As Liberal Democrats gather in Bournemouth this weekend for their annual conference, there will be much contemplation of what their terrible election result means for their future. It won’t be the first time the party has asked itself existential questions: formed from a marriage of convenience between the SDP and Liberal parties in the late 1980s, the Lib Dems have always been a party that has struggled to define its raison d’être.
But in the context of a majoritarian electoral system dominated by two main parties, this has – until now – helped rather than hindered them electorally, enabling them to manoeuvre themselves into short-term gaps in the political marketplace. Clegg achieved record success in 2010 by capitalising on disaffection amongst Labour voters, winning them over with the party’s symbolic opposition to the Iraq war and its pledge to scrap tuition fees.
But then came coalition with the Conservatives, resulting in a huge disjunct with those who had voted for the party: hence its resounding rejection at the polls in 2015.
Given the leftwards lurch of Labour, the temptation will be for the party to go back to positioning itself as a moderate-left alternative to Labour. So far, this seems to be Tim Farron’s strategy. This might be the right strategy if an SDP-style split looked likely, leaving space for the Lib Dems to try to reinvent themselves as a permanent home for Labour moderates. But those on Labour’s right have learned their lesson from the 1980s and have vowed to fight from within.
The danger for the Lib Dems, then, is this strategy leaves them having to reinvent themselves again when Corbyn’s tenure comes to an end, whether that’s in two, five or 10 years. How many more turns will voters tolerate before they ditch the party altogether?
Instead, the Lib Dems should be looking to the window of opportunity that is opening up as a result of broader, long-term electoral shifts. Cameron may have scraped a majority in 2015, but growing fragmentation of the electorate means coalition government will be more likely in the future, even without electoral reform.
This gives the Lib Dems a new opportunity to shake off the opportunism the electoral system has forced upon them and drop the pointless charade of developing policy platforms as if they are a government-in-waiting. They could instead look to carve out a niche as a coalition party, focusing on territory neglected altogether by both main parties, such as the right to privacy and progressive internationalism.
Eight seats might feel like a depleted base from which to do this, but it is achievable with imagination. Politicians such as Nigel Farage have been able to achieve much more in terms of shaping the national agenda, even from outside Parliament. Perhaps the biggest challenge posed by its vastly shrunken group of parliamentarians is that it has left the Lib Dems, never high achievers on the diversity front, a party of eight white men: changing this should be near the top of Farron’s agenda.
Behind the scenes, another top priority must be working on their coalition negotiation strategy. It is not inconceivable that if they recover, the Lib Dems could find themselves in the position of kingmaker in 2020, given the Conservatives may be facing a dent in their popularity as a result of having made swingeing cuts, and Labour might still look unlikely to have recovered its status as a credible alternative.
Clegg did terribly out of the coalition negotiations in 2010; the weak concession he extracted on AV set back the battle for electoral reform by a generation, a mistake they could ill-afford.
There are of course limited votes in the coalition party strategy. But it is a fallacy to think the right strategy for small parties is to maximise short-term votes at all costs: this is the sort of thinking that leads to tuition fee-style pledges and eventual decline.
The longer-term shifts in Britain’s electoral dynamics mean that even without electoral reform, there may be a space emerging for a national party that seeks to build a small but loyal base, which increases the chances of them holding the balance of power when either main party fails to get a majority. This is the future the Liberal Democrats should embrace.
