As the election finally reaches its conclusion, Britain has never looked more like a two-party state. (This is not to erase the prominence of the SNP, of course: but they are not so much a third party as the dominant entity in a neighbouring one-party state). So what happened to the progressive alliance, or the “coalition of chaos”, as Theresa May helpfully framed it, which, at the start of the campaign, so many centre, soft and sort-of left hopes were pinned on? Did it run out of steam? Or is this what success was always going to look like, supporters of minor parties throwing their weight behind their most likely left-leaning victor, indistinguishable from a Labour surge?
Clive Lewis, the Labour candidate for Norwich South, who was in the middle of a campaign evening that involved a Bernie Sanders-style “barnstorm”, said: “We went round to a load of Greens giving them posters saying: ‘We’re Green but we’re backing Clive Lewis.’” This is the final-stage iteration of the alliance – vote Labour where they can win; anywhere else, back the strongest opponent of the Conservatives. It’s tactical voting, basically, turbo-charged with a print budget and some tech support (websites such as Compass’s Progressive Alliance show you who your viable progressive candidate is, swapmyvote.uk offers a vote swap, if you’ve had to vote against your beliefs in the service of a Conservative defeat). If progressives really do “vote smart”, this will inevitably hit the vote share of the Greens. That, initially, was a hit they were prepared to take.
By nomination time, Thursday 11 May, 30 prospective MPs had stood aside for another progressive candidate who they thought had a better chance of winning. In Ealing Central and Acton, Twickenham, Lewes, Carlisle, Workington and Copeland, deals had been struck for a progressive alliance. Except for Brighton Pavilion, where the Liberal Democrat, Paul Chandler, made way with a very graceful speech, all these concessions were made by the Green party. They were offering Labour another 12 seats, for just one reciprocation – the Isle of Wight – but the leadership was resolute in refusing (indeed, this is the only thing I can think of on which Corbyn and the rest of his party agree).
Something similar happened as a result of Tim Farron’s rejection – there were a further 10 seats which Green candidates were prepared to cede for the Lib Dems. Of course, who knows where this might have led had Labour and the Lib Dems had conversations of their own?
So as the nominations were in and the campaigns began in earnest, relations were poor between progressives at the highest levels. Yet that didn’t deter local activists – if anything, it encouraged them.
“I’ve been involved in politics for 40 years, and I’ve never known anything like it,” said Steve Williams. We were talking about a public meeting at the start of May, in Jeremy Hunt’s constituency of South West Surrey: around 200 constituents, members from all the progressive parties, plus allies who weren’t members of any, held a hustings. Susan Ryland from the Greens, Ollie Perkiss from the Lib Dems, and Dr Louise Irvine from the National Health Action party (NHA) made their cases. The room voted for Irvine as the most likely to beat the health secretary, given her coal-face knowledge of the NHS, though Williams emphasises that “she obviously spoke across a range of policies, relating to education, to Brexit, to a fairer voting system”. Only Ryland officially took her name off the ballot, but informally, everyone in that room moved to campaign for Irvine. There is a certain serendipity specific to South West Surrey. Dr Irvine versus health secretary Hunt has focus – it turns the election, in this one constituency, into a referendum on the NHS. It has the drama of a rematch, since it was Irvine who successfully took Hunt to court over his decision to close Lewisham hospital in 2013.
If you’re a wonk with a long memory, you might call this the Martin Bell manoeuvre: take a stunningly unpopular aspect of the conservative track record (Bell was taking a stand against corruption), identify the candidate who embodies it, unite behind his or her most obvious opponent. Shipley is similar: the sitting candidate, Philip Davies, is such a textbook misogynist – the only MP to vote against the ratification of the Istanbul convention – that it made perfect sense, to everyone except the Labour candidate, to move behind Sophie Walker, leader of the Women’s Equality party.
What makes those decisions easiest of all is the size of the Conservative majority: Jeremy Hunt’s is over 28,000, Philip Davies’ nearly 10,000. Progressive parties have everything to gain and nothing to lose that they haven’t already probably lost.
Corbyn’s opposition to any alliance is apparently implacable, but the same doesn’t go for Momentum. There was a lot of discussion of electoral pacts and workarounds at their World Transformed conference last September, and Gavin Thompson, 30, a Labour member in Newcastle and member of Momentum, describes (in rather oblique terms) the negotiations that have happened since April in the constituencies of Barrow, Copeland, Workington, Carlisle, Penrith and Borders and Hexham. “At the end of the day, when an alliance happens, each of them is going to be asked to give something, so each of them has to get something. At a national level, that’d be a piece of cake. Local people are restricted in what they can give.
“But,” he continues, “we still wanted to have these conversations, so we had two scenarios. One is where the minor party affiliates to the major party and becomes part of it. It loses its image, its brand and its reputation. But it gains influence. God, it would give us some great candidates, immediately. The other option is basically tactical voting.”
Where there’s a cluster of potentially progressive seats in a blue area, the ground seems more fertile, maybe because of the sense of siege. While the only explicit deals in Sussex are Brighton Pavilion (Lib Dems for Greens) and Brighton Kemptown (Greens for Lib Dems), the seats of Hove, Lewes and Eastbourne are also targets, as Robbie Hirst, 23-year-old founder of the Sussex Progressives, describes: “We’re trying to create an environment where progressive parties can communicate with each other and trust each other. We’ve been building that since last July. So when the election was called, there were lots of relationships in place to make arrangements quite quickly.”
Brighton was the first place to hold a “barnstorm”, which is where a group of people, some affiliated to a party, others, not, volunteered for an action – a phone bank or canvas, an event – in support of whichever progressive candidate stood the best chance. These barnstorms have since taken place in Cardiff, Carlisle, north London and Twickenham.
The Liberal Democrats came off as the missing puzzle piece, high-profile figures coming out in support of alliances and then going back in again. Vince Cable openly endorsed Labour’s Ealing candidate, Rupa Huq, and advocated “paper candidates” (that is, where the party fields a candidate but nobody campaigns for them) at the start of May, only to write off any potential deals by the middle of the month on the grounds that time had run out.
To declare an interest, finally: I’m a supporter of Compass, which has been pushing the progressive alliance for two years. I intend to vote Labour in my constituency, Vauxhall, and find a Labour person to vote-swap with in the Isle of Wight, to vote Green (which will not be easy, as I understand there are only four of them). I accept in advance that, whether it’s effective or not, the impact of the progressive alliance will largely be invisible on Friday morning. Yet, as Neal Lawson, the chair of Compass, has said, it’s “alliance or annihilation”. Or maybe both, but it’s worth a shot.
The question at this stage is whether or not this will leave any mark on the landscape, whether locally or centrally, concretely or atmospherically, whether there will be anything to build on, whatever needs building. I doubt it will have a substantial effect on Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party – tempt it to cooperate in the future, or move it towards proportional representation – but it has found a courageous proponent in Clive Lewis, whatever that means in the medium term.
I doubt, too, that the Greens will remember it with unalloyed enthusiasm, since it will surely reduce their vote share: yet the local alliances forged between Green activists and Momentum will have created networks. Momentum, whatever you think of its stance, has already shown itself able to organise new events in new ways. The non-aggression pacts and the rare occasions where hustings were held and some concrete action came from them have made a vital point: that the time is well past when progressives fighting one another was a local party’s most important work.
Crucially, it has driven people across multiple progressive parties to iterate the aims they share: it may not be immediately obvious what that translates into, but it’s impossible to imagine anything generated without it.
