After the election, will the Lib Dems turn left or right?

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/apr/05/after-election-lib-dems-turn-left-right

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Towards the end of Coalition, James Graham’s Channel 4 dramatisation of the five momentous days in May 2010 that led to the Tory-Lib Dem coalition, there is a memorable moment when Paddy Ashdown – keeper of his party’s conscience – seals the deal for Nick Clegg.

Agonised Lib Dem MPs are meeting to vote on whether to accept or reject going into government with a Conservative party that many of them despise. Ashdown admits that he, like them, has been severely torn. He says he came to the meeting intending to resign. But having examined the coalition deal on the table, his mind was turned. “Fuck it: let’s do it,” Ashdown declares. The tension is broken, applause breaks out, and opposition melts away.

The records show that the subsequent vote of MPs in favour of teaming up with the Tories was won by 50 to none, with a handful of abstentions. The scene then switches to No 10 where two smiling young leaders are about to face the cameras in the Rose Garden as happy partners in a marriage that both agreed would usher in a new kind of politics.

Almost five years on, last Thursday night, in the ITV leaders’ debate, there was a moment that was just as gripping, but altogether less harmonious – and certainly not “new politics”. Clegg turned on Cameron, accusing him of planning “ideologically driven cuts” of £3bn to the schools budget in the next parliament. A visibly angry Cameron fired back: “Nick, I defend all of the decisions we took and I think your sort of pick-and-mix approach really is not going to convince anyone.” Clegg was furious. “No, no, no. I remember vividly when your party wanted to cut spending for schools at the beginning of the last parliament and I said no because you don’t make society fairer by cutting the money that goes to nurseries, colleges and schools.”

There was nothing confected about the angry exchanges. Five years of coalition has taken its toll on both leaders and both parties. The Lib Dems, having seen their support slump dramatically while in government, are now fighting for survival on 7 May. They have an uphill struggle and a difficult balance to strike, preaching in one breath about the achievements of coalition while in the next denouncing the Tories, as they seek to reassert some independence.

Meanwhile, the Conservatives, desperate to become the largest party, attack the Lib Dems for holding them back and say a vote for Clegg’s party will let Labour in. The 2010 marriage is in its final, bitter throes.

Across the country, in marginal seats where Tories are fighting Lib Dems, it’s now open war. Last week in Eastleigh, Hampshire – a Lib Dem stronghold where the Tories came second in 2010 but which Cameron’s party is now desperate to seize – the Lib Dem MP Mike Thornton was telling constituents that the Conservatives plan savage cuts in the next parliament.

His leaflets say the Tories will “cut vital services like our libraries, youth service, and support for pensioners and disabled people”. On Wednesday he spent 20 minutes on the doorstep trying to persuade Iris Wright, who works for the Royal College of Nursing and who has voted Lib Dem before, to stick with his party because they will pump billions more into the NHS.

But she is torn and suggests she has been thinking about what the Tories are saying. “I dislike Labour so much that it is about keeping them out,” she says. Tim Bearder, a local activist doing the rounds with Thornton, says he has not been so nervous about the Lib Dems’ chances in Eastleigh since they first took the seat in a byelection in 1994. His message to voters is that “we have to be terrified about the £12bn of Tory cuts”.

In Lib Dem-held Wells in Somerset, where Tessa Munt had a majority of only 800 over the Tories in 2010, the Conservatives use Clegg’s name as a form of insult. She’s “Nick Clegg’s candidate”, according to the line pumped out by her Conservative rival James Heappey. Munt rejects this connection, while playing down her closeness to the national party.

“No, sorry, that’s not entirely right”, Munt says of Heappey’s description. “I’m Somerset’s Liberal Democrat candidate.”

There is not a yellow rosette, nor indeed a smidgen of yellow, to be found among her four-strong canvassing team. “It’s Tessa Munt,” she bellows on doorsteps. “Come in, come in,” says one female voter. Munt declines but asks whether she can count on her support on 7 May. “Maybe,” is the response. “We want to vote for you but I really, really don’t want Ed Miliband in. We’re going to talk about it as a family.”

The Lib Dems admit privately that if they hold on to more than 30 of their 56 seats they will be happy on 8 May. If the Tories are throwing everything they have at Clegg’s party in southern marginals, they face similar fights against Labour in the north. And nowhere is the yellow-red battle more intense than in Clegg’s own constituency of Sheffield Hallam.

I just cannot see what the Tories could give us that would make it palatable. It would have to be something spectacular

A poll by Lord Ashcroft placed Clegg, who secured 19,096 votes more than third-placed Labour in 2010, two points behind Labour’s Oliver Coppard with five weeks to go to polling day. Labour is pouring in teams of activists and its posters outnumber the Lib Dems on almost every street.

Coppard says the Lib Dems have changed their message since 2010 because the threat has changed: “Nick Clegg’s approach and literature is all focused on winning over Ukip and Tory voters … they are the people he’s relying on to get re-elected.

“In 2010 he was trying to appeal to this leftwing bloc in Sheffield Hallam, standing against the Tories. He’s now trying to appeal to this rightwing bloc and say ‘I’m standing against the Labour party’.”

The Lib Dems say their own polling in Sheffield Hallam is positive (though they are keeping it private) and argue that Ashcroft’s survey did not name Clegg as the candidate, so did not reflect their true support. As in Eastleigh, they say they are “confident” of hanging on. But the contest is soaking up limited money and time because it is one they know they simply cannot afford to lose.

While the Lib Dems’ most urgent preoccupation is to minimise losses on 7 May, by fighting ruthless campaigns against Tories and Labour, fears about their post-election future are already beginning to bear down heavily on the party. With the Tories and Labour neck and neck in the polls, the Lib Dems, even with a severely depleted number of MPs, could still hold the balance of power after the election.

They know they will probably face another agonising decision about whether to go into another coalition with the Tories again, if they are the largest party, or with Labour for a first time if they prevail. Or would, as many Lib Dems maintain, a battered party be better off recovering for a while in opposition?

Behind the scenes, MPs, peers and activists are beginning to ask “what next?”. Recollections of those tense days in May 2010 are etched on their memories. If that was a difficult time, they know the post-election negotiations this time could be even more traumatic. The official line is to wait and see what result the voters deliver. But splits are already evident, in an ominous sign of how bitter it could all become.

Clegg, and his supporters on the right of the party are said, privately, to prefer the idea of teaming up again with the Tories – the devil they know. But the left of the party is deeply uneasy. Lib Dems ask whether it can really be possible for them to marry, divorce, then remarry the Conservatives so fast and retain any credibility. “We are, after all, a party that has a trust problem,” said one MP last week.

The likes of Vince Cable and Tim Farron, both likely leadership contenders if Clegg loses his seat or quits, are deeply uneasy about talk of another Tory deal, particularly as Cameron’s party is wedded to an in/out EU referendum and proposes huge extra cuts to welfare.

The issue of Europe looms like a nightmare for many Lib Dems. They fear their party could be about to give the Tories permission to hold a vote by the end of 2017 which might lead to the UK’s exit from the EU. “To say that would be a disastrous legacy for a pro-European party like ours is the understatement of the century,” says one Lib Dem minister.

Many activists – and senior party officials, who will play important roles in advising on any new coalition – are willing to voice their concerns publicly. Gordon Lishman, who is on the party’s federal executive, which would be consulted on a new deal, is one of those who would prefer a deal with Labour: “Given the Tory policies on the EU and welfare, I don’t see how another deal with the Tories is possible. Going in with the Conservatives again would not be good for a Liberal party.”

Martin Tod, also on the executive, says: “I just cannot see what the Tories could give us that would make it palatable. It would have to be something spectacular like the single transferable vote system for Westminster elections, which the Tories would never concede.” Tod predicts that Lib Dem peers may lead a revolt against any plan for a second coalition with the Tories.

Naomi Smith, chair of the Lib Dems’ largest grassroots grouping, the Social Liberal Forum, says: “Many Liberal Democrat activists would find it unacceptable for our parliamentarians to help facilitate David Cameron’s harebrained plan for renegotiating the UK’s relationship with the EU, which is designed solely to avoid civil war in British Conservatism. The Tories continue to put the national interest at risk by playing politics over the issue of Europe, and Liberal Democrats should play no part in that.”

But there are plenty who take a more pragmatic view – which is that the Lib Dems are now a party of compromise and that being in government with the Tories again is entirely possible. Munt, in Wells, seems to be one of them. “David Cameron isn’t ideological,” she says. “You can work with a person like that.”

Adrian Sanders, the Lib Dem MP for Torbay, who was against a coalition with the Tories in 2010, also seems open-minded about whether it is Tory or Labour. “The coalition was in the nation’s interests: everyone can see that. I don’t think beyond 7 May. Anything could happen.”

Sunday’s Opinium/Observer poll shows Lib Dem voters to be deeply split over what the party should do after the election. For now, the main focus is on survival. But, after the election, an argument about what the party is really for is set to break out. It is one that even Paddy Ashdown at his most forceful and succinct may struggle to settle.