The Scots’ march on London drew a step closer on Thursday when Sir Menzies Campbell was elevated from acting to actual leader of the Liberal Democrats.
Ming, urbane and impeccably well-connected, will have no trouble rubbing along with his fellow Scot and soon-to-be fellow party leader, Gordon Brown, when the two are thrown together at grand political occasions.
They were both born in Glasgow, but now represent adjacent Fife seats. They have both served long apprenticeships and display a certain sense of entitlement that comes with waiting. They are both big on gravitas. Their relationship may not be as chummy as Ming’s was with Donald Dewar or John Smith but it is cordial, forged over many years on the Edinburgh to London shuttle, and deep within the belly of the left-of-centre Scottish establishment. By that reckoning, then, it would not be a total disaster for either of them if, come the next general election, they had to work together.
This is no longer an implausible scenario. As the psephologist John Curtice has pointed out, the odds are greater than ever before that there will be neither a Labour nor a Conservative majority after the election, likely to be in 2009. Labour needs only to lose 33 seats to see its governing majority disappear, but because of Britain’s first-past-the-post electoral system, the Conservatives would need to out-poll Labour by 11% to secure a majority — a swing they have never achieved. This means the smart money is on a hung parliament in which the Liberal Democrats hold the balance of power.
Such a prospect raises serious questions for the Lib Dems and their new leader about what policies they would pursue were they to enter government. But these questions have gone largely unanswered during the leadership campaign.
It’s all very well for Paddy Ashdown to wax eloquent on the Today programme about the joys of a new generation Lib-Lab alliance. However, those of us who have witnessed such a coalition in action cannot be so hopeful.
In Scotland we have seen what happens when the Lib Dems get their hands on the levers of government. For seven years the devolved government has brought Scots unreconstructed class war legislation — namely land redistribution and an early ban on foxhunting — and cultural vandalism.
Blairite reforms in education have been completely ignored because there is “no appetite” (in the unions) for reform. As a result, literacy and numeracy standards have fallen below the national average. In health, too, there has been no appetite for change, with the result that hospital waiting times continue to go up, in contrast to a marked drop in England, despite health spending in Scotland being 20% higher per head.
Where have the Lib Dems been in any of this? What positive contribution have the “ideas people” in the Scottish executive made? Certainly, it hasn’t been in the areas of education or health, or the economy, where growth has been painfully slow, or in trimming the public sector, where growth has been painfully fast. Or crime. Scotland boasts the unlovely title “murder capital of Europe”, and has areas of deprivation where life expectancy is lower than Gaza.
The one half-decent piece of legislation passed by the Scottish executive was the Antisocial Behaviour Act, to tackle the blight of juvenile delinquency. The Lib Dems were vocal in opposition to it.
Yet the junior coalition partners claim to have succeeded in getting 80% of their agenda through the parliament. They trumpet free care for the elderly at the top of the list, forgetting to mention that councils across Scotland are facing legal challenges from pensioners for failing to deliver so much as free tea and toast.
The Lib Dems are also proud of Scotland’s ban on tuition fees, another cause they championed. But it is a con, as students have to pay later through a graduate tax and universities will be deprived of funds from this short-sighted opportunism.
Abolishing the Skye bridge toll and reintroducing the Borders railway were on the Lib Dem agenda, too, and in pockets of Scotland some voters (in Lib Dem strongholds naturally) are very grateful for their lobbying. But the Borders train is going to cost more than £200m and the Skye bridge is . . . well, it’s in Skye.
The problem with the Lib Dems is that they promise one thing to one part of the country and another thing to another part. Even Jack McConnell, Scotland’s first minister, says as much, and he is dependent on them for his job. This may well work in by-elections, such as in Dunfermline and West Fife which they seized from Labour, where they can focus on local grievances.
But when it comes to the bigger picture they just don’t have one. That’s why they had no qualms about supporting road congestion charges at Holyrood and at Westminster but opposing them within Edinburgh city council. And why — back to Dunfermline — the Lib Dems were the recipients of a protest vote although they were in government in Scotland. They were able to pull off this amazing feat partly by blaming Labour for proposed toll increases on the Forth Road bridge even though the Scottish transport minister and man in charge of things like bridge tolls is a Lib Dem, one Tavish Scott.
Now, as Westminster contemplates a Lib-Lab pact, Labour ministers in Scotland talk darkly about future coalitions not being a foregone conclusion. What’s in it for us, they have been asking.
The voter might ask himself the same question. It is clear what Lib Dems get out of the deal: a tantalising taste of power far exceeding the wildest expectations of politicians reared for the back benches, plus all the glamorous trappings — chauffeur-driven rides between Edinburgh and Aberdeen, for example, to catch the last plane home to Shetland (Tavish Scott again).
They are eager for more of this; they are in second place to Labour in 14 Westminster seats in Scotland, and they are on a roll.
But we don’t really know what they are for, not in Scotland after seven years, and not nationally. Perhaps they don’t know either. And having enjoyed, in Scotland at least, power without responsibility, perhaps they don’t care. Britain beware.
Minette Marrin is away
