Lessons of Coalition (4) : what do we Lib Dems need to learn?

LibDemVoice is running a daily feature, 'Lessons of Coalition', to assess the major do's and don'ts learned from our experience of the first 3 years in government. Reader contributions are welcome, either as comments or posts. The word limit is no more than 450 words, and please focus on just one lesson you think the party needs to learn. Simply email your submission to voice@libdemvoice.org and copy info@eastmidslibdem.org.uk..

Today Nick Thornsby shares his thoughts …

Making a success of coalition government as a concept

Making a success of this coalition government meant two things for the Liberal Democrats. It first meant proving to a sceptical public unused to pluralism that coalition government as a concept is a good, worthwhile thing. Secondly, we had to survive, and hopefully prosper, as a political party.

While separate, those two aims were always intimately linked.

In the early stages of government we were extremely successful with the first. We confounded the critics who said coalition would be a recipe for weak government, proving that a two-party coalition could be more than the sum of its parts. We were forging a new politics on a daily basis.

But then came tuition fees and the AV referendum. Significantly weakened, the party leadership bowed to pressure from those in the party who were never happy with the coalition in the first place, and who were calling for a strategy of "differentiation" just a fifth of the way through the parliament.

But not only did we "differentiate" too early, we went about it in completely the wrong way, replacing the rhetoric of progress with that of division, and negotiation and compromise with internal opposition.

This was the new politics we tried to sell, and the voters didn't much like it. A ComRes poll published earlier this week had only 19% of respondents desiring another coalition in 2015.

And while "differentiation" did nothing to improve our electoral fortunes, it all but destroyed the chance to sell coalition as a new and better way of doing things. What Clegg realised but failed to articulate early enough was that the success of the government was a prerequisite to (though not a guarantee of) later electoral success.

There are some lessons here for the leadership, but there are more for the party members who forced Clegg down this path in 2011. Whether it will be learned in time, or at all, remains to be seen.

Previously published:

Stephen Tall: Stronger policy development and campaigning on issues that matter to the public (AKA where's our liberal equivalent of the benefits cap?)

Mark Valladares: Better party communications responding to the realities of governing

Gareth Epps: Government: What's Occurrin?

Note from the Webmaster

All responses to this series of five articles will be posted on the website and forwarded to Phil.Kowles - Policy Officer for the East Midlands and Lucy Care our representative on Federal Policy Committee