News from the New Party

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

The art of regicide

The Liberal Democrats seem to be making a habit of overthrowing their leaders. For all the denials that Sir Menzies Campbell's resignation was unforced, it seemed clear even before his interview with Nick Robinson this afternoon that he realised that his position was untenable, and that such support as he had from his parliamentary colleagues and the party at large was at best lukewarm.

There is some truth to the suggestion that discussion about the leader's age was a factor in forcing him to step down. To this extent the complaint that he has been a victim of "ageism" is justified. Aside from the fact that a general election campaign is onerous enough for a fit fifty-year old, let alone a near septuagenarian, the question of image is important enough in itself. The requirement to present a dynamic, if not youthful, impression to the electorate is regarded as increasingly important in modern politics - which says much more about the state of modern politics than it does about Sir Menzies Campbell.

Even so, it has to be said that the substance of Campbell's leadership was in reality a problem in itself. Oliver Kamm delivers a harsh, but essentially accurate, assessment:

The great surprise to many commentators was how little Campbell really knew and how ill founded was the respect in which he was held. Campbell himself must have known; yet he didn't have the insight to perceive the damage he would inflict thereby on his party. You could just about make an intellectual case - and it has been done, unconvincingly, by two biographers - that Michael Foot was a necessary caretaker leader in Labour's then enfeebled and fractious state. The same cannot be said of Campbell. His was a mission of vanity. The party ought to have done far better in the 2005 election. A problem with the leadership caused the party to miss a historic opportunity. Campbell's succession has reinforced that failure, and the party may not again see a chance like the one it had.

Whilst it is undoubtedly true that Sir Menzies Campbell, like Michael Foot, has enjoyed a long and distinguished parliamentary career, in the case of Campbell the distinction derives more from dignity than real substance. His long service as Foreign Affairs spokesman for the party coincided with a distinctly unimpressive period in the Lib Dems' thinking on foreign policy. In particular the party's position on the Iraq War has been opportunistic in the extreme - successful in the short term, in that it no doubt bought the party plenty of Labour votes in 2005, but damaging in the longer term now that Iraq is no longer the hot electoral issue it used to be. The reality is that the Campbell leadership delivered little in terms of a sense of direction for a party which has become increasingly detached from its traditional centrist position in British politics.

Although it is possible to construe the Lib Dems' current low ebb in the opinion polls as the result of an uninspired leadership with a poor public perception, the political context in itself is hostile to the Liberal Democrats' present position: there is currently little scope for the Liberal Democrats to oppose Labour from the left (as they did in 2005), and little enthusiasm from the party's activist base to adopt a true liberal (as opposed to social democratic) strategy, which might enable them to win back some of the political territory that has recently been conceded to David Cameron's Conservatives. In short, the party is fundamentally divided as to its ideological purpose and political strategy: marginalised by recent political developments, the Liberal Democrats are facing a classic main party squeeze. Whilst Ming Campbell has not done particularly well, it is hard to see how any other leader might have done much better for the Liberal Democrats.

Nevertheless, Lib Dems at all levels have been lobbying for a new leadership election and now they have one. Which way will the party go? Received wisdom is that the two main candidates will be Nick Clegg on the party's right wing, and Chris Huhne (runner up in the 2006 leadership election) from the party's left wing. Although Huhne's performance last time was impressive in some respects, Nick Clegg is undoubtedly the more telegenic of the two. He also has the advantage of a substantial majority in his constituency of over eight thousand, which ought to survive even the worst Lib Dem bloodbath predicted by the opinion polls. Huhne by contrast has a majority of only 568 in a constituency which the Conservatives will expect to win next time. In terms of policy, however, a Clegg leadership is far more likely to deliver something like a genuinely liberal programme for the Liberal Democrats. Whether this is something that the socialist left of the Liberal Democrats will tolerate, only time will tell. If not, then yet another outbreak of regicide may be expected.

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The art of regicide