Who Wants to Lead the Liberals?

The Lib Dem leadership contest result will be announced on Tuesday, but whoever wins it faces a poisoned chalice. If you don't like numbers, skip the next paragraph, but suffice to say it is likely that the Liberals will lose Parliamentary seats at the next election. They do have a lot of good local councillors, but also a lot of very poor ones. If you do vote Liberal, you are not sure whether you are getting someone that genuinely cares for the environment (Chris Huhne - more on him later) or someone that wants people to fly between Liverpool and London instead of using the train (Warren Bradley, leader of Liverpool Council).

Under Charles Kennedy the Liberals gained their best ever election results in 2004 and 2005 because they were seen to oppose the Iraq war, which was supported by the Tory opposition. They also benefited from UKIP candidates standing in over 400 seats - according to our research UKIP proportionally take more votes from the Conservatives. In the next General Election, 9 of the top 30 Tory targets are currently held by the Lib Dems, with another 10 seats vulnerable if the Tories can get a swing of 5%. Labour might put a further 5 seats under pressure. Take a look at ukpollingreport.co.uk if you want to study this further.

The preferred candidate for the Parliamentary Lib Dems is Nick Clegg, who is the same age as Cameron and is regarded as fresh and new. I think if the Lib Dems elect him, they will perhaps be better able to hold onto their seats, but I don't think he has the vision or experience to do the job. Huhne has been seen by many as an environmentalist and has worked very hard to present himself as such. Unfortunately this image has been somewhat punctured by his somewhat unbelievable claim he wasn't aware gold mining caused so much damage, for which he has been rightly criticised by our MEP Caroline Lucas.

The really tough thing for the Liberals is that they don't really stand for anything clearly understood by ordinary voters. People know what Labour and the Conservatives stand for, but when asked about the Liberals, the main reason they give for voting Liberal is because they are not from the other two parties. This is a problem for any new leader. When voters are asked who is strongest on the environment, the Green party comes out on top. People know about at least one thing that we stand for. In Norwich and Brighton (where we increased our vote in a recent byelection) the Greens are more popular than the Liberals. This is because ultimately voters like to know what they are getting.

I think Clegg will win by a very narrow margin but that decision lies with the Lib Dem members. But it will be a tough task for whoever steps to avoid losing ground to the Tories in particular, and to ensure they protect their vulnerable seats. Already the political manouevering has begun, with Tory leader David Cameron putting a provocative statement onto his own website:

"...I hope than in 2008 the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party will join us in putting pressure on the Government to decentralise power, and that together we can create a new progressive alliance to decentralise British politics."

I think I can be categorical in stating that I'm not convinced by this. After all, the Conservatives stripped out much of the power of local government during the 18 year period they ran Britain. However this clearly will cause a headache for an incoming Lib Dem leader. To protect marginal seats, they can't be seen to be too anti-Tory. It is a difficult dilemma when you don't have a unique core issue or core principal at the heart of your political party.