an even worse track record: of 21 Labour MPs since 1950 to leave the party and stand for re-election in the same seat, 18 lost.
The difficulties that MPs have faced in getting re-elected should not be surprising. Polling conducted by YouGov in June 2017 showed that just 6% of Labour voters supported the party primarily because of their local candidate or MP, compared to 28% who voted for the 2017 election manifesto and 15% who voted for Jeremy Corbyn. Even more recently, polling in October 2018 showed that just 1% of current Labour voters are voting Labour primarily for their local candidate or MP. Given that only 22% of voters can name their local MP, this is not surprising.
In short: Labour MPs who leave their parties historically find it very hard to win re-election. Barely any Labour voters back the party primarily because of their local MP. And very few people even know who their local MP is.
So without a local membership willing to campaign for them, without a large base of supporters in their constituency and without the resources of a major political party, an MP is almost certain to lose if they leave their party and stand for re-election on behalf of a new political party. This makes it very unlikely that any MP would risk leaving their current party and losing their seat. And yet, unless any new party attracts significant numbers of MPs, it will not be taken seriously, nor will it be able to attract the publicity or resources necessary for the party to succeed.
“I Can't Make It Without You”: you can’t wish First Past the Post out of existence
One inescapable reality that any new political party always has to confront is that Britain uses a single-member plurality voting system (“First Past the Post”) to elect its MPs. Winning 5% of the national popular vote, which would guarantee you around 5% of seats in countries that allocate their seats in Parliament proportionally, means nothing in British politics. In Britain, if you want to win seats in Parliament, you have to win the most votes (usually 35-40%) within a specific constituency. This is particularly challenging for parties that only represent a small minority of public opinion, such as the environmentalist Green Party, because most environmentally-minded voters are not concentrated in a single constituency but are instead distributed across 650 different constituencies. This particular problem has also affected centrist parties in Britain. The Liberal Democrats, as well as the Liberal Party and the Social Democratic Party before them, have struggled to win significant numbers of MPs even whilst winning substantial numbers of votes.
The tables below show the election performances (% of votes and % of seats) of all parties other than Labour and the Conservatives since 1945.
As you can see, third parties (and others) can receive millions and millions of votes in British elections (reaching an all-time high of 10.4m votes in 2010) and yet only win a handful of seats in the Commons. UKIP found this out firsthand in 2015. The party won an impressive 3.9 million votes (12.6%), an increase of 9.5 points from their 2010 result. But they only won 1 seat out of 650. By comparison, the SNP achieved a total of 1.5 million votes (4.7%) and won 56 seats. Even the Lib Dems have only ever managed to win a maximum of 62 seats (in 2005).
Yes, the Greens managed to win 1 MP, after over 30 years of trying. Yes, UKIP managed to win lots of votes very quickly after 25 years of existence. And yes, the SNP won a landslide majority of seats in Scotland (after 70 years of existence). But a new centrist party would aspire to govern, or hold the balance of power, in the next general election. That would require a new party, starting from scratch, to win dozens or even hundreds of seats. That simply has never been done before in modern British politics.
“Back Together”: Conclusion
When the Social Democratic Party was established in 1981, its founders declared that “the need for a realignment of British politics must now be faced”. British politics did indeed re-align as a result of the SDP’s creation, but their much-hoped-for centrist realignment never arrived. Instead, the relative success of the SDP/Liberal Alliance in the 1983 election (25% of the vote) only had the effect of splitting the opposition vote and enabling Margaret Thatcher to increase her Parliamentary majority from 43 seats to 144 seats. Thatcher’s overwhelming victory, achieved because the opposition vote was split evenly between Labour and the Alliance, allowed her to not only carry out her policies in the 1980s but also define British politics for the next 30 years. As she famously declared in 2002, her greatest achievement was “Tony Blair and New Labour”.
A new centrist party is incredibly unlikely to succeed, if we define “success” as wielding any kind of formal power (i.e. governing or holding the balance of power in a hung Parliament). But it would almost certainly split the opposition vote just enough that Labour could lose a close election that they might otherwise have won, leaving the Tories in charge. Would that lead to a realignment of British politics? Absolutely – but it wouldn’t be the centrist, pro-EU future that a new anti-Brexit party might want. Instead, the Tories would be fully in control of a post-Brexit UK, with the left marginalised and centrism totally abandoned.
Is that really what centrists want?
Wednesday, 26 December 2018
Poor Expectations: why the Liberal Democrats are doomed
How
times change. When Stephen Lloyd MP, who quit the Liberal Democrats this month
in order to vote for May’s Brexit deal, first stood for Parliament in 2005, his
party had 62 MPs. Following his departure, they now have 11. After Lloyd was
elected as an MP in 2010, his party took part in a UK government for the first
time since 1931, and within the previous decade had also governed as part of
coalitions in Scotland and Wales. They were, in a very real sense, a major
political force. Now they are struggling to have more seats than the DUP.
The party’s position on the fringes of British politics is a consequence of the 2015 general election result. In one devastating night, the Liberal Democrats’ participation in the Coalition undid over 45 years of electoral progress. Under Clegg, the party won just 8 MPs (-49) and 7.9% of the popular vote (-15.1pts). On both counts, this was their worst result since the general election of 1970, but it was also the biggest drop in Liberal support since 1931, and the biggest percentage loss of seats (86%) since 1918. Given that the 1931 election saw the Liberals stand 400 fewer candidates than in 1929, and that the 1918 election saw a temporary split in the Liberal Party, it is fair to say that the 2015 result was their biggest ever defeat in a ‘normal’ election.
Is it even possible for a party to recover from that, let alone to recover enough that they are in government again? Maybe. Stranger things have happened. But it would take a long time, and there are significant obstacles in its way. In this article, we’ll examine what they are.
Part 1: Hard Times
The Liberal Democrats’ entry into the Coalition government in 2010 was the culmination of an 80-year journey, in which the party dragged itself out of the political wilderness and back to the Cabinet. And yet, despite spending decades trying to return to power, just 5 years in government has left the party barely existing as a political force. Their local government base has been depleted, after over two thousand of their local councillors (51%) lost their seats; their representation in devolved Parliaments is virtually non-existent; their European Parliament representation is at its lowest level since the UK switched to using proportional representation; and their group of MPs (11) barely outnumbers those of the Democratic Unionist Party (10).
It is tempting to point to history as proof that the Liberal Democrats will never recover. But the truth is, it is hard to know. The party has never experienced circumstances as bad as the ones they experienced in 2015. Yes, the party has been stuck on a low vote share before, and yes, the party has gone through decades without winning more than 12 seats.
But since 1924 (when they lost 118 seats) and 1935 (when they lost 17.1pts in vote share) they have not experienced a mass withdrawal of support in any way similar to that experienced in 2015. Yet those examples set a worrying precedent. After dropping from 23% to 7% in 1931, the Liberals did not win more than 20% of the vote until 1983. And after dipping below 100 seats for the very first time in the 1924 general election, the party never won anywhere near that number of seats again. To this day – 94 years after the 1924 defeat – it still hasn’t. So if history is any guide, the Lib Dems’ defeat in 2015 will leave them on the fringes of UK politics for a very, very long time.
As former Leader Tim Farron told the Independent in March 2018:
“There is no doubt it [the Coalition] possibly fatally damaged the party”.
Part 2: A Tale of Two Elections
But history is not the only indication that the Lib Dems will struggle to return to power – on this question, the present is as much a guide as the past.
The 2017 result, in which they made a net gain of 4 seats, would seem to suggest that they are recovering. But outside of Scotland, where anti-SNP tactical voting saw them gain 3 MPs, and a few key seats, the party simply collapsed further. For the first time since the 19th century, there are no Liberal MPs in Wales at all, after its last stronghold of Ceredigion was won by Plaid Cymru in 2017. In England, the party now holds just 7 seats out of 533, only 1 more than their 2015 result (which was their worst since 1970). And contrary to expectations – given that 48% of the voters backed ‘Remain’ in 2016 – the strongly pro-EU Lib Dems failed to increase their vote share in the 2017 election. Instead, they went backwards, falling to 7.4%, their worst share of the popular vote since 1959. The party lost half of the seats (4 out of 8) that they had won in 2015 – it was only by gaining 1 new seat (Oxford West & Abingdon) and regaining 7 seats they had held in 2010 that allowed them to make net gain of 4.
Even more worryingly for the Lib Dems is the fact that they have collapsed in many of the seats they used to hold. The table below shows the 57 constituencies won by the party in 2010, and compares the Liberal Democrat vote in 2010 with their vote share in 2015 and 2017.
As you can see, in 35 of the 57 seats, the party did worse in 2017 than in 2015.
And in 29 previously-held Lib Dem constituencies, the party’s vote share has undergone a dramatic collapse since 2010, falling by more than 20pts.
Effectively, the 2017 election confirmed the message of the 2015 election: the Lib Dems’ support base has dramatically shrunk, and it is not growing. Between 1983 and 2015, the party never received less than 17% of the popular vote. Yet they have now received less than 8% of the vote in two successive elections for the first time since 1959, and they have not averaged above 10% in the polls in any month since their landslide defeat in 2015. This is not a party on the cusp of returning to relevance. Yes, the only way is up – but ‘up’ is a long, long way away.
Part 3: The Mystery of Brexit
The final question worth considering, when it comes to the Lib Dems, is (what else?) Brexit.
You might not know it, but Brexit has affected the Liberal Democrats’ base as much as it has affected the Tories and Labour. A YouGov survey conducted after the 2017 election found that only 20% of the party’s voters had backed ‘Leave’ in 2016. This might not be surprising, but amongst people who had voted for the Lib Dems in 2015, 29% had voted Leave. YouGov found that 73% of these ‘2015 Lib Dem Leave’ voters backed other parties in 2017. Even more worryingly for the party, a YouGov exit poll after the 2017 election suggested that the Lib Dems had retained only 42% of the people who backed them in 2015. By contrast, Labour retained 83% of its 2015 voters.
Think about that: the Lib Dems couldn’t even convince half of the people who voted for them after 5 years of the Coalition to stick with them just two years later. Granted, it’s not quite as bad as the Green Party (who lost 86% of the voters who backed them in 2015) and the Lib Dems did manage to win a handful of new voters from other parties, arguably because of their stance on Brexit. But the party faces an uphill party even to stand still. As Tim Farron himself said in 2018, if it weren’t for the Lib Dems’ stance on Brexit:
“There’s no way we’d have 12 seats and 100,000 members now. We’d be doing a David Owen now and winding up the party”.
The mystery, though, is this: when Britain leaves the European Union (as it will), how long can the Lib Dems continue to be the party of Remain? The party’s voters back remain by an 80-20 margin. Nearly 6 in 10 of its voters didn’t back the party in 2015, and even its former Leader thinks that the only reason the party is still viable is because of its Brexit stance. When Britain has left the EU, why would those people continue to vote Lib Dem? We don’t have an answer to this question. But neither do the Lib Dems. And that should really, really concern them.
Conclusion
Inhis speech to the 2010 Lib Dem conference, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg claimed that coalition government would soon become the norm for Britain; that “Liberal, plural politics will feel natural” after 5 years of the Coalition. “Hold our nerve”, he told his party, “and we will have changed British politics for good”.
It’s easy to see why he thought that. Earlier that year, his party had won its highest share of the popular vote (23.0%) in over 25 years. Despite declining slightly from their 2005 result of 62 seats, the Lib Dems still had 57 MPs, more than it had held at any point from 1931-2005. And for the first time since the early 1930s, Liberals were part of the government.
Yet 5 years later, it wasn’t Clegg giving the Leader’s speech to Lib Dem conference. He had resigned a few months earlier after leading the Lib Dems to their worst defeat since 1918.
Instead, the new Leader Tim Farron gave the speech. The 2015 election result “was utterly devastating”, he told members. But he did not criticise the party’s performance in government. Instead he said:
“I am proud of what we did in government and I am determined that we will return to government. Did we make mistakes in Government? Of course, but show me a government that didn’t. When we come to measure our time in Government the scales are heavily weighed in our favour…We paid a heavy price for our time in government, but we did right by our country”.
Two years later, Farron led the Lib Dems to their lowest share of the popular vote since 1959. He resigned not long after.
Despite the electorate rejecting them decisively in two successive elections, the Lib Dems have not shown any desire to apologise for the Coalition. Indeed, after Farron resigned, the party elected Vince Cable – a former Coalition minister – as their new Leader unopposed.
And that, ultimately, is why the Lib Dems are doomed: not because they lost badly in 2015 (which they did), not because they declined further in 2017 (which they did) and not because they continue to struggle in opinion polls (which they do). They are doomed as a party because they fundamentally will not accept that the decision to join the Coalition is what led to them losing 80% of their seats. As ‘The Newsroom’ famously stated: “The first step in solving any problem is recognising there is one”. Until the Lib Dems acknowledge their mistake, they will remain stuck in the political wilderness.
And to be honest, that’s where they deserve to stay.
The party’s position on the fringes of British politics is a consequence of the 2015 general election result. In one devastating night, the Liberal Democrats’ participation in the Coalition undid over 45 years of electoral progress. Under Clegg, the party won just 8 MPs (-49) and 7.9% of the popular vote (-15.1pts). On both counts, this was their worst result since the general election of 1970, but it was also the biggest drop in Liberal support since 1931, and the biggest percentage loss of seats (86%) since 1918. Given that the 1931 election saw the Liberals stand 400 fewer candidates than in 1929, and that the 1918 election saw a temporary split in the Liberal Party, it is fair to say that the 2015 result was their biggest ever defeat in a ‘normal’ election.
Is it even possible for a party to recover from that, let alone to recover enough that they are in government again? Maybe. Stranger things have happened. But it would take a long time, and there are significant obstacles in its way. In this article, we’ll examine what they are.
Part 1: Hard Times
The Liberal Democrats’ entry into the Coalition government in 2010 was the culmination of an 80-year journey, in which the party dragged itself out of the political wilderness and back to the Cabinet. And yet, despite spending decades trying to return to power, just 5 years in government has left the party barely existing as a political force. Their local government base has been depleted, after over two thousand of their local councillors (51%) lost their seats; their representation in devolved Parliaments is virtually non-existent; their European Parliament representation is at its lowest level since the UK switched to using proportional representation; and their group of MPs (11) barely outnumbers those of the Democratic Unionist Party (10).
It is tempting to point to history as proof that the Liberal Democrats will never recover. But the truth is, it is hard to know. The party has never experienced circumstances as bad as the ones they experienced in 2015. Yes, the party has been stuck on a low vote share before, and yes, the party has gone through decades without winning more than 12 seats.
But since 1924 (when they lost 118 seats) and 1935 (when they lost 17.1pts in vote share) they have not experienced a mass withdrawal of support in any way similar to that experienced in 2015. Yet those examples set a worrying precedent. After dropping from 23% to 7% in 1931, the Liberals did not win more than 20% of the vote until 1983. And after dipping below 100 seats for the very first time in the 1924 general election, the party never won anywhere near that number of seats again. To this day – 94 years after the 1924 defeat – it still hasn’t. So if history is any guide, the Lib Dems’ defeat in 2015 will leave them on the fringes of UK politics for a very, very long time.
As former Leader Tim Farron told the Independent in March 2018:
“There is no doubt it [the Coalition] possibly fatally damaged the party”.
Part 2: A Tale of Two Elections
But history is not the only indication that the Lib Dems will struggle to return to power – on this question, the present is as much a guide as the past.
The 2017 result, in which they made a net gain of 4 seats, would seem to suggest that they are recovering. But outside of Scotland, where anti-SNP tactical voting saw them gain 3 MPs, and a few key seats, the party simply collapsed further. For the first time since the 19th century, there are no Liberal MPs in Wales at all, after its last stronghold of Ceredigion was won by Plaid Cymru in 2017. In England, the party now holds just 7 seats out of 533, only 1 more than their 2015 result (which was their worst since 1970). And contrary to expectations – given that 48% of the voters backed ‘Remain’ in 2016 – the strongly pro-EU Lib Dems failed to increase their vote share in the 2017 election. Instead, they went backwards, falling to 7.4%, their worst share of the popular vote since 1959. The party lost half of the seats (4 out of 8) that they had won in 2015 – it was only by gaining 1 new seat (Oxford West & Abingdon) and regaining 7 seats they had held in 2010 that allowed them to make net gain of 4.
Even more worryingly for the Lib Dems is the fact that they have collapsed in many of the seats they used to hold. The table below shows the 57 constituencies won by the party in 2010, and compares the Liberal Democrat vote in 2010 with their vote share in 2015 and 2017.
As you can see, in 35 of the 57 seats, the party did worse in 2017 than in 2015.
And in 29 previously-held Lib Dem constituencies, the party’s vote share has undergone a dramatic collapse since 2010, falling by more than 20pts.
Effectively, the 2017 election confirmed the message of the 2015 election: the Lib Dems’ support base has dramatically shrunk, and it is not growing. Between 1983 and 2015, the party never received less than 17% of the popular vote. Yet they have now received less than 8% of the vote in two successive elections for the first time since 1959, and they have not averaged above 10% in the polls in any month since their landslide defeat in 2015. This is not a party on the cusp of returning to relevance. Yes, the only way is up – but ‘up’ is a long, long way away.
Part 3: The Mystery of Brexit
The final question worth considering, when it comes to the Lib Dems, is (what else?) Brexit.
You might not know it, but Brexit has affected the Liberal Democrats’ base as much as it has affected the Tories and Labour. A YouGov survey conducted after the 2017 election found that only 20% of the party’s voters had backed ‘Leave’ in 2016. This might not be surprising, but amongst people who had voted for the Lib Dems in 2015, 29% had voted Leave. YouGov found that 73% of these ‘2015 Lib Dem Leave’ voters backed other parties in 2017. Even more worryingly for the party, a YouGov exit poll after the 2017 election suggested that the Lib Dems had retained only 42% of the people who backed them in 2015. By contrast, Labour retained 83% of its 2015 voters.
Think about that: the Lib Dems couldn’t even convince half of the people who voted for them after 5 years of the Coalition to stick with them just two years later. Granted, it’s not quite as bad as the Green Party (who lost 86% of the voters who backed them in 2015) and the Lib Dems did manage to win a handful of new voters from other parties, arguably because of their stance on Brexit. But the party faces an uphill party even to stand still. As Tim Farron himself said in 2018, if it weren’t for the Lib Dems’ stance on Brexit:
“There’s no way we’d have 12 seats and 100,000 members now. We’d be doing a David Owen now and winding up the party”.
The mystery, though, is this: when Britain leaves the European Union (as it will), how long can the Lib Dems continue to be the party of Remain? The party’s voters back remain by an 80-20 margin. Nearly 6 in 10 of its voters didn’t back the party in 2015, and even its former Leader thinks that the only reason the party is still viable is because of its Brexit stance. When Britain has left the EU, why would those people continue to vote Lib Dem? We don’t have an answer to this question. But neither do the Lib Dems. And that should really, really concern them.
Conclusion
Inhis speech to the 2010 Lib Dem conference, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg claimed that coalition government would soon become the norm for Britain; that “Liberal, plural politics will feel natural” after 5 years of the Coalition. “Hold our nerve”, he told his party, “and we will have changed British politics for good”.
It’s easy to see why he thought that. Earlier that year, his party had won its highest share of the popular vote (23.0%) in over 25 years. Despite declining slightly from their 2005 result of 62 seats, the Lib Dems still had 57 MPs, more than it had held at any point from 1931-2005. And for the first time since the early 1930s, Liberals were part of the government.
Yet 5 years later, it wasn’t Clegg giving the Leader’s speech to Lib Dem conference. He had resigned a few months earlier after leading the Lib Dems to their worst defeat since 1918.
Instead, the new Leader Tim Farron gave the speech. The 2015 election result “was utterly devastating”, he told members. But he did not criticise the party’s performance in government. Instead he said:
“I am proud of what we did in government and I am determined that we will return to government. Did we make mistakes in Government? Of course, but show me a government that didn’t. When we come to measure our time in Government the scales are heavily weighed in our favour…We paid a heavy price for our time in government, but we did right by our country”.
Two years later, Farron led the Lib Dems to their lowest share of the popular vote since 1959. He resigned not long after.
Despite the electorate rejecting them decisively in two successive elections, the Lib Dems have not shown any desire to apologise for the Coalition. Indeed, after Farron resigned, the party elected Vince Cable – a former Coalition minister – as their new Leader unopposed.
And that, ultimately, is why the Lib Dems are doomed: not because they lost badly in 2015 (which they did), not because they declined further in 2017 (which they did) and not because they continue to struggle in opinion polls (which they do). They are doomed as a party because they fundamentally will not accept that the decision to join the Coalition is what led to them losing 80% of their seats. As ‘The Newsroom’ famously stated: “The first step in solving any problem is recognising there is one”. Until the Lib Dems acknowledge their mistake, they will remain stuck in the political wilderness.
And to be honest, that’s where they deserve to stay.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)