Principles before power: Liberals should let the Tories rule
Politics may not be a game, but any businessman familiar with game theory can analyse the impasse that has followed the 2010 UK general election. With the votes counted we ought to be discussing policies but the post-poll debate is still about politics.
People told the opinion pollsters they wanted a hung parliament to punish all the parties – and having got one in the real poll they find they have punished themselves. Instead of having the best of all policies they have the worst of all worlds.
The Conservatives have the most seats and the most votes but not enough to command control of the Commons. But if they have not won, Labour and the Liberal Democrats with even fewer MPs and votes, certainly have not. But a hung parliament means that the party which polled the fewest votes of the three main parties and which has the least seats – and fewer seats than at the last election after losing substantial support in the days before the poll – will decide who forms the next government and could be part of it.
A Lib-Con alliance would upset many who voted Liberal to avoid a Tory government (and many Conservatives with no love for Liberals) but if that combination of parties is not what the people wanted, what of a Lib-Lab pact – especially one that replaced Gordon Brown as leader? It would give Britain a prime minister it had never voted on or seen in the leadership debates and it would give power to the two parties that fared worst in the poll. Surely that cannot be a definition of democracy.
And proportional representation is not the panacea the baffled public seems to think. If the parties now had seats proportionate to the votes cast the Liberals would still be the smaller party but, as kingmaker, the most powerful. If practice the Liberals would probably have received more votes because fewer supporters would have switched to other parties to avoid “wasting” their vote. The LibDems could become kingmaker in every future election, governments merely switching between Lab-Lib or Con-Lib administrations.
This blog forecast the collapse of the apparently high pre-election Liberal support; it forecast the higher turn-out and it forecast David Cameron will be the next PM. In similarly non-partisan spirit I now suggest Cameron and Nick Clegg call off their talks, the Liberals shun Labour overtures, and the Tories form a minority government.
The Libs can say they won’t deliberately frustrate reasonable Tory policies but should decline any coalition and seats in cabinet. A short-term alliance with their old enemy would compromise the principles of a party which (because it has not been in power for so long) still has them. Those principles and its unaligned independence are the party’s unique selling point but if it abandons them temporarily it will be tainted for a generation while walking away from the talks would enhance its reputation and show it puts principles above power.
Anyway, the Tories would ditch an alliance as soon as they see the prospect of an outright victory at a new election.
Labour meanwhile must accept they are in opposition and regroup under a new leader. A deal with the Libs would look shoddy for both parties.
Minority governments are not easy but if it means a Conservative administration tempers its more controversial policies and pursues a programme acceptable to most people it will have achieved everything demanded by the supporters of a ‘parliament of all the parties’ or PR.
