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.