My God the Lib Dems have screwed this one up royally.

Let’s leave aside for the moment, the rights and wrongs of the policy, this is just stunning political ineptitude. Every step they take seems designed to make them look more ridiculous than the last.

Look first at Vacillating Vince. Will he vote for his own policy. No one – especially not Vince – seems to know. In the end though he will of course vote for it. As will enough Lib Dems to ensure it passes. They’ll be left with the worst of all worlds, having adopted the policy while trying to weasel out responsibility for it. Which of course, anyone with an ounce of political nous can tell you won’t happen if the policy passes.

The interesting thing is that the really high profile likely rebels – apart from Tim Farron – are the giants of the past. Ming Campbell and Charles Kennedy won’t be back in senior positions again, but still command a great deal of respect from the left of the party. Their high profile rebellion this early in the parliament is quite significant.

The problem Clegg and the Lib Dems have, is that they have allowed the Tories to front-load all the stuff they hate before the AV referendum. The cuts have been announced, they are going to pass the hideous housing benefit changes, Tuition fees will largely have been and gone, the changes to the NHS, Education and Policing will have Lib Dem support on the record, even if the votes haven’t occurred.

So when the AV referendum and council seats are lost, the cold comfort of the raise to the basic level of tax (more than off-set by the VAT rise) or the Pupil Premium (not new money) will not be enough to reinvigorate demoralised activists. The hardcore few will remain. These will be those who are more wedded to the coalition than those who have slipped away. They will cling ever harder, because they will rightly see that before 2015 and a change of leadership (at the least) the Lib Dems will not survive alone again.

There are a lot of people who see the splits over tuition fees as the beginning of the end of the coalition. I don’t – I think it binds the two parties tighter than ever. However, what it could easily signify is the end of what we currently know of as the Liberal Democrats as a single and separate political force. Large parts of the party could be wooed by the Tories into a more permanent political Alliance (they’ve been there before). While some others may join the Liberal Party or struggle on as a seatless wraith. The ghost at the feast of plural politics. The warning to all politicians to be careful what you wish for.

Frankly, the way they have bungled this, it remains to be seen if they will even have the nous to salvage that much.

Tags: av, Condems, Lib Dems, referendum, tuition fees

This entry was posted on Monday, December 6th, 2010 at 15:20 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.