Oh, the oxygen of optimism! After two years of thinking the Conservatives can’t be beaten for another generation, Labour finally has its head above the clouds. It is at last ahead of the Conservatives, in some polls by as much as 10 points. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine might tamper with the numbers a little, but the opposition is in the game. The tide has turned!
Only it hasn’t. In fact, it would not be going too far to say that the current good showing for Labour – which seems to be largely based on Boris Johnson’s bungling of the Owen Paterson and “partygate” affairs – is the worst thing that could happen to Britain’s progressive forces. It takes their eye off the need to be ruthlessly methodical in unravelling the Tories’ parliamentary majority.
Already, newly buoyant Labour is slipping into its traditional “do we really need these smaller parties?” mindset – making warm noises towards other parties like the Greens and Liberal Democrats when it thinks it can’t win an election on its own, yet dropping them like a hot potato when it thinks it can. But the reality is that Labour cannot win by itself in the current electoral landscape. The party needs to gain 120 seats to have a working majority – a near impossibility in the current electoral landscape – so it will have to rely on support from at least one other party. For that, there will be a price to pay. It may as well face up to that now.
Even the one piece of constructive news comes with alarm bells. Labour and the Lib Dems have clearly agreed a non-aggression pact, which makes sense, but they have seemingly failed to reach any agreement about the use of proportional representation (PR). In the Financial Times article in which the cooperation arrangement was leaked, an unnamed adviser close to Ed Davey was quoted as saying: “We are trying to get Labour to think about that now.” This is nowhere near good enough, either for the Lib Dems or for British politics. The Lib Dems finally have some leverage now; they should use it while they can to secure assurances on electoral reform.
If the failure to nail down PR in the Lib-Lab arrangement rings one alarm bell, the basic error of the two parties excluding the Greens should ring another. In a reworking of the 1960s comedy sketch in which John Cleese, Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett play upper-, middle- and working-class stereotypes, Labour is looking down on the Lib Dems, who in turn look down on the Greens. And when Labour deigns to talk to the Lib Dems, both hope the Greens will know their place.
Only they won’t, and nor should they. The Greens feel shafted by the 2017 election when they stood aside for numerous Labour and Lib Dem candidates, only to get no credit. Amid talk of “progressive alliances” to stop Theresa May getting a whopping majority, the Greens fielded around 100 fewer candidates than in 2015, and ended up losing more than £80,000 as opposition party funding is linked to the number of votes cast. There’s enough resentment in Green ranks to last a generation, so deciding to fight against Labour and Lib Dem candidates who could beat the Tories is understandable, as they did in places like Stroud and Lewes at the last election.
But it’s also futile. The obvious Green target at the next election is to win a second MP to bolster the inestimable Caroline Lucas, who has held Brighton Pavilion since 2010. Yet a look at the electoral map shows no seat anywhere near the Greens’ reach. The only way they could pick up a second MP would be as the result of some freak event, like a big name standing for them in a winnable seat (David Attenborough in the Isle of Wight?), or Lucas risking a “double or quits” gamble by standing on her reputation somewhere else, and hoping the Greens keep Brighton. In short, it’s not going to happen, but environmental issues are prominent enough that the Greens will peel off votes from a significant number of Labour or Lib Dem candidates and allow Conservatives to win – especially as the Greens look set to outperform their 2015 high-water mark of 3.8% of the popular vote.
This is the car crash that the “traffic-light” parties are heading for. It’s happened before, but they seem to have learned nothing. The landscape is complicated by the nationalists, who could well hold the balance of power, but the seething hatred between Labour and the SNP means they refuse to face the fact that Labour-SNP cooperation could be crucial.
To avoid the next car crash, the progressive parties need to do two things. First, they must bring the Greens into the Lib-Lab non-aggression pact. Second, the Lib Dems should be driving a hard bargain with Labour for electoral reform, with a proportional-voting system agreed now and a roadmap for implementation finalised well before the election.
Ideally, the commitment to electoral reform should be part of a platform of core policies that make it into Labour, Lib Dem and Green manifestos, so anyone wanting to vote for one party can vote tactically for another and still support the main themes. The list of core policies doesn’t have to be long – it could be just four or five – and they can be worded differently in each manifesto.
But the bedrock has to be PR for the House of Commons. It is no magic bullet, but it’s the only way the smaller parties can cooperate. The Greens in particular have no incentive to pull back from their spoiler campaigns if they’re not offered PR for Westminster. And Labour has so much to gain by embracing it – not just electorally, but to ensure a the achievements of a Labour-led government aren’t undone in the next swing to the right.
The brick wall should be looming into view in the windscreen. There is just enough time for the opposition parties to swerve, but they have to open their eyes first.
Chris Bowers is the Liberal Democrat co-editor of The Alternative (2016), a collection of essays on how Labour, Lib Dems and Greens should cooperate more
