Should the Scottish Lib Dems split from the UK Party?
5 September 2011 16 Comments
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An idea floating around the Scottish Tory Party is that to become electable in Scotland they need to break away from the Conservative Party and become a new right wing party for Scotland. A radical solution for their poor performance. However, it also raises some interesting points for the Lib Dems and whether the Scottish Lib Dems may benefit from being a separate Party.
Scotland is important territory for the Lib Dems for many reasons. One being that the march of the Labour movement in the early 20th century did not manage to become the main party in the outer edges of the UK. These became stronghold Liberal areas and so are now historically and strategically important to the Lib Dems. We can see that the Lib Dems secured 18.9% of the vote in the General Election 2010 and Scotland represents about 20% of the Lib Dem MPs.
However, a recent opinion poll gave the Lib Dems 6% – 13% less than at the General Election. While it is hoped that this will improve I struggle to see the Scottish Lib Dems securing near the last General Election result. What we are seeing is that the SNP are stealing a march on the Lib Dems as the left wing party of Scotland in the traditional Liberal areas. Their current poll rating is 42% – up 22% from 2010 General Election.
The Lib Dems have long advocated for devolution of power and have been instrumental in working towards this. Scotland is a very different place to England in many ways and the political culture is very different. Scotland enjoys 3 large left of centre parties and one right of centre. This is a very different picture to England where Labour had to move to the right to secure votes. How does the Lib Dem Party represent the voice of Scotland being in a centrist Government, which is seen as a right of centre Government by most on the political left. The answer it seems, from the population, is that it doesn’t.The Lib Dems are therefore at serious danger of losing a key Liberal stronghold, and a significant part of the party’s Westminster representation.
The Liberal Democrats are allied to the Alliance Party in Northern Ireland rather than setting up a Northern Ireland Lib Dems for a number of reasons not dissimilar to the situation we have in Scotland – other than NI does not hold as strategically and historically significant support. The case for a separate Scottish Liberal Party has long been made. In a world where an appetite for an independent Scottish voice is every growing, the Lib Dems can ill afford not to capitalise on this to secure their support.
I think most voters will be just too cynical of a rebranding exercise alone as a risible attempt to ‘run with the hound and the hare’. And there is also a consideration that the current level of support for the Lib Dems in Scotland are those who are fairly positive about the coalition, and it would be dangerous to assume that a distancing of the Scottish party from the Westminster coalition will bring back many more voters, mainly lost to the SNP, than it may lose.
What Scottish Lib Dems need to do, (as any party must) is to present a clear vision for Scotland and ambitious policies woven with an holistic social-liberalism which is actually very true to the Scottish spirit of enterprise, social justice and internationalism.
Recent election result in Scotland are, I’m afraid, a fair representation of the decay of the Scottish party and its truncated pitch to the Scottish electorate, in what is inevitably a more independently minded Scotland. My thoughts on what that pitch could be here http://goo.gl/CGhcm (2.).
Basically that the Scottish party’s form should be representative of the the party’s outlook for Scotland, presenting both its national individualism, and national maturity, from the people up – and a real alternative to the reactionary nationalism of the SNP, or indeed Unionism (which is dead).
Hi John and thanks for the interesting comments. I see what you mean and it is a difficult one to solve the collapse of the LD vote. Things certainly need to improve soon and I hope they find some solutions.
I disagree, this is a recent problem brought on almost entirely by being in coalition with the Tories (refusing to go into coalition with the SNP last time around in Holyrood probably didn’t help either). I’m unsure what can be done to be honest, beyond hoping that whenever the SNP support eventually dies down that the LDs that swung to the SNP come back home (will be helpful if the LDs are out of coalition by then).
I’m not too sure what spinning off the party will achieve to be honest, if there was a time to do that it would be before entering coalition. I think it’d just be closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. The only thing I can think of that would be of use in Scotland would be to move the position of the Scottish LDs to being neutral on the issue of independence (equivalent to the Alliance position) and hope for the best. I can’t think of a good solution at the moment.
This is in contrast to the Scottish Conservatives. Their problem has existed since the 1960s and become acute since 1997, they’ve had a long time to wait for things to iron themselves out and they haven’t. I’m not sure if their spinning off would help them, but quite frankly they don’t have many other options. It is clear that they are never going anyway, which is not the case, at least yet, for the Scottish LDs.
Also, is the reason you gave really the reason why there are no NI LDs? To be honest, I think there are plenty of good reasons for the main UK parties to not be operating in NI (yet, perhaps when things are more settled both UK and RoI parties can operate there) but if the reason was solely lack of support then I’d imagine that the Tories, and especially Labour (given the important role NI had in their beginnings), would have probably got involved directly in NI.
Apologies for the rambling post, I wrote this in somewhat of a rush. Your article was thought provoking, but I disagree with it!
Hi DunKhan, thanks for your comments and lots of interesting points. I’m not sure what they can do either but this is an option which many have suggested for a while. I fear once the support has left the LDs to the SNP then the LD won’t be able to regain it as a political system rarely supports so many parties of the same political persuasion. I don’t think it is the independence issue that benefits the SNP as much as they are independent of Westminster? But if things don’t improve in scotland then we will need some solutions
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As an English LD I think the Scots LDs definitely need some way to emphasise their seperateness & independence. The idea of organising around Holyrood rather than Westminster constituences is an excellent one too.
Hi Paul, and thanks for the comments. I agree I think that is also a very good idea.
Actually as a Scottish LD, I think the English need some way to emphasise their seperateness & independence. This whole question is much, much more of a challenge for England rather than the other nations of the United Kingdom. No change will mean no union
Wouldn’t it be a better solution for our colleagues to recognise that we are a federalist and not a unionist party. We need to consider how a federal United Kingdom could look and work and promote that.
Left between a choice for independence and the status quo I would certainly vote for the former. I don’t believe I’m alone amongst Scottish Liberal Democrats in this view.
What has been lacking for many years is a sense that English colleagues have any significant appetite for grappling with this. The absence of any party seeking to find a solution of some kind which will work for all the nations of the UK is going to be a huge factor in making Scottish independence inevitable and possibly even desirable.
The party has a federal stucture but still needs to do more to recognise the different nations that make up the UK. That’s a much bigger question than simply how the Scottish party should organise itself.
Hi Allan and thank you for the comments. Very good points and I guess that is the crux of the matter – to recognise the different nations in a meaningful way. Do you have any answers to how to do that?
Quite simply by championing home rule for England. It’s in England where the anomalies and contradictions lie – Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland can increase their powers as much as they want, but unless England addresses its’ own governance then the Union will implode. I’m afraid that’s an inevitable outcome to inaction
I can imagine that would go down quite well in England – maybe a vote winning policy?
The big problem for Scottish politics is that the UK is not structured federally. There is the UK parliament that also serves as the English parliament [hence the West Lothian question] and then there are the devolved assemblies for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
What we need is a truly federal arrangement where there is a separate English assembly – separate from a UK federal parliament. If we can achieve that then there will be some genuine parity.
Sadly our own party is just the same. Check the party website. Where is the link to England? There are links for Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Europe but no link for England. So though we might talk about the Federal Party it is for most practical purposes synonymous with the England party. So maybe its time we sorted this for ourselves.
The government now wants to re-examine the West Lothian question. Good! This is our opportunity across the whole UK to campaign for a proper federal structure. But it also raises new questions that some might not relish. For example – where does the management of the economy sit and where will tax raising powers lie? Surely the bulk of that must sit with the federal parliament. Yet vested interests in the devolved assemblies will think otherwise.
Raising revenue is key to being able to get things done and also key to accountability. Which is also why we here in Scotland are bitterly opposed to the Nationalists perversion of the idea of a ‘local’ income tax – a tax set centrally in Holyrood and handed down by ministers to local government. Local government here has been very effectively blackmailed (read “bullied”) into agreeing a council tax freeze. In fact, it’s ironic that the Nationalists, who are so bitterly opposed to “London rule”, are systematically setting about centralising everything they can in Edinburgh instead.
Our party stands firmly, and perhaps uniquely in UK politics, for local power, local decision taking, and local accountability. We need to hold fast to that position and campaign for it. Federalism is part of building that devolving structure.
So please, lets not go after separatism. Instead we should pursue dispersion of power as our most important platform.
Aren’t we in politics to give power back to the people?
Hi Alistair, thanks for the comments, you are very perceptive and they are excellent points. I totally agree with you, giving power back to people is what we are in politics for, I guess finding a way to make federalism meaningful for voters is the hard question. Any answers?
Alastair’s already answered that I think – local power, local decision making and local accountability. It’s issues based on that we can campaign on – the solution happens to be called federalism but we don’t need to barge in using the “f” word given that it’s generally used as a swear word.