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
Yep, but Clegg`s certainly showed his party where darkness and obscurity lies and given the voting public a bitter lesson in trust.
Cylux
It’s hard work being the protest vote and the ‘not labour, not tory’ vote when you’re actually given a shot at power and blow it as badly as the lib dems did. The reversal on tuition fees pretty much annihilated their student support, with student driven campaigns against them up and down the nation. Plus if you want to get Tory, you’re better off voting Tory and cut out the orange book middle-man altogether.
Secondly their god awful decision to ‘compromise’ for a referendum on Alternative Vote rather than for their preferred model – they lost, majorly, (no real surprise, it’s not like there was the enthusiasm to campaign for the system they didn’t want) and even if they’d have won, all the AV system would have done would have been to entrench the two party system even further. Quite possibly losing even more seats than they did.
Harold
The Lib Dems in my area always positioned themselves as the alternative, most were “wet” Tories who did not like the Conservatives but were conservatives, consequently I think they voted for various parties or not at all as they were never part of any political parties base.