Why coalition governments are set to make a comeback at Westminster
The UK’s political parties now find themselves competing for attention on an increasingly crowded and competitive stage
The warning signs have been there for a while and, if the major parties don’t sit up and pay attention, soon they may find themselves drinking in the last chance saloon.
By-election defeats aren’t unusual for governments. It’s the public’s chance to say you are getting this wrong. But it feels there’s something far more significant about Gorton and Denton. And not just for Labour.
This result feels like a message from the public to all the major parties: ‘You are not addressing the issues we care about. We want change and if you can’t provide it we will take our votes and ours support elsewhere.’
There are new kids on the block forcing their way onto the scene. The rest of us may have to adapt if we are to survive.
Reform and the Greens appeal to very different electorates. But I don’t see much they’re saying which is actually that new or providing different solutions.
The Reform project – including their front bench – borrows heavily from the last Conservative government’s playbook. The Greens’ ideas reflect much of the progressive thinking in the Liberal Democrats and Labour – some may even feel their political clothes are being stolen.
The difference is the packaging. It's much more empathetic. They and their leaders are not weighed down by the baggage of the past.
They don’t stand up in parliament every week and knock seven metaphorical bells out of each other in an argument which is increasingly unattractive.
READ MORE: Nightmare start to Scottish Labour conference after Gorton and Denton by-election humiliation
The Green’s leader Zack Polanski is not an MP and operates outside parliament, while Farage is rarely to be seen in the corridors of power. They make public statements that ooze sympathy for their own very different supporters, while signalling their disenchantment with the existing order.
The result is that we now find ourselves operating in an increasingly crowded and competitive stage. While the Tories and Reform fight it out for the right-wing vote, Labour, the Greens and ourselves in the Lib Dems are competing on the centre/left.
Normally I’m not a fan of the right, left and centre rhetoric. As a Liberal, I don’t see myself fitting neatly into any of those categories. But I suspect there may shortly be a need to choose allies or lose.
More than anything else Thursday’s result made it abundantly clear that the next general election will likely be contested by five parties. In that scenario, it's likely the result will demand that a combination of parties find common ground for the benefit of the country. Government by consensus.
In Scotland we have lived with coalitions, working arrangements and minority governments at Holyrood for 25 years. At Westminster too, there are good people in all parties who have, as the late Jo Cox pointed out, “more in common than divides us.”
For too long everything has been about this party or that one. Labour or Conservative, ignoring the fact that actually we would be better served by working together.
Of course there are critics who will say we had a coalition 15 years ago and we voted it out. That is true, but perhaps it was just the difficult first experience of a changing society and political allegiances which will demand more empathy and collaboration and less conflict.
Christine Jardine is the Scottish Liberal Democrat MP for Edinburgh West
Comments
Want to join the conversation? Please or to comment on this article.