Could this be the Lib Dems toughest challenge yet?
By Emma.
Now as regular readers will know, I don’t always have the greatest amount of time and respect for the Liberal Democrats. I didn’t before the coalition and little that has happened since has changed my mind (more reinforced in steel what I always believed to be true). I say this because what I am discussing below could easily be seen as my putting a partisan gloss on an issue. There are certainly good reasons both in terms of the fairness and the electoral effect of the boundary proposals to make it a clear Labour priority to scupper the Bill by any means possible (and you know, all it really takes is one Scarlet Standard blog post to bring the establishment, trembling, to their knees *ahem*). But actually I hope this is a bit more of a thoughtful blog about the rock and the hard place the Lib Dems find themselves over this issue.
So here’s the problem:
The Lib Dems are – in all likelihood – going to be completely shafted by the boundary review. There are mutterings that several might vote against it. Labour will vote against it. If enough Lib Dem and Tory rebels can be found the Bill could be defeated. Defeat of the Bill suits the Lib Dems in terms of immediate parliamentary arithmetic.
The problem is that they made a very public agreement to support the boundary changes in return for the AV referendum. As Lady Bracknell might have said: “to break one high-profile promise is unfortunate…”. Additionally, this promise is one that the right-wing press is absolutely behind. While Nick Clegg may have passed into popular culture as Britain’s most well known liar (and you just have to look at the recent Shameless trailer to see how pervasive this is) it is not quite yet seen as endemic to the Party. If they go against the Government on boundary changes, you can guarantee that the press goes after Tim Farron and Simon Hughes, after the Lib Dems who might have a chance at giving them a post-coalition future. It will be open warfare on all the Lying Lib Dems. If you think it’s been bad up to now….
Now those of us who were imploring the Lib Dems to split the Bill and make these issues less reliant on each other last year can look on at the car crash that is coming with a certain sense of “I told you so” style satisfaction. And of course, part of me is doing that, because this bind the Lib Dems in is entirely of their own making. The continually slapdash approach of the Lib Dem team to strategy is astonishing by a Party at the level they have reached. But having backed themselves once again into a lose/lose corner, it is impossible not to feel a stirring of pity for them.
Just a tiny bit mind.
Tags: av, boundary review, Lib Dems
Monday, September 5th 2011 at 22:45
I am bemused by the tone of your post. As though you accept that parliament has too many members, that democracy is best served by coherent, valid constituencies, and that the process to create those constituencies must be independent. And yet…everything you write is so partisan, so bias, and in most places ill-informed, that I can only conclude that you’d prefer an American style format where you really would know the meaning of the word ‘gerrymander’
I get the impression you aren’t entirely sure how the process works. Wait until next week, you have a month to send in your own submissions and reactions, and a month to visit one of the public meetings
Don’t worry about us LibDems. We’re not the party desperately trying to hold on to artificially small urban seats like Labour clearly are.
Wednesday, September 14th 2011 at 19:18
if, IF, the Lib Dems did want a way out of voting for the changes,
then there are reasonable objections they could raise.
Primarily, they could seize on what was obviously the worst aspect of the bill from the get-go : the tilting of power away from the Legislature and towards the Executive.
With a reduction of 50 MPs, there would be be 50 fewer back-bench MPs. The standard of staffing of Select Committees would likely decline; mustering opposition in Commons votes would be more difficult, as a higher percentage of MPs would owe their ministerial status to the patronage of the Prime Minister (and perhaps the Deputy PM if there’s another coalition). Democracy would be weakened; it would be much harder for any future govt to be challenged or held to account.
Liberals could object to all this, with some honour, if they woke up and had second thoughts.
Thursday, September 15th 2011 at 10:58
Just as I was beginning to feel an ounce of sympathy…
Thursday, September 15th 2011 at 12:30
Sorry, Emma, if I said the wrong thing.
I’ve been informed this morning that the Lib Dems had a manifesto promise to reduce the number of MPs by 150. If so, they can’t object to the reduction on principle – they could only argue about its implementation and the technical re-drawing of the boundaries.
Dismal!
They really have painted themselves into a corner on this one.
Friday, September 16th 2011 at 22:38
Not you Phil! So sorry – the rather snarky Lib Dem above!
Saturday, September 17th 2011 at 10:48
phew! I hoped it wasn’t me or anything I’d said!
btw, I did read the first reply but it was just some Tory-Liberal talking to himself, apparently, and not caring what he sounded like to others.
I felt an idiot, though, for not knowing the facts. I thought the plan to reduce the number of constituencies was a Tory objective and the Lib Dems were prepared to help them with it, in return for a referendum on AV. Honestly, I thought that was why the two separate things had been cobbled together into one hybrid Bill.
Oh, I like your word, snarky.
It’s not an expression I know, so I looked it up in the O.E.D. and discovered that a snark is a hybrid monster (like a chimera), originally devised by Lewis Carroll.
Saturday, September 17th 2011 at 11:01
Off Topic, but important
A quick note on the re-drawing of boundaries :
although I’ve seen only a few proposed boundaries for new constituencies, they look like they were meticulously devised by faithful Tory servants. Be watchful for this, especially the unnecessary swapping of Labour-held wards with Tory-held wards in neighbouring constituencies.
Bear in mind the current Tory liking for ‘shock and awe’ tactics as a cover/smokescreen; the desire to rush in nearly 600 changes at once may be to prevent proper scrutiny of biased boundary changes. The exercise may be about the re-drawing, itself, more than the reduction by 50 (even though we all thought it was about reducing the number for electoral advantage). And remember, Pickles’ dept was found to be smearing Jenny Watson a year ago, and that looked to me as though they were trying to force her out of her position.
Could be the luck of the draw if it’s just the few cases I’ve seen in the past couple of days, and over the whole country things balance out evenly.