[D66] Liberal Democrats hammered in UK elections

[Antid Oto]

[Sorry, maar enig leedvermaak over jullie Engelse bondgenoten kan ik niet
onderdrukken. Het motto regeren=halveren is in de UK ook voor libdems blijkbaar
een axioma. BTW, is sociaal-liberaal communisme een oxymoron voor borende
analisten en neoliberalen?]

Liberal Democrats hammered in UK elections
By Chris Marsden
7 May 2011

The punishment meted out to the Liberal Democrats for imposing brutal cuts in
coalition with the Conservatives was the key feature of the local elections in
parts of England, as well as the elections to the Scottish Parliament and Welsh
Assembly. In England and Wales, Labour was the main beneficiary, but Scotland
saw a decisive victory for the Scottish National Party.

In the local elections, the Liberal Democrats suffered losses of 11 percent,
their worst result since the party was formed in 1988 in a merger between the
Liberals and the Social Democratic Party, a right-wing breakaway from Labour. It
did particularly badly in northern cities, registering major losses to the
Labour Party.

The party lost 11 seats in Liverpool, leaving it with just 2, and lost all 11
seats it contested in Manchester. It lost control of Hull to Labour, losing 10
seats, and Stockport. In Blaenau Gwent, Wales, the Liberal Democrats won just
367 votes, coming some way behind the fascist British National Party.

The most politically humiliating performance was in Sheffield, home to Liberal
Democrat leader Nick Clegg’s Hallam constituency. Labour took control, winning
49 council wards out of 84 by taking 9 seats from the Liberal Democrats.

Labour also gained other councils previously registering no overall control,
including Leeds. The Tory-Liberal Democrat coalition in Birmingham lost 13 seats
to Labour, but retained power.

More generally, the Conservative vote remained stable, with the party winning
control of two additional councils. In addition, Labour’s gains of close to 800
councillors came mainly at the expense of the Liberal Democrats and were from a
low starting point. In 2007, Labour lost 642 councillors and the Liberal
Democrats 257.

Labour came within one seat of an overall majority in Wales, with 30 seats, and
will probably form a coalition with the Liberal Democrats.

This result was wholly overshadowed by Labour’s poor showing in Scotland. Labour
suffered its worst election result there in 80 years, losing 7 seats. Together
with the Liberal Democrats’ 12 losses and 5 for the Tories, this produced a
23-seat swing to the Scottish National Party (SNP) and the first majority
government since the Holyrood parliament was established in 1999.

SNP leader Alex Salmond declared the days of Labour dominance in central
Scotland “gone forever” and pledged to hold a referendum on independence within
five years. Before this, he would insist on greater economic powers for the
Scottish parliament, including the right to set a lower rate of Corporation Tax
to service its relations with global business interests.

Support for independence, still standing at just 30 percent, is not the reason
for the SNP’s victory. Rather, it has been able to present itself as being able
to safeguard services such as the National Health Service and avoiding tuition
fees by striking a harder bargain with Westminster than the Liberal Democrats
and Labour—both directly associated with cuts. Salmond has said that a
referendum would be “indicative”, rather than legally binding.

Whereas Labour has no reason to gloat about its performance, the Liberal
Democrats were left tearing their collective hair out. Numerous councillors
declared that they had suffered due to being in the coalition. Clegg himself
made the anodyne observation that the party was bearing “the brunt of the blame”
for spending cuts that were bringing out “memories of things under [former
Conservative Prime Minister Margaret] Thatcher”.

This is only part of the truth. The Liberal Democrats are being made to pay for
their crimes in a way that the Tories have escaped thus far. The Tories have
their constituency, which turned out for them in May last year and again on
Thursday because they support cuts and other anti-working class measures. The
Liberal Democrats entered government after years of making a feint of being to
the left of Labour and opposing measures such as tuition fees. Their voters felt
betrayed and registered their disgust.

Most of the openly expressed ire among the party’s political casualties was
directed at Clegg’s leadership, rather than a direct questioning of the
coalition with the Tories.

Gary Long, leader of the Liberal Democrats group on Nottingham City Council that
lost all its six seats, urged Clegg to “resign immediately”.

Ken Ball, Liberal Democrats group leader on Chorley Borough Council, accused
Clegg of “letting the party down” and said he was so disillusioned he might quit
the party.

Irene Davidson in Rochdale said Clegg should “think about his position”.

The party’s higher echelons have focused on denunciations of the Tories, and
Prime Minister David Cameron in particular, for supposedly betraying their trust!

The despair of the Liberal Democrat ranks was evident, even before the
announcement late Friday evening that the referendum on whether to introduce an
Alternative Vote (AV) system instead of first-past-the-post had suffered a
crushing defeat. The no vote was more than double the yes vote.

The referendum on AV was the sole supposed concession wrested from the Tories in
return for entering the coalition.

The “No” campaign, which is largely funded by the Conservatives, made hay at its
coalition partner’s expense. Leaflets it issued denounced Clegg for breaking
promises on job cuts, Value Added Tax increases, tuition fees and spending cuts
and said that AV would lead to “more hung parliaments, backroom deals and broken
promises.”

Ex-Liberal Democrat leader Lord Paddy Ashdown accused Cameron of a breach of
faith in not dissociating himself from a “regiment of lies”.

“The bottom line is that Liberal Democrats are exceedingly angry,” he said. “If
the Conservative party funds to the level of 99 percent a campaign whose central
theme is to denigrate and destroy our leader, there are consequences for that.”

When it came to stating what those consequences would be, however, Ashdown
fizzled like a damp squib. The Liberal Democrats would not leave the coalition
until the end of the five-year parliament, he said, “We have set our hands to
this task and now it must be completed so the purpose of the coalition has not
altered, but the mood music, the atmosphere of the coalition most assuredly has.…”

The coalition is clearly politically unstable because opposition to its attacks
is rising. But at this point, the Tories and Liberal Democrats are still held
together by a joint commitment to do the bidding of the financial elite in
imposing savage austerity measures against the working class.

As Ashdown himself acknowledged, “The central proposition of this parliament
stands: ‘Is [Chancellor] George Osborne’s economic judgment right?’ I believe it
is. The whole of British politics now rests on that single proposition.”

Cameron said his party and the Liberal Democrats would “continue to work
together in the national interest”.

As workers in many cities will now come to understand, even if the coalition
breaks apart at some point in the near future, Labour, whether in coalition with
the Liberal Democrats or not, offers no alternative. On Monday, Labour
councillors in Sheffield, Manchester, Liverpool and elsewhere will meet to
discuss how to use their electoral gains to push through the cuts and closures
being demanded of them.

The Socialist Equality Party stood two candidates in the local elections, Robert
Skelton in Ardwick, Manchester, and Simon Walker in Walkley, Sheffield. Skelton
secured 82 votes, 3 percent of the total on a low 22 percent turnout in a strong
Labour seat. Walker secured 116 votes, 1.8 percent of the vote, and placed
higher than the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition.

This was a significant vote.

The SEP advanced a socialist and internationalist programme centring on the
demands, “No cuts in pay, jobs and services”, “End the wars in Libya and
Afghanistan”, “Build international workers unity” and “For a new socialist party”.

We insisted that working people need their own answer to the crisis and their
own socialist leadership. We stressed that Labour agrees with the government
that cuts are necessary, while the trade unions have not and will not organise
any significant opposition to the attacks on working people.

Our manifesto called for “the formation of rank-and-file committees, independent
of the trade union apparatus, in every workplace and community” as the driving
force of “an independent movement of the working class to bring down the
coalition government and replace it with a workers’ government committed to
socialist policies.”

Those who put their cross against the names of our candidates did so in support
of a radical departure in the political life of the British working class. It is
a marker for the future.

http://wsws.org/articles/2011/may2011/elec-m07.shtml