New Ball Game
Hugo Rifkind doesn't often write about party politics, but if you ask me he's spot on with his analysis about the prospects of the Lib Dems in the event of another 'hung' Westminster Parliament after the general election in May 2015.
Unless, of course, Scotland votes Yes in the forthcoming independence referendum in which case it will be a whole new ball game altogether.
Have some fun, Nick. Just say what you think
By Hugo Rifkind - The Times
The Lib Dems simply can’t lose. Whatever happens, they’ll be Britain’s third party. They need to be bold, not cagey
Two Liberal Democrats walk into a bar. That’s it, I’m afraid. There’s no hilarious punchline. Only bitter. And maybe nuts.
Just think of the fun you could be having right now if you were a Lib Dem! No, I’m serious. Although by “fun”, please note, I don’t mean the old kind of Lib Dem fun, such as alcoholism, or dog murder, or cactus murder, or pretending to hate gays while secretly being one, or doing unspeakable things to rent boys while apocryphally in the bath, or slagging off “the Jews”, or undermining each other for being a bit old, or having to go to jail because your estranged wife once wasn’t driving a car, or having an affair with somebody who actually isn’t a Russian spy but, let’s be honest, looks like one, or not being able to apologise for sexually harassing people because you insist you didn’t, or donating lots of money, being convicted of fraud and absconding to the Dominican Republic.
No. None of that. I mean good, wholesome political fun, where you say what you actually think about things, and what you like, and what you don’t, and what you’d change if you only could. Why don’t they do this? What have they got to lose?
Nobody else can. Tories are busy running the country, which means if they say they want to do something then they actually have to. Or, if it’s not up to them, then they sound like they’re attacking somebody they should be supporting. For example, imagine if the education secretary was to say that the Home Office should do more to tackle Islamic extremism. See?
Labour types, meanwhile, have a lot to lose, and can see their share of the vote plummet disastrously by just eating rolls badly. Whereas the Lib Dems? They’re in the sweet spot. Granted, they got only a few times as many votes in the Newark by-election as Nick Clegg has had sexual partners, but it doesn’t matter. Last general election they came third. Next general election they’ll also come third. And, while it’s not a given that this will give them a place in government or even a say in it, all the polls and bookies agree that it’s pretty damn likely.
So you’d think they might be able to chill out a bit. Instead, theirs is a party failing to answer two key questions, and they are questions so key that you wonder how they can have the energy each morning to drag themselves from their own beds. If, indeed, that’s where they’re all now sleeping. First, there is the question of what, at this point, success would have looked like. Second, there is the question of what it would look like after the next election. Because obviously without knowing what they wanted to do there’s no way of judging whether they’ve managed to do it. And without knowing what they want to do in the future, we’ve no way of knowing whether we, too, want them to do it.
The first question shouldn’t be hard. A year from now, the Lib Dems’ big achievement in coalition will have been, in a nutshell, coalition. By which I do not just mean sticking the course. The real legacy is those first, vital, constitutional tweaks. With the introduction of fixed-term parliaments, British prime ministers lost the ability to go to the country without parliamentary assent. Past PMs, remember, could call elections any damn time they pleased. These days, unless they control more than two thirds of the Commons (and so probably don’t want an election anyway) they can’t.
Thus, if you’re a PM who forms a coalition, you’re stuck with it. Your junior partners can sneer at you, undermine you and obstruct you, and there’s not much you can do about it, even if you think the electorate is on your side. The only alternative is to run a minority government, forever waiting for the axe. It was a massive change and with implications still poorly understood. It should have changed our politics enormously.
Except it didn’t. Inexplicably, in an age of hung parliaments, with nothing less than a chance at a near-permanent place in government on offer, the Lib Dems have learnt to cower, not strut. Just beyond their fingertips was a new political culture in which a member of a British cabinet could stand up, announce that his or her own prime minister was talking utter balls and still not resign. And yet they never grasped it. As members of a new two-party sort of government, they have been as cagey and circumspect as members of an old, one-party one.
Last week, clutching their pints, Messrs Clegg and Cable could have declared their disagreements openly; with the former declaring that their drubbing at the polls was an inevitable result of no longer being a party of protest and the latter saying he still thought they should protest a bit more, though. Why not? What’s to lose? Even now, members of a Liberal Democrat cabinet could be saying openly that next time they’d rather be in coalition with somebody else. Again, why not? After all, Tories will openly say they’d rather not be in coalition with them. Or they could be saying they want more of the same. If they do. Dear God, though. They could be saying something.
“This government is going to be unlike any other.” So said Nick Clegg in 2010, in a speech entitled “New Politics”, which was his first as deputy prime minister. Only it hasn’t been, has it? Same old stilted trappings of unity, same weird circumlocutions, same old pretence that one person’s bad ideas belong to everybody else too. Just think of the fun they could have had if they’d done it differently. And still come third.
But no. Just bitter. And maybe nuts.
The Lib Dems simply can’t lose. Whatever happens, they’ll be Britain’s third party. They need to be bold, not cagey
Two Liberal Democrats walk into a bar. That’s it, I’m afraid. There’s no hilarious punchline. Only bitter. And maybe nuts.
Just think of the fun you could be having right now if you were a Lib Dem! No, I’m serious. Although by “fun”, please note, I don’t mean the old kind of Lib Dem fun, such as alcoholism, or dog murder, or cactus murder, or pretending to hate gays while secretly being one, or doing unspeakable things to rent boys while apocryphally in the bath, or slagging off “the Jews”, or undermining each other for being a bit old, or having to go to jail because your estranged wife once wasn’t driving a car, or having an affair with somebody who actually isn’t a Russian spy but, let’s be honest, looks like one, or not being able to apologise for sexually harassing people because you insist you didn’t, or donating lots of money, being convicted of fraud and absconding to the Dominican Republic.
No. None of that. I mean good, wholesome political fun, where you say what you actually think about things, and what you like, and what you don’t, and what you’d change if you only could. Why don’t they do this? What have they got to lose?
Nobody else can. Tories are busy running the country, which means if they say they want to do something then they actually have to. Or, if it’s not up to them, then they sound like they’re attacking somebody they should be supporting. For example, imagine if the education secretary was to say that the Home Office should do more to tackle Islamic extremism. See?
Labour types, meanwhile, have a lot to lose, and can see their share of the vote plummet disastrously by just eating rolls badly. Whereas the Lib Dems? They’re in the sweet spot. Granted, they got only a few times as many votes in the Newark by-election as Nick Clegg has had sexual partners, but it doesn’t matter. Last general election they came third. Next general election they’ll also come third. And, while it’s not a given that this will give them a place in government or even a say in it, all the polls and bookies agree that it’s pretty damn likely.
So you’d think they might be able to chill out a bit. Instead, theirs is a party failing to answer two key questions, and they are questions so key that you wonder how they can have the energy each morning to drag themselves from their own beds. If, indeed, that’s where they’re all now sleeping. First, there is the question of what, at this point, success would have looked like. Second, there is the question of what it would look like after the next election. Because obviously without knowing what they wanted to do there’s no way of judging whether they’ve managed to do it. And without knowing what they want to do in the future, we’ve no way of knowing whether we, too, want them to do it.
The first question shouldn’t be hard. A year from now, the Lib Dems’ big achievement in coalition will have been, in a nutshell, coalition. By which I do not just mean sticking the course. The real legacy is those first, vital, constitutional tweaks. With the introduction of fixed-term parliaments, British prime ministers lost the ability to go to the country without parliamentary assent. Past PMs, remember, could call elections any damn time they pleased. These days, unless they control more than two thirds of the Commons (and so probably don’t want an election anyway) they can’t.
Thus, if you’re a PM who forms a coalition, you’re stuck with it. Your junior partners can sneer at you, undermine you and obstruct you, and there’s not much you can do about it, even if you think the electorate is on your side. The only alternative is to run a minority government, forever waiting for the axe. It was a massive change and with implications still poorly understood. It should have changed our politics enormously.
Except it didn’t. Inexplicably, in an age of hung parliaments, with nothing less than a chance at a near-permanent place in government on offer, the Lib Dems have learnt to cower, not strut. Just beyond their fingertips was a new political culture in which a member of a British cabinet could stand up, announce that his or her own prime minister was talking utter balls and still not resign. And yet they never grasped it. As members of a new two-party sort of government, they have been as cagey and circumspect as members of an old, one-party one.
Last week, clutching their pints, Messrs Clegg and Cable could have declared their disagreements openly; with the former declaring that their drubbing at the polls was an inevitable result of no longer being a party of protest and the latter saying he still thought they should protest a bit more, though. Why not? What’s to lose? Even now, members of a Liberal Democrat cabinet could be saying openly that next time they’d rather be in coalition with somebody else. Again, why not? After all, Tories will openly say they’d rather not be in coalition with them. Or they could be saying they want more of the same. If they do. Dear God, though. They could be saying something.
“This government is going to be unlike any other.” So said Nick Clegg in 2010, in a speech entitled “New Politics”, which was his first as deputy prime minister. Only it hasn’t been, has it? Same old stilted trappings of unity, same weird circumlocutions, same old pretence that one person’s bad ideas belong to everybody else too. Just think of the fun they could have had if they’d done it differently. And still come third.
But no. Just bitter. And maybe nuts.
