The theory that Labour should handle the Liberal Democrats with kid-gloves for fear that damaging their vote will inadvertently help the Tories to victory has become increasingly hard to justify.
Yet that is what Joan Ryan was essentially getting at in her article The Hidden Majority Myth from the June edition of Progress.
I can’t disagree with Joan’s assertion that targeting only Lib Dem seats is a recipe for failure. Of course, Labour’s appeal needs to be far more broad-reaching than that and we should not become too focused on any single campaigning strategy.
But suggesting that Labour should only target the Lib Dems in Lab-Lib marginals is, to me, both defeatist and unambitious.
It goes without saying that we would not want to damage the Lib Dems just for the sake of it in areas where doing so would hand the Tories an easy victory when they might otherwise face a Lib Dem challenge.
But to me it is equally obvious that we should be targeting the Lib Dems in other areas – particularly where a Tory majority over Labour has been smaller than the total Lib Dem vote.
Those are the seats where Labour can do precisely what Joan doubts – unearth the hidden majority by demonstrating that Labour is the only party capable of delivering progressive social change.
And there has never been a better time to do it. The Lib Dems are a spent force. They have languished for decades on the sidelines drafting policies ranging from unrealistic to utopian.
It’s a privileged position of idealism they’ve been able to enjoy for years because the prospect of actually forming a government was so alien that many of their policymakers never dreamt they might one day need to implement anything.
But now they have had an opportunity to deliver and have failed miserably.
Rather than affecting government policy, the Lib Dems have played the role of willing conspirators, dancing to the Tory tune as Cameron and his cronies inflict a damaging ideological social experiment on the nation.
That is why the political landscape has shifted. That is why the Lib Dems can no longer be viewed as potential allies to Labour. And that is why Labour can now confidently target voters have lent the Lib Dems their support without fear that they will necessarily be helping the Tories in doing so.
For the same reasons, I must also disagree with the suggestion that Lib Dem voters who could not be persuaded to vote Labour before could never be convinced.
The theory goes that if 18 years of Tory rule in 1997, or indeed the prospect of a return to it in 2010, wasn’t enough to turn Lib Dems voters then nothing would.
But, again, the major difference now is that those voters have now seen evidence of something they hadn’t seen in 1997 or 2010: a dreadfully inept performance from Lib Dems in government.
I mean, seriously, how many people who voted Lib Dem in 2010 are going to be able to look back on their decision at the next general election and think: ‘Well they delivered for me last time and they’ll deliver again’?
The answer is, of course, none. There is the issue of the Lib Dems’ reliance on the personal vote, of course, but I don’t believe for a moment that that is as important as others suggest.
Looking back at the local elections in May, there’s plenty of evidence to support the view that former Lib Dem voters and supporters are leaving in droves.
And that’s why Labour must now take a firmer line against the Lib Dems.
Labour has reached a crossroads. We either continue to tread carefully around the Lib Dems to ensure we have potential allies if we need them, or we set out our own stall and stick to it.
We should go for the latter every time. It will be a dark day indeed if we are reliant on Lib Dem support to return to government, and we will be handling damaged goods if we do.
Joan’s assertion that Labour must now appeal to all sections of society across the land is quite right: but it is equally true that we should be unafraid of targeting Lib Dem voters to achieve that.
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Chris Williamson is MP for Derby North
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