Charles Kennedy and the Liberal Democrats ... - Wiley Online Library

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Is There a Liberal Alternative? Charles Kennedy and the Liberal Democrats' Strategy J OHN M E ADOWCR OFT On his election as leader of the Liberal Democrats in 1999, Charles Kennedy inherited from Paddy Ashdown a party in an ostensibly robust state of health. The Liberal Democrats had more Members of Parliament than the third party has had at any time since 1929, were partners in the devolved government of Scotland, and had ten MEPs, more than 5,000 principal authority councillors and control of 28 local authorities, including the major cities of Liverpool and Sheeld. Kennedy, however, also inherited a party whose long-term strategy had been left high and dry by the capture of the social democratic centre ground by New Labour, leaving them in desperate need of a new strategic direction. While the immediate task facing the new Liberal Democrat leader is to develop a strategy that can see his party through the next election, to be successful such a strategy must be grounded in the longer term: to chart a distinct and independent future for the third party. This article will consider the strategic options available to Kennedy and speculate on the probable consequences of each alternative. It will argue that the present strategy of maintaining relatively close links with Labour, hoping that the next election will see no major Conservative revival and thus enable the consolidation of Liberal Democrat support in the seats gained in 1997, makes the fatal error of not providing a vision of the long-term future of the third party. The Labour party's successful move to the social 436

democratic centre has created a vacuum on the left that many in the third party would like to ®ll, but recent political history suggests that the entrenched nature of Labour's support would condemn such an approach to failure. A liberal alternative, returning the third party to classical social and economic liberal values and the defence of negative liberty, may therefore be the most viable option. To put this discussion in context, however, the strategy of the modern third party will ®rst be charted, examining the leadership of Jo Grimond, the Alliance and eventual merger of the Liberal Party and SDP, and the emergence of New Labour.

Third party strategy: a brief history The strategy of the modern third party has been dominated by two related questions. First, how can a third party break open a two-party system? Second, what is the third party's relationship to the other non-Conservative party in British politics, the Labour party? The answer to the ®rst question has been co-operation and coalition with other parties to achieve proportional representation (PR) and the transformation of Britain into a multiparty system. The answer to the second question has proved more problematic. The relationship between the Liberal and Labour parties has always been somewhat ambiguous. Although few Liberals have a great deal of sympathy for

# The Political Quarterly Publishing Co. Ltd. 2000 Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA


socialist ideology, or Labour movement heroes like Tony Benn or Nye Bevan, the divide between the social democracy of Tony Crosland and postwar social liberalism has been less clear. Two of the key architects of the Attlee government's social and economic policy, John Maynard Keynes and William Beveridge, were Liberals. The strategy of community politics pursued by the third party since 1970 can be seen as a classic attempt to create a social democratic model of deliberative democracy in local government. Indeed, Roy Jenkins, who in a long career has been a leading member of both parties, has argued that liberalism and social democracy are separated by the narrowest divide in political history, while none other than Tony Blair has written that the split between social democracy and liberalism did much to weaken progressive politics in Western democracies.1 It is the place of the third party on the left of British politics, and therefore its relationship with the Labour party, that has dominated its strategic thinking. Jo Grimond gave the third party the left-of-centre positioning it has maintained to this day after he succeeded Clement Davies as Liberal party leader in November 1956. His political strategy, and that of his successors, was founded on a relatively simple formulation. Grimond believed that there would always be two principal elements in British politics: a progressive force and a conservative force. The conservative force would always be the Conservative party. Its place on the political landscape was assured. Labour had taken over the mantle of progressive politics from the Liberals after the First World War. Grimond, however, believed that socialism as an ideology was morally and intellectually bankrupt, and this, coupled with demographic and social change, would make the class-based approach of the Labour party less relevant and therefore less electorally viable. The long-term strategy of the Liberal party, then, was to replace # The Political Quarterly Publishing Co. Ltd. 2000

the Labour party as the non-socialist alternative to the Conservatives and again become the progressive force in British politics. Grimond was conscious that such a strategy would not bear fruit either in the short or the medium term, writing: `I am under no illusion about the diculties, nor the length of the road ahead before the Liberal Party asserts itself as the main progressive force,'2 but he believed that history was on his side. This fabled realignment of the left became the `holy grail' of third party politics. It was David Steel's leadership of the third party that appeared to coincide with the opportunity to achieve this realignment. The resignation of the Gang of Four from the Labour party in January 1981 and the creation of the Social Democratic Party appeared to herald the fragmentation of the Labour party and the prospect that Steel could unite with the new party to build a new progressive force that would eventually replace the Labour party on the political left of centre. Buoyed by an initial wave of popular enthusiasm, the Liberals entered into a formal alliance with the SDP that survived for seven years until the two parties merged to form the Liberal Democrats in March 1988. Despite achieving more than a quarter of the vote in the 1983 election, the Alliance ultimately failed to `break the mould' of British politics. When the dust settled in 1988 the new merged party was no closer to power than the Liberal party had been a decade earlier. Neil Kinnock had dragged the Labour party back to the political mainstream, ensuring that its traditional base of support did not switch allegiance, and the third party had subsumed a large cohort of Social Democrat activists. Despite the failure of the SDP, the strategy of left realignment did not go away. The ®rst leader of the Liberal Democrats, Paddy Ashdown, campaigned for the party leadership on a platform claiming that `the task of the Liberal Democrats was to replace the Labour party as the leading non-Conservative party of conscience and The Li b e ral Al t e rnat i ve

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reform.'3 Clearly, Grimond's formulation still held a powerful grip over third party strategic thinking. The inability of the Labour party to defeat the Conservatives in 1992, despite a severe economic recession, appeared to vindicate Ashdown's strategy. If the Labour party could not win in these circumstances, then it surely had no future as a party of government. Grimond's belief that support for Labour would inevitably dwindle, as the theoretical and practical failings of socialism were exposed and class became a less important fact in British life, appeared sound. It seemed the best the Labour party could hope for in the future was a hung parliament: a situation in which the Liberal Democrats would surely hold the balance of power, enabling them to make a bid for PR and create a multi-party system.

New Labour, no strategy? Few could have envisaged the impact Tony Blair would have on the Labour party and British politics on his ascendancy to the Labour leadership in July 1994. New Labour's landslide victory in May 1997 banished the idea that the Labour party was a relic of the past that could not command support from all sections of modern British society. Perhaps most crucially for the Liberal Democrats, if Tony Blair and his allies had created a non-socialist alternative to the Conservatives in New Labour, where did that leave the third party's strategy of replacement? Furthermore, the size of Blair's Commons majority meant that PR at Westminster would not be forthcoming in the immediate future. The strength of the Labour party's power bases up and down the country, in town halls, trade unions and local parties, always meant that the strategy of replacing Labour as the progressive force in British politics would not be easy. There exists in many regions of Britain a deeply ingrained culture of 438 J o hn Me a d o w cro ft

Labour support across generations that cannot easily be eradicated. Indeed, the third party's electoral record against the Labour party is unimpressive to say the least. At general elections (as opposed to by-elections) the third party has only ever won two seats from sitting Labour MPs in `three-cornered' contests: the Yorkshire constituencies of Colne Valley in 1966 and again in February 1974, and Leeds West in 1983. The third party has not won a parliamentary seat from the Labour party since Rosie Barnes took the Greenwich by-election for the SDP prior to the 1987 election. The task now facing Liberal Democrats ®ghting Labour is harder than ever before. Replacement is no longer an option. What, then, are the options available to Charles Kennedy? Three alternatives will be considered.

Wait and hope? Kennedy's present strategy is to maintain close links with Labour, co-operating on areas of common policy, notably in the Scottish Parliament and the Cabinet committee on constitutional reform, while calculating that campaigning by Liberal Democrats on the ground can counter a revival in Conservative support in the seats won in 1997. It is hoped that if Labour's majority is reduced Tony Blair may concede PR after the next election. A continued policy of co-operation with Labour would then give the Liberal Democrats a permanent seat at the Cabinet table, forming a broad centre-left coalition to govern Britain with New Labour. While there is an underlying logic to this `wait and hope' strategy, it may prove high risk. The electorate may punish a party that is thought to be seeking power not through its own support at the ballot box, but via a backstairs deal with the governing party. The machinations undertaken by Jim Wallace to put himself into government in Scotland's new Parliament were not a pretty sight. It will be # The Political Quarterly Publishing Co. Ltd. 2000


damaging if the Liberal Democrats are seen as a party prepared to jump through any hoop to gain power. The result of the Hamilton South by-election in September 1999, only days after the Scottish deal had been struck and on the day of Charles Kennedy's inaugural conference speech, may demonstrate how the public judge such backstairs deals: the Liberal Democrat candidate came sixth, losing her deposit with a meagre 634 votes. Perhaps more importantly, this strategy does not envisage a long-term future for the Liberal Democrats independent of New Labour. While it is natural for the Liberal Democrats to seek closer links with a party that shares many of their principles and policy positions (it is rumoured that Cabinet colleagues have nicknamed Tony Blair `the Liberal'), to see the future linked so closely with another party at the national level brings into question the raison d'eÃtre of the third party. Surely it would more be wise and more honest simply to join New Labour than to assume a future in government purely as a result of their success? How the distinction between two parties so ideologically close can be maintained in such a situation is also open to question. If separate identities are not sustained, there will only be one loser.

To the left of New Labour? What, then, are the options for a Liberal Democrat future wholly independent of New Labour? The one that appeals to the gut instinct of many party activists and councillors schooled in the community politics tradition4 is to move to the traditional left ground vacated by New Labour. The Liberal Democrats could take on a role as the defenders of public services and the state welfarist ideal. The apparent popular success of the `penny in the pound' on income tax to pay for education in 1992 and 1997 suggests that this is an approach with electoral appeal # The Political Quarterly Publishing Co. Ltd. 2000

that could point the way to a distinct identity. The success of the Liberal Democrats in local government in traditional Labour areas, seen most recently in the metropolitan boroughs of Liverpool, Sheeld and Oldham, suggests that this approach can win support in former Labour heartlands. Liberal Democrat activists may now look to these councils to show how to reach traditional Labour supporters alienated by the government's cautious public spending plans and `control freakery' in the Welsh Assembly leadership election and the London mayoral contest. Given that the electoral success of the third party may depend on winning the support of soft Conservative voters in traditional Tory areas, would such a strategy amount to little more than electoral suicide? Research evidence suggests that `tax and spend' policies are not necessarily the electoral liability they are often assumed to be.5 Instead, questions of general economic competence may be more important in in¯uencing voting behaviour. Nevertheless, for the Liberal Democrats to be seen as to the left of Labour would surely discourage many potential voters, particularly in the former Conservative constituencies they must defend and win at the next election. It would be an extremely bold strategy to risk alienating these key voters. Would this approach, however, secure enough support from traditional Labour voters who feel disenfranchised by the changes Tony Blair has made to their party to compensate for a lose of former Conservative voters? While some disillusioned Labour voters are clearly prepared to support the Liberal Democrats in the short term at local elections, the historical evidence shows that the third party has never succeeded in attracting substantial or sustained support from traditional Labour voters, particularly at general elections. The strength of the wider Labour movement forms a barrier that The Li b e ral Al t e rnat i ve

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has always proved insurmountable for the third party. Of course, tactical or electoral considerations should not be the only or even the primary determinants of strategy or policy. If they were driven purely by the desire to attain power, then most Liberal Democrat members would surely be members of one of the two main parties. The critical weakness of a strategic shift to the left is not that it will fail to bring electoral gain, but that it will move the Liberal Democrats away from the natural liberal territory and support that has sustained the third party for the past seventy years. Although in the short term this strategy may appear an attractive way to out¯ank New Labour and capture the public imagination, in the long term a move to the left of Labour will compromise the Liberal Democrats' core support and liberal philosophical foundations while gaining them little in return. The Liberal Democrats are a liberal party or they are nothing: it is their heritage, and it must remain their foundation and their guiding philosophy.

A liberal alternative? Is there, then, a liberal alternative? The present policies of the Liberal Democrats are more recognisably social democratic than liberal, accentuating the values of positive over negative liberty: taxes should be raised to fund improved public services, individual choices are best expressed through participation in deliberative democratic structures than via consumer preferences in the marketplace, the local state is the ideal provider of local services. Could the Liberal Democrats, then, stake a claim to the classic liberal political space built upon a defence of negative liberty, meaning a combination of social and economic liberalism? Would such a shift mean the third party turning away from those, often living in deprived urban environments, who have come to recognise Liberal Democrat councillors 440 J o hn Me a d o w cro ft

and activists as people prepared to ®ght for their interests in the face of perceived bureaucratic indierence? A combination of social and economic liberalism provides an intellectually coherent foundation for the philosophy of a political party. In many respects, classical liberal values have been tarnished by their intellectually incoherent association with the social conservatism and the defence of privilege that were characteristic of the Thatcherite variant of New Right thinking. It would be the task of the third party to reclaim those liberal values and show that they can be applied with a liberating eect, not just to the concerns of bourgeois intellectuals seeking to defend their interests, but in particular in the lives of all those who encounter state bureaucracies on a day-to-day basis, whether in health, education or housing services. In terms of practical policies, this will mean putting the intellectual case for markets as more eective than social democratic planning techniques in establishing individual preferences in complex and changing environments. This will, of course, imply breaking the present consensus that perceives the only way to improve public services as increased public spending, irrespective of how that money is spent and how a plurality of dierent demands and choices are collected, correlated and evaluated. It will mean opposition to a single national school curriculum imposed by central government and other examples of `joined-up government', in favour of a multiplicity of centres providing a multiplicity of choices. It will also mean continued support for the rights of asylum seekers and other minorities who may come under populist or xenophobic attack that may be translated into public policy. Would Liberal Democrat members and activists be prepared to adopt such a direction? The social liberal dimension of this strategy would be unlikely to prove controversial. The unity of the # The Political Quarterly Publishing Co. Ltd. 2000


Liberal Democrats' protest against the Conservative party's use of the apparent rise in applications for asylum in the UK in political debate during the May 2000 local election campaign suggests that the vast majority of the party are comfortable with the liberal defence of minority rights. Where this strategy may prove more con¯ictual is in the rejection of social democratic interventionism in favour of market-orientated liberal economics. Charles Kennedy, for one, hails from the social democratic tradition within the third party. Most Liberal Democrat councillors and members, many drawn from public sector backgrounds, have spent their political careers opposing the rhetoric of the Thatcher and Major governments while employing social democratic models of deliberative democracy in local government. They may not be comfortable adopting a political language that many associate with Thatcherism and the New Right. Yet the values of social and economic liberalism are clearly grounded in the traditional Whig values of the third party and are, therefore, theirs to be reclaimed. For the Liberal Democrats to adopt such a strategy, then, will require a dynamic reconnection with those core liberal values. Such a change may not be without some angst, but it is surely not beyond the bounds of possibility. Reverting to the name of the Liberal Party would seem a logical step in this process, although it would probably prove so controversial among those Liberal Democrats who were once SDP members as to be impracticable. Certainly, the question of the name of the new party was one of the most tortuous aspects of the merger negotiations that led to the formation of the Liberal Democrats. Few within the third party would like to see those wounds reopened. It is not argued that this strategy would sweep the third party to power: it would be an end in itself. It would provide the third party with a raison d'eÃtre, a vision of its long-term future, grounded in its # The Political Quarterly Publishing Co. Ltd. 2000

philosophical heritage. Nevertheless, the electoral prospects of such a strategy may be quite bright. Liberal parties exist in all modern European democracies. Although they do not usually command mass support, they can perform a function within their political systems by defending individual rights in whatever sphere they are threatened. Systems of proportional representation have very often given these parties a place in coalition government, notably in the case of the German Free Democrats. Although the impact of PR in recent British subnational and European elections was not as great as some may have anticipated, it would seem that PR is slowly but surely exerting an in¯uence over our politics. Power sharing in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and the election of an independent mayor in London presiding over an assembly without a majority party, all illustrate how PR is subtly changing the electoral landscape. It seems likely that British politics will become increasingly fragmented (postmodern) in the coming decades, with a decline in the importance of national trends and a growth in the in¯uence of minor and regional parties. If the European example is a guide, there is no reason why an autonomous liberal party with a distinct identity cannot secure enough support in such elections to play a meaningful role at many dierent levels of government.

Conclusion Charles Kennedy has more to lose than any of his predecessors who have led the modern third party. His present strategy of `wait and hope' assumes that local campaigning in Liberal Democrat held seats will be sucient to nullify any Conservative revival at the next election. It also assumes that the Liberal Democrats can maintain a distinct and separate identity while working closely with the Labour party, perhaps over a number of years. While there is an underlying logic The Li b e ral Al t e rnat i ve

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informing this position, it fails to address pressing strategic questions. Crucially, the third party must develop a longterm strategy independent of New Labour. The strategy of replacing Labour as the progressive force in British politics, pursued by third party leaders from Grimond to Ashdown, is no longer a realistic option. The two alternatives identi®ed here are to move to the left of Labour as the defenders of public services, or to develop a new approach as a liberal party in the tradition of European liberals like the German Free Democrats. This paper has argued that only this ®nal approach, the development of a distinctly liberal alternativeÐseen as the adoption of classical social and economic liberal policiesÐcan sustain a long-term future for the third party in the light of New Labour's capture of the social democratic centre ground. It is dicult to believe that the British political system can sustain two social democratic parties for long,

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but a distinctly liberal party may survive and ultimately prosper.

Notes 1 Roy Jenkins, Partnership of Principle: Writings and Speeches on the Making of the Alliance, ed. Clive Lindley, London, Secker & Warburg, 1985, pp. 66±7; Tony Blair, The Third Way, London, Fabian Society, 1998, p. 1. 2 Joseph Grimond, The Liberal Challenge, London, Hollis & Carter, 1963, p. 316. 3 Alan Leaman, `Ending Equidistance', Political Quarterly, 1998, p. 160. 4 For a discussion, see John Meadowcroft, `Community Politics: Ideals, Myths and Realities', in Nirmala Rao, ed., Community and Representation in Western Democracies, London, Macmillan, 2000. 5 See e.g. John Hills and Orsolya Lelkes, `Social Security, Selective Universalism and Patchwork Redistribution', in Roger Jowell et al., eds, British Social Attitudes: The 16th Report, Aldershot, Ashgate, 1999, pp. 3±6.

# The Political Quarterly Publishing Co. Ltd. 2000