The results of the combined local-councils-devolved-assemblies-and-oh-by-the-way-voting-reform polls are coming in. While the results of the reform referendum and the assemblies are yet to be unveiled, it’s already clear that the reform champions, the Liberal Democrats, have suffered a catastrophic defeat. The Guardian – which unforgettably called the 2010 elections for the Liberal Democrats – nabs it with the unequivocal headline, “Lib Dems suffer worst losses in a generation”, and proceeds to treat us to choice anecdotes of humiliation:
The party was ejected from power in Sheffield – home to Nick Clegg’s constituency – as its national share of votes plummeted to 15%.
With around two-thirds of local election results still to come in, the party had already lost around 200 seats.
Lord Mike Storey, who led the city’s council from 1998 until 2005, lost his seat to an 18-year-old.
The sternest statement ahead of the implosion came from a Lib Dem grandee, Lord Ashdown, who bravely blamed other people. In particular, he complained, “”When it comes to the bonhomie of the Downing Street rose garden, it’s never again that glad confident morn.” Heartbreaking.
Back in the warm-up to that “glad confident morn”, on which David Cameron and Nick Clegg sealed their ill-fated partnership, I remember toying with the idea of sending an open letter to Clegg, imploring him not to do a Peretz. In 2005, Amir Peretz – a Mizrachi union leader, a co-founder of Peace Now and a longtime underdog among the ultra-Ashkenazi strongmen of the Israeli Labor party – ousted the almost comically unelectable Shimon Peres from leadership. Getting rid of Peres’s dead weight threw open the party doors, with prominent journalists, academics and lawyers rushing into the Labor ranks.
Peretz shifted some emphasis of the party’s traditional self-righteous whining about the “peace process” and ran his campaign with a strong welfare agenda; whatever he didn’t actually say, was complemented in the imagination of his voters by his reputation as a minority underdog and a union boss. Peretz’s hard work (and being not-Peres) was rewarded by the first elections in which the Labor party didn’t lose a single seat since 1992. As the polls closed in, it seemed that Israel would have either a strong secular social-democrat coalition partner, or a strong and combative opposition leader. And then Amir Peretz took the almighty Defence portfolio in Ehud Olmert’s government.
I still like to think that this was the revenge of Shimon Peres, because the move was too inspired and cynical even for Olmert to figure out on his own. The Defence Minister is the most powerful position in the Israeli cabinet- sometimes more powerful than the that of the prime minister. Peretz had every right to claim that portfolio as the senior coalition partner, and Olmert was seemingly recognising Peretz’s clout by offering it to him. What in fact was happening, of course, was that Olmert appointed a man with little military experience and the image of a peacenik to to a post in which he needed to mediate between the generals and the government.
Inside his office, Peretz had little choice but to go ahead with whatever the generals proposed – or with choosing one of a set of near identical options he was offered. Outside, to the public, he had to pretend he was tough enough for the post. This combination produced the disaster of the Second Lebanon War, turned Peretz from a dove politician into a hawk heavily suspected of war crimes, and eventually had him ousted from government by being made to take the blame for the war. In the next elections, the Labor party took a plunge to 13 seats. The lesson here is: Know your limits and don’t delude yourself you can have equal partnership in a coalition with a ruling party that has twice your numbers. It’s simple math.
The choice facing Clegg less than a year ago was almost identical: Grab a seat at the cabinet now – punching considerably above your weight – or wait it out in opposition. It was reasonable then, but it’s utterly obvious now, that the choice he eventually made was woefully wrong. Bound by a golden chain to Cameron’s ankle, Clegg has ditched nearly all of his election promises. His rather progressive stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Gaza blockade withered on the vine. In fact, Conservative foreign minister William Hague has been doing a far better job on that front than any Lib Dem – and any Labour minister, too, making the Tories’ foreign policy , to this point, considerably more bearable than that of either of the other two parties. Meanwhile, Clegg has become the Tories’ human shield – as these elections clearly demonstrated. It’s only natural: No one is going to vote out Tories for being Tories, but there’s no reason to vote again for Lib Dems who turn out to be Tories, too.
What Clegg should have done in 2010 is let the Conservatives form a minority government and support from the outside whichever of its moves he deemed palatable, on a case by case basis. Thus, he could apply much more effective pressure to change policies before agreeing to offer his support; and nothing to lose if he decided not to support a bill, a motion or even a national budget.
In recent days observers pointed out that the Tories would not have put up for long with such dependency, and will have called a new elections, probably winning them with a clear majority. This may well be the case. But even then, the burden of the public resentment for the budget cuts would have to be carried by the Tories alone; and by the time the next elections came around, Clegg would have a party untarnished by collaborationist blame – or at the very least, he’d still have a party. On the path he did eventually take, having a party to lead in the next elections is becoming less likely with every ballot counted.
What should Clegg do now? Well, the cliched answer is that “if he has any self-respect,” he should resign. But if he has any respect for his voters and the message they drove home to him today, he should take his party out of the coalition. This is actually something everyone would gain from, even the Lib Dems.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQ6TgaPJcR0[/youtube]