“Suicidal”: that was Liberal Democrat campaign director Chris Rennard’s blunt assessment of the risk of entering into coalition without a change in the voting system. He was writing in March 1998 when the coalition under discussion was with Labour but his argument would prove uncannily prophetic when, 12 years later, the party found itself a junior partner in a Tory-led government. Rennard went on: “My prediction is that 10% would be our likely share of the vote … and our … success would end in the wilderness which befell our party in the 1920s.”
In the circumstances, perhaps a better title for David Laws’s book would have been Chronicle of a Death Foretold. Pity the poor Lib Dems. Entering into coalition with the Tories in 2010 made perfect sense, both in their own and in the national interest. That, after all, was the outcome the electorate had dictated. The only serious alternative was a few months of unstable minority government culminating in another general election likely to result in an outright Tory victory.
Continue reading...
0 comments:
Post a Comment