UK: The Strange Death of the Rainbow Coalition

In a few hours on Tuesday the 11th of May, the vision of a coalition between Labour and the LibDems appeared briefly and then evaporated. There are many different version of why it could not succeed; Clegg’s personal affinity with Cameron, the speed with which John Reid and other Labour tribalists denounced it and the spurious numbers-didn’t-add- up argument rightly dismissed by Lord Ashdown. Nick Robinson, speaking later on the BBC, aptly described the Lib-Con government as a coalition of socially liberal Cameronites and economically liberal Cleggites.

In reality, what was destroyed on Tuesday was far more than a short-lived LibDem-Lab flirtation. We saw the an unwritten pact torn up between many supporters of both parties — perhaps even a majority — who had watched the last 13 years with growing dismay as Blair and Brown lined up with the US in unpopular wars, trampled on our civil liberties, pursued City-friendly policies which made Britain even less egalitarian and toadied up to the barons of the tabloid press. On Tuesday, the goal of uniting Britain’s two main centre-left parties, sustained by many common campaigns at grassroots level over many years, was shattered.

The long-term cost of this act is potentially far greater than the questionable benefit of heeding the City’s panicked cry to fill the ‘black hole’ in the budget and form a ’strong government’, a cry used repeatedly to justify a LibDem-Conservative coalition. Firstly, the LibDems membership base will be eroded, perhaps on a scale comparable to Labour after the folly of Iraq. Clegg’s Cabinet team will share in the ire provoked by the Tories’ deep spending cuts and the ensuing rise in unemployment, all the more so as it becomes clear that the budget cannot be balanced unless we restore the growth necessary to reverse the collapse in tax receipts. Clegg’s apparently neoliberal economic instincts risk make him the the LibDem’s Tony Blair.

Secondly, the Labour Party opt-out of a progressive coalition will not, as claimed by some, give the Party a chance to ‘regroup and rebuild’ in opposition. Instead, it will fortify the spirit of ya-boo politics, facilitating an easy return to the antics of Prescott, Blunkett and other UK Labour politicians who, in the absence of any long-term political vision, thrive on gainsaying their latest ‘enemies’.

Perhaps the greatest cost of all will be the failure to secure genuine electoral reform. For many years, Britain’s FPTP (First Past The Post) electoral system has been a barrier to political change, giving disproportionate weight to the marginal constituencies of middle England and effectively ruling out any electoral platform that might rock the boat. Although we now appear to have the promise of a referendum on PR for the Commons, it will take place under circumstances dictated by its fiercest opponents, the Tories. Moreover, as is now clear, many Labour veterans who opposed the recommendations of the Jenkins Commission in 1998 — Jack Straw and John Prescott amongst others — have been joined by new MPs such as Ed Balls, Kate Hoey and Diane Abbott.

Critically, only the most non-proportional form of PR is on the table: AV, not AVplus (which resembles the German system).  If, as seems likely, voting reform is opposed in a referendum by both the Tories and Labour tribalists and supported by a much-diminished LibDem Party, we shall not have further progress on this front for another generation.

To be sure, Britain today does not lack the issues to animate a more progressive politics — climate change, fighting poverty, minority rights, a fairer income distribution, to name but a few. But the centre-left is no longer to be found in a single party, and in some cases it is more engaged in grass-roots movements.

A new politics is needed, a politics of coalition between the different organisation and campaigns across the spectrum of centre-left parties. An essential ingredient of such politics is a change in the voting system, a new constitutional settlement which breaks with the smug insularity of those who argue for the unique virtue of Britain’s creaking voting arrangements. Theirs is the language of Thatcher and Sons, a language which must finally be abandoned if progressive politics is to thrive again in Britain.

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