Two of the most critical decisions facing the new Liberal Democrat leader, whether it is Nick Clegg or Chris Huhne, will be how to handle the party’s electoral and political strategy and its relationship with the other parties.
The close relationship between Labour and the Lib Dems under Tony Blair and Paddy Ashdown saw them in coalition in the Scottish executive from 1999-2007 and a three-year ‘partnership agreement’ between 2000-03 in the Welsh assembly. Charles Kennedy took the party into the 2001 election, ‘competing with Labour but fighting the Tories’, signalling an unofficial anti-Conservative alliance that made perfect sense for a party which had made virtually all of its advances at Westminster at the expense of the Conservatives since its inception in 1988.
The aftermath of the 2001 terror attacks in New York provided a catalyst for the Lib Dems to decouple from New Labour. Although the party backed the NATO bombing in Kosovo and the war in Afghanistan, the Lib Dems recast themselves as ‘the effective opposition’ to the Labour government. By 2003, under Kennedy, it had become the party of opposition to the war in Iraq and had developed a vigorous critique of New Labour – from top-up fees to the marginal rate of income tax – that seemed to have traditional Labour voters, rather than discontented Tories, in its sights.
However, there was a tactical dilemma in the electoral appeal of the Lib Dems at the last campaign that hints at their contemporary predicament. A direct appeal to ‘one nation Tories’ was feasible but by 2005 the party had come to adopt policies that were less palatable to this very audience: a marginal rate of 50 per cent income tax for top earners and the plans to replace council tax with a local income tax were bound to be problematic for the very voters the party had seduced for so long. The 2005 decapitation strategy was a complete failure as the Lib Dems lost ground to the Conservatives. Furthermore, the perception of Cameron’s Conservatives – and his excursion onto Lib Dem territory in education and environment policy – has created an obvious problem for a strategy that already looked to have run its course by 2005.
The new leader has to instil a sense of purpose in the party and plan its post-election strategy immediately. As it discovered in 1992, a public perception of a tight contest will lead to speculation about who the likely coalition partners might be and therefore put pressure on the third party vote.
The Lib Dems’ post-election power may not depend on them performing well at the next general election. Losing 20 seats to the Conservatives in the south of England might not be a disaster if the outcome is a hung parliament in which the Lib Dems act as kingmaker. However, similarly promising positions in devolved institutions in Scotland and Wales were wasted as the party was outmanoeuvred by the SNP and sidelined by a Labour-Plaid coalition in Cardiff. The Lib Dems can’t simply wait for Godot to make them relevant again in Westminster.
It is uncertain that the Conservatives are a viable option as a partner for the Lib Dems; they might take a leaf from the SNP’s book in Scotland and point out that if the Tories were to be the largest party in a hung parliament the Lib Dems’ room for coalition with a ‘discredited’ Labour would be limited and in any case the Conservatives are likely to resist electoral reform at all costs. Before the party can deal with Labour, bridges burnt by the Blair-Ashdown project, the failure of the Jenkins report, civil liberties and foreign policy need to be rebuilt. Would Labour be prepared to deal on electoral reform? Would the Lib Dems give up on their favoured STV? No one knows the answer to these questions yet. But the new Lib Dem leader must start to address them the day after he’s elected.