Liberals and the Future

By ANGUS MAUDE ICAN quite see that it must be great fun to be a Liberal at the present time, although it must also be extremely worrying to be a Liberal leader. This is the sort of juncture at which mistakes can be fatal.

The articles by Julian Critchley and Richard Rose (Spectator, April 27) provide a basis for taking a good look at the Liberals' future pros- pects. We can begin with Mr. Rose's psepho- logical forecasts for the next General Election, based on the trends of by-elections since 1959 and alternative assumptions concerning possible trends during the remainder of this Parliament. His 'range of probable results' spreads from a comfortable Conservative victory with fourteen Liberal MPs in the House of Commons to a Labour victory with as many as twenty-eight Liberal MPs. In between is the possibility of something like a tie between Conservatives and Labour, with perhaps twenty Liberals holding We balance of power in the Commons.

There is, of course, one possibility that falls well outside Mr. Rose's 'range of probable re- sults': that after the next General Election Mr. Jo Grimond will be the only Liberal Member of Parliament left in the House of Commons.

No doubt Mr. Grimond and Mr. Byers are well aware of the possibility, although, of course, they would be crazy to admit it in public. Mr. Lubbock might well lose Orpington in a General Election, as Mr. Bonham-Carter lost Torring- ton. Messrs. Wade, Holt and Bower have not been opposed by Conservatives, and if next time they are then they might lose Huddersfield West, Bolton West and Cardiganshire to Labour. Irre- spective of what happens in the by-election, Election might be lost at a General tleetion without Clement Davies to fight it. On the face of it, Mr. Thorpe looks safe enough in North Devonshire, but he cannot be con- sidered a certainty. There remains only Mr. Jo Grimond, whom presumably nothing but death or a miracle could unseat in Orkney and Shet- land.

This would be exceedingly awkward for the Liberals. Their parliamentary impact is negli- gible now, and they desperately need to increase it. To lose even some of the seats they now hold would not necessarily be a mortal blow to , the Party or to its hopes for the future, nor would it necessarily stop them from winning m id-term by-elections on the pattern of Tor- pngton and Orpington. But it would be a mortal blow to their present plans. They would have to Lire uP all hope of winning parliamentary seats Y their present methods. They might have to do thik anyway within we next ten years. If the next General Election did leave a body of Liberal MPs holding the balance between the other two parties, and if the country decided that the results were un- satisfactory, it is quite possible that at the following election every single Liberal (except, of course, Mr. Grimond) would lose his seat. These possibilities have to be faced, by Liberals and by currently discontented Conservatives and Labour voters who see the Liberal Party as a potential saviour.

Here, then, is the first of the Liberal leaders' serious dilemmas. They may well conclude that such an electoral disaster would not necessarily be fatal. If they are sensible, they will not spend too much time trying to insure themselves against the disaster itself. It is always a temptation for parties in opposition to spend as much time worrying about keeping the votes they have as in trying to win new ones. It never pays to yield to this temptation.

In this respect the Liberals have one great ad- vantage over the other parties. They cannot be quite certain who their reliable voters are, so that there is little point in trying not to offend them. Much better to concentrate solely on win- ning more and more voters who have never voted Liberal before, and a major campaign to this end is clearly imminent. It will no doubt be stimu- lated by the results of the municipal elections, in which the Liberals will probably do well.

Assuming that the campaign has some lasting results, and that they do not suffer a parlia- mentary catastrophe at the next General Elec- tion, what is the future of the Liberals likely to be? The first question is whether it is pos- sible for three parties to co-exist for any length of time in British politics. The answer is no. The only qualification to this answer is that a change in our franchise to a system of propor- tional representation would make it possible, and I suppose it is not inconceivable that one of the two major parties, in a stalemated Parliament with the Liberals holding the balance, might con- cede PR as the price of Liberal support. Even that would not endure for ever, but it could keep three (or more) parties going for a long time.

Apart from this possibility, there is no room for three parties except during a period of transition. Least of all is there any room for a centre party, between Labour and the Con- servatives, which is what some Liberals still imagine they are or would like to be. It can only be made to sound even faintly plausible by equating the Labour Party with the socialism of its extreme left wing and the Conservative Party with its extreme right. The plain fact is that what one must, for want of better terms, call the right wing of the Labour Party and the left wing of the Conservatives already over- lap so closely on the political spectrum that you couldn't get a match-head between the two parties, let alone a whole new party with room to manoeuvre.

Despite all the people who are at this moment going around saying how nice it would be to have a real third choice, everything in our poli- tical system tends towards a two-party line-up, and that is what We shall almost certainly have, even though there may be a transitional period of three-party contests. Nor is there anything in this which need discourage an enthusiastic Liberal. It does, however, certainly raise the size- able question which of the other two parties the Liberals are going to supplant.

At present, the extraordinary and incompatible mixture of voters whose support they are winning at by-elections must be making life very difficult for them. It is tempting to believe that it might after all be possible to win effective power as one of three permanently co-existing parties; and if they act on this belief they will be wasting a lot of time, because they will either fail or have to take later on a decision that could more profit- ably be taken now. But their present successes are also bound, to some extent, to confuse the crucial issue : if they are going to supplant one of the other two parties, which is it to be?

Let us consider the Conservative Party first. I do not think it can be doubted that a conserva- tive party is—well, perhaps not strictly essential, but certainly inevitable. If one did not exist, it would be necessary to invent one. It follows that, when the Liberals have finished doing whatever it is they are going to do, there will still be a conservative party. Therefore, they can only dis- place the present Conservative Party by doing one of two things. One is to become the conserva- tive party, and win through by making a better job of it than the present one. This is presumably what a great many inhabitants of Blackpool North, and even Orpington, want them to do. I rather doubt whether they could do it, but in any case I understand the Liberal leaders don't want to do it, so presumably they won't try. And if they are not going to try, they really ought to have the courage to disillusion here and now all the angry Tories who are voting for them in by-elections.

don't suppose they will, but if they don't they will regret it later on.

But there is another way in which they could, in theory, displace the present Conservative Party.

That is by making the Labour Party the con- servative party. Since the Labour Party is, in fact, conservative already, it should not be difficult for the Liberals—if they are clever enough and radi- cal enough—to make the fact apparent to the electors. The beauty of this play, from the liberals' point of view, is that it would give them a double option. It might result either in the Conservative Party joining the Labour Party or in the Labour Party joining the Conservative Party. The danger (a very real one) is that the Conservative Party, after shedding a few con- servatives who would join the Labour Party, might become radical and beat the Liberals at their own game.

The point becomes clearer when we ask whether the Liberals can hope to supplant the Labour Party. There can be no question of their becoming the Labour Party. Even if they wanied to—and they have shown no signs whatever of trying—traditional Labour loyalties are too strong to permit it. If we reject, as I have tried to show that we must, the possibility of the Liberals' displacing the Labour Party by edging in on its right between it and the Conservatives, then there remains only one possibility. They have to become so radical that they can elbow the Labour Party over to the right.

It would be foolish for anyone to imagine that this is utterly impossible. All that I have said is no doubt perfectly obvious to Messrs. Grimond and Byers, but I see no signs that the implications have been appreciated by anyone else. Julian Critchley suggested in his article that the Liberal revival might postpone or prevent the break-up of the Labour Party and 'a re- casting of British politics into two new main groupings, Conservative and Radical (together with a rump of doctrinaire Socialists).' Presum- ably, as a Conservative MP, he felt it tactful not to indicate who he thought would be on which side if such a realignment did after all take place. Yet if the realignment were based on a real conflict of interest between genuine conserva- tives and genuine radicals, can it be doubted that many members of the Labour Party (in- cluding trade unionists) would be found among the conservatives and that the radicals would in- clude many who now call themselves Conserva- tives?

Radicalism is no longer a matter of exclusive preoccupation with the interests of the working class, if indeed it ever was. And those who per- sist in saying that the Liberals have no radical policy are in error. It is perhaps a pardonable error. It is easy to be confused by the Liberals' own present confusion, which is due to their winning so many by-election votes for the wrong reasons. The policy is also not easy to find; you have (as I did) to buy up and read nearly every- thing in the Liberal Party bookshop to be sure of getting it. Moreover, there are probably not so many people nowadays who are still capable of recognising a radical policy when they see it. But, for those who are interested, it is con- tained in Mr. Grimond's pamphlet Growth not Grandeur. This is just as much a policy as that which the Conservative Party put forward be- tween 1948 and 1951, when they too were taunted by their opponents (quite unreasonably) with not having one. And it is radical.

The policy can of course be criticised. For instance, neither Mr. Grimond nor any other Liberal seems to have explained convincingly what they want growth for. There are suggestions that it is essential to survival, that the only alternative is decay, but one is left rather feeling that the payoff is to be better roads, better houses and higher pensions—in other words, more material comfort. One might perhaps have expected Liberals to hold out some nobler in- ducements than these; but, apart from this, I doubt whether they can really hope to beat the other two parties at that game. If rapid growth is to lead only to more comfort, then is it going to be worth the discomfort of the growing pains? The temporary frustrations of the inhabitants of Orpington notwithstanding, the majority of people may already be comfortable enough to be pretty chary of bestirring themselves. Whatever may be the effects of the radical changes of habits and attitudes needed to stimu- late substantial and lasting economic growth in Britain, the process would not be comfort- able, and I am sure that most people realise, this only too well. Surely it is this realisation, as much as Government incompetence, that actu- ally inhibits growth?

The sad truth for the Liberals—and perhaps for the country—is that there just aren't enough radicals to win an election. I would not even back all their 'new men'—the young business executives in grey flannel suits—to stick with them if the going really got tough. In time, cir- cumstances might create enough radicals. Then, if the Liberal Party hasn't been wiped out first or allowed one of the other parties to pinch its clothes, it might reap its reward. These are large 'ifs.' if the Conservative Party takes Britain into the Common Market, the Liberals' chance might be lost for ever, for the result might be the enforcement of just those radical changes for which Mr. Grimond stands. On the other hand the immediate result might be, over a wide range of British industry, a disastrous hardening of the present conservative attitudes of manage- ment and labour towards competition. In this case, the Liberals would still be in the race.

If we need a conservative party, no less do we need a radical one, and there are few signs that the Labour Party will meet the need. For this reason, if the Liberals stick to Mr. Grimond's guns and resist the temptation to compromise their radicalism in order to win the temporary support of right-wing voters, I cannot find it in trip ,to hope that they will fail. All things con- sidered, however, the odds would seem to be against success.