News from the New Party

Liberal Democrats fail to bridge the credibility gap

The Liberal Democrats are famous for one policy above all others: proportional representation.  For decades, Lib Dems and their forebears have extolled the virtues of PR as a panacea for delivering consensus led governments that will deliver the will of the people more effectively than any other method of democratic governance.  And so, following the recent elections in Scotland and Wales, where the electorate has made a clear choice not to deliver majority support to the Labour Party, and where Liberal Democrat support could have delivered a stable majority government, the Liberal Democrats have seized the moment and... run away.  As a consequence, the credibility of the third party, never more than shaky in any event, has been considerably damaged.

Recent developments may be a surprise to opponents of the Lib Dems who have often suspected that the chief attraction of proportional representation to the Lib Dems was that it would keep them in government forever.  In fairness to the Scottish Lib Dems, they have themselves been in government for the past eight years.  Perhaps they felt the need for a bit of a rest; perhaps also they were justified in considering that the electorate's verdict on Labour was also a verdict on them.  The Welsh fiasco is, on the other hand, a wonder to behold.

The possibility of a "rainbow coalition" of Plaid Cymru, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, which would have replaced Rhodri Morgan's Labour administration and given the Welsh people a chance of something other than Labour government for a change, actually had the backing of Plaid and the Tories.  It was division within the executive of the Welsh Liberal Democrats which led to the breakdown of the effort to deliver a broad based coalition government, which is what the Liberal Democrats have been telling everybody for years is what the people need, even if that's not actually what they want.

Yet it seems, belatedly, that the Liberal Democrats have learned a hard lesson. Proportional representation in the recent elections has not delivered stable majority government.  It has delivered confusion in both cases.  The irony of the most coalition-minded party in the country turning its back on power-sharing will not be lost on the British people.  Proportional representation within a parliamentary system of government is very bad news for democracy.  It can result in either unstable, fragmenting coalition governments, or at the other extreme, huge centrist monolithic agglomerations which cannot be shifted by the electorate, come what may.  In either case, the will of the people counts for little, the back-room deals of politicians count for much.  Elections cease to be a battle between competing manifestoes, as the manifesto commitments are immediately bargained away as soon as the election is over.  We need more accountability from our politicians, not less.  This is a truth which may now be dawning on the people of Scotland and Wales.