Party Lines

What are the Lib Dems? Why are the Lib Dems? If they did not exist, then would anyone bother to invent them?

It is easy to say to someone like Jeremy Browne that he knows that he could never make it in the much larger field of the Conservative Party, so he is a Lib Dem with an eye on a hung Parliament or on a small majority for one of the two major parties.

It is easy to say to someone like Tim Farron that he knows that he could never make it in the much larger field of the Labour Party, so he is a Lib Dem with an eye on a hung Parliament or on a small majority for one of the two major parties.

It is easy to say that Nick Clegg not merely would be, but is, a failed Conservative apparatchik, just as the man whom he beat for Lib Dem Leader, Chris Huhne, not merely would have been, but was, a failed Labour activist once he had joined that party along with the rest of the International Marxist Group.

Yet somehow this does not quite work, especially on the Lib Dem Left. Farron, or Simon Hughes, or Steve Webb, is somehow not quite imaginable as a Labour figure. He could only be a Lib Dem.

Never discount the social and cultural side of these things, either. That is also true of Labour politicians who might ostensibly just as easily be Conservatives, and of Conservatives who might ostensibly just easily be Labour. Except when done very early in life, few people who have made such leaps have found the experience agreeable.

There are still going to be 30 Lib Dem MPs come May. That is largely Labour's fault. Thanks to the Coalition, it could have taken scores of seats that it could never previously have considered, nor will be able to do so again for half a century if it does not take them next year, including most of those which currently return Lib Dems.

It has failed to select the strong local candidates necessary, with or without prior party allegiance, or to spend the necessary cash, which everyone from the unions to Lords Sainsbury and Sugar have in abundance.

In the way that the ideologically coherent and organisationally disciplined Communist Party used to be a moderating influence on the much more freewheeling Labour Left, so Labour could be a moderating influence on the Greens and on the decidedly similar left wing of the Lib Dems.

Might the Conservatives moderate the Lib Dem Right? That is mostly patrician Whigs without any such need. As for the rest, people in the vein of Mark Littlewood, if they were Conservatives, then they would now be defecting to UKIP. But probably not finding it very conducive, as Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless will not, and as the self-styled "Radical Whig" Daniel Hannan would not.

UKIP is not a classical liberal, a libertarian or a Radical Whig party in the way that Marxist parties are Marxist. It is more a vehicle for a lower-middle-class populist Right that may defend or promote individual policies informed by, or at least compatible with, such a position, but which has read little or no such literature, which would be alienated and even disgusted by a very great deal of it, and which would certainly not always, or even ordinarily, agree with many of the logical conclusions of a classical liberal, a libertarian or a Radical Whig ideology.

In that sense, UKIP is much more akin to the (also very anti-EU) working-class populist Left of Dennis Skinner or Ronnie Campbell, which may defend or promote individual policies informed by, or at least compatible with, a Marxist position, but which has read little or no such literature, which would be alienated and even disgusted by a very great deal of it, and which would certainly not always, or even ordinarily, agree with many of the logical conclusions of a Marxist ideology.

If anyone ever did create a party specifically for that working-class populist Left, and the inherent unlikelihood of that is compounded by the fact that those who adhere to it are Labour in the way that the Basques are Basque, then Marxists would not be happy in that party, and would be most unlikely to last very long in it.

Likewise, classical liberals, libertarians or Radical Whigs would not, and will not, be happy in UKIP, and are most unlikely to last very long in it. That includes the incumbent for whom this insurrection is about to secure re-election for a few final months.

But the ones in the Lib Dems are always going to be in the Lib Dems. Somehow, they could never quite be anything else.