"I've always seen us as a party of the radical centre", said the man sat on one side of the stage.
"No I couldn't disagree more, we are a centre-left party", responded the woman sat opposite him. This recent exchange between two members of the Lib Dems' campaigning base at an event in Manchester serves as a succinct demonstration of the party's central dilemma.
Bigger than the decision to enter into coalition with the Conservatives and more pressing than a question of individual leadership comes a much broader dilemma. What is it that the Liberal Democrats stand for? You must understand that this question isn't asked out of malice or blind partisanship. I should know. During my second year as an undergraduate I was an active member of the party's youth wing at the University of Manchester. Canvassing, leaflet dropping, campaigning, meeting MPs at party events, that was me. I remember well the excitement of election night and subsequently being glued to the 24 hour news channels, watching the drama unfold as the first coalition for over 30 years was formed.
But then disillusion set in, and not for the reasons you might imagine. Debate over whether the party had conceded too much in their bid to form the coalition agreement was of course a contentious issue. Had the party compromised on too many of their core principles? Being a student I couldn't help ignore the ire of my contemporaries as it emerged that one of the key platforms the party had run on, the desire to scrap tuition fees in higher education, had for the moment at least, been abandoned. The casting of Nick Clegg as pantomime villain wasn't entirely unjustified, even for me, a previously ardent supporter.
No, what started to bother me was a broader, more philosophical question. What in actual fact are the party's core principles? And what is it that differentiates the Liberal Democrats from the other two mainstream parties, parties which have grown out of two separate and distinct political traditions. The party might well claim that it is formed out of the twin ‘reformist’ traditions of liberalism and social democracy, separated from one another in the early decades of the last century. The problem here is that liberalism can be seen within the Conservative Party through its emphasis on individual freedom and responsibility, while Labour has cleaned up on the social democracy front. So what is left for the Lib Dems? On the back of the Lib Dem membership card is printed the following:
'The Liberal Democrats exist to build and safeguard a fair, free and open society, in which we seek to balance the fundamental values of liberty, equality and community, and in which noone shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity.'
This is all very well, after all words like liberty and community are very safe and comforting. But all that this really amounts to is a very vague attempt at describing liberalism. Liberalism itself, while a very powerful idea and one that I will always adhere to, is not enough of a basis for a political party to exist in 21st Century Britain. This is because it has already absorbed itself into much of the fabric of everyday life, with both the political left and right adopting elements of the idea. This leaves the Lib Dems in two distinct but untenable positions.
The first is that of the pressure group. What can be highlighted about the party is its consistency on a very small number of issues, such as electoral reform and gay rights. In the House of Commons whenever these two issues are discussed you can rest assured that from their benches the party’s MPs will always vote and campaign in a way that promotes both of these causes. In this sense the Lib Dems are just like Stonewall or Liberty, a group that will always push on very particular issues. While extremely admirable, this is not enough of a platform for the existence of a political party. Single-issue parties will never be able to aptly form a government.
The second role that the Lib Dems have played in recent years with relish is that of the receiver of protest votes. One issue, perhaps more than any other characterised this tendency whilst the party was in opposition and that was the Iraq War. Long gone are the days of voting Lib Dem as a lifestyle choice unfortunately. Under the stewardship of Charles Kennedy the party was undoubtedly one of the centre-left, outflanking Labour on its left side. Being in government has shown that the party cannot relax on this platform again for a long time if it hopes to be taken seriously by voters across the country and not simply students. This is not to say that the party is simply a bunch of contrarians and opportunists but they can wave goodbye to those quick by-election victories for a long, long time. Being responsible in government will mean an end to the indecision plaguing the yellows in their first year on the job.
Because the party is essentially the result of a marriage of convenience, whatever efforts are made to paper over the ideological cracks within the party will ultimately fail. In 1983 the relatively new Social Democrat Party, formed by Labour moderates out of frustration at the rise of the unelectable left within the party, formed an electoral pact with the Liberals, the remaining relics of the historic party of Gladstone and co, who at this point only numbered a smattering of MPs in parliament.
This arrangement worked for a while due to the two parties’ agreement on a small number of policy areas, such as electoral reform. However, since the formal creation of the Liberal Democrats as a single party in 1988 there have been two distinct wings balancing delicately over the ideological schism. Those who identify more with the Social Democrats, the moderate and in practice right-leaning side of the party, will never fully be able to reconcile themselves with the more left-ish elements within, characterised nowadays by the likes of Tim Farron.
All this amounts to a political party built on shaky foundations unable to make its mind up about what its ultimate purpose is. Of course parties can inevitably change their policies over long periods of time, we have seen this with both Labour and the Conservatives. But there is still a solid tradition and ideology for both to build on, which are unfortunately lacking with the Lib Dems, leading them to argue amongst themselves like they did at the beginning of this page.
