Humiliation seems likely but the Lib Dems must survive

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/21/lib-dems-tories-nick--clegg-blukip

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Perhaps the saddest spectacle in this election, amid stiff competition, is David Cameron seeking tactical advantage from the hatred so many people in Scotland feel for his party. Scottish nationalism is not exclusively about a determination never again to be governed by Tories, but that is one of its strongest mobilising energies. So when the Conservatives warn about the threat of Nicola Sturgeon propping Ed Miliband up in power they are, in essence, saying to voters south of the border: “You must support us down here because up there dwells a dangerous tribe that finds our very name unspeakable.”

This message serves a number of functions: it provokes more support for the SNP, which comes mostly at Labour’s expense; it appeals to some Ukip supporters who fizz with English nationalist resentment of subsidised Scots; and it prepares the ground for a post-election campaign to delegitimise Miliband as potential prime minister if he doesn’t win enough seats in England. It is dishonourable but effective.

It is also a pitch to a small but crucial segment of the electorate in areas where Labour is barely in the race at all. These are the undecideds and the ones pollsters call “soft Cons” in battles where the Tories are trying to unseat Liberal Democrats.

Nick Clegg’s campaign and his party’s prospects for survival depend almost entirely on the mood among those voters for whom the local Lib Dem represents an insurance policy against a hard-right Tory government. They are, according to Clegg’s strategists, above all worried about the fate of public services if Cameron is given free rein to pursue the next stage of Tory state shrinkage. But they also blame Labour for the parlous state of public finances and shudder at the prospect of Miliband at the helm.

There are at least a dozen seats, mostly in the south-west, that the Tories could win if they successfully ramp up fear of Labour and assuage concerns about their own slash-and-burn impulses. That is why George Osborne’s budget in March signalled a slight retreat from the ultra-austere “back to the 1930s” spending squeeze he had mapped out in his autumn statement. And that is why the chancellor told an audience in north Devon on Monday that a Labour-SNP partnership would “ignore and marginalise” the region, leading to “misery, loss of hope and destroyed livelihoods”. He urged Lib Dems and Ukippers to back the Tories for the good of their local economy. This is how attack lines are customised for close marginals: a red-tartan conspiracy not to upgrade the A358 in Somerset.

In retaliation, the Lib Dems want to highlight an equivalent threat of Tories taking policy dictation from Ukip. That danger may seem less imminent when Nigel Farage’s party will be lucky to win more than a couple of seats. But Clegg’s argument is that without his MPs’ restraining influence Cameron’s course would be set by Tory backbenchers – and possibly Ulster Unionists – of a Ukippish hue. He calls it Blukip, and he’s got a point. There are few instances of the Conservative leader rejecting demands from his reactionary right, and many cases of capitulation (gay marriage being a noble exception).

It is hard to envisage any scenario in which Cameron stays on as prime minister without being bullied, controlled and ultimately undone by the large, angry Tory faction that has never liked him and which tolerates him only as long as he yields to their pressure.

Labour heaps scorn on Clegg’s offer to anchor Cameron in moderation, but that perspective is skewed by resentment of the Lib Dems for the very act of forming a coalition, based on the misguided pre-2010 supposition that they were a lost tribe of the left. Clegg’s record may not be heroic but it at least makes sense when you consider that he wanted to make the government more liberal, as opposed to making the Tories more like Labour. It is far from clear who in a Conservative-only administration would play counterweight to Theresa May’s authoritarian habits or buttress Cameron’s flaky euro-pragmatism, as the Lib Dems have done for five years.

Naturally, Labour will not credit the deputy prime minister with any achievement in office. A collapse in Lib Dem support is the primer coat on which Miliband’s electoral strategy is painted. But Labour also needs its supporters in those south-western marginals to vote tactically against the Tories, which is where years of vitriol, portraying Clegg as indistinguishable from the old blue foe, may prove self-defeating.

It is, of course, the job of the Lib Dems to explain why some people should vote for them; no other party will lend a discreet hand. But they struggle to be heard. Clegg’s team is as irritated by aggressive partisanship in the Conservative press as Miliband’s is, although no more surprised by it.

They had counted on a modest uptick in attention from broadcasters during the campaign, a factor that has historically come to their aid in the weeks before polling. But they have lost airtime to Ukip, the SNP and the Greens.

Their strategy of promising budget rigour in a Labour government and compassion in a Tory one – holding the “liberal centre” – makes sense, on paper, as a pitch to their target voters in a handful of seats. But even there, its impact is diminished when nationally they are being written out of the script as a likely party of power. Speculation about more exotic deals is the fashion. Clegg wants to be seen as a vital component in the machinery of government but the Lib Dems come across more like rinse aid in a dishwasher: probably useful, surely not essential, easily forgettable, and few people are clear about what it does.

As with the SNP surge, a significant cause of Lib Dem decline is deep-rooted cultural aversion to the Tories. Not only is the Tory brand toxic for many voters; it turns out to contaminate parties that get too close, as Labour did in the no camp during the Scottish independence referendum. So the Lib Dems can expect little gratitude for serving as a parliamentary prosthesis where there might once have been a liberal, moderate, pro-European limb on the Conservative party. Nor is there any excitement about their potential role as lobbyists for more liberalism in a Labour administration. But that doesn’t mean their humiliation is good for British politics. The space they occupy would otherwise be vacant.