The past week has seen history repeating itself, skipping the tragedy and moving straight to farce. Two weeks ago a Scottish MP, tipped from his first days in the Commons as a future leader of his party and hyped for years as his party’s one true statesman, stood exposed as a leader with a reputation built on so much hot air, and took a decision which plunged his party into chaos.
On Monday a Scottish MP, tipped from his first days in the Commons as a future leader of his party and hyped for years as his party’s one true statesman, stood exposed as a leader with a reputation built on so much hot air, and took a decision which plunged his party into chaos.
The hype surrounding both Gordon Brown and Sir Menzies Campbell has always been puzzling. The Prime Minister is the most overrated politician of the past 30 years: a prosaic thinker, a dreadful strategist, a terrible speaker and — just to ensure his unsuitability as a leader — with a personality which repels rather than attracts.
As for the former leader of the Liberal Democrats: his political career has merely shown the embarrassing extent to which we remain in thrall to men with an easy patrician air. His Commons performances were embarrassing, a strange mix of pompous and clueless. He is at sea in most areas of domestic policy. And although repeatedly referred to as a foreign affairs ‘expert’, nothing in his writings or speeches has shown him to have even a basic understanding of the realities of 21st-century geopolitics.
Both Sir Menzies and Mr Brown’s parties have reason to be grateful that the two men were not quite the dynamic titans that the hype would have had us believe. Mr Brown bottled his chance of winning the Labour leadership election in 1994, to his party’s immense benefit. Had he stood and won, either against or instead of Tony Blair, Labour would have been denied the leadership of its greatest ever election-winner.
Had Sir Menzies decided in 1999 to do what many in his party urged and stand for the leadership against Charles Kennedy, and had he then won, the Lib Dems’ less than sparkling 22 per cent share of the vote in 2005 would almost certainly have been a lot worse. Voters have a habit of getting to the heart of the matter. When it really matters — in 1979 and 1997, for example — they have made clear where the country needs to be taken. But they have the same knack when it comes to trivialities, such as the Lib Dems. Lib Dem claims that a revival is imminent are an ever-present in British politics, from Jeremy Thorpe being supposedly about to enter a coalition with Heath, through David Steel’s instruction to his troops to ‘Go back to your constituencies and prepare for government’, to Charles Kennedy forever claiming to be on the edge of a breakthrough. And it is, always, pure drivel. The Lib Dems are no nearer a breakthrough now than they have ever been — with one important exception.
As the party’s next leader is about to find out, the Lib Dems’ problems go far deeper than Sir Menzies’s flaws. Come election time, those pesky voters repeatedly tell the Lib Dems what they consider them to be: a useful receptacle for their protest vote.
British politics is in equilibrium when a moderately left-of-centre party is opposed by a moderately right-of-centre party. The only plausible reading of the past three decades is that voters’ default preference is for a sensible social democrat government and that they turn to the Conservatives only when the Labour party presents itself as unelectable. There was no mass embrace of Thatcherism in the 1980s. But there was a collapse in support for Labour, with the unilateralist, isolationist party managing just 27.6 per cent of the vote in 1983, and the barely improved version getting 30.8 per cent in 1987. Once it started to move to the centre, Labour re-entered the fray. Had it gone into the 1992 election with a leader seen by voters as fit to be Prime Minister, rather than with Neil Kinnock, then it might have closed the gap still more. But it still managed to reduce the Conservatives’ majority to 21.
As for the past three elections: if the Conservatives had been led by a combination of Solomon, Aristotle, Churchill and Bobby Moore, the party would still have been crushed. Labour was not merely electable under Blair; as a modern social democrat party, it really was the political wing of the British people, and so those election results reflected the voters’ default preference. The Conservatives did not have a prayer.
The Lib Dems’ fundamental problem is demonstrated by the one election in which the party did have a realistic hope of touching power. In the unique circumstances of 1983, the Alliance secured 25.4 per cent. In 1979, the third party vote had been 13.8 per cent. But this near doubling of the vote had almost nothing to do with any perceived merits of the Liberals. It was because the party had jumped on the coat tails of the breakaway Labour party, the SDP. The Alliance vote reflected merely the preference of the electorate for social democracy. Even in near-triumph, the Liberals’ weakness was exposed.
Politics has moved on, but not much has changed for the Lib Dems. David Cameron — who is now the longest-serving party leader — is taking the Conservatives towards the centre, a prerequisite of victory. But to make that real, the Labour party has to be seen, as in 1979, 1983, 1987 and 1992, as having forfeited the right to power. Saddled with Gordon Brown, that looks more than a possibility.
That leaves the Lib Dems pretty much where they have been since 1983 — struggling to find a purpose or a niche. The party’s leadership contest is, somewhat hilariously, being presented as a battle between those who want to target potential Conservative voters and those who want to ape Charles Kennedy’s strategy of being more left-wing than Labour. Hilarious, because if the party wants to maximise its vote at any given election, it has little choice in how it presents itself. As a vehicle for protest votes from those who are unhappy with either the Labour or Conservative party, it must position itself in reaction to the electorate’s view of the main parties. With a resurgent Conservative party, it would be crazy to target the Conservatives. With an ever-weakening Labour party, it would be crazy not to target disillusioned Labour voters.
Nick Clegg or Chris Huhne: the party’s vote might dip and bob a few points, but the Lib Dems will remain what they always have been.