What Is The Point Of The Lib Dems?

Spot on:

At last the Liberal Democrats have answered the question that someone, somewhere may well have been asking. Who would they favour if they held the balance of power in a hung Parliament? It turns out that the answer is anyone who will let them sit at the big table and is willing to sign Nick Clegg's autograph book.

There's been a certain amount of straw-clutching in the last few days because one poll has suggested that the gap between Labour and the Tories is narrowing, which would increase the chances of neither party commanding a majority in the House of Commons. The poll has been built up into far more than it really is with those who see what they want to see, forgetting that one extremely unlikely swallow does not make a spring.

At the weekend Clegg announced that "whichever party have the strongest mandate from the British people, it seems to me that they have the first right to try and govern." While he was right to point out that in a democracy it should be the people who decide who governs, it does rather ignore the fact that those who vote for Clegg's party are making a political decision which should count for something. In effect Clegg has decided to cast his party in the mould of a neutral referee without philosophical allegiance or strong opinions either way. He may as well have indicated that if you want to decide who runs the country after the election, don't vote Lib Dem because they'll take their lead from everyone else anyway.

What makes it even more bizarre is that this damp cloth of an announcement is seen as the strongest statement Clegg has ever made on the subject and, as such, is news. Just don't ask him what his favourite biscuit is for heaven's sake or we'll be here all day.

Tony Benn often remarks that politicians are either weathercocks or sign posts - that is, those who point whichever way they are blown and those who stick to their principles no matter what. However, it appears he left out the category of limp knitted windsock, which is where Clegg is building his electoral niche.

Just because someone's in an organisation that has more in common with uncultured yoghurt than a political party, that doesn't mean they should be demonised. There are good people in campaigns to defend council housing, against various wars and to protect particular public services who also happen to be members of the Lib Dems. When Lib Dem Cambridge MP David Howarth attended the G20 protests as a legal observer and eloquently spoke out against the behaviour of the police, I don't have the slightest inclination to moderate my praise with a "yeah, but..."

There's no question that some of the vote the Lib Dems receive is to the left of new Labour. Those whose progressive instincts are repelled by Trident, ID cards, the Iraq occupation and a host of other monstrosities that I don't need to go into here have often lent their vote to the Lib Dems. What these people rarely do though is begin to see themselves as "Lib Dem voters" and, as such, that vote is extremely soft and vulnerable. In recent times we've seen the new Lib Dem leadership begin to shift the party towards a more Cameron-lite style of politics - which is no mean feat when you consider that helium has difficulty being lighter than Cameron.

Clegg's announcement at conference that he was for savage cuts and was ditching the commitment to scrapping tuition fees was an attempt to look more substantial in an era of financial crisis. But for many this simply came across like the sidekick of an Eton bully egging on the violence without the clout to actually join in themselves. When Clegg surprised his party's policy-making body on the abolition of tuition fees he hoped to signal that he was up to the task of handling the recession, but he ended up showing that he was just an identikit politician, as undemocratic and cynical as other party leaders but less influential.

A party without an identity is hardly up to the task of tackling global problems like climate change, the financial collapse or war. If you don't believe in anything you're not fit to govern. Currently the Lib Dems' local campaigns even seem to be pushing the party towards a kind of "patriotic" pro-war position and they are making more than clear that the one area of spending they won't be trying to make cuts in is the armed forces. The leaflet that came through my door this weekend focused solely on the local candidate's loyalty to the troops in Afghanistan. This isn't just unconvincing - it means that none of the three largest parties is even trying to represent public opinion on ending the occupation.

The nation's forgotten third party seems to be on a mission to become completely indistinguishable from the very worst parts of the stifling consensus at the heart of so-called respectable politics. Clegg's announcement that he'd just go with the flow after the next election and isn't bothered either way is hardly inspiring.
Partly because it emphasises that his party is always "the would-be king-maker," never the "would-be king," but mainly because it demonstrates how alien conviction politics is to the leadership. Judging from the early reaction from Lib Dem blogs even their activists aren't too impressed with the new announcement.

This may partly be due to the way they get to act as spectators to major decisions made by their party rather than actual participants. Some thought they'd already ruled out a coalition with Labour, others that they'd taken a vow against the Tories, but no-one seemed astonished that the actual position was a rather feeble "whoever." There's no doubt the Lib Dems will swing left again when the wind blows them that way. But whether leaning to the left or the right, without a philosophical anchor there's nothing much to get excited about.