LEADING ARTICLE
november 15 2019, 12:01am, the times
The Times view on the Liberal Democrats’ election hopes: Yellow Streak
The Liberal Democrats hope to gain seats by being the party of Remain. But they need to be honest about what they would do in a hung parliament
The Liberal Democrats had high hopes going into this election. Indeed so high that they were the first party to back Boris Johnson’s demand for a December poll. The party’s confidence stemmed from a surge in fortunes over the past year, during which it made confident advances in the local elections, came second in the European elections and nearly doubled its numbers in parliament with the addition of nine defectors from other parties. Support surged over the summer to peak at 20 per cent in July, up from 10 per cent in May, since when it has slipped back modestly to 18 per cent, according to
The Times’s analysis of polls. Yet as always with the Lib Dems, the challenge will be turning that support into parliamentary seats. How far they succeed is likely to have
a decisive effect on the election.
That challenge should certainly be easier than in previous elections. The party has traditionally suffered from its voters being spread too thinly to win seats under the first-past-the-post system. But the party hopes that its new pro-Remain voters are more concentrated. In 2015 the Lib Dems won 7.9 per cent of the votes and gained only eight seats. In 2017 the party’s vote share actually fell to 7.4 per cent yet it acquired 12 MPs. This time they are equipped with a “stop Brexit” message which appears to be cutting through. The party has high hopes of capturing a swathe of Tory-held seats in Remain-voting areas. There is anecdotal evidence that they are even performing well in Leave seats in the southwest.
Nonetheless the task has been complicated by Nigel Farage’s decision to stand down Brexit Party candidates in Tory-held seats, many of which are Lib Dem targets. The Lib Dems are also likely to be more vulnerable in almost all the 21 seats they hold, many of which have majorities of less than 7 per cent and some of which voted Leave in 2016. Besides, the narrative told by the polls may damage the party. The fortunes of Jo Swinson, the leader, depend on voters believing that she can win. If she seems to be struggling, voters may cast around for another party to support.
Meanwhile the Lib Dems could have made their own task harder by sending out conflicting messages on their priorities. Their primary appeal to voters was supposed to be that they are the only national party unequivocally in favour of remaining in the EU. Yet this is difficult to square with their decision to stand against pro-Remain candidates from other parties in seats where the Lib Dems have no chance of winning. One of these is South West Hertfordshire, where Ms Swinson’s party is standing against David Gauke, a former Tory cabinet minister who has re-engineered himself as an independent and had called for voters to back the Lib Dems. Ms Swinson has also installed a new candidate for Canterbury to stand against the pro-Remain Labour candidate Rosie Duffield after the previous Lib Dem challenger pulled out. Perhaps the party’s priority is not stopping Brexit after all.
An even bigger question mark hangs over what they would do if the election results in another hung parliament. Ms Swinson insists that she can become prime minister but not even her most loyal supporters believe this. She has ruled out backing Mr Johnson to remain in No 10 and “absolutely, categorically” ruled out a coalition with Jeremy Corbyn.
Given that it is highly improbable that the Labour leader would stand aside to let someone else take his party into Downing Street, her position doesn’t bear scrutiny. The idea that she would instead push for another election is equally implausible given the ticking clock of the Brexit deadline on January 31, unless of course she is prepared to let Britain to crash out then with no-deal. In those circumstances the assumption must be that she would indeed put Mr Corbyn into Downing Street. She should be honest enough to say so.