Greens – thinking liberal

Britain’s politics is a function of its electoral system

The changed electoral map. Source: the Liberal Democrats

It was a dull election campaign but an earthquake of a result – not less significant for it having been widely predicted. Above all it shows just how much the country’s electoral system dictates its politics. That is how Labour won, and that is how they will stay in power.

I resisted the temptation to update my electoral predictions last week, as I didn’t have much more to add. If I had I would have talked up the Greens a bit, and also predicted that Jeremy Corbyn would win his seat of Islington North – notwithstanding a very dodgy local poll saying that he was well behind. I sensed that as people became more assured of a substantial Labour victory, with even the Tories saying so, that left-leaning voters, unenthused by the party’s relentless centrism, would vote for alternatives. The Tory tack of talking up Labour, referred to as the “Queensland Strategy”, to try and persuade people to vote Conservative to provide an opposition to Labour, was laughable. The Tories showed much more interest in fighting each other than opposing Labour.

The results proved me broadly correct, including those late predictions I didn’t publish – though I was surprised about how well the pro-Gaza independents did, unseating the prominent Labour front-bencher Jonathan Ashworth, for example, and nearly doing so to Labour big-hitter Wes Streeting. There were two main surprises for me though. The first was just how low was the overall share of the vote that Labour eventually got (about 35%) – much lower than the polling predictions, and with a much lower lead over the Conservatives (10% compared to a consistent 20%, though this dropped a bit in the last polls). This did not have much impact on the result in seats, though; a lot of this dynamic was happening in safe Labour seats, with Labour supporters moving to Greens and Independents, or not showing up to vote. The other surprise was quite how many seats the Liberal Democrats won. My argument had been that weakness on the ground would place an upper limit on the party’s performance of about 50 seats; in the event they won 72 – and nearly won a slew of others. There is an upper bound to Lib Dem performance – but it’s quite a bit higher than I thought it was. In about half the seats the Lib Dems won, pre-election campaigning was weak – but there was enough local council strength for the party to make the case for tactical votes, and there must also have been a bit of help from the national campaign, which managed to increase support for the party overall, over the course of the campaign (though it ended up in vote share more or less where it was in 2019).

Interestingly, the MRP polls, a big feature of this campaign, did not come off as badly as the ordinary ones, though they made similar mistakes with the overall vote shares for Labour and the Conservatives. The Labour victory was at the lower end of the range of these projections, but at least it was within it. They picked up more of a sense of how efficient the Labour and Lib Dem polling was in electoral terms, and inefficient was that for Reform UK and the Greens. They didn’t see the rise of the independents, and the projections for individual seats were often wayward, especially for the distribution of votes between the parties. As I suggested in my comments during the campaign, they exaggerated Labour strength in Lib Dem targets – allowing many a Labour leaflet to suggest that the party was in contention when it was in fact a distant third.

So the Labour victory was big but shallow, with many close results. Indeed, supporters of the previous leader, Jeremy Corbyn, noted that the party won fewer votes than when their man was leading – making the narrative of why Sir Keir Starmer’s stewardship proved so successful much more complicated than the mainstream explanation suggests. Labour did not win, so much as the Tories lost. Sir Keir Starmer did not win over many people to his party (and he lost a good few), but he did not scare as many Tory voters as his predecessor – allowing them to stay at home or vote for Reform.

To be fair on Sir Keir, he seems to understand the thinness of his mandate. He is not using the scale of his victory to suggest that he has public support for radical policies. He is trying to establish a reputation for competence – something the Conservatives lost in the wake of the Brexit referendum. Labour will, of course, relentlessly blame the country’s “14 years of Tory chaos” – never mind that these followed three years of Labour chaos, and that the first six years were not especially chaotic. But whether it was 8 years of chaos or 14 makes no real difference to voters. This is a sensible strategy. The populist right plan a relentless attack on Labour for being “woke” – attending to the “luxury beliefs” of liberals and the identity politics of some ethnic minority politicians. Sir Keir’s best hope of winning the next election is to contrast the wildness of these attacks with the unfussy competence of reality. Good luck with that. He has the discouraging examples of Francois Hollande in France, and Gerhard Schroder in Germany. Two uncharismatic but competent left-of-centre politicians who were/are unable to manage the stresses of modern politics. Still, those leaders were operating in a very different political systems. So long as Labour can keep the right divided, its chances are good.

On the question of the right, I continue to follow the writings of populist promoter Matt Goodwin. I like him because he is reasonably factual, unlike many of his fellow travellers, who trade in conspiracy theories and lies. He did not have a particularly good election. He was elated by the Reform surge after its leader, Nigel Farage, started to seriously engage in the campaign. He went on to breathlessly call an inflection point, with Reform surpassing the Conservatives, backed up his own polling organisation, which proved by some margin to be the least accurate of all those publishing polls. But then Reform flatlined, and Mr Goodwin started to talk about the French elections instead. Looking back on the election, he is now calling the Reform glass half full. It has indeed peeled off the working class/lower middle class part of the Tory 2019 coalition, but it is making little progress beyond that. The Conservatives outpolled them by 10% – and its much stronger ground organisation showed. A pile of second places is no use in the British electoral system – and you need a strong ground operation to turn those second places into wins – just ask the Liberal Democrats. Complaining about the electoral system doesn’t cut it. The chances of Reform doing that on their own in more than a handful of places looks thin.

That leaves a stalemate on the right. Clearly it needs to rebuild the 2019 coalition, across working class and middle class voters, and in the north, south, east and west of England and Wales. Reform can’t do that. The Conservatives have two strategies open to them: the first is to displace Reform from the ground they now hold, and then rope in the middle classes and professionals later. But that will be hard: they have lost trust, and now that Mr Farage is in parliament he is in a strong position to fight them off – unless they can find a way of bringing him on board. The other strategy is to regain the middle ground, and then attack and squeeze Reform nearer to the next election, rather as David Cameron successfully did in 2015 to Ukip, a Reform forerunner. But Tory grassroots seem to have little patience for such a strategy, and they need somebody to lead it who is untainted by the Johnson, Truss and Sunak regimes – their own Keir Starmer. The likelihood is that the party will tear itself apart while trying to decide. This is Labour’s best hope, as they inevitably get bogged down in the mid-term.

What of the Lib Dems? Their large slew of MPs will give them more money, and more clout in parliament. It is a very different party from the ill-disciplined and eclectic group of local activists of the early 2000s, who often opposed Labour from the left. The centre is much stronger – this year’s campaign was notable for the strength of its central campaign, and consistency of its message across the country. They will seek to consolidate their gains, and build up new prospects. Their campaigning will continue with the same voter-led messages (health, care and the environment). But there is a hunger within the party for something more idealistic, defining what the party is all about. There will also be pressure to ramp up messaging around Europe. Perhaps they are shaping up to be part of a coalition with Labour in 2028/29.

But the big message of this campaign, demonstrated by both Labour and the Lib Dems, and in reverse by Reform and the Greens, is that elections are won by constituency-led targeting. The electoral system is shaping politics as completely as ever. Will electoral reform come back onto the political agenda? There are three broad options. The first is the Alternative Vote, which is not much more than a tweak to the existing system, but one which would allow those disenfranchised Reform and Green voters (to say nothing of third-placed Conservatives and Labour ones) more of a say. This would suit the Conservatives best – the Australian experience is that such a system ultimately reinforces the power to the two main established parties. And yet they united in opposing exactly this system when it was put to a referendum in 2011. The more radical alternative is proportional representation, which would suit Reform and the Greens best. This would have Lib Dem support too, though it is unclear that the party would benefit much, and it also has the support of many Labour grassroots.

But such chatter is irrelevant. The Labour leadership is focused on its core “missions”, which do not include political reform – and turkeys don’t vote for Christmas. Until there is a public groundswell to change the system, as there was in New Zealand in the 1990s, there will be no serious move to change things. The British electorate is very conservative, as that 2011 referendum showed. And if such a groundswell was going to happen, I think it would have happened already. Reform and the Greens need to learn from the Lib Dems and embrace local politics.

Electoral efficiency in British elections. From *The Economist*

Anti-Tory pacts – lessons from Wealden

Analysis: Matthew Green thinkingliberal.co.uk

Such is the paradox of the information age. Massive amounts of information from across the globe is at our fingertips, and we can now use AI tools to retrieve it with startling efficiency. But news reporting, especially local news reporting, has collapsed – so many, many interesting things are liable to escape our attention because they will never get into to the accessible database. There has been a wealth of reporting on last week’s local election results in England. But many interesting, and important, local stories remain unremarked. Such is the case in my local area, with the district council elections of Wealden in East Sussex – and arbitrary bureaucratic agglomeration of villages and small towns, whose main centres are Uckfield, Hailsham and Crowborough, each of roughly equal size.

The first point to make about this is that I wasn’t involved in these elections, in spite of being a party member. I haven’t talked to any of the actors since long before the campaign started. My reporting is based simply on the results published by the council. I hope to find out more later – but I’m not minded to harass exhausted newly-elected councillors who have important decisions to make about running the council. I’m a blogger, not a journalist.

It was the first British public election since 1979 in which I did not vote for the Liberal Democrats, or one its predecessor parties. That was because they did not field a candidate in my ward. There were only three candidates: a Conservative, a Green and an independent who did not put up much of a visible campaign. I voted for the Green candidate, Christina Coleman, who won with 64% of the vote against the Conservative incumbent councillor, Roy Galley, who had won in 2019 with 59% of the vote, against just a Green candidate. Ms Coleman increased the Green vote from 523 to 1,107, while Mr Galley’s vote sunk to 545 from 749. As I searched through the results, I found that this outcome was not untypical. The Conservatives contested wards opposed by typically only one other party. And they lost badly, sinking from 34 councillors (out of 45) to just 9, behind both the Lib Dems (13) and Greens (11). This was a shocking result in a part of the Blue Wall that is so blue that most people don’t regard it as politically competitive. This bespeaks serious trouble for the Conservatives. It is hard to exaggerate the degree of disgust with the party amongst most of my neighbours, whom I would describe mostly liberal conservatives. One Conservative inclined neighbour is even more unforgiving of the Liz Truss episode than I am.

But that is unremarkable. It has been picked up by the main media commentary. What is remarkable was the degree of cooperation amongst the Conservatives’ opponents, and how well this worked. To put a bit of substance behind this story I have analysed the detailed results in the table above. This is all my own work and it’s possible the odd error has crept in. First, some basics to help understand the figures. There are 41 wards, four of which elected two councillors, and the rest just one. One was uncontested – the Conservatives were elected unopposed. The Conservatives contested all the wards except one (where an independent stood, and lost, against a Green). In the analysis I have tried to exclude candidates without serious backing or a campaign. I judged these to be independents who did not manage to gain 100 votes, and minor parties (though in one ward there was a Reform UK candidate, and in a another a pair of Ukippers, all of whom received over 100 votes); I have left in all of the Labour candidates, although one failed to reach 100.

The Lib Dems put up 23 candidates, doubtless so that they could claim that they could theoretically win a majority on their own. But they were opposed by the Greens in only three cases, and Labour in one, with “serious” independents in four. Eleven of the Lib Dem candidates faced no other serious opponent than the Conservatives; they were all elected – but only two others were. The Greens put up only 14 candidates – nine of these faced only one serious opponent (well, 10 if you exclude a weakly supported Labour candidate) – all (ten) of these were elected, along with one other. Three Labour candidates out of 11 were given a clear run against Conservative candidates; none were elected. Two Labour candidates were elected in three-cornered battles with Conservatives and independents (including a split result in a two member ward) – their first councillors in the district. The independents are by their nature not a coherent party, so the analysis means less – but their 18 serious candidates were involved in only four straight fights – three against the Conservatives (which they all won) and the lost fight with a Green. There were 13 three or four cornered contests: the Conservatives won six of their councillors here. These six, the two straight fights with Labour and the one uncontested ward were all the councillors they won. They won no contest in a straight fight with Lib Dems, Green or Independents. In two case of the more complex contests, the Conservatives prevailed with under 40% of the vote. In only three cases Greens and Lib Dems ran candidates against each other – the Conservatives won in two of them (with under half the vote), with the Greens winning the third comfortably with the worst Lib Dem performance of the day.

So far as I know there were no formal pacts – if there had been, the picture would have been a bit tidier. But cooperation is evident, and, as a device for winning against Conservatives, it proved highly effective – but less effective where Labour were putting up the candidate. How far can we extend the conclusions to a general election? Local and national elections are different – but the main problem for the Tories in Wealden was their unpopularity at national level. Their Wealden administration is not particularly unpopular, though no especially popular either. This suggests to me that an electoral pact between the Greens and the Lib Dems could turn some seats in the Blue Wall unless the government can seriously scare voters about the prospect of a Labour-led government. Wealden borough closely corresponds to a parliamentary seat, also called Wealden, which is very safely for the Conservatives (the Lib Dems edging ahead of Labour into a distant second) – but this all changes when new parliamentary boundaries come in. Such a pact would follow one made in 2019, but could be much more effective if voters are less scared of Sir Keir Starmer as Labour leader than Jeremy Corbyn.

But it would be very hard to bring Labour into such a pact. Many former Conservative voters will vote for the Lib Dems or Greens (somewhat ironically since the Greens are closer to Corbyn’s Labour than Starmer’s), but draw the line at voting Labour. So there is much less in such a deal for Labour than the other parties, and it would be a major distraction from Labour’s main campaigning focus. Also Sir Keir is setting his face against electoral reform (which would be another distraction for him), which reduces the attraction of Labour to Lib Dems and Greens.

In the right circumstances electoral pacts work. Given the severe distortions imposed by the current electoral system I would have no qualms about my party entering into such a pact.

All the main parties have opportunities and challenges

We now have nearly a complete body, so the post-mortem is more convincing. What the elections show is that politics has been changed decisively by Brexit and the takeover of the Conservatives by Boris Johnson and his supporters. This new world offers challenges and opportunities for each of the five main political parties – the Conservatives, Labour, the SNP, the Lib Dems and the Greens.

One comment I am reading a lot of is how much these elections have been favourable to those in power, at least down to regional level. The Conservatives have done well in England, and in the Teesside and West Midlands mayoralties. Labour did well in Wales, Manchester and other big city mayoralties. The SNP did well in Scotland. Perhaps that is the influence of the covid-19 crisis. Perhaps that means that the winners are not as secure as some suggest. One aspect of this incumbency bonus is the naked way the Conservatives are using power in recently won seats in England to bring in local government spending. The voters have got the message, it appears, and don’t object; Labour complaints only draw attention to it.

The biggest winners are the Conservatives, who have consolidated their hold on formerly Labour areas in northern England and the Midlands, but not Wales. I have already written about this. It places the party in a formidable electoral position. The challenge has been well put by Matthew Parris in The Times. The party has been garnering support among people who see themselves as the rejected, society’s losers. Important though these people are, the policies they favour are not those that will be good for the country’s prosperity and wellbeing. They favour continuity and stability, if not pushing the clock back. Sooner or later this is going to create unbearable pressure at government level. They will either be unable to deliver on their promises to improve local conditions, in which case their voters will move on, or they succeed, in which case the politics of victimhood will play less well, and other parties will find the going easier. The two pronged attack that did for the Conservatives at the Euro elections in 2019 can do for them again – as both professionals and populists close in on either flank. For now the Prime Minister looks likely to bluff his way through this challenge, delivering cheery words but little in the way of substantive results. But the vulnerability remains. Meanwhile Labour, the Lib Dems and the Greens were all able to chip away at the Tory hold in their southern heartlands where well-led locally.

One of the rituals of election post-mortems is commentators to have a go at the Labour Party, criticising it for not listening to its core supporters. Take this piece from Janice Turner in The Times again. And yes, I often join this chorus myself. But when most of these people accuse Labour of looking down on traditional supporters, they themselves look down on Labour’s core support, especially amongst “woke” public service professionals. It needs to be taken with salt. More interesting is the variation on the theme by John Harris in the Guardian, who accuses Labour of too often ignoring local community groups, to rebuild the civic infrastructure it lost when old industries went into decline. This is something that the party seemed to understand under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, and certainly was important to his effective deputy, John McDonnell, but it is being abandoned by the current leadership.

Labour finds itself in a tricky position. It must extend its base beyond those public-sector professionals and the “new” urban working classes, without abandoning core ideas, like multiculturalism, that are central to its hold on that existing base. I’m sure that Mr Harris is right and that local community politics is part of the answer. But it isn’t easy, and in places they will find that the Lib Dems or Greens will have got there first. Tricky strategic decisions lie ahead, but their position is far from hopeless. The results are not as bad as many are making but, but they do show that the Tory hold on the old “Red Wall” remains tight, in England at least.

The SNP are the other big winners. The challenge for them is clear: navigating the drive towards independence for Scotland. The idea of independence is popular in Scotland, but the hard reality is likely to be less so. Perhaps the UK government’s best strategy is to move the debate onto the nitty gritty and let the SNP get bogged down; but to do that it has to concede a referendum, though not perhaps the referendum that the SNP want. See this interesting article by David Herdson on political betting.com. Losing the last referendum was the best thing to happen to the SNP; that will not be the case for another one. But if the government refuses to concede a referendum, then the SNP will continue to control the agenda.

For the Lib Dems the elections produced mixed results, but hopeful signs outweighed the discouraging ones. The party is making headway against the Conservatives where it has local strength. The Tory drive for the old Labour heartlands increases its vulnerability in its own backyard. But no earthquakes. It is not yet clear how the party breaks through into national scene. The party does not have a sharp brand; this can help in Britain’s electoral system, as a sharp brand deters as well as attracts voters. In Scotland the party held onto all its first-past-the-post seats, and challenged hard for a further one. But it won no seats on the proportional list system. This is ironic for a party that is so keen on proportional representation.

The advantages of a clear brand are shown by the Greens, who generally did well. If Labour starts to dilute its appeal to younger and environmentally conscious voters, the Greens are more likely to benefit now than the Lib Dems. The Greens easily beat the Lib Dems in London, as well as Scotland (where they contested no first-past-the post seats). Still, their claim to be the third party of national politics is overdone. Their predicament is the opposite to that of the Lib Dems – trying to turn a strong national brand into something that wins them councils and parliamentary seats.

Should the non-Tory parties work together to challenge the Conservatives, outside Scotland at least? This can only be on the basis of changes to the electoral system and perhaps other constitutional changes. This has been done in New Zealand. But for that to be viable there needs to be a broad understanding in the public that the system is broken and needs to be changed. For all the whinging I see little evidence of this. Beyond a little sotto voce staying out of each others’ way at the next general election I don’t think this idea will get anywhere.

So the landscaper has changed, but we are only beginning to see where this is leading.

What is the meaning of Richmond Park?

My (many) Liberal Democrat friends are ecstatic. The party has just won the parliamentary by-election in Richmond Park, overturning a massive majority from the sitting MP, Zac Goldsmith. As the dust slowly settles, what is there to learn about the state of British politics?

Richmond Park is quite close to where I live. I have been visiting it since the 1980s, helping out the local Liberals and then Liberal Democrats, including a few visits this time. It consists of the suburb of Richmond, together with a slice of Kingston, near Richmond Park, nearly up to Kingston town centre, and including the local hospital. The seat, and its predecessors, has been the scene of epic battles between Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. After a series of close results, the Lib Dems won it in the Tory collapse of 1997, with the rather eccentric Jenny Tonge as their MP (she kept testing the boundaries of what respectable politicians it could say about the Israel-Palestine conflict, transgressing on occasion – she has now left the party). She held the seat in 2001, but then stepped down. In the high water mark election of 2005 for the Lib Dems, which gave the party the illusion that seats that could be readily handed on from one candidate to another, the Lib Dems held the seat with Susan Kramer.

But in 2010 Zac Goldsmith, a local boy and inheritor of a substantial fortune, took the seat back for the Conservatives. He held it with a crushing majority (with 58% of the vote) in the Lib Dem meltdown of 2015, though the Lib Dem candidate, Robin Meltzer, managed to hang on to second place with 18% – a feat that could by no means be taken for granted. Many Lib Dem activists sighed and suggested that the influx of rich voters meant that the seat was gone for good.

But Mr Goldsmith was an independent minded MP, who had campaigned hard against the expansion of nearby Heathrow airport – which blights an area that otherwise offers sites of outstanding beauty. This is necessary for anybody that aspires to be an MP there. When the Conservative government under the new prime minister, Theresa May, finally opted to expand the airport, Mr Goldsmith fulfilled a campaign promise by resigning and standing as an independent. But the Conservatives did not put up a candidate against him, undermining his claim of independence.

Notwithstanding the mountain that the Lib Dems had to climb, expectations on the party were high. They had surged in the Witney by election, and a similar surge might take the seat for them. The Lib Dems had been doing well in local by elections (as well as Witney) over the summer, though their national poll rating remained dismal. To prove that that this improved electoral performance had substance, many commentators suggested that it was an election they had to win. All Liberal and Liberal Democrat revivals since 1945 had been led by spectacular parliamentary by election wins. If not here, where was that boost going to come from?

But Mr Goldsmith had clout on the issue that triggered the election: Heathrow. The Lib Dems had campaigned just as hard on the issue, and the government’s decision had proved the party’s contention that the best way to prevent the government from pressing ahead was for a strong Lib Dem party in coalition. Five years of coalition had held off the considerable political pressure for expansion. (Though Lib Dems might want to ask themselves why the party showed backbone on Heathrow, but not student fees). Barely a year of even a small Conservative majority and the resistance to expansion folded. But that’s a subtle argument, and the Lib Dems needed something bigger to shift enough votes their way. And so they campaigned on Brexit. Mr Goldsmith is a prominent supporter of hard Brexit, while the constituency voted 69% to remain in the EU. That did the trick.

What does this mean? Let’s start with the red herrings. First it says nothing about the state of play in Britain’s battle over Brexit. One of the strongest Remain constituencies voted for an anti Brexit MP. That does not change the calculations for a large majority of MPs, whose constituents voted to leave. What would change the nature of the debate is a large number of Brexit voters changing their mind. With 45% of the electorate still voting for Mr Goldsmith, there was no sign of that.

A second red herring is that the collapse of the Labour vote (they lost their deposit, polling less than their party’s membership in the constituency). This is what happens in this sort of by election, and says nothing about the party’s chances in a future general election. A resurgent Lib Dem party could be a worry, but Labour still holds the aces, and this should not be a problem for a half-way competent leadership. Indeed if the Lib Dems draw off Remain voters from the Tories, it could help Labour. That Labour voters can be persuaded to vote Lib Dem tactically does not hurt Labour at all. The reversal of this trend in 2015 was a disaster for Labour.

The first lesson I would draw is that the Lib Dems have nailed their colours to the pro-EU mast. That seems to cover about a quarter of the electorate, a big enough pool for the party to fish in in its current state. It answers the question “what is the point of the Lib Dems?”, as the Tories adopt Brexit as their own, and Labour collapse into muddle. Those Lib Dems, like me, who are inching towards some form of reconciliation will have to bite their tongues. We need to understand that this is the best way of that the party can demonstrate its open, liberal values and present itself as a bastion against the rise of nativism and intolerance. It does not quite answer the question of whether the party is going for a core vote strategy, though. If the party gets the by election bug they will be tempted to water the message down in pro Brexit constituencies.

The next lesson is that organisation matters in British politics, and that the Lib Dems still have it. It was possible to feel sorry for the Zac supporters, overwhelmed by a blitz of Lib Dem literature and canvassing, while not having adequate data themselves. Many of them felt shell-shocked, and the graceless Mr Goldsmith whinged about being crushed by a machine. This delighted Lib Dem activists. Having been written off in 2015, after being crushed by a ruthless Tory machine, to be accused of being a ruthless machine themselves is a compliment indeed. The party pulled together, mobilising old members and new, in an optimistic, cheerful campaign, led by their candidate, Sarah Olney, who only joined the party in 2015. Both Labour and the Conservatives, with their bigger and better party machines, will take note, and will not be too upset. Breakaway parties, such as some Labour members were contemplating earlier in the year, look as hopeless an enterprise as ever. Lesser parties, including the Greens and Ukip, are presented with a big challenge.

A further point of interest comes from the fact that Ukip and the Greens did not put up candidates, and instead deferred to Mr Goldsmith and the Lib Dems respectively. The former reflects Ukip’s current turmoil, and the party is weak locally – it has created no debt on the Conservatives. The Greens’ move is more significant. They too were in a weak position, and faced being crushed by the Lib Dem juggernaut, as Labour were. By pulling out they made a virtue out of this weakness and will have softened the attitude of Lib Dems to do electoral deals with party in future, as part of a “progressive alliance”. Under Britain’s first past the post electoral system this kind of dealing is a logical response that may well take hold. Labour came under quite a bit of pressure from many of its members to do the same. There was never much chance of this from the still very tribal Labour party with its weak leadership – and Lib Dems will be relieved. They do not want to be under any kind of obligation to Labour under its current leadership.

What we don’t yet know about this election is whether it will boost the Lib Dems national standing amongst the public. The media is starting to take the party more seriously, but it will be some time before we have enough polling evidence to tell. What is clear is that the party is in fighting form, and has a much greater political weight. That is good news for supporters of liberal values, for which it is the clearest upholder on the British political scene. If Labour and the Conservatives can take their reluctant liberal supporters less for granted as they face the challenge of the populists, it will make all those efforts by the party’s volunteers worthwhile.

The politics of Brexit: how should the parties respond?

I had thought things were going Remain’s way, after my near certainty of last week that Leave had won. A day helping get out the Remain vote in Wandsworth and Lambeth borders (mainly alongside Conservatives) helped cement that feeling. The vote for Remain there was 75% and over. But the backlash from the rest of England (aided and abetted by Welsh voters) was too great, and we ended up with a decisive vote for Leave. I’m still in the very early stages of grief for the country I love. British politics has suffered an earthquake. I want to offer some first thoughts about how the different parties should respond.

The Conservatives first. As my experiences here in Wandsworth shows, they are bitterly divided. But they will now have to rally behind the result and be the unequivocal party of Brexit. David Cameron was clearly right to resign, albeit at a leisurely pace. It is very revealing about those that supported Leave that so many of them thought he should stay. It bespeaks denial about the gravity of what they have done. But Mr Cameron would have been a prisoner and puppet as Prime Minister and party leader; that is not what the situation demands. Personally I think Boris Johnson should take over; his leadership may well have been decisive for Leave; he should be made to answer for its consequences. He may not have enough support amongst Tory MPs, though. But he does have momentum.

There is a clear opportunity for the Tories tok benefit from the bitter divisions in England and Wales. George Osborne’s wish for the party to build bridges with voters outside London now looks altogether more credible. Quite what this means in policy terms is less than clear. But they will need a clear focus on limiting immigration to begin winning the trust of Brexit voters.

That they have a chance to do so arises from the problems of the political left. Labour’s leadership backed the wrong horse in this race, mainly through honourable and honest belief. But their core support now comes from educated public sector workers and minority ethnic groups. The gap between this core and their previously loyal working class voters outside London has turned into a gulf. This has become a strategic problem.

I believe that the best thing for them is to stick to their beliefs keep up the attack on the advocates of Brexit. They will need to play lip service to respecting the will of the British people, but what they really need is for the Conservatives to fall apart under the stresses of trying to follow Brexit through. A period of institutional chaos is about to unfold; they need to be the party of buyer’s remorse and even “told you so”. This should be combined with a bold move to the political centre, perhaps scooping up disillusioned Conservatives.

But they have a leadership problem. Jeremy Corbyn has been criticised for being a lacklustre advocate of Remain, because of his half-hearted support for the idea. I have a feeling that the problem is much deeper. I don’t think he is cut out for hard political campaigning of any kind. On the radio this morning he sounded like a damp rag; he offered no ideas about what the country should do next. The Conservatives will have to be in bad shape indeed if they can’t beat him in a general election. And it is not just leadership. I would take an amazing act of political skill to persuade Labour members back to the centre ground. But not impossible.

Ukip have been dealt an interesting hand. They have done much to bring this situation about, and will doubtless gain Kudos. They must continue their pivot towards disaffected white working class voters, and peel them away from Labour. But it will be a hard road under Britain’s electoral system. Their power base in the European Parliament is about to be closed down. That this will hurt so badly will be amongst the many ironies of the vote.

And my party, the Liberal Democrats? The party continues its flirtation with irrelevance, and Brexit for these enthusiastic supporters of the EU makes it worse. But it has much stronger party infrastructure than Ukip; it has more MPs, more councillors and more Lords. They should benefit from the manifest troubles of the Labour and Conservative parties, but it is hard to see exactly how. They do not offer an inviting prospect for disillusioned centrist Labour and Tory MPs. I don’t see that they have much choice but to slowly rebuild on core liberal values, and make a strong appeal to younger voters. A lot will have to change to make this credible; not least it needs an influx of women and ethnic minorities into its leadership positions. I will write more on what the party should try and do another time.

And the Greens? They, too need to compete hard for that younger vote, where they have an edge over the Lib Dems. They have a very interesting strategic choice though. Do they continue with their leftwing, pro public sector lurch, away from their environmentalist roots? Jeremy Corbyn seems to have shot that fox, and offered a home for these voters in the Labour Party. But if Labour start a serious march to the centre, this gap might open up again. But if Labour continues to be a prisoner of its new members this route towards relevance will be blocked.

And the SNP? They have been presented an opportunity for independence and another referendum. But Brexit poses challenges for Scotland. A Scotland inside the EU and an England outside poses some major headaches. Many of these are about to be rehearsed on the island of Ireland. It may be hard for the SNP to create an attractive prospectus.

And what is the best thing for the country? I see the vote as a cry of pain from the politically excluded. This has a very ugly face, and I fear the rise racism and xenophobia. But all politicians should heed that voice. We must develop a new economic model that brings the excluded back in. That is the only way to bring liberalism back into fashion. If the Brexit vote hastens the development of such a new model, it will have been a good thing. All of the parties, apart from Ukip perhaps, show some signs of understanding this but are bereft of clear answers. But I fear that instead too many politicians will draw the conclusion that they should pander to dark side.

British politics is in stalemate

The British elections last Thursday were probably the most significant electoral test this parliament, with the Scottish and Welsh parliaments, the London Mayor, and many English councils up for grabs. Everybody had the chance to vote for something. The outcome was underwhelming. Where does that leave the political scene?

The analogy is overblown, but I am reminded of the war that ravaged Europe 100 years ago. In 1916 huge efforts by the major combatants yielded little return on the ground. While the military men looked for breakthrough tactics, these yielded limited results, and in the end it was a matter of stamina and fundamentals.

The results pose uncomfortable questions for all the political parties that took part, major and minor. Most of the attention has focused on Labour. They suffered a further catastrophe in Scotland, falling behind the Conservatives to third place. In England they mainly held their ground, with an impressive victory in London’s Mayoral election. Supporters of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn hail this as vindication – but that only shows how low their expectations have sunk. There is no hint here of how the party can regain power in Westminster. The myth of a hidden bank of left wing voters waiting to be energised by Mr Corbyn has been shown to be just that. But neither is there a disaster enough to fuel Mr Corbyn’s opponents; the Scots meltdown predates his tenure and so had already been written off. The best guess is that the far left will continue to hollow the party out from within, but that the party’s outward status remains largely unchanged. Come the next general election the question is whether the party will implode or simply repeat its dismal performance last time. On this year’s evidence it will be the latter.

For the Conservatives the position looks considerably better. They drifted only gently backwards in English councils; their performance in London was reversion to type, after unexpected success under their Mayor Boris Johnson; and they achieved a remarkable breakthrough in Scotland. But to keep governing beyond 2020 they will need to deliver a killer blow to Labour, while containing any Lib Dem comeback. Can they do that when they are riven by divisions over Europe, will replace their leader with one who has much less public respect, and while their government programme keeps being derailed by backbench discontent? Meanwhile their tactics in London, where they tried to toxify Labour’s Sadiq Khan by associating him with Mr Corbyn and Muslim extremists, failed, and may have damaged the party’s brand.

The SNP maintained their grip on Scottish politics but lost their overall majority. They have completed an astonishing pivot to the left, allowing the Tories a bit more breathing space, and leaving Scots to wonder what the point of Labour is. It is hard to see how anybody is going to deliver a knockout blow, but more Scots will surely start to tire of them. The only way seems to be down.

Ukip cemented their status as a major UK party, with breakthroughs in the Welsh Parliament and London Assembly, and consolidation of their role as Labour’s main opposition in parts of the north of England. But they are a party of oddballs, and it is hard to see how they can maintain their coherence. As a party of local government in England, they won only 15% of the seats of the supposedly down and out Lib Dems; this is a weak grassroots base.

The Greens moved forwards in Scotland, and held their own in London, where they are established as the third party by popular vote. But in English council seats for every gained they lost a seat somewhere else, to end up with even fewer seats than Ukip. Their switch to the left, while downplaying their environmentalism, looks to have been a strategic error, with the wind taken out of their sails by the revival of the Labour left.

And my own Lib Dems? There were quite a few successes; they gained more English council seats than any other party, and are approaching half the Conservative total. They comfortably retain their position as the third party of local government. There were striking constituency wins in Scotland and one in Wales. But all the Lib Dem successes boiled down to pockets of local strength, where they are deeply embedded into civic society. They have shown their ability to claw back ground from the Tories in particular, and even the SNP. But talk of a revival of fortunes belongs in the same category of optimism as the Labour left’s. The party was reduced to a single seat in both the Welsh parliament and London Assembly, and fell behind the Greens in Scotland. They struggle to reach 5% in proportionally elected contests, an irony for a party that is so in favour of this type of election. The party has not established clear political ground for itself and remains confused as to whether its coalition years were its finest hour or a terrible mistake. The party fights irrelevance in most of the land.

Plaid Cymru continued to move sideways. The politics of Wales remains quite different from that in Scotland, and the party seems quite unable to replicate the SNP’s success.

And nobody else made an impact. The Women’s Equality party was launched last year in a big media splash, and tried its luck in London, but got nowhere. The nativist Britain First is another new party, which has a big presence on social media, and it put in a performance that beat other competitors in its space (such as the British National Party), but still only managed a derisory result. For all the claimed discontent of the public with established politicians, there is not even a faint sign of an insurgency that could take off.

So British politics is in deadlock. The Conservatives have a narrow majority in the UK parliament but lack the discipline to govern decisively. There is no evidence as yet that they are going to break out of this. But neither is there any sign of a party or coalition of parties that can knock them off their perch.

There is a broad lesson here about British politics that is not given enough weight by most commentators. Political success requires a strong grassroots infrastructure and solid organisation, built up over many years, as well as being able to chime with some part of the zeitgeist. Labour and the Conservatives have achieved this more or less across Britain, now that the former are rebuilding themselves in Scotland. Fear of losing this vital political infrastructure stops either party from breaking apart, in spite of huge political divisions. The SNP has this in Scotland and is consolidating. That the Lib Dems are in the fight at all after failing so spectacularly to hit the zeitgeist is testament to their pockets of grassroots strength and penetration of institutions like the House of Lords; they have something to work with. Ukip and the Greens have attempted to build their own infrastructure but are finding it desperately hard going. Nobody else stands a chance. There will be no unconventional uprising like Italy’s Five Star movement. It is also very hard for a nativist insurgency, such as that of Donald Trump in the US, or the Front National in France, to get traction – though Ukip has tried.

And so we are locked in stalemate. The biggest threat to this dynamic is if one or other of the major parties breaks up under the strain. The second possibility is that the Tories get their act together sufficiently to deliver a knock-out punch to a Labour Party that does not look interested in government. As yet there is no sign of either.

Can any of Britain’s political parties break the deadlock?

The rise of fringe parties takes British politics into a whole new era. and yet the outcome of the election due on 7 May 2015 seems strangely predictable. The parties seem to be stuck in a deadlock where none can win. What are the chances of one of them breaking free?

Britain’s electoral system (misleadingly referred to as “first past the post”) is capable of producing dramatic swings in the balance between the parties. But a plethora of constituency polls allows pundits to make some quite stable predictions this time. The main features are these: the Liberal Democrats will lose up to 30 seats of their current 57. The Scottish Nationalists (the SNP) will pick up a similar number, or perhaps more, giving them 30-40 seats overall. The new insurgent parties, Ukip and the Greens, will only pick up a handful of seats, and the latter maybe none at all. Overall Labour will advance, and the Conservatives will fall back. The main debate is whether Labour will be able to overhaul the Conservatives to become the largest party. Interestingly, the fortunes of both major parties will be largely determined by how well they do against the smaller parties rather than each other. But neither party will win enough seats to form a government with one of the smaller parties; they will need to do a deal with each other to form a stable government. This is the outcome nobody (except the SNP perhaps) wants.

Can any of the parties break out of this stalemate? Sudden changes of fortune can happen. Two stand out in recent history. The first was in 1992, when John Major’s Conservative government suddenly overhauled Labour in the last week of the election campaign to win a comfortable majority, under the slogan “Labour’s Tax Bombshell”. The second was Cleggmania in 2010, when the Liberal Democrats surged forward after the performance of their leader, Nick Clegg, in the first of the television leadership debates. The surge faded, but the party avoided the drubbing they were heading for, defending their record result in 2005.

Such sudden surges are entirely possible this time. No political leader dominates the scene as Margaret Thatcher did in the elections of 1983 and 1987 or Tony Blair in 1997, 2001 and 2005. As in 1992 and 2010, political leadership is weak, and so things can be more fluid. Public frustration with politics is high.

To understand that we only have to look at Scotland, where the SNP have surged forward after last year’s referendum on independence (or, more precisely, they are consolidating their spectacular gains in the Scottish Parliament in 2011). Labour, who are defending 40-odd seats at the election are in serious trouble. That surge, however, is already built in to the forecasts. The surprise might be if the anti-SNP vote rallies and votes tactically. That’s a real possibility, though – and it would mainly benefit Labour (whose majorities are generally big), and might stem some of the Lib Dems’ anticipated losses. It would be particularly satisfying if the Lib Dem candidate Christine Jardine is able to hold off former SNP leader Alec Salmond.

What of the English insurgents, Ukip? They won the European Parliament elections as recently as last year. But their support has sunk to 15% (less than the Lib Dems achieved last time) and it is too thinly spread. Their novelty is wearing thin, and there is quite a strong anti-Ukip reaction, visible in their leader’s negative approval ratings in polls. The press, who often set the news agenda, found it convenient to boost them, but they are now poking fun at them. Yet they are well-funded and in some regions (along the south and east coasts especially) they might yet hit the zeitgeist, and pick up a few more seats than the pundits expect. There is a more remote possibility that they do well in northern urban Labour strongholds – but this looks too high a hurdle for them this year.

How about the other insurgents, the Greens? They have done well in the polls this year, catching up with the poor old Lib Dems quite often. They have picked up the “none of the above” vote that dislikes Ukip. They have the possibility of repeating Cleggmania and advancing into teens of %age of votes, if not better. But they could suffer if they come under scrutiny. They have a rather mad collection of policies and their leader, Natalie Bennett, struggles to break out of fringe appeal. There is a challenge for the party. If they could dump Ms Bennett as their figurehead and replace her with their only MP, the impressive Caroline Lucas, and if they ditch most of their silly policies as “aspirations”, with a more mainstream manifesto – then they might be in business. It would be a big moment of growing up – but, my sense is that they can’t. Too many activists would see such a move as a betrayal. A further difficulty is translating an advance in the polls into seats, as their vote is thinly based. They seem to do well where Labour are already strong – and they lack the time and organisation to marshal a stronger vote in particular seats.

Could the Conservatives repeat their feat of 1992, and break through to an overall majority? They have an impressively disciplined campaign. They could even repeat the tax bombshell line of 1992 line with some justice (Labour’s instincts are free-spending); and Labour’s leadership is seen as not up to it, again as in 1992. Their leader, David Cameron, may not as impressive as Mr Blair or Mrs Thatcher, but he is more convincing than John Major was. But. But. I just think that the Conservatives are on the wrong side of history and will find it impossible to extend their appeal enough. Back in the 1980s they were the party that broke the unions (which most people saw as a good thing) and made the country self-confident again. Mass affluence broke out – even if a lot of it was through the false wealth of rising property values. Now we seem stuck; the rich do well, but few others. Even increasing property values are seen as double-edged, forcing youngsters from even affluent families back onto “the bank of Mum and Dad”. In the 2000s the Tory brand became toxic; they haven’t done enough to reverse that. Tactically they are in a bind too. They need to win back Ukippers with sour policies on Britain’s international role and immigrants – while at the same time as appealing to more optimistic, liberal voters. I just can’t see a breakout. Their only hope of a breakthrough comes from the collective weakness of everybody else – which remains possible.

How about Labour? They have the opposite problem. They are much more in tune with the popular zeitgeist. They understand a lot of what people feel is wrong about society. But their narrative is chaotic. They look like a coalition of grumpy protest groups rather than a coherent government in waiting. I am reminded a little of Labour under Jim Callaghan in 1979: when they try to make a clear stand on a policy, one of their number undermines it. Tough on immigration? Protests from London MPs. Stop any serious reform of the NHS (which they call “saving” it) – yes one moment, no the next. The current awkwardness is on a promise to reduce university tuition fees. They want a headline policy to whack the coalition with (especially to consolidate former Lib Dem voters) – but how to do so without damaging universities or giving a gift just to the richer students? It seems as if the party has lost the discipline of the New Labour era. But the party does have some strengths – in particular an army of younger canvassers, especially in London, and probably the strongest central organisation of any UK political party.

Like the Tories, the main hope for Labour seems to be the weakness of others: the Lib Dems, the Greens, Ukip and the SNP. On the other hand, it is easier to foresee some sort of implosion by Labour than it is for the Tories. A public rift on economic policy could be the cause: the tension between their trade union backers and the more realistic parliamentarians is palpable. There is rather strange paradox here. Ed Miliband has kept the party together much better than expected over the last four years. But this has been achieved by placating rather than resolving the tensions within it. Which makes the unity and discipline less easy to achieve when it is most needed.

Which leaves the Lib Dems, in my review. Their fall has been dramatic. They commonly show up with a poll rating of just 7%, compared with the 23% they achieved in 2010. In many places they would do well to get 2-3%. But they have strongholds, and a strongly focused constituency-led campaign strategy is helping to limit the damage. They are helped by Ukip undermining the Conservative vote, though they seem to have fewer defences in the minority of seats where Labour is their main opponent. In terms of popular vote it is difficult to see the party falling much further – but there is a risk that their constituency-led strategy falls apart, and they are left with very few seats indeed. But they do have upside potential. Their hope is to be seen as a sensible, liberal party, with none of the extremist politics of Ukip or the Greens. The more Labour and the Conservatives move to the extremes to face the threat of Ukip in particular, the more appealing the Lib Dems might look. There is reason for them to hope that their poll ratings will rise – though this may make surprisingly little difference in terms of the number of seats that they lose. Indeed a surge in the polls might undermine the party discipline needed to make the constituency strategy work.

All of which leaves British politics in a predicament. An electoral system that used to practically guarantee a succession of stable single party governments, is now moving towards one that simultaneously disenfranchises most voters (by stranding them in seats where their vote makes no difference), while delivering a result from which it is hard to form a governing majority. And yet such is the conservatism of Britain’s politicians and public, that it is difficult to see any successful move to change it.