Liberals didn't abandon Nick Clegg; he abandoned them
Whatever you think of the current Labour Party, there’s no denying that it knows how to lose an election.
The morning of 8 May brought a crushing defeat, but for all the upset there was no time wasted. Miliband resigned and straight away conversations started about what could be done differently – and under who – to win in 2020.
Coming, as it did, on the morning the party hoped to walk victorious into Downing Street, this was admirably resilient. But what of the night’s other losers, the Liberal Democrats?
While there is no consensus on why Labour lost it, the Liberal Democrats can be under no illusions: five years of propping up a Tory government had ground voter support down to a nub.
Yet somehow, the party seems to have missed this message. Its leaders speak as if the electorate lost the election, not them – as if no mistakes have been made, save for by the voters.
Nick Clegg, stepping down, said the results had been ‘crushing and unkind‘. Paddy Ashdown said the outcome was ‘cruel‘. You’d think the public had failed to support them out of spite.
Clegg went on to say his MPs had lost their seats because of ‘forces entirely beyond their control’ and that the ‘politics of fear’ had cost them – the latter point was echoed by Vince Cable.
In a moment of undisguised contempt for the electorate, Clegg evoked a Liberal Democrat councillor who, on losing his seat, said he wholeheartedly accepted the voters’ verdict if it was their thanks for the scraps begged from the Tory table.
The notion that the coalition might have been a mistake, meanwhile, is not indulged at all. The party is agreed – it was brave and selfless to leap at power like a dog after a stick, and a move all should admire.
If a failure must be considered, it’s that the party did not adequately communicate its greatness. Yet this too can be someone else’s fault. One councillor told me they blamed the lack of a Liberal Democrat mouthpiece on Fleet Street.
Even Norman Lamb, who at least accepts some wrongdoing, seems to only give ground on the tuition fee U-turn, otherwise defending the Liberal Democrats’ time in Toryland.
One might expect something like humility from a party that lost 85 per cent of its MPs, but the talk is mainly of rebuilding, and – with the coalition not disavowed – it’s on these toxic foundations.
The year after entering the Conservative coalition, Lib Dem party membership plummeted 25 per cent. Herein lies the key.
The Liberal Democrat voter base was, in no small part, composed of people on the centre-left. Did Clegg and co really expect to get into bed with a right-wing party and retain that support?
For many, this loss will seem well earned and richly deserved. Here is a party that not only helped the Tories into power, but continued to support them even when its own values were the price.
Whether or not the party did the right thing by sporting a Tory leash (it didn’t) is neither here nor there. The voters have decided it was wrong and, until the survivors distance themselves from the decision, they will be starved of support.
Clegg may mourn a sad result for liberalism, but liberalism is alive and well. Its followers didn’t abandon his party; his party abandoned them.
What matters now is who liberals choose to support in the future and, at this stage, it’s not the Liberal Democrats.
Michael Havis is a blogger and reporter. Read more of his work here
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13 Responses to “The Lib Dems’ contempt for the electorate will do them no favours”
stevep
The Lib Dems deserved everything they got on election night.
5 years ago they pitched themselves as a progressive left-of-centre party to capture disillusioned Labour voters (including myself, who voted tactically, like a fool), only to find them getting into bed with Cameron.
They have let the Conservatives in twice now. Once, by the aforementioned Cameron deal. Twice by ensuring no voter with a conscience would vote for them at the last election because of their treachery, their subsequent collapse benefiting the Conservatives twice as much as Labour ( Scotland is a separate issue). They deserve to rot in a dung heap of old Country Life, The Spectator and Horse and Hound magazines for the next 50 or so years.
AlanGiles
I’d just make the point that Clegg resigned within an hour of Miliband, however Jim Murphy took NINE DAYS and wanted his ego massaged with the vote of confidence and his petulant resignation speech.
Farage resigned of course the same day as Ed & Nick – only to reinstate himself three days later
Torybushhug
Liberal is a dirty word.
The public have come to detest all things liberal because too often liberal imperatives privilege those that want to glean advantage from British fairness.
Clegg was trumped by Farage during the EU debates, why, because people saw straight through simplistic liberal populism. For example; Liberals tell us we can only co-operate on cross border policing by being in the EU, and yet the EVIDENCE gives many examples of nations not in the EU that do just that. The liberals convinced themselves they are the guardians of evidence, nothing could be more wrong, they are guardians of unimaginative weak minded bias.
stevep
No it`s not “cruel”. Cruel is expanded tuition fees, the bedroom tax, two recessions, reduced workers rights and five more years of the same and more due largely to Cleggs` vanity and the Lib Dem`s treachery.
AlanGiles
And “contempt” is a pompous little man who calls ordinary people “trash” and knocks back £150 steaks while contemplating the poor, announcing he wants to be leader and then backing down three days later because he doesn’t like media scrutiny. All parties have people who don’t show their party in the best light