Labour and the Lib Dems risk delivering a Tory majority
(Shutterstock)
If I had told you before the election that, despite weeks of campaigning to prevent it, Labour and the Liberal Democrats could actually enable Boris Johnson to re-enter Downing Street, this time with a majority, you would not have believed me.
This election has shown us that, even in the unique crisis in which we now find ourselves, party politics still triumphs. Labour, nor the Liberal Democrats, have been unable to reconcile their ideological differences in the pursuit of something far more important — an electoral alliance designed with one objective: to put country first by preventing Johnson retaking office.
In his final weeks before standing down as MP for Twickenham, Vince Cable told me that it would “not be possible” for the Liberal Democrats to work with Labour. It had, he said, been “taken over by the hard left.”
The country was given a taste of what such an alliance might look like in early November, when Tim Walker, the Liberal Democrat candidate for Canterbury, stood aside for Labour’s Rosie Duffield. He did this, he said, so as not to split the Remain vote. He also said that if the Conservative candidate Anna Firth — co-chair of Vote Leave For Britain — took the seat off Labour, he would be filled with “visceral dread”. His decision fuelled speculation of a de facto electoral pact between the two parties against the Conservatives.
Yet all that vanished in a matter of hours when, to great surprise, the Lib Dems announced that the party would be fielding another candidate to stand against Rosie Duffield.
Party politics and the national interest always exist in a kind of tension. But the danger comes when party politics becomes infected with an excessive sense of tribalism. In this case, if the Liberal Democrats had followed Walker’s lead and endorsed Rosie Duffield, the party could have found itself maximising the chances of a Remain candidate being reelected.
Of course it is not just Canterbury. Numerous seats across the country are being contested by more than one party in favour of a People’s Vote. The Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru and the Greens have agreed to step aside to ensure a single pro-Remain candidate stands in 49 seats in England and 11 seats in Wales. But Labour insists on further splitting the vote and is standing candidates.
What makes this lack of cooperation all the more bizarre is that both parties are in favour of a second referendum. Despite the Liberal Democrats offering to Revoke Article 50, its former leader told me that it is still “the party for the People’s Vote” while Labour is committed to offering voters a choice between its own deal and Remain. But rather than use their shared ambitions to unite against Boris Johnson, the parties risk splitting the already fragile Remain vote and increasing the likelihood of a hard Brexit.
What is perhaps most worrying of all, is that the Tories’ electoral strategy actively relies on the division of the Remain vote. The Lib Dems and Labour may have valid reasons for attacking each other. But this only helps to put Johnson back into Downing Street.
In this election, the future is far more important than party politics, especially the kind that seeks to divide the nation further. It’s a shame the party leaders don’t share that view.
