For Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats, the 2015 general election has to come with extremely low expectations. The party is polling at only a third of those that voted for them in 2010, a measly 8%, and Clegg himself seems to have been made a scapegoat for all of the failures of Britain's political system.
On 7th May the Liberal Democrats look like they will be held responsible, for better or worse, both for the impact of the coalition and for the compromises made in the forming of it. While the Conservatives look set to be judged on austerity, how much support - and how many seats - Clegg and the Lib Dems are able to retain will represent whether or not the decision to enter coalition has been accepted by voters - regardless of any proposals that the party puts forward.
If the public's judgement should run against them, as polls suggest, the party looks like it will still survive in some seats where it is, ironically, protected by the first-past-the-post system against which they have campaigned for decades. That campaign for political reform was one of the party's biggest hopes for the coalition, and also their biggest disappointment. Their already compromised proposals for changes to the electoral system were rejected at a referendum (BBC, 2011), and attempts to reform the House of Lords into an elected chamber were put to an end in cross-party talks, with the Conservatives and Labour both blocking Lib Dem efforts (Clegg, 2012).
The Lib Dems have, however, managed to get quite a few policies through. The rise in the Personal Tax Allowance (Liberal Democrats, 2014), the Protection of Freedoms Act (Liberal Democrats, 2012), and the Pupil Premium (Vasagar, 2011). While they have been charged, by association through coalition, with culpability for allowing the Tories to govern, the party has argued that they have held the Conservatives
back from doing their worst.
They resisted and tried to get a better outcome on the Health and Social Care Act 2012 (Harris, 2012), they resisted the Tory version of the Bedroom Tax (Watt, 2014) and they earned praise for standing up for public sector Trade Union members against the Conservatives (Syal, 2014; Watt, 2015). Nick Clegg and Danny Alexander, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, have both gone further and warned of worst to come from the Tories if they're left unchecked (The Guardian, 2015{1}; The Guardian, 2015{2}).
Their future plans have also been roundly copied by their rivals. Their Mansion Tax has been co-opted by Labour (Dominiczak, 2013) and their Personal Tax Allowance has been taken on by the Conservatives (ITV, 2014). The Liberal Democrats are also the first party to pledge an increase in NHS funding each year through to 2020, in real terms - adjusting for inflation - to the £8bn more that the NHS has stated it needs (Wright & Moodley, 2015; Campbell, 2015).
Despite all of this, there is one one policy that the party does not seem able to live down. The compromise too far was tuition fees. The party argues that, despite being a small party without enough influence and no parliamentary supporters, it got the best deal it could, rather than let something worse come about - specifically uncapped unlimited fees. The solution itself is, although achieved through what feels a lot like an accountants sleight-of-hand, higher education free at the point of use, to be paid back later in tax.
That outcome comes - along with the risk of non-payment being moved to government away from the
universities in order to secure
higher education funding for the present (Ashworth-Hayes & Sippitt, 2015) - with a shift in the burden of debt from universities to students. With repayment thresholds designed to protect the poorest, the tuition fee has turned into a de facto graduate tax. The problem is that the debt, though structured to lessen the burden, is still - on principle - a burden (Swain, 2015).
That goes against the radical principle the party had stood for, and it seems few want to hear the arguments about political compromise from weak bargaining positions - despite that being central to the party's political beliefs since before they were called Liberal Democrats. Their practical stances and readiness to compromise means that few would find it realistic for the party to present themselves as the radical alternative protest party that they were seen as in 2010 (Brocklebank, 2010). In that light the Lib Dems have had to take a new approach.
The new presentation is focussed on the party's belief in practical, balanced budget, Centrism. Fair and balanced is what they are presenting as the order of the day under a Liberal Democrat government - or, at least, a government under liberal influence. Fewer cuts than the Right wants, less spending than the Left wants. Cuts only to tackle the deficit, spending only what can be afforded, with a commitment to raising taxes on the wealthier to reduce the depth of cuts to public spending. Less harsh and more understanding on welfare than Labour or the Tories (Batchelor, 2014); a commitment to funding for mental health care (Sparrow, 2015); a commitment to Europe; a commitment to civil rights (Macwhirter, 2015); and a commitment to devolving power away from Westminster (Demianyk, 2015).
Despite their proposals, despite their achievements, the party is nonetheless in a precarious position. There are those, however, who are not so pessimistic about their chances on the 7th May (d'Ancona, 2015). Away from the mainstream polls, there is positive thinking amongst Lib Dems that 12-15% of vote and 30-something seats is possible, and that 40-something seats are not out of reach (Tall, 2015{2}). With annihilation predicted for them, even 30 seats would be seen as a huge victory - and maybe in some way vindication for taking the difficult decision to change British politics and go into coalition.
In that there is something from which the Liberal Democrats will ultimately take pride. Clegg and the Lib Dems have made compromise, coalition and a more grown up politics possible. They have made it possible to have, not only coalitions, but stable coalition government where both sides can openly, brazenly disagree and still work together - even if in doing so has damaged their own chances of ever playing that role again (Gibbon, 2015).
Prospects: 8% for 28 seats (for a loss of 28).*
Potential Coalition Partners: Labour Party (273 seats), Conservative Party (273), SNP (51), Green Party (1).
Verdict: All of the reasons to vote Liberal Democrat in 2010 remain valid in 2015 - with the obvious exception of the tuition fee policy. Abolition of fees for Higher Education is now being considered a future aspiration the party, not something it can deliver in the short term. That alone may be enough to damage the party significantly. Keeping half of their seats would be seen as a major success.
