The other thing which is surprising about this is that Yougov have generally been polling Lib Dems lower than ICM, Comres and AR. Will be really interesting to see what their polls say.

Labour’s response:

“Mass Panic in #tory HQ as #labour are back in the driving seat in YouGov Seat Projection: Con 245 Lab 275 Lib Dem 99 RT”

http://twitter.com/UKLabourParty/status/12304692931

Yes, Labour’s response to coming third in a poll is to *boast* that the system is so fucked they’d nonetheless have the most seats. I didn’t think I could hate the Labour party any more. I find myself thinking in Telegraph commenterese – they are absolutely beyond shame and beneath contempt.

@Alix

Yes I saw that via James Graham and had to facepalm.

I do wonder, is that pure spin and cynically devised, or are they so genuinely out of touch that is what they thought?

tory supporters seem to be getting panicky

“Yes, Labour’s response to coming third in a poll is to *boast* that the system is so fucked they’d nonetheless have the most seats.”

Well, the system is what it is. I don’t like it, but its inevitable that they’ll rejoice that the swing against them doesn’t make the Tories the largest party. This is, after all, all about the swing. And size of constituencies etc.

I hate to be all defensive of FPTP as I dislike it too, but its like people in California complaining they only get two senators while so does the miniscule state of Hawaii. It is what it is. For now.

What Alix and other mad Lib Demmers don’t seem to get is that if the Tories are the largest party in a hung parliament, if they do go into coalition with the Lib Dems then the conditions of the latter are unlikely to include reform of the FPTP system. However, if Labour are the largest party, a coalition with the Lib Dems will surely lead to AV+ (as a compromise between Labour’s AV and the LDs’ STV).

So actually, Sunny is right: the system is as it is, and if you want to change it then it actually benefits the Lib Dems to have a hung parliament where Labour is larger than the Tories rather than the other way round.

Clegg (and the rest of you) can only play hard to get for so long.

Anyone see CH4 news at 7? Showed Charlie Whelan and Andy Coulson bumping into each other in the spin room after the debate.

Coulson did not seem a happy camper.

@6 Actually I hope we’ll stick up for our principles no matter how the vote goes but then again, I am but young and naive.

Interestingly, the BBC seats calculator (if we use this poll) gives:

Labour – 276
Conservatives – 245
Liberal Democrats – 100
Others – 29

Now that result, for me, would be just peachy.

P.S. However, it still doesn’t seem right that the Lib Dems could get 2% more votes than Labour and end up with 176 less seats. But then again, I support STV so I’m clearly off my rocker

I don’t see how Tories would be able to do that, 6. Either they’d have to give up reform, or try to rule a minority government (which would not last more than a year). Then the Lib Dems could re-campaign on Tories blocking reform of politics…and you don’t have to look to far to see how that’d go down with the electorate.

I also would like to think Lib Dems would stick to their principles, they actually have a *lot* to lose if they don’t after making such a big deal about it.

Lee, the Lib Dems’ strength (both in their target seats and through Clegg on the remaining debates) will come from showing themselves to be superior to the other two main parties, a task which necessitates showing those two parties to be decidedly inferior. For them to form a coalition with either, after the election, will be detrimental. My hope is that they trade support for the largest party on certain policies like budget cuts, for electoral reform. The largest party calls a second election under the new system, and hopefully things will be clearer by then.

However: under this hypothetical situation, if a second election is called then the Lib Dems will have to declare who their preferred partner will be, as happens in other countries with PR systems (e.g. in Germany it’s well understood that the CDU prefer the FDP as partners). This will be tricky, but if we do bring in electoral reform, and unless there is a massive surge in support for one of the other parties, the Lib Dems will form a coalition with one of them.

Also, the Tories are being upfront about not wanting electoral reform. The furthest they go is cutting the number of MPs and a right to recall. The Tories will not accept the LDs’ demand for electoral reform as a condition for a coalition. However there might be agreement on raising the tax threshold and the pupil premium (which reminds me of assisted places).

blocking reform of politics…and you don’t have to look to far to see how that’d go down with the electorate.

Seeing as the electorate tend not to care about how unreformed our system is, because when presented with its failures they mostly turn away in disgust rather than try to reform it, I’m not sure this follows. Clegg did well not because he was promising something new (I mean, he was), but because he played up the anti-politics/pox on both your houses sentiment. He can’t embody that forever, because, as I said, under PR a coalition is inevitable and the LDs would have to either declare or intimate which party they’d prefer to join. Their current coyness won’t wash once FPTP is gone.

Oh Blanco, you are but a walking cliche.

Stop teasing me, Lee – why do LDs (sorry, I mean, LD-supporting independents, obviously) love to tease? Just say who, under a PR system where a coalition would be necessary to govern, you would prefer to join. It’s either that or the Tories and Labour join forces like the SDP-CDU “grand” coalition. Bet the electorate would love that.

“fieldwork 15th-16th April”

Half the fieldwork was done before the debate! Imagine what fieldwork done wholly after debate will show…!

————

George @#8:

That’s assuming a uniform swing. I think with a poll like this one, with a big Lib Dem surge, you’re unlikely to have a uniform swing.

————

My feeling is that voters are pissed off with Brown, but they’ve looked at Cameron and the Tories and, while tentatively going along with them, have seen nothing inspiring from them. The along comes Nick Clegg and voters think: maybe we can have our cake and eat it.

“where a coalition would be necessary to govern”

False. How about “minority government”?

I reckon LDs won’t go into coalition if Hung Parliament, they’ll get their Council of Fiscal Stability, and then let the main party (if not themselves) govern on other things. But they’ll try and establish consensus on the economy.

Am confused: can I just ask what the “stick to their principles” point being advocated here: it sounds as though the principle is broadly, “whatever happens, refuse to enter a coalition”.

In that case, I don’t understand what the party’s political strategy or theory of change to *change the system * is. I had understood the political strategy of the party involved aiming to double its current seats by 2014-15, which I took to be an attempt to engineer the type of scenario we are discussing in which it might then use its power and influence

Do, however, please clarify: it might be that you mean “refuse to enter a coaltion with Conservatives or Labour” (while perhaps being open to a coalition with, say, the Greens, Welsh Nationalists and independent candidates from Kidderminster; or perhaps in some parallel universe the German Christian Democrats and Nelson Mandela or something), or perhaps it is simply “refuse to enter a coalition unless the Conservatives or Labour agree the platform would be that the entire policy agenda would be the whole LibDem manifesto and nothing but the LibDem manifesto.

Now, as I understand it, perhaps the core principled argument of the LibDems is that we should have a pluralist constitutional overhaul of the British constitution: part of the intention of which is to make hung parliaments, power-sharing and coalition the norm, by not giving majority power to parties with only a plurality of the vote. The implicit assumption is that parties having to negotiate so that a government drawn from parties with more than 50% of the vote would be more democratic and more legitimate, and that this would shift a winner take all political culture into a more continental European one of pluralism, political negotiation and grown-up politics.

So I would have thought that ‘sticking to principles’ means being prepared to negotiate if the current system delivers a hung parliament to exert whatever pressure and influence the party has to try to achieve major steps in that direction?

If not, why not?

Lets hypothesise something like the poll was the result:Is the argument that principle demands insisting there is no coalition, so there is a minority government with 30-33% support so that there is likely to be a second election within 12 – 24 months?
Doesn’t that risk implying pluralities which deliver a majority are legitimate, while hung Parliaments aren’t? And what would the LibDem aim in the second election: to form a majority government, or be the largest party?

What if that then ended with a major party with 38%, an overall majority, and the question of reform being shelved for 5 years: and perhaps 3-5 elections before a hung parliament (its taken eight and counting since the last one) you might look silly. Hung Parliaments and snap elections have in both 1910 and 1974 led to more or less the same result, and I assume you’re not advocating that annual elections for 3 or 4 years would make the case for a political reform *designed* to deliver hung parliaments as the norm??

If the argument is simply that, whatever is offered, it could not be enough, then that seems strange. I would have thought AV+ and an elected Lords (say, with a set date of Spring or Oct 2011 for a referendum as the first bill passed, and a campaign for it) would count. if the Tories offered the LDs that and a sensible Europe policy, you might bite their hands off. Alternatively, if Labour did, you could agree a government commtted to a full written constittution which would have about 60% of the vote behind the parties forming it….

Anyway, Clegg is quite clear it would be his responsibility in a hung parliament to make sure the Parliament behaved responsibly: in most outcomes, that is taken to mean abstaining on confidence and supply having negotiated some concessions.

If there is a principles o

Sorry. If the argument is that there is a principled reason why Nick Clegg could negotiate the terms under which he would not vote no confidence in a minority government or its budget (while not joining it) but could not negotiate the terms under which he would join a coalition (because it would complicate or diminish his ‘outsider’ pitch) then that seems to me to be about political positioning not principle, and to be a choice for purism over pluralism.

It would do quite a bit to undemine the case for the constitutional overhaul the LibDems advocate, since it would not work if the Liberal Democrats regard themselves as uncoalitionable or averse to coalition.

@Sunder

I agree. Surely if the LDs are hoping for a hung parliament and electoral reform resulting from that, they need to recognise that at some point either after this election or the next, they will need to form a coalition with one of the major parties. They might not like the two main parties much, but that’s the world we live in: perhaps they want to live in the world they think should be. Good luck with that.

It is the same conundrum that arises in the contrast between their campaigning in FPTP elections (which heavily plays upon the idea that only two parties can win in any one area, one of those two being them of course, the same idea used against them at a national level) which they are much better at than their campaigning in PR elections.

Sunder’s right: if “sticking to their principles” means not forming a coalition with the largest party in a hung parliament after this election, surely that definition cannot extend to refusing to form a coalition after the next election presuming that next election is fought under a reformed electoral system? Either you want the politics of compromise and consensus, or you actually don’t.

In my view the LDs are primarily a social liberal party, a lot of the labour core have views similar to the LD core, so we have more in common with Labour than the conservatives. So, while I’d be happy to see a coalition, I wouldn’t want to see one of it meant abandoning our principles in order to comply with the distinctly un-social liberal behaviour of the Labour leadership or in order to get along with a Conservative party intent on creating this mythical “big society”.

So yes, go into a coalition if we need to but we definitely shouldn’t fall into the trap of forgoing our political principles just in exchange for the illusion of power.

I make no secret that a hung parliament has been my preferred option for a long time. I’m not a LD , but will probably vote for them as the only way (however unlikely) to get the Tory out in the blue-rinsed political desert that is deepest, darkest Sussex.

The bigger the number of seats the LD’s get, the better as far as I’m concerned. Surely their post election strategy assuming a hung parliament is simple?

If they insist on giving the largest party “first shot”, and it happens to be the Tories, they make PR a condition of a coalition. If the Tories (as seems likely) refuse to play ball, the LD’s let the Tories try and govern with a minority government. They then watch them fall over, with ample time to build their case with an already half convinced electorate that voting reform is essential, and capitalise on this at the following election.

If Labour are the largest party, they offer a coalition on condition voting reform is delivered, Trident is cancelled, all the illiberal New Labour anti-civil rights legislation is ditched, and that they get a few decent cabinet positions.

Simple. Let’s just hope it’s the latter eh?

The outcome of a hung Parliament would be a minority government.

What would happen? Brown would carry on, tabling a confidence vote. Either the LDs abstained – having been offered no promises of any kind – in which case they are Mandelson’s patsies, or else they vote to defeat Brown. Cameron comes in, and they become Tory stooges. Be careful what you wish for.

Mike @ 23: those surely aren’t the only possibilities.

There is a pluralist wing within Labour and we should treat the prospect of a hung parliament, based on these polling figures, as full of creative possibilities.

(1) If Labour won the most seats with the lowest proportion of the vote, Labour should seek a coalition with the Lib Dems as a matter of political legitimacy – it would be intrinsically wrong for Labour to try to form a government on its own in these circs and would only damage its credibility in the long-term.

(2) Labour should offer the Lib Dems at least AV plus, fully elected Lords and something like a Commission on Civil Liberties to review the database state.

Of course, the Lib Dems might reject this. But they’d be pretty daft to do so, and they certainly wouldn’t look like ‘Mandelson’s patsies’ if they did.

The issue is how far Labour would have the gumption to go for something like this. There are some in Labour for whom this would be almost as bad as a coalition with the Tories. But there are others, like myself, who would see this as a fantastic opportunity that will open up Labour itself to much-needed renewal.

Oops…that have should been: ‘…they certainly wouldn’t look like ‘Mandelson’s patsies’ if they did accept such a deal.’

I live in a marginal constituency previously held by the LibDems. At the 2005 election, the votes for the LibDem and Conservative candidates split 40% to 38% of the poll.

One consequence for this election is that I’m getting virtually daily drops of personally addressed Conservative election literature, much of it by mail, which must be costly.

In August 2008, as the world economy was going into meltdown, I received a letter, by mail, from the Conservative PPC thanking me for my continued support of his campaign to change my post code – a post code which has remained unchanged for the 20 something past years I have lived at my present address.

For various reasons of disenchantment with the three main parties at the time of the 2005 elelction, I chose not to vote but then the overall turnout at 61.4% was the second lowest since 1918:
http://www.ukpolitical.info/Turnout45.htm

I’ll probably be voting on 6 May 2010.

I agree with Sunder on the point of “principles”

I think the “plague on both your houses” dtrategy is excellent, but not sure how its any more principles than the others objectively.

also, if they are getting to about 100 seats then they need to start thinking seriously about coalitions than just sitting on the fence.

[24] Stuart, do you seriously suppose for one moment that

- Brown & Madelson are thinking along those lines

- that those two don’t have a firmer grip on the Party than Gorbachev ever had on the CPSU?

Psychologically, they see only two kinds of Brits, those who obey them and those who abuse them. That, in short, is why their party is now third in some polls.

MIke @ 28: I have no idea what Brown or Mandelson are thinking. My comments are directed to what the pluralists in Labour should be encouraging Labour to do in the event of a hung parliament where Labour is the biggest party but with the smallest share of the vote.

This brings us to your claim that Mandelson and Brown have a firmer grip on the Labour party than Gorbachev did on the CPSU. (That wasn’t very firm, was it?)

I disagree with what I take to be the spirit of your remark – I think they will certainly not have a very firm grip on the party in the event – which we are here assuming – that they lead the party into third place in the popular vote.

[29] Fair enough – I really can’t get my head round the thought that Cameron has somehow managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, if indeed he has.

My advice to Brown and Mandelson (which they won’t take either) would be, in those circumstances, to resign as quickly as possible, let the Lib Dems support a Cameron minority government, hold an inner-party PM and leadership election and take it from there. Then would be the time to wiggle the PR hips at lover-boy Clegg, methinks…

[30] PM = post-mortem, of course.

Didn’t this kick off three weeks ago with the Chancellor’s debate? The one where Vince “Mangler” Cable came across as a plausible senior minister?

And on Thursday, Clegg had his moment. LibDems have failed in the past because they have been seen as one man bands; a party with a popular leader and no soldiers. The LibDem two man band is much more appealing than the Conservative equivalent.

I think it would be ridiculously unwise for the LibDems to expose their cards at this time. We know who the Tory candidates are, but we don’t know who will be elected. Depending on who is elected, we (us people, the electorate) might get a short life parliament with electoral reform.

The press are constantly going on about the BNP benefitting from the discredited old parties, but the LibDems’ amazing surge in the latest opinion polls indicates instead that the wider public are gagging for progressive policies.

It’s no coincidence that the most favoured LibDem proposals appear to be their most progressive ones: lifting low earners out of taxation; the so-called “Mansion Tax”; scrapping Trident.

My view is that at the next TV debate Nick Clegg should go on like a broken record about his party proposal to scrap taxation under £10K. It’s spectacularly popular with the electorate and difficult for both the Tories and Labour to rebuff without appearing hostile to low earners and ordinary workers.

I truly believe it’s the LibDems’ best asset and opinion polls seem to suggest the same.

@ 33 claude

Agreed. Here’s hoping he’s got some decent ideas up his sleeve to make Camera-on and Pa Broon look (even) more lead footed than they actually are.

How about windfall taxes on bonuses (whether cash or shares)?

Based on what Sunder and Sunny are saying here I seem to have misunderstood several weeks of harrassed LibDem’s on TV being constantly asked ‘Which would you prefer in a coalition?”. I could have sworn the party line was “We will not join one; the liberal agenda has more power outside a minority government than inside a coalition.” I know the party’s members are massively more similar to Labour voters than they are to Tories, but the party’s members are also not typically political strategists. The leadership are.

The logic seems to be that in a two-party coalition, the senior party gets its way on nearly everything and the junior partner gets its way on a few cosmetic details. This certainly reflects most of the ones I’ve studied where legislative power was not close to parity when the coalition was formed.

The minor party now has something to lose if the government falls. On any given issue, the amount of influence of the junior partner is more or less nil, particularly if the senior partner decides they are willing to risk a vote of no confidence to drive their juniors into line. Again, many precedents (not all from British politics).

If a minority government falls because it refuses to countenance progress for tribal or hysterical reasons, the Liberal case for STV becomes stronger. With it, the sense of outrage among the electorate becomes more entrenched. Their recent momentum is founded on (at last!) a successful differentiation of the Liberals from the Establishment in the eyes of the public. This site has had at least three articles in the last day pointing out how hard the tribalists are working to try and pull the wool back again.

Joining a coalition with either of these two parties, as led by Cameron and Brown but dominated by Cold Warriors and Thatcherite middle-class thinkers, would tar the Liberals with the last century of arrogance, corruption, violence, racism, homophobia, religious bigotry and economic short-termism. That would end their chances with most of the electorate permanently.

In a hung parliament, by contrast, the government must seek substantive third-party support on every single law. Any law that does not satisfy the third party produces a government defeat. [1] And crucially, the Liberals have no stake in the government; they have nothing at all to lose. For the plucky insurgency which has perceived momentum, every trip to the polls is a gift. That gives them the freedom to act liberally, and the power to moderate reactionaries. As someone said over on CiF recently, it puts them in a position to provide Westminster with some adult supervision.

It seems fairly clear to me that this is the best possible outcome for the Liberal Democrats. It is certainly the best outcome for a move away from industrial-era tribal politics. It is also what I had understood the party to have been saying consistently for the last month. Given that, I find it odd that so many simply refuse to believe that the Liberals might “stick to their principles”, i.e. do what they say they will. The principle in question, to answer Sunder, is that they should as a party promote the liberal government of the United Kingdom, and afaict they think independence from the Labservatives ™ is the best way to do that.

After all, as recently established by Mr. Clegg on Channel 4, the Liberals aren’t Labour, nor are they the Conservatives. The last Liberal government to fall to sleaze was beyond living memory. There is no experiential equivalent to Back to Basics, or the Iraq war, or the poll tax riots, or Brixton, or 42-day detention, or “20 Reasons”, or the breaking of the Unions, or tuition fees, or the Winter of Discontent. Why do people assume that Clegg’s party are equally unethical?

However, Sunny and Sunder are smart people and are both better connected than me. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d had to say I was wrong on here.

I may have misunderstood the LibDem line. If they were not putting the argument I have recapped, could someone tell me where I went adrift? If they were, why does no-one believe them?

[1] Think on the actual laws proposed and who voted for them, these last 9 years. Think on all the civil liberties law, the defence of the banks and the libel system from liberal intervention. Think on what happened to Clegg’s 100 Days.

The most likely ’3rd party’ to support most of Labour’s actions in government over the last 13 years has been the Conservatives. Both the government and the opposition are authoritarian reactionaries, and have voted like it; whatver the party memberships look like, a LabCon coalition is much more likely to function as a co-ordinated policy organ in Parliament than a team of either with the Liberals. Neither of the other parties can both abandon their entrenched prejudices and keep their heartland; as we’ve all been talking about ever since the last Euro elections.