How Lib Dems could overtake the Tories
Published 27 August 2001
Francis Maude, you cannot be serious! You suggest the Liberal Democrats can push the Tories aside to become the main anti-Labour force. What an astonishing idea. But ah, yes, you are simply in a fit of pique because your best chum Michael Portillo is out of the race for the Tory leadership. Iain Duncan Smith - you, too, imply that the Lib Dems are greatly to be feared. You propose a special campaigning unit to vaporise them, because you also see them as a real threat. But you are simply searching for a subject - any subject - that doesn't involve going on about Europe. Neither of you, surely, is really suggesting that the good old Lib Dems can come in from the fringes to become the main opposition party. No one seriously thinks the yellow bird is a real, carnivorous threat to the Tories. Do they?
Maybe they should. Maybe this is an idea that should be properly considered. Note, first, that just saying it makes it a bit more likely. Lib Dem leaders are overjoyed at what Maude and Duncan Smith said: they are putting a hitherto inconceivable idea into the public's mind. And perhaps the jousting Tories have got it right. Given the new trigonometry of British politics, it is just possible that, come the next election - or, more likely, the one after that - the Lib Dems could find themselves in second place.
Look at the figures: the Lib Dems hold 52 seats to the Tories' 166, both well below Labour's 413. Yet a 10 per cent swing to the Lib Dems would bring them another 57 seats. If the Tories lost that many seats, the two parties would be neck and neck. It's a big electoral challenge, but not an insurmountable one.
The yellow bird has no chance of flying that high all by itself, however. The Lib Dems need the other main parties to help them. The Tories have to carry on moving towards Euro-obsessive, feuding extremism. Well, that's not so unlikely. Even a victory for Ken Clarke would not necessarily halt that. True, it would give the Tories a leader who could bring back moderates. But it would also mean more internal division than the Tories have experienced for years, with the possibility of the party simply imploding over the issue of Europe. Furthermore, Clarke's great appeal - his blokeish, man-of-the-people style - is trumped by only one person in British politics: Charles Kennedy. About 20 years Clarke's junior, Kennedy carries his "I'm just a normal guy" appeal to the younger generation, which the cigar-smoking, jazz-tapping Clarke fails to do.
But a win for Duncan Smith would be wonderful for the Lib Dems. Their strategists admit to "lots of gossips and discussions" with moderate one-nation Tories about what would happen if Duncan Smith won, and genuinely expect a fair few defections if he does succeed. After all, what would be left for the one-nation Tories to stay for? That, in turn, would lead to a Tory party even more sect-like than it was under William Hague. It would not only consolidate Lib Dem votes in constituencies such as Winchester and Guildford, but surely encourage more in others. The Tories, then, are doing their best to help the Lib Dems.
But so, in its own, quiet way, is Labour. This is where the trigonometry comes in. It is a truism to say that the main opposition party will invariably sit on the opposite wing of the political spectrum to the government. Until now, because Labour has been seen as a party of the left, the natural opposition has come from the right.
But as Labour moves, crab-wise, ever further to the right, it opens up a great undefended flank. Strange though it may seem to the new Labourites, it is possible that a strong opposition of the left will emerge. After all, new Labour is now without doubt the party of US-style business culture, unequivocally opposed to the European model. New Labour doesn't simply embrace the private sector; it rolls around the floor with it so enthusiastically that many of us have to look away. And it is the party that admires President Bush's defence plans.
Shrewd opinion has hitherto assumed that Kennedy's decision to move his party to the left will eventually backfire. Eventually, the mildly Conservative-leaning, middle-class voters whom the Lib Dems have hoovered up in the Midlands and the south, including the London suburbs, would wake up to its being a high-tax, Euro-enthusiastic party, and return to the Tory fold. But if Labour is taking all that ground on the right, this analysis may be outdated. A large part of the electorate, moderately pro-European, would rather like the gentler, more employee-friendly climate of the European Union, and would accept a modest rise in taxes to achieve better public services. These people are, after all, the vast majority in other European countries.
But the Lib Dems have long had another kind of people problem: their most prominent politicians haven't been much good. Rather like today's Tories, the talent pool for Liberal Democracy has been pretty shallow and brackish. The party has had a few first-rate people, such as Paddy Ashdown, Menzies Campbell and now Kennedy himself. But the rest of their MPs have failed to make much of an impact.
Again, this may be changing. A new generation of bright young Lib Dem MPs is springing up, somewhat reminiscent of a Labour duo called Gordon Brown and Tony Blair in the late 1980s. Look at Mark Oaten, Ed Davey, Evan Harris, Paul Burstow, Michael Moore: none of them household names, but all serious young men (no women, sadly) with an appetite for power.
My advice is: watch them. The strange rebirth of Liberal Britain requires more than a gradual improvement in the Lib Dems themselves. It needs the Tories to carry on drifting rightwards; and Labour to carry on drifting rightwards, too. Strange indeed. Except . . . isn't that exactly what's happening?
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