Until the current administration, the British had not been governed by a Liberal-Conservative coalition since immediately after World War I, when David Lloyd-George—“the man who won the war”—was prime minister. Then, in 1922 and 1923, the bitterly divided Liberals were crushed at the polls and eclipsed by Labour as the principal alternative to the Conservatives. Liberals would later serve in national governments, but the party never again won a general election. Having dominated British politics in one form or another going back to the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the Liberals were finished as a political force.
So when in May 2010 the current party leader, Nick Clegg, emerged into the sunshine of the Rose Garden of 10 Downing Street alongside his Conservative counterpart, David Cameron, to announce a new Liberal-Conservative coalition government, many wondered if this heralded a new era in recent British politics. Coalitions, by and large, had only come at times of national emergency, but here were two leaders apparently happy to embrace each other in peacetime. Moreover, as the former Conservative prime minister, Sir John Major, pointed out, some hoped that “a temporary alliance will turn into a mini-realignment.”
With next month’s UK general election looking set to produce a “hung” parliament, a continuation of that mini-realignment may yet still be on the cards. But with the campaign heading towards its final stage, the more immediate task for the Lib Dems is to avoid a political meltdown every bit as traumatic in its way as that of 1923.
Last time round, following a campaign characterized by so-called “Cleggmania”, the Lib Dems won twenty-three per cent of the vote, coming up fast on the rails behind the second-placed Labour party on twenty-nine per cent. The latest polls this time show the party on a calamitous eight per cent, not only far behind Labour on thirty-five per cent, but also having been overtaken by UKIP on thirteen per cent, and with the Green party challenging on six per cent. If the Greens had put up a credible leader, such as their one-and-only MP, Caroline Lucas, instead of the woeful Natalie Bennett, the Lib Dems might easily have been pushed down into fifth place in England.
Even Nick Clegg himself is not safe. Polls in his Sheffield Hallam constituency show that he may have to endure the ultimate rejection by losing his seat in the House of Commons. As the great nineteenth century Liberal, William Gladstone, might have put it, Clegg and his party could end up being kicked “bag and baggage” out of parliament.
The problem, as Professor Tim Bale, one of Britain’s most interesting public intellectuals, told the New York Times recently, is that Clegg is hated by true believers on both sides of the aisle. Labour supporters loathe him for taking office alongside the Conservatives and trimming on social issues such as university tuition fees. The right-wing of the Conservative party blame him for every compromise the coalition government has had to make. “Put together with a manner that some people would describe as sanctimonious,” says Bale, “and that’s a lethal combination.”
History, though, may be kinder to Clegg than the electorate. The Liberal leader showed fortitude, discipline and maturity in holding together an inherently unstable government over a full five year term. The fact that he did so during a period of painful and controversial austerity makes the political achievement the more significant. Recovery after the global crash of 2008 was the priority for this government, so the coalition can point to genuine accomplishments such as Britain’s GDP growing faster than any other G7 economy last year, and hitting this year’s deficit target.
These achievements are Liberal as well as Conservative ones, not least because they represent much of the philosophy behind the influential “Orange Book” written in 2004 by many of those Lib Dems, including Clegg himself, who subsequently entered government in 2010. This seminal text reconnected the party with the classical liberalism of its Victorian heritage, not least the Gladstonian virtues of efficiency and economic retrenchment. The book banished the idea that it was enough for the party to stand wringing its hands on the sidelines of politics. For liberalism to mean anything, its leaders had to play in the real world. The Orange Book made it easier for Clegg and his ministers to work together with the likes of George Osborne, the Conservative chancellor of the exchequer, who even keeps a portrait of the “Grand Old Man” Gladstone in his private study.
Gladstone’s great rival, Benjamin Disraeli, once noted that Britain “does not love coalitions,” and we might add that it seems to love junior coalition partners even less. Clegg may yet return as deputy prime minister in a new coalition after May 7. But if the voters of Sheffield Hallam decide that his time is up, he can at least reflect that he’s being punished for living by another of Disraeli’s dictums that “real politics are the possession and distribution of power.” And that, after all, is the bit historians write about.
