The Party’s Over
If the contentious Joint Enterprise law applied to politics, the Liberal Democrats would be the luckless juvenile looking at a decade behind bars because he happened to be a member of a gang present when somebody else in that gang committed a murder, in the wrong place at the wrong time yet in possession of blood-free hands. Those Lib Dems who lost their seats during the Great Election Massacre keep stressing they have no regrets about entering into a coalition with the Conservatives five years ago because they sacrificed party principles ‘for the good of the nation’. Unfortunately, noble self-sacrifice in a profession where self-interest is paramount counts for little; their coalition partners had no scruples in cannily manipulating public opinion so that Nick Clegg’s mob bore the brunt of any opposition to coalition policies. Well-versed in the Dark Arts of Westminster, the Tories played the game with almost admirable ruthlessness and the fatally naive Lib Dems are left decimated.
If we stand back and look at historical precedents, however, the party has been here before, albeit in its previous incarnation sans Democrats; the problem is that all these precedents happened before any of us were born, even Ming Campbell.
Although a Liberal administration had been in office for eight years when the First World War broke out in the summer of 1914 (since winning a famous landslide in 1906), many of its most prominent ministers were pacifists and Asquith as PM found the mantle of war leader didn’t sit easily on his shoulders. Lloyd George and Churchill were a little more gung-ho and pressurised Asquith into forming a coalition with the Tories a year after the outbreak of hostilities, one that fell apart at the end of 1916. The Liberals’ coalition partners switched their allegiances to Lloyd George and the Welsh Wizard became Prime Minister of a coalition largely consisting of Conservatives, one he held together and then led to victory at the General Election held just a month after the end of the war. Unlike the Election we’ve just experienced, in 1918 Tory and Liberal MPs who’d been members of the wartime Cabinet didn’t revert to pre-coalition enmities when Parliament was dissolved, with Lloyd George and Conservative leader Andrew Bonar Law specifying which candidates were ‘official coalition candidates’, something that spelled defeat for the sitting Liberal MPs who hadn’t participated in the coalition.
For all his legend as ‘the man who won the war’, Lloyd George’s thirst for power cost both him and his party dear. His coalition eventually collapsed in 1922, when the domination of the Tories within it forced Lloyd George’s resignation. In the General Election that followed, the Liberal vote was split between Asquith heading the official Liberals and Lloyd George leading ‘the National Liberals’, resulting in the Liberals as a whole being reduced comprehensively to third-party status at the expense of the emergent Labour Party. This had been inconceivable a generation earlier, but the situation was to grow considerably worse for the Liberals in successive Elections.
Although the two Liberal wings reunited under Asquith’s leadership to fight the 1923 General Election, the end result was a Hung Parliament; with support from Asquith, Labour under Ramsay MacDonald formed its first government, though this minority administration didn’t last long. Just when it seemed as if General Elections were in danger of becoming an annual event, the 1924 Election saw the Conservatives swept back to full power for the first time since Lord Salisbury’s victory in 1900, and another five years passed before the next one. The Liberals’ representation in 1924 dropped from 158 seats to a paltry 40 and even Asquith lost his amidst the carnage.
With Lloyd George back at the helm, the Liberals improved their performance at the 1929 General Election, which once more climaxed in a Hung Parliament; but the National Government coalition that eventually arose from the deadlock was dominated first by Labour and then by the Tories as the country entered the Great Depression and then the Second World War. The Liberal share of the vote continued to plummet as the 1930s progressed; at the last pre-war Election in 1935, the party was down to 21 seats, with Liberal leader Sir Herbert Samuel losing his. After the war, the Liberals seemed a spent force, winning 12 seats in 1945, 9 in 1950, 6 in 1951, and then the same again in 1955 and 1959.
Eric Lubbock’s famous Orpington By-Election shock victory of 1962, in which the Liberal candidate overturned a Tory majority of 14,760, was regarded as the beginning of the Liberal revival, but even under such a charismatic and popular leader as Jeremy Thorpe (1967-76), the most number of seats the party polled at a General Election thereafter was 14 in February 1974. When it was announced at the 1983 General Election that the Liberals under David Steel would contest it in alliance with the SDP, the combined seats won totalled 23. Following an official merger between the two in 1988, the Liberal Democrats were born and the gradual rise of the new party at local council level helped push support high come General Election time; the Lib Dem zenith occurred under the leadership of Charles Kennedy, when the party won 62 seats at the 2005 Election.
Despite the brief blip of Clegg-mania in the wake of the first leaders’ TV debates in 2010, the Lib Dems lost five seats at the following General Election; but 57 was enough to warrant the phone call from David Cameron. And the rest, as they say, is history – a bittersweet one for the Liberal Democrats indeed.
Nick Clegg, Tim Farron, Alistair Carmichael, Tom Brake, Norman Lamb, Greg Mulholland, John Pugh and Mark Williams – the tiny boy’s club of Liberal Democrat members re-elected to the Commons in 2015. 48 Lib Dem seats lost, a staggering and humiliating thumbs-down from the electorate made all the harder to swallow by the fact that the party’s coalition partners emerged from the partnership unscathed and stronger, winning a majority without the need for Lib Dem support. For all the talk of Labour’s decimation in Scotland, the magnitude of the defeat the Lib Dems suffered is arguably even greater, as Labour at least held onto 231 seats in England and Wales. Where the leaderless party goes now is open to question. Should they merge with Labour, their natural allies, and cease to exist as a separate party? Should they drop the toxic ‘Democrat’ part of their name and return to being the Liberal Party? Should they start from scratch at local council level and rebuild their reputation and representation in a long protracted revival akin to the one they embarked upon from 1962 onwards? I doubt the party itself even knows.
For many years, the Lib Dems were not merely ‘the protest vote’, but the only viable alternative to Labour left and Tory right; similarly, during the Blair era, when Labour had encroached upon Tory territory and the Tories themselves were in a bit of a muddle, the Lib Dems seemed to be the genuine opposition voice; even during the coalition, it’s now evident that they served to restrain some of the more reactionary Tory responses to numerous issues, not that this ultimately did the party much good. Deprived of their presence in great numbers, I think Parliament will be a poorer place for it. Support for David Cameron is not exactly universal, and Labour today doesn’t seem to really know what it stands for anymore than it did in 2010. The need for a strong third party appears greater than ever. The fact that this third party in 2015 is a nationalist collective that represents only one of the UK’s four constituent countries is something few saw coming – although who was the third largest party after the 1918 General Election, with 73 seats? Sinn Fein. The past may have been composed of many colours, but it would seem the future certainly won’t be orange.
Petunia Winegum
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May 20, 2015 at 9:26 am -
Thought provoking, Petunia. Well done!
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May 20, 2015 at 10:22 am -
The primary problems are
1 the adverse reaction brought about by the message ‘Beware of Scots, bearing haggis’ which undoubtedly frightened many people into tactical desertion
2 the UK electorate’s continued willingness to forget just how bad the major players could be, to have deserted them in the first place
When the LDs became allied to one of the major players, its sins became those of its partner, and the electorate’s relative lack of sophistication in not seeing how much worse things might have been can only contribute to their doom.
That will revert over time, as before, but it may take a few parliaments for the effects of the main parties untrammelled rule to wake up the votors
However the kranky, wee, problems emanating from over Hadrian’s Wall might well knock back such a reversion by much longer, as long as the Celts continue to pict a fight
And, as you said, we really do need a strong third party, and many of us will be the worse off, in every sense, for its absence
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May 20, 2015 at 11:41 am -
On point 1, wasn’t the fear one of a Labour – SNP coalition or working arrangement? Surely that should have benefitted the LDs. It’s also the case that during my lifetime at least, the party with the most credibility at addressing problems of the economy or public spending are the Conservatives, and we currently have a very significant problem with public spending. Most of the LD promises I recall from the election campaign involved more spending, not less.
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May 20, 2015 at 1:50 pm -
+1
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May 20, 2015 at 4:00 pm -
Benefit the LDs? Not really. Looking at the 46 of the results I could find, LDs lost 25 to the Tories, 12 to Labour and 9 to the SNP
Former Labour deserters went back to Labour to avoid a Tory led Coalition, the Scots dreamt of blue Saltires over Westminster, as opposed to red ones, and the Tory unfaithful rejoined the ranks to avoid a Labour+SNP coalition when they didn’t know which way the LDs would jump after the dust had settled; especially if Lab+SNP were to have the majority of seats, that being one of the reasons they gave for joining up with the Tories last time
With a vision of the Tartan Army at the gates (even without many voters not realising that its MPs are probably more leftist than Labour), then the LDs were going to lose every which way.
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May 20, 2015 at 10:23 am -
Maybe their current fate is all about the name. The modern Brit is trained to keep things simple in their brain, like a convenient newspaper headline. Who likes “liberals” these days? Democrat? That implies democracy works. Sheesh. Stinks worse than kippers.
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May 20, 2015 at 11:51 am -
United Kingdom Independence Party got all those second places and one MP. All very strange. A little coterie of Lib /Dems . Sinn Fein…..something to do with separating from us like the Scots seem to want to do. Perhaps we should change our deodorant? Even the UKIP acronym trips off the tongue and gets itself dug in well, to do with independence from Europe. We have shrunk from a world power to little england during the last hundred or so years. Like the Roman Empire rotting at its western fringes. The scaled down Germanic defenders struggled along trying to keep up appearances and letting in the marauders to squabble over forts and towers roads and pathways, sheep and arable lands along Hadrian’s Wall. Later intrusions too but not to go there! We are at a crunch point in our history, a classic case of fallen empire.
All I want from politicians is honesty, integrity, good money management, wise law making. Better justice and policing over bad behaviour now, not half a century ago. More referendums over serious matters, like wars, and kindness and mercy to those not born with well off or wise mums and dads. Sod the politics say I. Stop moaning about toffs and chavs and just get on with good governance.-
May 20, 2015 at 12:14 pm -
Part of the problem is that “British Values” are actually “English values”. Stiff upper lip, the rules of objective evidence, racial and cultural tolerance, free trade and capitalism…. “the Englishman’s home is his his castle”…. Nobody likes the English, not even most of the English…
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May 20, 2015 at 12:40 pm -
Not sure I agree that ‘British Values’ are just ‘English Values’, and a significant (if not thumping) majority of Scots agreed when they voted to maintain the Union. As for ‘nobody likes the English, not even most of the English’ – well, speak for yourself. It’s only a small coterie of metropolitan Gaurdian-readers who hate the English, not the rest of us.
“Stop moaning about toffs and chavs and just get on with good governance.” Hear, hear to that.
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May 20, 2015 at 3:32 pm -
.. Finally, Margaret Thatcher appointed Lord Mackay to the Lord Chancellorship. He was the first Scot to hold that post. Lady Thatcher cannot have known, but this decision would have far reaching consequences. In making recommendations for judicial appointments Lord MacKay eschewed the usual ‘Colonels in Horsehair’, as Sir Stephen Sedley dubbed them, in favour of a constellation of intellectual stars that have moulded and developed the law in a manner that would have been unthinkable a few generations ago. Furthermore, the lifting of the ‘Kilmuir rules’ by Lord MacKay in 1987 led to judicial glasnost with judges giving lectures and very occasional interviews.”
http://ukhumanrightsblog.com/2…-
May 20, 2015 at 3:48 pm -
Whassat supposed to be saying?
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May 20, 2015 at 5:16 pm -
Odd how the Scots keep their own law, but the English get a Scottish boss in 1987 who promptly changes things in a manner unthinkable not so long before, which then seems to have led to an overweening constellation of intellectual stars overturning English Common Law in 1995, whilst the Scotsman in charge of English Law becomes the longest in post ever. History dear boy. Events. Things happening for a reason.
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May 20, 2015 at 6:17 pm -
Well, if you’ve got a proper Union, why should anybody be excluded from office just for being Scots, or Welsh or Northern Irish for that matter? And if Lord Mackay’s changes turn out to be so terrible, no doubt they’ll be modified or overturned in due course. The Law can’t just be pickled in aspic and stay the same for ever; it has to evolve to fit the times, surely?
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May 21, 2015 at 4:43 pm -
Somebody at Spiked gave the relevance I instinctively felt must exist but was not able to provide.
Carlos Malleum Moor Larkin • 5 hours ago
indeed, MacKay (a great friend of my late father) came from the Scottish Legal tradition that is fundamentally different from Common Law and initiated the culturally fatal collision between the European idea of the role of the judiciary (Scot’s law is fundamentally different to Common Law as it is based on the Roman tradition) but also the Scottish idea of the role of the judiciary – for the 300 years of political Union the Scottish judiciary along with the Kirk were the executive expressions of Scottish political identity. The Lord President of the Court of Session in Edinburgh was almost a substitute PM.
http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/hra-giving-democracy-a-hammering/16985#comment-2037188137
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May 20, 2015 at 4:07 pm -
Well, one ‘English Value’ we could well do without is criminal conviction on the uncorroborated evidence of one individual. Isn’t it?
OK, I grant that the Moorov doctrine exists, but if you look at the outcomes and principles derived therefrom, it tends to be a bit more sensible than the Salivating English version
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May 20, 2015 at 4:29 pm -
In general, English law does not normally require corroboration and any fact may be proved by a single item of credible evidence. A judge has a discretion to indicate to the jury the dangers of relying on particular evidence. Guidelines were laid down by the Court of Appeal in R v Makanjuola, R v Easton [1995] 3 All ER 730 (CA). Corroboration remains mandatory in cases of treason and perjury and for opinion evidence as to some matters, such as speeding, though other historical requirements have been abolished.
http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095640713The problem seems to lie in the definition of “credible” and “evidence”. Guidelines were laid down as recently as 1995? Seems very recent doesn’t it, seeing as English Common Law is supposed to be nearly 500 years old…
The effect of s.32 CJPOA 1994 was considered by the Court of Appeal in R V Makanjuola (supra), R V Easton [1995] 1 WLR 1348. Both cases involved applications for leave to appeal against convictions for indecent assault. It was argued on behalf of both applicants that, s 32 notwithstanding, the old common law rules could not just disappear overnight. The Court of Appeal was patently unmoved by such an argument, declaring in terms that any attempt to reimpose the “straightjacket” of the old common law rules was to be deprecated.
The Court of Appeal then summarised its conclusions:
S. 32 abrogates the requirement to give a corroboration direction in respect of an alleged accomplice or a complaint of a sexual offence, simply because a witness falls into one of those categories;
It is a matter for the judge’s discretion, what, if any, warning is appropriate in respect of such a witness as indeed in respect of any other witness in whatever type of case;
In some cases it may be appropriate for the judge to warn the jury to exercise caution before acting upon the unsupported evidence of a witness;
If any question arises as to whether the judge should give a special warning in respect of a witness, it is desirable that the question be resolved by discussion with counsel, in the jury’s absence, before final speeches;
where the judge does decide to give some warning in respect of a witness, it would be appropriate to do so as part of the judge’s review of the evidence and his comments as to how the jury should evaluate it, rather than as a set-piece legal direction;
Where some warning is required, it is for the judge to decide the strength and terms of the warning.
Discretionary care warningThere are four categories of case concerning evidence from potentially “unreliable witnesses” which currently come within this ambit:
Accomplice giving evidence for the Prosecution;
Complainants in sexual cases;
Children;
Prosecution evidence given by an inmate of a secure mental institution.
http://www.inbrief.co.uk/court-proceedings/corroboration.htm-
May 20, 2015 at 5:41 pm -
Needs a brave judge these days to warn the jury to exercise caution, doesn’t it? Victim witnesses must be believed, mustn’t they?
You see the whole gang of personal liability lawyers lining up to complain in, or via, the media, and anyone else they can get their hooks into, if any of them as much as suggest otherwise.
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May 20, 2015 at 1:59 pm -
If it wasn’t for the SDP, the Liberals would have been dead years ago. Hopefully they will be this time around.
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May 20, 2015 at 2:03 pm -
Odd that despite the constant expectation that the Tories would be driven apart by Europe, what’s actually happened is that the left (including the Libdems) have been split apart by Scottish nationalism and green issues. We might also argue that by UKIP’s presence the left have been as much damaged by Europe as the Tories. Early days though.
I don’t see any reason for the existence of the Libdems, but given their local level infrastructure, I guess it’ll be a lingering death.-
May 20, 2015 at 4:44 pm -
I agree – what we’re really seeing is a fragmentation of the Left. As Labour (Blair and after) sought to occupy the middle ground, it spawned the drift towards more traditionally leftward candidates by the remaining dyed-in-the-wool socialists, hence the growth of Greens, extreme socialist groupings and the SNP. But what most surprised Labour, and the pollsters too, was the volume of traditional working-class votes which went to UKIP, far more effectively than they had gathered from any wavering Tories, presenting a greater threat long term.
The challenge now for Labour is to define a whole new position, one which can recover those lost leftie souls whilst also making the right noises about business, immigration, Europe etc. I think that’s an impossible challenge, certainly for any of the current batch of leadership candidate nonentities. Labour now only exists in a very few major conurbations, it is a party of the depressed inner-cities, no longer a whole nation party, nor even a working-class party. The exit-door beckons – unless Osborne throws them a life-line with his daft ‘city-devolution’ plan – that could guarantee devolved Labour enclaves for a few more decades yet.
As for the Liberals, whether Democrat or not, I suspect their day has gone: people have more feasible choices now for their protest votes and trying to co-exist in the middle-left-ground while being trampled on by both the Tories and Labour is not a healthy place to be. R.I.P.-
May 20, 2015 at 5:55 pm -
An excellent analysis mudplugger.
I would add that the limpdem disintegration happened because people could longer stand being associated with a party mired in paedophile history, would not deal with accusations of sexual assault on female staffers, lost the green loonies, and entirely lost the students. (review the electoral map,. the university towns solidly went liebour from limpdem). In the end the sunlight shone on them in office found them to be a shambolic mess, unwilling and unable to deal with reality. They will not be missed.
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May 20, 2015 at 6:02 pm -
* people could longer stand being associated with a party mired in paedophile history *
That would explain how the Tory vote held up so well then….
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May 20, 2015 at 5:40 pm -
I hoped when the LDs went into coalition they would prove themselves and in time replace Labour as a centre left party without socialism or union domination. Sadly it was not to be and I can’t see them recovering any time soon.
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May 20, 2015 at 8:14 pm -
I’m sure that’s what the Lib-Dems themselves believed.
Anyone without hard-left views, but with a clear memory of just how bad the financial crisis looked in 2010, granted considerable respect to Clegg & Co for embarking on the Coalition at the time. That process was always going to alienate the far-left of the party, those who hate the Toxic Tories with the same emotional and irrational venom as the SNP portrays, but Clegg’s calculation was undoubtedly that, on account of taking that responsible position, when the next election came round they would be rewarded by far more widespread support than they had lost.
The key error in that calculation was a failure to grasp the short attention-span of the average British elector – add to that the professional cunning of the Conservative election machine and it was always going to end in tears for the Lib-Dems.
I suspect that history will be far kinder to Clegg & Co than the electorate proved to be.-
May 20, 2015 at 8:35 pm -
I was, after the rose garden moment, surprised at what was ‘given’ to Clegg to get him on board. I suspect that it was inevitably a poisoned chalice, but one impossible to refuse, even if we uncharitably dismiss the ‘for the sake of the country; the economy…..’ reason.
The chance to taste power; for a Libdem! Beyond dreams, so no reason to have a credible manifesto….
Even so, I don’t forgive the failure to support boundary review, a clear & partisan affront to basic democracy in my view, nor the again partisan Libdem proposal for Lords reform, which would I think have led to a house of 80+% party retreads/difficult to remove bar death peers being exchanged for a house of 100% etc etc..
I thought the eventual exposure of great aunt Vince well overdue.
But I’m a bit prejudiced.-
May 21, 2015 at 12:58 am -
Must say I agree with every word of your comment, the failure to honour the boundary commission, which was in their own manifesto, was the last straw for me too. Also Vince Cable was my highlight of the night, I was sick of his miserable carping two faces!
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May 21, 2015 at 10:05 am -
I voted LibDem in 2010 as I wasn’t convinced by Cameron and lack any of the motivational factors (delusional arrogance, class sensitivity, public-sector self-interest, etc) for voting Labour and was generally pleased that they agreed to enter coalition. I would regard their performance in that coalition to have been generally good though I believe that the boundary review betrayal was childish and damaging. What persuaded me not to vote for them in 2015 was the reaction of [what seemed to be] the majority of the party support to that coalition deal. This reaction revealed that the supporters of the LibDem party did not actually want to govern but instead wanted to stick rigidly to what they regard as their principles and stand on the sidelines carping, moaning and protesting. I could see no future in voting for a party that represented such a shower of witless tossers.
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