Writing for Comment Central, Vince Cable looks at the Liberal Democrat performance in last week's local elections:
The Lib Dem results were more impressive than the numbers suggest. They built on exceptionally good results in 2019 when the seats were last contested and a record 700 seats were gained.
The aggregate vote share of 20 per cent was even higher than the 19 per cent in 2019. There were also strong results in some areas where Labour was the opposition, notably in Hull where the incumbent Lib Dem council held off a strong Labour challenge and even made gains.
As to what this means to our approach at the next general election:
Lib Dems are currently targeting a dozen or so new seats but may be tempted to raise their sights.
They will rely on Labour (and Green) tactical voting in these target seats which will be maximised if a pact is agreed with the Greens, as in 2019, to stand aside candidates and if there is tacit cooperation with Labour as in 1997.
The pollster Michael Thresher concludes from the local results that the Lib Dems could win 39 seats but even 25-30 would be considered a good outcome by the party (with perhaps another one or two Greens).
He suggests that Lib Dem gains on this scale would be crucial to the formation of a stable Labour-led government, but suggests we are unlikely to see a coalition government on the scale of 2010-15:
So we won't be hiring Westminster Abbey to hold them.Ed Davey is right not to rule out a coalition with Labour but it is highly unlikely that the Lib Dems would go into such an arrangement this side of electoral reform being delivered.
A looser 'confidence and supply' arrangement is much more plausible, depending on how the numbers look after an election and subject to agreement on reform of the voting system.
You can be sure that serious, but deniable, conversations will be taking place over the next year.
6 comments:
I hope the Liberal Democrats don't increase the number of target seats unless there is a lot more money to go into them. It seems to me that at every General Election the Lib Dems start to get delusions of grandeur, open up hostilities on a wider front, get spread too thinly and then get soundly beaten as a consequence.
Yes we must not get ahead of ourselves by aiming too high
We need "soft" Conservative voters to come over to us as well as tactically-voting socialists, so we must let up on criticism Sir Keir's policies where they are illiberal.
It's Michael Thrasher not Thresher. He's a nice guy - very, very knowledgeable on council elections, but usually a bit over optimistic in his GE projections for us.
On a more substantive point, we need to remember that Vince was the leader who was absent for one key parliamentary vote on Brexit where instead he was having "secret" talks. On that occasion he and one other LD MP did not turn up for a vote that the Conservatives won by just two votes.
Alistair Carmichael took one for the team by saying he had authorised the absences, but by then it was too late. A tied vote plus the casting vote of the Speaker (Mr John Bercow) would have swung it our way and possibly put our country on a totally different path.
For the want of a nail ...
I agree that targeting remainer liberally minded Tories should be the number one priority right up to the general election. A pro single market policy should be the USP
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