The dust has settled and we are left with a well and truly hung parliament. I won’t bore you with comment and analysis, I’m sure you are sick of it, but there is one thing we need to discuss. After what seemed to be a disasterous night for the Lib Dems, Nick Clegg is seemingly the kingmaker after all and both David Cameron and Gordon Brown have made their offers.
Only the Liberal Democrats, that most democratic of all parties, would actually consult their supporters before making such an important decision, so, if you would like to have your say, email the Lib Dem executive via: balancedparliament@libdemvoice.org
Get your email in by 2pm Saturday and maybe you can influence their decision.
They ask that you include some information about who you are and why you care and, please, keep your argument brief; they will have a lot to read.
Here is the letter I sent them earlier, feel free to copy it and alter as you see fit:
***Update: I have revised my letter as I have strengthened my argument, the recommendation is the same.***
To whom it may concern,
The apparent choice is between a risky Lib/Lab pact that could go very wrong but which also represents our best chance of getting PR and some safer options, including a Lib/Con pact or no pact at all.
I believe that is a mistaken interpretation of the options. The truth is a Lib/Lab pact with a slim chance of reform vs the certain decline of the party, the only question being how fast. Put that way, the risky chance of reform is not only the best choice, it is the only sensible choice.
I believe this because while we have FPTP the only way to get serious power is to leap-frog one of the other parties and go from 20 to 40% of the popular vote overnight. This will self-evidently never happen. We cannot achieve 40% based on a slow continual increase because when we get to around 25% and three similarly strong parties FPTP breaks down and delivers a hung parliament. This is always followed by a reset where the smallest party is cast down by the electorate – not because they don’t want to vote that way but because their votes will be wasted if they do. It happened in 1974 and it is happening again now. It makes no difference what we do, if we do not get PR, the party will decline and it may take us 35 years to regain our current position.
Uniquely this time, the public wanted a hung parliament, they are calling for PR and are setting up demonstrations and petitions (25000 names in 18 hours!) to show that that is the case. If we let them down by failing to grab this opportunity, they will not forgive us and the punishment and the fall will be swift and far.
Yours hopefully,
Ellie Banwell
As a bit of a lefty LD of 27 years standing, I said on LDV, before it crashed, it is by no means clear that Brown could deliver his entire Parliamentary Party for voting Reform. But I agree we would need to squeeze far more out of Cameron to make a deal worth while. Equal sized constituencies? Ha! A convention to kick it into touch forever? Equally worthless. But obviously Cameron’s backbenchers would string him up if he dared compromise on PR. Maybe – just maybe – there is a middle way which would deliver a significant degree of Reform, whilst enabling him to sell it to the Tories in the national interest.
I have sent a letter. with a few differences. I agree it is too much for the party’s integrity to stand to deal with the Cons.
I think a Lib/Lab pact may be unworkable as the demands the Welsh and Scot Nats will make will be too easily sidetracked, so their co-operation will be too easily lost.
I say let the Cons have their minority Gov, and let it sink them.
Glad to see people disagreeing with me
That is a sign of a healthy democracy, not the nonsense we saw yesterday :-/
I should note that both the above comments were written based on my original open letter and I have changed my reasoning since then, however, the points are probably still more or less valid.
Terry,
I’m certain Cameron can’t get his party behind him to deliver our key pledges and, with the SNP refusing to back the conservatives, it looks possible neither party can secure an outright majority.
Be careful what you wish for, the voters wanted a hung parliament and they have possibly delivered one more hung than we thought possible!
Under those circumstances, even if we can’t secure PR which is, I admit, a slim possibility, even with the weight of the public mood behind us, I would far sooner ally with Labour. Even a loose and informal pact would hinder the Tories in their worst policies and, if we’re going down anyway (which I strongly believe we are if we can’t get PR), then we stand a better chance of getting some of our other ideas acted upon with Labour.
Babs,
I wrote a long and rambling reply on why I thought you were wrong, but I’ve turned it into a long and rambling blog post instead, which in turn became the revised open letter above. I’m sure you get the picture, I’d love to hear any contrary position, as always
On the Scottish seats question, they (like Sinn Fein) seem to be adopting a position of non-interference in what is rapidly becoming an English and Welsh issue. The Scottish parliament already seems more kindly disposed towards STV and, according to something I read last night, the only reason it wasn’t adopted completely was because the northern most constituencies would be huge. Don’t the Northern Irish constituencies already use something similar?
Constitutionally, Gordon Brown is still PM and Cameron may have to force a vote of no confidence to oust him. If all the Scottish and Northern Irish MPs see it as an English and Welsh matter and a vote about delivering PR, they may choose to abstain and the vote would probably fail. Even if they didn’t abstain, it seems Cameron may struggle to get the numbers. Brown would stay and we really would start getting into some difficult water…
I would see the period of turbulence as something painful we would need to suffer in order to deliver reform and I would view that as preferable to backing away. Reform must happen eventually and, when it does, it will be difficult. There will be no good time and so it is probably better to get it over with. If Nick Clegg started siding with the Tories in order to give stability at the expense of reform (seems very likely given the rhetoric from all sides about strength and collaboration) I would find it very hard to ever forgive him.