LibDem limits
The main electoral impact of the Liberal Democrats in modern times has been to help deny the Conservatives a working Commons majority. They have done so regardless of whether the latter have been in government or opposition.
In 1974, the Conservatives were in government, the Liberal vote surged, Edward Heath failed to win a majority and Jeremy Thorpe refused to enter a coalition with him. In 2010, the Tories were in opposition, the LibDem vote rose slightly, David Cameron failed to gain a majority – and Nick Clegg took his party into coalition.
It is significant that sweeping LibDem gains haven’t tended to harm Labour. In 1997, the party gained 25 seats, taking its total to 34. In the same election, Tony Blair won a landslide. He and Paddy Ashdown had crushed the Conservatives in a pincer movement.
The tumultuous effects of Brexit have resuscitated the LibDems and are reviving their prospects. Coalition nearly killed them, at least at Westminster. But the EU referendum has given them a new lease of life. Once again, it is most evident in areas which otherwise return Conservative MPs or councils.
Out of their 14 MPs in England and Wales, all those elected as Liberal Democrats in 2017 had the Tories in second place. In the local elections last spring, all their councils gained were in yellow/blue areas. Their revival tends to be concentrated in areas in which they flourished between roughly the late Thatcher and late Cameron eras.
This is the context in which to viewed their latest shift on Brexit, the opportunities it is bringing them, and the defections it is gaining them. The shift to revocation takes place in the context of their competiton with Labour. The more red votes the party can squeeze in blue/yellow marginals, the more seats it is likely to win.
So as Labour gradually commits itself more explicitly to Remain, to be delivered through the medium of a second referendum, the more the LibDems must try to outflank it. Junking the referendum and going straight for revocation is the obvious means of doing so.
The ploy carries risks for Jo Swinson’s party. Revocation may play well in South-West London or university-type seats. But it is hard to see how it will be a plus in Brexity South West of England. Swinson seems to be going for broke in the Remain heartlands of 2016: the capital itself and what might loosely be called the greater South East. Plus Scotland.
In her perfect world, the Liberal Democrats will sweep up London seats in which they have not been previously competitive. Hence Chuka Umunna’s flight from Streatham towards the Cities of London and Westminster. She may also be hoping to have a crack at Labour in some of its north London constituencies. The prospect is agitating pro-EU Labour MPs such as Keir Starmer and Emily Thornberry to push harder for Remain.
It is tempting to write off the Revocation policy. After all, Swinson can only implement it herself with the Commons majority that she won’t win. That clip of a prosperous-looking LibDem audience whooping it up for Guy Verhofstadt’s imperalist ravings won’t impress Revocation-sceptic centrist voters.
But the shift will have an effect on the conversation at Westminster. Were Swinson to win that mythical majority, Revocation would be one thing: she would have won the right to implement it, fair and square. But the policy will be quite another if Brexit doesn’t take place on October 31, and MPs begin to drift in its direction without a mandate.
That would be to flick a V-sign not only at 17 million Leave voters but the entire EU referendum result – with consequences for the stability of our already shaken politics that are potentially shattering. Revocation in that context would be the real extremism, not No Deal, for which at least there is a mandate if necessary.
Swinson’s gambit may blow up. It could just be that LibDem support in blue/red marginals collapses, handing the Conservatives new seats in the Midlands and North, and that these outnumber LibDem gains in the blue/yellow marginals. Or that the Luciana Berger and Angela Smith defections to the party are the start of something bigger
Four-way politics in England and Wales complicates all these calculations, as does its equivalent north of the border: Swinson herself could lose her seat to the SNP, which took it from her 2015, before she won it back two years later. Which reminds us that there will be more to any forthcoming general election than Brexit.
This should lead us to look at the LibDems in the round, as their conference continues today. Coalition sobered them up, at least for a while, and provided some good Ministers: Steve Webb’s work with Iain Duncan Smith at Work and Pensions stands out.
But most of the stars of that era have either left the Commons or are leaving: Clegg, Webb, David Laws, Vince Cable. Their successors look less impressive. And the Tory defectors, Phillip Lee and Sam Gyimah, may not be in the Commons for much longer (and nor may the Labour ones, come to think of it.)
The LibDems have a core problem that they cannot shake off. In local government, they may well revive further. In the European elections, they can build on their second place won this year. In Scotland, they could conceivably govern as part of some rainbow coalition. That is also possible in Wales, where they are currently weak. Westminster is a different proposition.
For a lesson of the Cameron years is that first past the post sets the party up for punishment if it goes into coalition. Doing so tends to have the effect of depressing smaller parties in any event, as Paddy Ashdown used to point out, regardless of the electoral system in question. But first past the post intensifies the effect.
Were the LibDems to go into coalition with the Conservatives again, their lefter-leaning voters would desert them. The reverse would be true were they to go into coalition with Labour. (The Lib/Lab pact scarcely helped the Liberals in 1979.) In any event, a lot of LibDem support comes from protest voters. In 2015, many of these decamped to UKIP, in defiance of any ideological consistency.
This suggests that the most durable option for the LibDems in any future hung Parliament would be confidence and supply. It is almost impossible to imagine Swinson going into coalition with Jerermy Corbyn or Boris Johnson in any case.
No Ministerial cars; no red boxes. No more posts as Deputy Prime Minister, or LibDem Ministers shaping government policy. It is a grim fate for any ambitious politician to accept, but the LibDem mentality is different to that of Labour, as well as us Conservatives. They are used to marginality, being squeezed – and the joys of irresponsible opposition. Brexit has changed much for them, but less than one might think.
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While more than nine in ten Conservatives oppose a referendum, a return to the polls is favoured by more than one third of 2017 Labour voters, more than half of EU Remain voters, and by more than one in five of those who voted No to independence in 2014.
Asked how they would vote in such a contest, 46 per cent said they would vote Yes to independence, and 43 per cent No. Excluding those who say they don’t know or wouldn’t vote, this amounts to a lead of 52 per cent to 48 per cent for an independent Scotland. This is the first lead for independence in a published poll since an Ipsos MORI survey in March 2017, and the biggest lead since a spate of polls in June 2016, shortly after the UK voted to leave the EU.
Overall, a majority of Scots thought that if a second referendum were to be held, the result this time would be an independent Scotland. Only three in ten – including just two thirds of Conservatives and fewer than half of 2014 No voters – thought Scotland would vote to remain part of the UK. A further 18 per cent said they didn’t know.
More than six in ten Scots – including 38 per cent of 2017 Conservatives and two thirds of Labour voters – said they think Brexit makes it more likely that Scotland will become independent in the foreseeable future. Indeed, more than half of 2014 No voters think this is the case, with 32 per cent of them saying it makes independence much more likely.
Just over half – including a majority of Labour voters, nearly one in five Tories and two thirds of EU remain voters – say Brexit strengthens the case for Scotland to become independent.
Nearly half (46 per cent) of all Scots agree with Sturgeon’s claim that a No Deal Brexit would be disastrous for Scotland, including half of Labour voters and nearly one in five Tories. A further three in ten (including most Conservatives) think the risks have been exaggerated but there would be some difficulties.
Asked what their preferred Brexit outcome would be, most 2017 Conservative voters backed Boris Johnson’s position that the UK should leave the EU on 31 October, with or without a deal – though one in five said they would be prepared to wait longer than October for a better deal, and nearly a quarter said they wanted to remain in the EU. Remaining is the most popular outcome, though favoured by only half of all Scots.
Scottish voters are closely divided as to whether – if it were not possible to do both – it would be more important for Scotland to remain part of the UK, or to remain in the EU. While 43 per cent would prioritise the Union, 45 per cent would prioritise the EU. While Conservatives and SNP voters were leaned heavily as one would expect, Labour voters were split: 46 per cent would choose the UK, 40 per cent would choose the EU, and 14 per cent say they don’t know.
More than half of Scots said there should be a second referendum on EU membership, including 69 per cent of SNP voters, more than half of Labour voters and one in five Conservatives. Should this take place, 67 per cent of those giving an opinion said they would vote to remain.
As for Boris Johnson’s first week as Prime Minister, while nearly half of Scots said they expected him to do badly, a quarter of those said he had done better than they had anticipated.
While only just over one third of 2017 Conservatives they expected him to do well and he had, a further one in four said they had had low expectations but been pleasantly surprised.
Compared to other politicians, Boris Johnson ranks relatively low among Scottish voters – though still above Nigel Farage, Jeremy Corbyn, and Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard. He scores well below Ruth Davidson, both among Scots as a whole and, to a lesser degree, 2017 Conservatives.
Asked which of the two most likely candidate would make the better Prime Minister, 29 per vent of Scots named Johnson, 23 per cent said Corbyn, and nearly half said they didn’t know. Fewer than four in ten 2017 Labour voters said they thought Corbyn would make the best Prime Minister.
Despite this, when forced to choose, Scots said they would prefer a Labour government with Corbyn as Prime Minister to a Johnson-led Conservative government by 57 per cent to 43 per cent. A quarter of Labour voters said they would prefer the latter, as did the same proportion of SNP voters – perhaps calculating that this circumstance held out the best prospect of independence for Scotland.
3Those who voted SNP in 2017 are the most likely to say they will stick with their party in a new general election. They put their mean likelihood of turning out for the party at 88/100, compared to Conservatives’ 71/100 chance of voting Tory again; 2017 Labour voters put their chance of voting the same way in a new election at just 56/100. Some Tories were tempted by the Brexit Party (their mean likelihood of voting this way being 35/100), and some by the Lib Dems (26/100). The SNP, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens all held some appeal for Labour voters. In terms of overall mean likelihood to vote for the party, both Labour and the Tories ranked behind the SNP, the Lib Dems and the Greens, whose score was boosted by an average likelihood of 55/100 among 18-24 year-olds.