GIVEN how the party was treated by its own supporters after entering into a coalition with David Cameron’s Conservatives in 2010, you might think that the Liberal Democrats would be shy of contemplating a coalition with anyone.
After all, they did plummet from 57 seats in 2010 to just eight in 2015.
Talk about loyalty — former Lib Dem voters in Sheffield Hallam even chose to dump their own leader Nick Clegg for an incompetent, drug-taking Labour candidate, Jared O’Mara, who hardly ever turned up to Parliament and is now serving a four-year jail sentence for fraud.
Yet that hasn’t stopped current Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey from cosying up to Sir Keir Starmer in the belief that a coalition with Labour might suit the party better.
Davey has ruled out a coalition with the Conservatives after the next election but has pointedly avoided doing the same with Labour.
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Similarly, Starmer has ruled out a coalition with the SNP but declined, even at the 11th time of asking in a Sky News interview, to rule out a coalition with the Lib Dems.
We can take that pretty well for granted, then: Starmer is not confident of winning an outright majority in the next General Election, which must be held by January 2025, and is reciprocating Davey’s advances.
In other words, in two years’ time we could well be governed by this pair of Knights of the Realm.
They, no doubt, would call it a “progressive alliance”. If it happens, the rest of us may end up calling it a Knightmare.
Anyone tempted to think that it would be a union of moderates needs to think again.
We saw from 2010 how coalition negotiations are an excuse for both sides to rip up the manifestos on which they have just been elected, and cook up a programme including policies which appeared in neither party’s manifesto.
Don’t, in other words, be fooled by Labour’s reassurances on tax.
With the Lib Dems on board, Starmer could quickly drop promises to keep taxes low and use it as an excuse to resort to a traditionally Labour high tax and spend programme.
Ironically, he would be far freer to raise taxes with the Lib Dems aboard than he would were he bound by his own promises.
Two elitist knights conspiring to impose on the country a programme that was not actually presented to the public?
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That is exactly the kind of scheming that the British people rejected when they voted to “take back control” in the Brexit referendum.
A Labour-Lib Dem coalition would recreate the democratic illegitimacy that came with membership of the EU — where directives affecting the lives of all of us used to bubble up out of nowhere, without ever being discussed in public, let alone approved in a manifesto.
So what could a Labour-Lib Dem coalition programme look like?
Taxes
LABOUR opposed the Government’s increase in National Insurance and say they would have frozen council tax this year (although Labour-run councils didn’t do this).
But such policies would not survive a minute in coalition negotiations.
In 2019, Jeremy Corbyn’s manifesto — supported by Sir Keir and all of Labour’s current front bench — proposed £82billion of tax rises.
The Lib Dems, too, boasted that they would jack up income tax.
In April, Sir Keir’s deputy, Angela Rayner, spoke of a tax raid on the better-off.
A coalition would mean tax rises all round.
Migration
THE Government has failed to stop small boats, but a Labour-Lib Dem coalition wouldn’t even try.
The Lib Dems attempted to stop the Rwanda scheme in the House of Lords.
There is no way the party will agree to tough measures on migration.
Green policies
IF you think, quite correctly, that the Government’s net zero target is going to cost you dearly, a Labour-Lib Dem coalition would hit you even harder.
Labour wants to remove all fossil fuel-derived power from the electricity grid by 2030 without telling us how it intends to cope when there is little wind or solar energy.
The Lib Dems have proposed bringing the net zero target forward to 2040 without telling us how it will achieve it, nor how many billions it will cost.
God help us if Labour and the Lib Dems ended up in coalition with the Greens, too — the party’s only MP, Caroline Lucas, has attacked the whole concept of economic growth.
Eco protests
THE Labour Party has carefully avoided saying that it would ditch the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, which introduces tougher new powers for police to tackle protesters who block roads and vandalise buildings.
But don’t expect that to hold in a coalition with the Lib Dems — the act would go, and it would be carte blanche for eco protesters.
Brexit
SIR KEIR has been very careful not to make any promises about rejoining the EU or Single Market, saying that he wants to “make Brexit work”.
Don’t expect that to withstand coalition negotiations.
The Lib Dems wanted to cancel Brexit in their failed 2019 election campaign, and have never given up their ambition to rejoin.
Proportional representation
THE Lib Dems wouldn’t be happy about returning to government for one term.
Their biggest price for supporting Labour would be to introduce proportional representation for Westminster elections — in the hope of ensuring they would continue to be power-brokers for ever after.
