Nick Clegg’s support for a massive extension of online monitoring may be a disappointment to disgruntled activists, and to any voters who listened to him on the subject prior to (and immediately after) the May 2010 election. But it should be no surprise. It’s certainly in keeping with a consistent experience of the three UK parties of government.
They regularly appear solid on policy in opposition but then are either ineffectual or do a series of direct u-turns once in office. The list is endless. Labour talked about equality of opportunity before 1997, but left behind the most unequal UK ever. The Tories joined the Lib Dems in howling about tuition fees in opposition, before working together to treble them almost immediately their coats were over the Downing Street chairs. I still remember the Tory backbencher telling me in 1997 that “we’re fine on this now, but don’t trust us when we get back into office“. Too true.
On security and civil liberties – especially on the futile attempt to trade the latter for the former – we have this same problem in spades. Governments, including this one and its predecessor, are almost always wrong, and oppositions, including this one and its predecessors, are almost always right. Whoever you vote for, it seems, the permanent government gets in, and the policies remain the same. The glee in the Labour spokesperson’s voice on Westminster Hour when asked if she’d be supporting this latest dogs’ breakfast was inescapable: “we dropped it! we dropped it!”, she said. Be in no doubt that Labour would pick it up the moment they ever return to office.
This might just be another attempt by the Lib Dems to discard a chunk of the broad base of support they assembled up to 2010. We’re not quite two years through a supposedly five year term, and there’s very little left. Broad but, it turns out, shallow, and only the Orange Book minority has really been shown any love by the leadership. Students were driven away, anyone concerned about privatisation of the NHS or Royal Mail is long gone, let alone those who wanted a principled left alternative to Labour. It seems almost absurd to think that’s how people ever thought of them.
The email monitoring legislation does feel a little different to previous betrayals, though. It has the air of a terminal nosedive about it, a sense that the party is approaching what looks like the point of no return. The smarter sort of Lib Dems on Twitter, the few of those that remain in the party, are saying things like “I have not sent my LD membership renewal until I see what happens with the surveillance stuff“, “I don’t know where [Clegg’s] going, but I have no appetite to go on the journey with him“, “As someone who generally is keen on Clegg he’s fucked this up big time“, and “The question is what we can we do about it? How can we make the leadership listen?”
As Polly Toynbee put it today, “civil liberties was their last USP“, although she’s excluded Iraq, presumably because their policy there was actually much weaker than the media and the party implied: “if there’s a second resolution we’ll back a disastrous war“. (Polly-haters should try again with that piece, incidentally. Except for a spurious paragraph where she suggests “Labour has been spring-cleaning it roots” (sic), she’s on good form.)
Less than a month ago Julian Huppert, the darling of the Lib Dems on Twitter, wrote a remarkably prescient piece for the Guardian. Here is just one chunk (emphasis mine):
Civil liberties are a core, unifying issue for the Lib Dems. There are MPs in the Labour and Conservative parties who would defend civil liberties to the very end, and others – too many others – who would tear them up at the first opportunity. There is no such division in the Lib Dems. Issues such as civil liberties are utterly uniting for our party, and utterly divisive for the others. To abandon human rights would therefore be a greater threat to the coalition than most commentators realise. […] if we do not provide a thorough, reasoned defence of civil liberties, no other party will.
Aside from the usual Green-and-Nat-ignoring self-serving Westminster tripe at the end, most observers would have agreed with this assessment of the Lib Dems until the weekend. But now it transpires that their champions around the Cabinet table don’t care about this issue either. Who knew? Perhaps it’s some odd highball tactic so Clegg can accept a “compromise” that the party wouldn’t otherwise have swallowed.
No amount of reasoning with the Clegg/Alexander leadership could get them to change their minds on private control of NHS, and no amount of lobbying could persuade Lib Dem MPs or peers to rebel in any numbers on it either. Will they go the same way over internet surveillance? Are they really ready to go down with Clegg on this issue and take their whole party with them? Or will we, finally, start to see some backbone from their backbenchers?
#1 by scottish_skier on April 3, 2012 - 7:58 pm
The Lib Dems have been ‘sucked in and spat out’ by the Tories. Having slowly built up a good following to start getting over 20% of the vote, they sacrificed everything for a taste of power and now are polling less than 10% (6% in Scotland). In the next (r)UK election, they are facing disaster. All they can do now is do everything the Tories say in the hope of coming to an agreement with them on who gets what seats next time round. Nick will be fine. Danny and Michael are for the chop but don’t know it yet; they’ll be of no use once the ‘mad scots’ have left the glorious empire.
#2 by Indy on April 3, 2012 - 8:55 pm
I think it is a really interesting phenomenon and I wonder to what extent there is some kind of civil service agenda at work that explains why people fall for these grandiose schemes when in government and in opposition realise actually that’s a bit bomkers.
Cos this idea is bonkers, just as the whole ID card thing was bonkers.
Maybe they put something in the water at 10 Downing St?
#3 by Barbarian on April 3, 2012 - 11:39 pm
The Lib Dems are simply opportunistic political whores. They will do anything now to remain in a semblence of power, since come the next General Election they are finished. I would not be surprised if they are reduced to under ten seats.
No matter what policies arise over the coming years, the Lib Dems will be forced into supporting them.
The only glimmer of hope they have is for a senior Lib Dem to rebel, something I think will happen.
But does Clegg really care? He has the resources – ie money – to do what he chooses. Rather sad because the impact will be felt on those least able to do anything about it, short of voting the Lib Dems out of office, hopefully for good.
#4 by Angus McLellan on April 4, 2012 - 1:50 am
As much as I enjoy seeing Clegg and his unprincipled opportunists get a well-deserved pasting, while he’s weak on this he is at least on the right side of the argument – for now anyway – when it comes to the “closed material proceedings” proposals. Details in the Justice and Security Green Paper. If you don’t fancy reading it all, page 9 is a good place to start. Or the Guardian has quite good analysis by Joshua Rosenberg.
#5 by Doug Daniel on April 4, 2012 - 10:32 pm
The tragedy here is that people will mistakenly take this as proof that “they’re all the same,” rather than provide an impetus to disregard the three parties entirely and leave them for others. Lefties vote for the Greens, righties (is that the right-wing equivalent of lefties?) vote for UKIP or something. The Lib Dems only really exist as a party for people who have lost faith in their natural party but can’t bring themselves to vote for the other lot, so there’s no need for a replacement for their voters. Or they could start up their own bloody parties.
But what are the media really doing about this? They may be using it for some easy headlines, but where is the real scrutiny? Why are they not finding out who it is in Whitehall that keeps pushing this on incumbant governments? On the news right now is a story about the Chinese government trying to control what their citizens see online. It’s reported in a “oh look at them with their primitive approach to freedom of speech” kind of air to it, as if it’s something that could never happen here.
And it’s done without a shred of irony.
For the second time in a week, I’m reminded of that famous Chomsky phrase: “Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.”
As for the Lib Dems, they need to be left to die. They stand for nothing now, and there are already two parties that do that, so there’s no need for a third. Wipe them out.
On the positive side, it’s yet another own goal for the unionists. 2014 is looking increasingly like a choice between independence and a UK that is a cross between 1984, Animal Farm, The Trial and Oliver Twist. Err, no thanks.