An article was recently posted on the popular blog ‘Labour Uncut‘ entitled ‘Can we please just ignore the Lib Dems?’. I viewed this with interest as the author (Rob Marchant) seemed to claim that campaigning against the Liberal Democrats was a waste of energy and they should focus their efforts on the Conservatives.
He thinks that full co-operation would be difficult or impossible, despite the two parties being on the centre-left of the political spectrum. This is because he notes that Lib Dem policies were criticised too much in recent times and he claims that many people within the Labour Party “hate the Lib Dems”. He offers no evidence of this, but the claim is believable.
Anyway, Marchant goes onto to put those aside and lists ways to link the two parties. What follows is my analysis of those options.
Taken from the banner on the Labour Uncut website.
1 – MPs crossing the floor
“First, MPs crossing the floor. This would be great, but it won’t happen now. We are too weak. Important defections happen when you are strong and the others are weak, like Tories to us and the Lib Dems in the last days of Major.”
Thinking of Labour as weak is an interesting point. Although it’s a few months after the election and their new leader and Shadow Cabinet are releatively settled (even if you consider the post-Alan Johnson changes because it’s just the ame people in different roles), they are still formulating policy. Without substantial policy and clearly definied strategies, they will not be attactive enough to MPs from other parties.
However, I don’t think that’s the main problem with this particular point though. They can’t just rely on this because MPs defecting happens very rarely. The only time it happened on a large scale was when the SDP was formed in 1981. The following table gives you some information about the most recent MP defections (unfortunately the only source I could find was this page on Wikipedia, but I believe that it’s accurate):
| Original party | Party defected to | Total defections | Last MP to defect | Year |
| Conservative | Labour | 5 | Quentin Davies | 2007 |
| Conservative | Liberal/SDP/Lib Dem | 3 | Peter Thurnam | 1996 |
| Conservative | Other | 4 | Bob Spink (to UKIP) | 2008 |
| Labour | Conservative | 4 | Alan Grahame Brown | 1962 |
| Labour | Liberal/SDP/Lib Dem | 29 | Paul Marsden | 2001 |
| Labour | Other | 10 | Clare Short (to Independent) | 2006 |
| Liberal/SDP/Lib Dem | Labour | 1 | Tom Horabin | 1948 |
| Liberal/SDP/Lib Dem | Conservative | 1 | Never happened | N/A |
| Liberal/SDP/Lib Dem | Other | 2 | Cecil L’Estrange Malone (to British Socialist) | 1919 |
So, you can see that defections are rare and the rarest of them all is people leaving the Liberals/SDP/Lib Dems. Most of the defections have happened because people have left the Labour Party. The SDP formation has skewed the data slightly, but if you ignore that, Labour still have the most MPs leaving.
2 – Recruiting members
“Next, recruiting Lib Dem members: be my guest. But we may well have had pretty much all we are likely to already. The rest seem unlikely to jump ship in numbers, after this inevitable post-election adjustment (this is of course pure conjecture: but the reasoning is, if they haven’t left by now in disgust, they’re in it for the long haul).”
I agree with Marchant on this point. The largest numbers are always likely to happen after general elections. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to find out exactly how many people have changed sides as not everyone releases membership information. However, this Guardian article from May 13th, 2010, states that Labour claimed to have a membership increase of 10,000 since the close of polling. Now, it’s important to remember that not all of those people will be Liberal Democrats. Some will be brand new members and some will be from other parties. There will certainly be a large group of former Lib Dems in that figure though. That’s if that claim is true of course. We have no proof of it’s accuracy.
I wasn’t able to get any details about the Liberal Democrats, but one blog mentioned that Conservative Party membership dropped from 258,000 to 177,000. However, this has been attributed to factors such as people forgetting to/not renewing their membership – not just crossing over to another party. This could be due to the financial climate, apathy or reduction in the number of member benefits.
Membership fees are also worth considering. A one-year payment for Labour is £41. For the Conservatives it’s £25. For the Liberal Democrats, it’s as much as £52.
3 – Courting the vote
“We could simply interpret it, as suggested in the same FT article, as courting the Lib Dem vote, rather than their members – which, yes, absolutely we should. But this is not cooperation: all parties always try and pull votes from other parties. It’s called campaigning.”
Once again, I agree with this. They do this for every election, so something else has to be done.
4 – Informal co-operation
“Informal cooperation in the House on various issues: fine, as far as it goes. We and a few rebel Lib Dem MPs may annoy the government a little by making it lose the odd vote – and so we should – but we are hardly going to bring it down.”
I mostly agree with this, but it’s worth remembering that not every bill/amendment has the same significance. It could be one issue that carries a lot of strategic/ideological value for the Conservatives. If the government is defeated and it’s shown that Labour and the Liberal Democrats can agree on matters of significance, it might mean more members changing sides or an increased likelihood of future co-operation that could help Labour win the next election.
5 – Progressive coalition
“Finally, there could be some kind of grand progressive coalition (possibly with a split-off, rump Lib Dem party) in the future.”
Marchant goes on to say you only need to consider this if there is no majority. Labour and the Lib Dems joining forces would always guarantee a majority (as we saw from the recent general election). Othe parties might need to align themselves too, which could make things too complex. A Lib-Lab coalition that forms a majority could work though, in terms of historical places on the political spectrum (both are generally centre-left).
‘Ignore them’
He points out that there won’t necessarily be a progressive majority (as I have just suggested) and some bridges may have been burned thanks to the general election. Marchant thinks the Liberal Democrats should simply be ignored and Labour should attack the Conservatives instead. I think this is a foolish plan.
Like it or not, the Liberal Democrats are part of the government and some of their MPs hold important positions. They have also contributed towards coalition policy on a number of occasions.
I can see why some people would think they may be irrelevant based on current poll data (UK Polling Report shows that they have an 8-9% share), but polls can be wrong sometimes and we are not even half way through the coalition’s full term yet. Plenty of things can happen in the remaining time.
Ignoring them would make Labour appear complacent and ignorant.
So, what do you think?