Coalition-Building: The Dirty Truth

Today we heard  from Nick Clegg that he believes that because the Conservatives “have the most votes and the most seats” he’s going to choose to go into talks with them about forming a government. In today’s political world this seems completely logical, but ultimately such a proposition points to a far greater problem with how politics is perceived today. For thirty years now, the parties have taken on the idea of carefully moulding their policies to fit public opinion. Instead of going out to convince the public of the worth of a particular idea and viewpoint, the parties have simply taken to surveying the public. There are no longer any principles, or at least beliefs become expendable if they contradict public opinion.

This really gets to the root of why our parties are all so similar. None of the major parties is backed up by real ideology, or belief systems other than the belief in getting the most votes. I begin to wonder if even the liberals would support electoral reform if it wasn’t set to get them a whole lot more seats in the commons. When there are no longer beliefs, when all the parties are trying to capture the thoughts of the same man on the street, only when the small-p politics has been entirely eradicated from big-P Politics, does it make sense for a party to seek coalitions on the basis of which other party is most popular.

Perhaps I can better demonstrate this point with simplified model: Three left-wing parties and a right-wing party stand in an election. The left-wing parties get one seat each, and the right-wing party gets two. It would never make sense for one of the left-wing parties to go into coalition with one of the right-wing parties. And certainly not on the pretence that doing such a thing would be morally right because the right-wing party had some kind of democratic mandate.

Of course, the Lib Dems aren’t a left-wing party, and assuming that their politics of business is markedly different from the Tories politics of business is probably a mistake (although they do differ on some issues), but we should still be demanding that coalitions are built on policy. To do such a thing would demand we still had some parties with principles, a radical return to ideological debate on political issues rather than the endless muttering of platitudes about “fairness” that our democracy has disintegrated into in recent years.