THIS IS the most interesting autumn in British politics for many years. Change is in the wind; loyalties are shifting; and the weeks have been packed with surprises.
It has been a season memorable for its stage performances. From the rostrum at Labour’s conference in Brighton, the country heard two passionate bids for the party’s leadership — by Gordon Brown and by Tony Blair: one to take it, the other to keep it.
And everyone remembers the following week at the Winter Gardens in Blackpool, where would-be Tory leaders strutted their stuff.
But here’s a mystery. There is one party from which almost nothing has been heard: bedcovers pulled over its head; it has entered an apparent hibernation. Lest you overlook the fact, Britain has a third party, and numerically it is stronger than ever. Not nine weeks ago there was another conference in Blackpool this autumn — its own one — yet it appears to have dropped from popular recollection.
Which is strange. We seem to have forgotten about the Liberal Democrats. The Liberal Democrats seem to have forgotten about themselves. This is a party that, judged by its relative gain in Commons seats, made a solid advance not only at the last election, but at the one before that too. Its conference might have been a celebration.
It proved anything but. The Lib Dems’ days by the seaside turned into a flat and uneasy meditation upon the nature of power and the calibre and direction of the party’s leadership. Nobody seemed comfortable, yet nobody seemed ready to move. Its leader, Charles Kennedy, easily survived the speculation, and a few weeks later the Lib Dems’ 62 MPs — the biggest band in more than 80 years — drifted back to their desks, computer terminals and microphones at Westminster. Since then . . . nothing. Hardly a peep.
Are they up to something? More worryingly for those of us who wish liberal democracy well, are they not up to something? As the curtain rises on what looks like the final act for Tony Blair and the first act for a new Tory leader, have the Lib Dems lost the plot? Any such verdict is premature. There is too much talent in the newly swollen ranks of Britain’s perpetual runners-up, and too much goodwill among the electorate towards a herbivorous party in a carnivorous world, for this third force in British politics to disappear from the radar.
Implosion is out of the question. Indeed, Lib Dems seem at present to lack the energy to implode. But something more worrying troubles them. From a relative high-water mark, the tide could gradually begin to go out for their party, and if they are not careful, that could start from now.
Yet a strange listlessness grips them, at the very moment when they have returned to Parliament with greater numbers and more good brains, than in three generations. Why so torpid?
Liberal Democrats are not naturally lazy. Enthusiasm — focused or otherwise — is their default option. What afflicts them this autumn arises not out of laziness but from a paralysis induced by being pulled in different directions: to the right, to the left and to nowhere. Some want their party to challenge the Tories for dominance of the landscape of individual freedom and liberal economics, but tempered by social justice and stripped of Tory nastiness about things such as Europe and immigration. They include some of the sharpest MPs in the newest intake. They are afraid their party may get on to the wrong side of the argument next year, as Tony Blair battles against “old” Labour to push through public service reform. They think he should be supported.
But some Liberal Democrats want their party to challenge Labour more from the left, as a party committed to take from the rich and give to the poor, to defend the public sector and fund ambitious public services. They see new Labour’s lurch to the right as their opening.
And some Liberal Democrats don’t really want to challenge either main party for dominance, but see a permanent role for their tolerant and caring third force, snuggled down securely in town halls and at Westminster as a party of permanent, localist-driven protest. Such Lib Dems wouldn’t see themselves as the nowhere group: they would say “elsewhere”. So be it. Power, however, is now elsewhere.
Both leftists and rightists among Liberal Democrats have taken a knock this year. David Cameron looks like becoming Tory leader, and it will be harder for a right-leaning Lib Dem party to outcuddle Mr Cameron than David Davis. The eclipse of Tony Blair, meanwhile, will make Labour harder to attack from the left. Gordon Brown may be no Marxist, but he will work to keep on board those millions in Britain who look to the State to make life better.
So, curious as this may seem, the call of the snuggle-down-with-the- latest-edition-of-Liberal Democrat Focus wing of the Liberal Democrats stays strong even as the Westminster arithmetic suggests the party should be poised to conquer new ground.
Simon Hughes, the ageing young pup who for a decade has seen himself as the natural “elsewhere” heir to the leadership, is more admired by Lib Dem activists than by their MPs. Charles Kennedy knows this. He adopts the flip side of the resort of fugitives who hold in front of them a captive child: “Shoot and the baby gets it.” Kennedy holds Hughes behind: “Shoot and you’ll get the baby as your leader.” It always works.
Where, though, is Mr Kennedy going? Replying, he would draw your attention to a great deal of policy- wonking now under way. But a leader’s job is to turn a tangle of policy proposals into a narrative — so what’s the Liberal Democrat story? Pressed further, Mr Kennedy might grunt that all is flux at Westminster and the time is not right for new postures.
“Watch this space,” he loves to say. What if Mr Brown should flounder and his economic legacy become tarnished? What if Mr Cameron faces rebellion from the nasties in his party? Why should the Lib Dems move?
All this could happen. Inactivity has not so far served Mr Kennedy ill. But those Lib Dem MPs who think hoping for the best is not enough are haunted by the spectre of a 2009 election in which a resurgent Tory opposition challenges a troubled Labour government. If the big question becomes “Who should be in Downing Street: Labour or the Tories?” then Lib Dems would feel the squeeze. How will they answer doubters on the doorstep?
Here’s one possible answer — though the very thought will have many Liberal Democrats choking on their porridge. “Britain’s ready for a change; that’s our aim; and we’re ready to work with any party in government that shares it. Don’t call it coalition but we want to be involved. A strong Lib Dem force in Parliament could help tame a minority Tory government. We supported Tony Blair when he was ambushed by his party’s Left; and we will support David Cameron when he is ambushed by his party’s Right.”
This may appeal to doubtful Tories and disaffected Labour supporters alike. I doubt, however, that Charles Kennedy, whose visceral dislike of the Conservative Party has long been obvious to Parliamentary sketchwriters, could stomach it.
I have been in Mr Kennedy’s Highlands and Islands constituency as I write this. A brisk, November swing through the Inner and Outer Hebrides finds a still and glowing world, becalmed and basking in the late autumn sunshine, breathless before winter. But winter will come; and if, by his party’s spring conference next year, Charles Kennedy has not used those long Skye nights to plot something that looks like a serious course through the next four years, I think he may be in trouble, and deserve to be.
