The Unjust, Welcome Decline of the Liberal Democrats

It is an outdated, lazy generalisation to label all Liberal Democrats as granola eating Guardian readers; I have it on good authority that some of them eat porridge. With oat milk no less. I must admit, it saddened me to see the Lib Dems crash and burn as the scapegoat of tuition fees, even if I still do occasionally listen to Nick Clegg’s ‘I’m sorry’ remix to perk me up on a Thursday morning. The Lib Dems dying (presuming they are dead) is a good thing, but they went down for all the wrong reasons. 

My swimming in  £50k of student debt isn’t really Cleggy’s fault — part Welsh Labour’s, part David Hameron’s, part my choosing a four year uni to extend the amount of my life I could spend as ‘Not A Real Person’. Obviously, this is me being hilarious, but there is something deeply pernicious about the way that Cleggmania was squashed by the left all those years ago. Some of us salivate for a return to the days when things were simple: good ol’ austerity, no global pandemic, no ‘europe’. Just having to argue generally along the lines of ‘people should be able to afford to live’ (still, a tad trickier than you might think). As much as many view those days in hindsight as times of stability and calm, they set the course for the clusterfuck of ‘Great Year Ahead For Britain’, to which we have all had to bear witness.

I voted for Clegg in 2010. Well, sort of. I was ten. I did it from my bathtub. Dad came in from work, continually disillusioned by party politics but increasingly desperate for a piss. “None of them have done anything for me”. A shop worker who had lived through Thatcher, Major, Blair, and Brown, the bloke has a point. I told him I reckoned he should go for Clegg. He seemed nice, and wasn’t one of The Big Two. I thought this was pretty solid logic for a ten-year-old. Most of me hedging my bets with the Liberals could be attributed to my insufferable contrarianism (which has faded, a bit). The rest, though, was because Clegg was everywhere. Flash forward a decade, and Swinson, despite somehow having convinced herself that she could be the actual prime minister come December 2019, couldn’t even make it onto ITV. Nor into Parliament. In the months that followed, the Lib Dems locked themselves in (another) leadership race. With all due to respect to Ed Davey, I have friends who have fought Class Rep elections more competitive than that. 

Structuring my thoughts whilst simultaneously trying to write something mildly interesting about the Dems is difficult, mostly because I have a bit too much to say. The easiest way to do this is to list all of the atrocities against the working class committed by the ConDem Coalition. In all honesty, when trying to bully my friends out of voting for Wendy Chamberlain last year, this was the Mode of Attack. It’s effective. It works. ‘Don’t vote for the Lib Dems because you’re voting Tory Light’. Most people (and some in St Andrews) don’t wear ‘poor-hater’ with pride at the ballot box, so if you can convince them that Lib Dems are basically Tories and Tories are basically scum, then you’re on to a winner.

The ease of this comes with stark danger. By persistently underlining the Lib Dems’ role in the brutal regime of austerity, we help The Right get exactly what they want: blameless Tories. This doesn’t mean that the Lib Dems were blameless. There is much that could have been done differently (a Labour coalition, a minority Conservative government). Sir Nick was stuck between a rock and a hard place; nobody would be satisfied with any route he chose. Ideally (for him and for the porridge eaters), he would have become prime minister, but that was obviously never on the cards. Whatever options he faced, the fact of the matter is that he supported life-endangering cuts that have swallowed up meaningful state support for Britain’s vulnerable. Of course, the moral permissibility of these cuts is technically up for debate. For example, Spiked magazine suggests that if we starved children perhaps they’d have a savvier knack for business. Give someone so much spare time that they do a Philosophy degree, and they can throw anything back at you. Consider that a warning. 

So the Lib Dems were a bit at fault. That said, they say they were promised no rise in tuition fees (and something about proportional voting, but that’s a fun little chat for another Winter Break). These things didn’t happen, but when they didn’t happen they refused to stand against it. This article is not a defence of Cleggmania, nor the Liberal Democrats’ ‘project’ more generally. Recall, the title suggests that their decline is equal parts ‘unjust’ and ‘welcome’. We’ve seen why it’s a little bit of both, but let me get clear on the unjust-ness. 

The decline of the Lib Dems, from 2015 and beyond, is a little bit unfair because they were fully blamed for something they shouldn’t be fully blamed for. That is, it is good that they lost seats for failing on tuition fees, but the fact that David Cameron, who literally shagged a pig, managed to orchestrate that and then win a majority is ludicrous. As the old saying goes, the captain goes down with his ship, unless that captain is the captain of the Bullingdon Club, and the ship is the United Kingdom. It is also unjust because there are a whole host of reasons why the Lib Dems should only have enough seats to fit into the back of a taxi. These, coincidentally, are also the reasons why their decline is welcome. 

I will be both brief and rambling. Assertive enough so that you know what I’m saying, but sketching and strawmanning enough to invite outrage and response. I hope you forgive me for this, but the break has been long. There are three key failures that legitimise the Lib Dems’ decline: spinelessness, union blindness, and The Colour Principle. 

This spinelessness is old and obvious, and has been the subject of much of the venom sprinkled across this piece. The ConDem coalition, and the coalition with Welsh Labour more recently, have consistently shown how the Lib Dems are not immune to the promise-breaking and political-backstabbing of The Big Two, however much they try to position themselves as The Clean Alternative. They paint themselves as ‘neither Con nor Lab’, but were forced into collaborating with both. You cannot stand up as The Difference, and then bow down to the Establishment in one fell swoop whilst also arguing that you possess a spine.

I’m not a fan of reductionism, but you can see this spinelessness on the granular level of centrism too. Whether it’s Clegg shifting from ‘caring for the people’ to spying on the people as a Facebook Big Man, or Chuka Umunna, who has changed parties more times than I’ve changed clothes in lockdown 3.0, we see repeated cases of not just Self over Party but Self over The People. 

Careerism isn’t unique to centrists; it’s the driving force of the Nasty Party. I’m not seeking to expose some inherent evil of centrism that exists nowhere else. I’m simply pointing out that it’s the same spineless, austerity-sympathising, neoliberal-policy-worshipping crap I’ve grown accustomed to in my short life. Making their own sourdough and pretending to have read Becoming Michelle Obama doesn’t make them any less dangerous. 

The ‘union blindness’ is a clever little double entendre. They are blind both to the importance of trade unions, and the failures of the United Kingdom. The Liberals’ commitment to free markets and corporate-bootlicking fails the same working people that they tried to woo in 2010. Regarding the British Union, they stand strongly with the Conservatives in pressing against Scottish Independence, but offer little realistic alternative. ‘The Scots should stay because we can make the Union better!’ as a line of argument falls a tad flat when you have no chance of ever getting a full fist gripped on power, and have proven that when you have half a fist of power (a high five of power?), you simply bow to the dominant party of the coalition. The Tories of St Andrews strategically voting Lib Dem tells you all you need to know. 

Most of this has been boring, political rubbish. Perhaps (definitely) the biggest failure of the Liberal Democrats is illustrated by the Colour Principle. Hark back to the glory days of 2010, and you’ll not only notice the ridiculous amount of yellow, but that the Lib Dems are yellow. Fast forward to 2019, and all of Scotland is yellow. You’d be forgiven for thinking that the entirety of Scotland was lapping up the ConDem Regime. But no. The Lib Dems have declined so miserably that they have lost their own colour. Now, Nicola’s Yellow Army gets grips on the pale, inviting yellow. Scrambling for identifiability, the Dems have had orange thrust upon them. Everyone knew that this spelt the end for The Liberal Dream. Wolves. Dundee United. Blackpool. All football teams who play in orange, but refuse to acknowledge it. Much like the Lib Dems, who are long-gone into the political oblivion occupied now by The Whigs, The BNP, UKIP, Change UK/ The Independent Group for Change, and the Scottish Family Party. 

But if you are a Liberal who has made it this far, do not fear! There is hope yet. The Lib Dems have a new leader, and his name is Sir Keir Starmer. I leave you with a short poem, to inspire change and faith: 

He may technically wear red, 

He may really prefer blue

But please do not fear Keir

For he loves Porridge too.