Hard choices: who could Labour work with in a hung parliament?

Back in November, I blogged about the variety of unsatisfactory options that would be left to Britain’s leaders if May’s election produces the hung parliament that some polls have indicated could happen. Since then, the debate over the different options has intensified and more politicians have begun to reveal their thinking on the matter. Yesterday, Ed Miliband ruled out a full coalition with the SNP, ending weeks of speculation, but debate continues about other possibilities.

Even if Labour falls short, it is still likely to be the party with the most options in a hung parliament. The Tories currently have 303 seats, following three by-election losses this parliament, and need 323 seats to govern. Assuming the DUP have 8-9 seats and UKIP have around 6, the Conservatives would still need to make a net gain to make their most ideologically coherent options remotely viable, but only at the very best of times do incumbent governments increase their seat count.

The Lib Dems might still be able to put the Tories in if the parliamentary arithmetic allows, but that is not a given and in any case, the Lib Dems themselves are likely to be divided on whether they want five more years with the Tories. The current Cleggite leadership of the Lib Dems might want to continue the status quo, as I’ll explore below, but in a Lib Dem Voice online survey in October (albeit a non-scientific one with a mixed track record), only 18% of the readers answering preferred a deal of any kind with the Tories. By contrast, in October 51% of the LDV respondents wanted a deal with Labour. The Nationalists, Greens, George Galloway and Northern Ireland’s Alliance and Independent MPs are also all hostile to the Tories and to varying degrees hospitable to a Labour-led administration, and even the centre-right DUP have stated they could work with Labour.

This should all leave Labour with comparatively more choice even if short of a majority, but nevertheless, some options carry far more risk than others.

The Nationalists: SNP and Plaid Cymru

Ed was right to rule out a formal coalition, despite the likelihood that the SNP will significantly increase its seats in Westminster. There are three simple reasons for this.

First, the SNP are a strongly anti-unionist party. They may demand significant concessions from Labour in terms of even further devolution or budget assurances for Scotland, which would run counter to the UK national interest, delegitimise any new Labour-led government and severely damage Labour’s standing outside of Scotland. It would also damage Labour if it were to accept the SNP’s offer to reverse it’s presently abstentionist stance on English matters, as far from bridging the gap with English public opinion on English Votes for English Laws (EVEL), Labour would have effectively moved further away. Trading a few years in government for electoral suicide is not a good deal - in the short-term Labour would win one battle, but it would lose the war.

Moreover, within Scotland, granting significant concessions to the SNP would strengthen them, remove any reason for voters to return to Scottish Labour and make an eventual Scottish exit from the union more likely. It will also bear remembering after May that First Past the Post might well leave unionist Scots dangerously underrepresented in Westminster. Current polls show the SNP with a mid/high-40s vote share in Scotland (basically, most of the 45% who voted Yes, plus a few more), with Labour winning over a quarter and the rest backing the Tories or Lib Dems (i.e. most of the Scots who backed the three-party Better Together campaign last year). However, if the nationalist half of Scotland rallies to the SNP banner and the unionist half splits three ways, the multiplier effect we often see under FPTP could plausibly hand the SNP 50 of Scotland’s 59 seats. If that happens, it will be the duty of UK Labour to help the unionist half of Scotland make its voice heard, rather than legitimising the SNP’s unrepresentative near-monopoly.

Lastly, the SNP has also indicated that it would demand concessions on Trident, and this too would be unacceptable. I’m not completely opposed to Labour ever changing its present Trident policy, as I’ve written in past, but such a substantial shift in national security policy would need to involve a frank pre-election dialogue with entire British electorate. It could never be a backroom U-turn calculated to bribe the SNP.

Instead, Labour would need to remind the SNP that them backing a Labour-led government would be the only politically acceptable outcome to staunchly anti-Tory Scottish voters, something the SNP have already ceded by promising not to put the Tories in. To do otherwise would be politically suicidal for the nominally social democratic SNP. This simple fact would still give Labour substantial leverage over even a substantially enlarged SNP group in Westminster, and should allow Labour to secure SNP backing for a Labour-led government with a minimum of face-saving public concessions being granted to them.

As an aside, exactly the same will apply for centre-left Plaid Cymru’s three or so MPs in Wales, but their smaller numbers would make them less of a consideration.

The Lib Dems

By contrast, if Labour were to fall short of an absolute majority, a full coalition with the Lib Dems should be Labour’s first port of call, in my personal view. It is true that it may not be case that even a Labour-Lib Dem combined government could command a majority by itself. But even then, Labour might need to aim for this whether or not it would be sufficient for a majority – even a minority coalition with the Lib Dems in cabinet would at least get Labour closer to the line and thus increase the relative security of the government.  It could prevent a Miliband government being held up by the Nationalists or by a handful of the most rebellious Labour backbenchers. And crucially, since the Lib Dems are obligated by their politics to consider both main parties as potential partners, a deal would be necessary to scupper any chance of the Conservatives co-opting the Lib Dems into another five years of a Tory-led government.

Philosophically and ideologically, a Labour-Lib Dem coalition could make a great deal of sense if the need were to arise. There are of course differences - especially over civil liberties, electoral reform and the trade unions - but such a government could be bound by a common prospectus. Both are committed to British unionism, EU membership, deficit reduction, progressive taxation (the mansion tax, for example), radical decentralisation of the state, commitment to adequate public services (greater spending on mental health is now a Lib Dem priority), political reform (elected Lords, votes at 16) and more. The social democratic wings of each party sync particularly well, and both Vince Cable and the likely next leader Tim Farron may be more amenable to working with Labour. Labour’s Fabian Society and the Lib Dem-associated think-tank CentreForum recently released a report highlighting the substantial overlaps (along with the inevitable contrasts) in the two parties’ current agendas, which has already been noted as a potential blueprint for coalition negotiations.

Ed Miliband and his close ally John Denham MP (second-right) appear with
Lib Dems Tim Farron MP (right) and Baroness Shirley Williams (second-left) on
a Yes to AV platform, April 2011

There is also plenty of precedent for this kind of partnership on the continent. In Denmark, PM Helle Thorning-Schmidt’s Social Democrats govern in a minority coalition with the Social Liberal Party, with additional parliamentary support provided on confidence votes by the environmentalist Socialist People’s Party and the Respect-esque far-leftist Unity List. This majority “Red Bloc” has enabled her embattled government to stay in power despite frequent challenges to the difficult reforms Thorning-Schmidt has fought to make. In the 1990s, her modernising Social Democratic predecessor Poul Nyrup Rasmussen had also governed with the Social Liberals, during which time he established the flexicurity social-economic model that Denmark has become world-known for. In the Netherlands, the most recent Labour-led coalition (1994-2002) was with both the radical social liberals of Democrats 66 and the market-liberal VVD (since 2012, Dutch Labour has served as the junior partner in a VVD-led government). And since 2013, Labour’s sister party in Luxembourg has coalitioned with the liberal Democratic Party and the Greens, in order to prevent a resumption to rule by Jean-Claude Juncker’s dominant centre-right Christian Social People's Party.

As many have observed though, it is ultimately politics rather than policy that could make a Labour-Lib Dem deal difficult. Many Lib Dems feel there is a deep vein of tribalism in the Labour movement. They allege that this attitude within Labour was present during the May 2010 Lib-Lab coalition negotiations, and has only intensified since the advent of the current Lib-Con coalition. Unite leader Len McCluskey has threatened to abandon Labour if the party were to work with the Lib Dems and it is also true that many Labourites fear that working with “the Liberals” would be seen as an unforgivable U-turn after five years of bitter opposition to the current coalition. Some Labour activists demand that the party should be able to vote on any coalition deal (the Lib Dems are already obligated to do the same by their Ashdown-era party rules), and Labour has also indicated in past that it would be unwilling to work with Clegg specifically, just as the Lib Dems refused to open Lib-Lab negotiations in 2010 until Gordon Brown’s resignation as party leader.

Less often mentioned would be the political barriers to a Lib-Lab deal from within the Lib Dems themselves. First off, it’s not a given that the party will unanimously back five more years of coalition with either Labour or the Conservatives, given the severe electoral losses the party has had to endure. There’s also a serious question about whether the Lib Dems will even be on a footing to negotiate in May. Two recent polls show Clegg losing his own Sheffield Hallam seat to Labour, and Lib Dem deputy leader Malcolm Bruce (in theory the interim leader in the case of a vacancy) is simultaneously standing down in his Gordon seat. The newly-elected party president, Baroness Sal Brinton, is speculated to be next in line constitutionally, but she is little-known - the Lib Dems could be left almost headless, and thus unable to negotiate quickly.

Further, there are factors that could push the Lib Dems away from Labour and towards the Tories. In May, the most immediate Lib Dem losses will also be among MPs who sit in anti-Tory areas where the present coalition is unpopular (Scotland and urban Lib-Lab marginals), while most of the 25-30 Lib Dem MPs that hang on will be in ‘Eastleigh’-style rural or suburban English seats, where the Tories are the traditionally their main competitors. It is true that these Lib Dem MPs will still owe their seats partly to anti-Tory tactical votes, of course, but backing a Labour-led government will still be risky for some of them. Some senior Lib Dems are also used to coalition with the Tories and would prefer to keep their current course than switch to Labour. Two classically liberal MPs with high profiles in the party – Lib Dem manifesto co-ordinator David Laws and former Home Office minister Jeremy Browne – are notably anti-Labour, and Care Minister Norman Lamb said last year that he couldn’t imagine the Lib Dems backing Ed Miliband for Prime Minister. And while the Lib Dems are pitching themselves to voters as a moderating brake on the perceived worst excesses of either party (making the Conservatives more socially just or Labour more fiscally responsible), some Lib Dem strategists privately believe that the ‘good cop’ politics of being the backstop against Tory callousness are preferable to those of being the ‘bad cop’ enforcers of austerity with Labour.

Cabinet balance in a full Lib-Lab coalition would also be interesting to navigate. Lib Dems might be tempted to demand that Vince Cable gets Chancellor, but it’s hard to imagine Labour agreeing to this. More likely the existing set up of the Lib Dems holding the Chief Secretary post would continue, but with Danny Alexander likely to lose his seat to the SNP and previous Chief Sec David Laws being a bad ideological fit for a Balls-led Treasury, another strong Lib Dem would have to replace him. Ed Davey strikes me as a plausible choice. He’s been a Treasury spokesman in past and though yesterday he re-affirmed the ‘Clegg Doctrine’ (the idea that Lib Dems must negotiate with the largest party first, as they did in 2010), Davey also said in July 2014 that he anticipated a Lib-Lab coalition. Cable or Lib Dem foreign affairs spokesman and possible next leader Tim Farron could perhaps be Foreign Secretary – Labour’s Lord Adonis pointed out in 5 Days in May that junior coalition partners on the continent often hold this post. Labour will certainly need to have Secretaries of State at key departments like the Home Office, Defence, Health, Work & Pensions, and an outright majority of all cabinet posts. But as Adonis noted in his book, it would be within Labour's interest to bind the Lib Dems firmly into a secure coalition with at least one cabinet post (and enough junior ministers) in each of the main 'policy sectors' of government; economic (Treasury, BIS), international (Defence, FCO, DFID), welfare/public services (Home, Health, DWP, Education, Transport, DCLG, etc) and green (DEFRA & DECC).

Overall, if a Labour majority does not materialise in May, a Lib-Lab pact should be seen as by the far the most preferable option for Labour. The political concerns on both sides would of course still need to be alleviated. Policy-wise, Labour would also have to avoid being dragged too far left on crime, security and immigration, and would need to maintain a reformist position on the EU. Substantive Lib Dem influence on electoral reform or economic policy needn’t be deal-breakers in practice – Labour is already signed up to deficit reduction and the plausibility in May of seats-versus-votes “wrong party first” results or an overstated nationalist voice in Scotland could reasonably spark fresh debate about FPTP – but they still would be difficult for many in the Labour movement to accept and that would need to be traversed. But these hurdles aside, such a pact could lead to the creation of a strong and coherent government, perhaps even if it lacked an outright parliamentary majority in and of itself.

The Northern Ireland parties

In Northern Ireland, Labour can already count on the support of the moderately nationalist SDLP (their three MPs take the UK Labour whip in Westminster). The sole Liberal-affiliated non-sectarian Alliance Party MP, Naomi Long, is at risk of losing her East Belfast seat in May, but if she holds on she is another potential ally – she has not sat with the present Lib-Con coalition and her party has made left-leaning noises about cuts and privatisations. And Sylvia Hermon, the Independent ex-UUP MP for North Down, is a safer bet to keep her seat and has long maintained strong ties with Labour (she votes with Labour on most domestic legislation and left the UUP in 2009 after they entered an electoral pact with the Conservatives).

The DUP, who have eight MPs at current and may add Long’s East Belfast seat to their tally in May, are an interesting animal. Many would assume the “right-wing” unionist party would naturally back the Tories – and they still well might - but in May 2010 Labour negotiators were prepared to strike a confidence and supply deal with them (partly because at the time, the UUP-Tory electoral pact meant there was bad blood between the DUP and Conservatives). More recently, the DUP’s Westminster leader Nigel Dodds MP attacked free-market dogmas in a January piece for the New Statesman and spoke recently about his potential willingness to work with Labour, noting his agreement with Labour’s proposed energy market reforms and opposition to the bedroom tax (he also demanded delayed access to benefits for EU migrants, but this too would already be consistent with current Labour policy). Odd though this may all seem, it’s worth remembering that certain DUP members like Dodds define their conservatism in a manner that is somewhat more Christian democratic than Tory. While English Conservatives tend to be united on free-market economics and divided instead on cultural and identity questions (our place in the EU, immigration, same-sex marriage etc), in the less affluent and more sectarian confines of Northern Ireland, Ulster unionism can at times be the other way around. This creates the possibility of occasional alliances between social and Christian democrats.

However, despite possible points of agreement between Labour and the DUP on aspects of economic and social policy, the DUP can still overall be considered right-of-centre even in those areas (it recently proposed cutting public sector jobs to fund a corporation tax cut, for example, and the NI left has accused the DUP Health Minister of privatising Health and Social Care services). Clearer still is the fact that the DUP’s ardent sectarian, homophobic, anti-choice and Eurosceptic stances could make it difficult for Labour to publicly align with them – it’s worth remembering that the British left has frequently criticised both the Conservatives and UKIP for forming similarly ‘pragmatic’ alliances with radical-right parties in the European Parliament. While many of these issues are devolved, a deal between Labour and the DUP should be viewed as a last resort option.

Finally, Sinn Fein has five MPs in the current parliament, though it is historically abstentionist in Westminster (meaning the bar to clear for an overall majority is technically 323, not a 50%-plus-one figure of 326). Given the possibility of a hung parliament granting the DUP influence, the possibility of Sinn Fein reversing their policy has been speculated in certain quarters, and The Sun and the Tories subsequently attempted to smear Labour over the possibility of a deal with Sinn Fein, despite this being strongly denied by both parties. Sinn Fein’s historical association with terrorism, its hard-left politics and UK Labour’s sister status with both the more moderate SDLP and the Irish Republic’s own Labour Party (the latter of which faces PASOK-style decimation at the hands of an insurgent Sinn Fein in the next Irish election) make such a deal deeply unpalatable for Labour. But more to the point, unless Sinn Fein do choose to reverse their abstentionist stance, the Sun story is an outright falsehood anyway.

The far-left: the Greens and Respect

The Greens have one MP at current, Caroline Lucas in Brighton (where they also control the Unitary Authority). But even with their surge recently, expansion is not a given – their 12 target seats are reasonably well chosen, but few are realistic pickup opportunities this time around (Green leader Natalie Bennett is very unlikely to break through in her Holborn & St Pancras seat, especially after her disastrous interview performances of late). Further, Brighton has been a basket-case under Green rule, with council infighting, industrial action and a counterintuitive drop in recycling rates marring their time in power there. This means even their existing seat, which Lucas holds against Labour with a 1,252 majority and a mere 31% vote share, is not a dead-cert. By contrast, in Bradford West George Galloway’s 10,140 majority for the Respect Party looks somewhat tougher to surmount, so if Labour’s inspiring new candidate Naz Shah does not quite break through, we may still have to contend with his infantile politics once again.

However, at the end of the day, both the Greens and Galloway are virulently anti-Tory and represent voters with similar views. They will not always be reliable votes on aspects of a One Nation Labour agenda and once a Labour-led government follows through on the hard work of deficit reduction, the Greens in particular could be in a good position to become a stronger “UKIP of the left” gadfly in the next parliament. But like the SNP and Plaid Cymru, neither will have much wiggle room on basic confidence votes.

The right: UKIP and the Tories

I will mention UKIP, if only because in November Farage floated the bizarre idea of some kind of deal with Labour in exchange for an In-Out EU referendum (there’s also a cohort of “Red UKIP” former Labour voters who answer in polls that they’d like to see a Labour-UKIP government of some kind, mind-boggling as that would be). There are of course those in the Labour movement who’d like the party to commit to an EU referendum at some point, but Ed Miliband has been clear in the run up to this election that it’s not on cards yet due to the fragile economic situation (I’m also mindful that a referendum would require a lot of groundwork on the pro-EU side). This means that even though a referendum pledge would be popular in and of itself, it would be the ultimate unprincipled backroom stitch-up, and that’s to say nothing of the general toxicity of UKIP. We can safely put pay to Farage’s far-fetched proposal.

While we’re at it, we can also do the same with the idea of a Labour-Tory ‘Grand Coalition’. In recent weeks a couple of Labour figures known for their ‘small-c conservative’ maverick streaks (Gisela Stuart and John Mills) have mooted the idea to prevent Labour reliance on the SNP, but it will remain a non-starter for me and all other Labourites for the reasons I outlined back in November and more:

“This is relatively common in Europe, but it can still be controversial there and would be even more fraught with problems in UK context. We lack the tradition of consensus politics and are barely used to coalition, even when it's the centrist Lib Dems and one of the other two. It would feed the idea that there's "no difference" between the Labour and Conservative elites, further damaging our politics and feeding apathy (though the lack of basic truth in that sentiment goes a long way to explaining why this option is so implausible to begin with). And the lack of proportionality in our voting system would mean that although a Lab-Con coalition might only be holding around 60% of the popular vote, the 567 figure above [the combined Lab-Con seat total electionforecast.co.uk projected in November] would nevertheless equate to 87% of all seats in parliament, a death knell for democratic accountability. Never going to happen – luckily”

On top of that, the effect of the “there’s no difference” apathy factor I mentioned would be particularly immediate and devastating in Scotland. If Labour went into Grand Coalition after campaigning so hard on “vote SNP, get Tory” in the last few months, the separatist case would be bolstered unimaginably almost overnight. Far from saving the UK as we know it from the Nats, a Grand Coalition could finish it off. No other option could be worse.

Conclusions

As I said at the top, a Labour majority is still possible if Labour fights back enough against the SNP. But even if not, Labour can confidently rule out a coalition deal with them – a strong Lib-Lab minority or majority coalition, despite the hurdles that would have to be cleared, would be a better prospect. Meanwhile, supplementary alliances with the Northern Ireland parties, the political imperative for the Nats and the far-left not to risk a Tory administration and the Tories’ lack of allies will keep Labour in the driving seat in a hung parliament. Ed Miliband was right to reject the SNP – he should hold his nerve.