2024 – the collapse of the Tory Party?
Could the 2024 general election see a Tory collapse? Liberals, myself included, have been predicting the collapse of either the Tory or Labour parties at various times in the political cycle over the last quarter century. Expectations have always gone unmet, hopes dashed; maybe much of it was wishful thinking.
But 2024 will be the centenary of the collapse of the Liberal Party from a major party of government to what turned out to be permanent third party status. The party of Asquith, Lloyd George and (until that point) Churchill could not have imagined that the general election of 29th October 1924 would sink them so low that it would never in their lifetimes hold power on its own.
The Liberals crashed from the 158 seats won in the 1923 general election to just 40. It was the party’s first experience of the crushing effect of a first past the post electoral system in a three or more party contest. A party that had governed for the majority of time since its formation in 1859 would now exist on the edge of irrelevance, at least until 2010 when a short-lived return to government occurred.
A party’s place at the pinnacle of politics is not guaranteed. First past the post can be crushing when a party is on the wrong side of a tipping point in vote share. Its supporters claim it leads to political stability. In fact it’s a highly volatile system.
If 1924 seems a long time ago take a look at a more recent and more stark example from 1993. Not our House of Commons but Canada’s. The ruling Progressive Conservative Party crashed from a parliamentary majority to just 2 seats. Prime Minister Kim Campbell lost her own seat. Her party went from first to fifth party status. Canada uses the same voting system as us.
Here’s two end of year predictions. The next British general election will be on 24th October 2024, the last Thursday before the clocks go back and campaigning becomes cold and gloomy. I’ve never thought an earlier election in May was on the cards. Politicians like being in power, even when things appear to be collapsing around them. They don’t give it up any earlier than necessary.
Secondly, a general election held almost a hundred years to the day since 1924 could be as catastrophic for Sunak’s Tories as it was for the Liberals of Asquith and Lloyd George. For much of 2023 their percentage poll rating has been in the low to mid twenties, well below the 31% in 1997 that saw John Major plummet to 165 seats, the Tory party’s worst electoral showing, so far.
Things are much worse for them now and nothing they’ve tried has moved the dial. They are scrambling about on the fringes of the issues that might decide an election. They can’t “stop the boats” and an inheritance tax cut for their remaining rich friends would be seen as an outrage by people who’ve struggled with soaring housing costs and household bills.
The writing is on the wall for the Tories. And it could spell electoral oblivion. In a years time we will find out whether I’ve been prescient or just indulging again in wishful thinking. In the meantime, happy new year!
Save Central Library
Bristol’s Central Library is under threat of being closed down and relocated to a new site. The future of one of Bristol’s most distinctive and well used public buildings has been thrown into doubt by the Mayor including it in his mix of options for spending cuts to balance the council’s budget.
The Central Library is housed in a landmark Edwardian building on College Green, by the cathedral and City Hall. It is a treasure trove of learning and culture set in an architectural gem. The building is listed grade one for its architectural merit and was purpose built at the beginning of the 20th century to provide a magnificent setting for the city’s library and many of its historic archives.
Since 1906 millions of people will have passed through its doors to borrow a book, read a newspaper or periodical, look up historic records or do some research on some aspect of Bristol’s history. For the last 30 years or so I’ve been one of those people. I’ve sat in the magnificent upstairs hall of the reference library to read the newspapers on hundreds of occasions, at least until the Mayor scrapped the service last month. I’ve used the desks to look at records of Bristol’s history and to research my own family history, including my Bristol ancestors. While MP for Bristol West I held many of my weekly advice surgeries there and met people in the library café. It’s hard to imagine Bristol without this superb facility.
I understand that all councils are being squeezed financially by central government. But Bristol’s financial hole is deeper due to the folly of its own leadership. Over £40 million was blown on propping up a failing energy company. Huge sums have been wasted on the Mayor’s fantasy project of a Bristol Underground. All of this money has been wasted while basic and essential city services are cut.
It is unclear why there would be any saving by moving the library to another location, possibly in one of the empty shops in Broadmead. The council would have to pay rent at any new location, whereas it owns the College Green site. Furthermore, since 2014 the lower two floors of the Central Library have been let to the primary school of Bristol Cathedral School. At that time dozens of constituents contacted me as the local MP, opposing the plans. I was reassured by an undertaking from the council that the financial gain to the council would be reinvested in the library. The school paid a lease premium of £600,000 and since then the annual rent should have been at least £60,000. That should be more than enough to cover the increased energy costs of heating the library in recent months. Local Lib Dem councillor Alex Hartley will be raising this issue at the next meeting of the city council. *
Bristol’s Central Library is in a building well designed for its purpose that still works well today. It is already in the best possible location, centrally located for walking and public transport and near to the city’s other main public buildings. Moving it and selling it off for a less appropriate use and relocating it to a worse location and almost certainly downgraded size would be a travesty. The Mayor has got a fight on his hands if he thinks he can get away with what would be an act of cultural vandalism.
Petition
Bristol Liberal Democrats have a petition against the Mayor’s plans. You can support it here https://www.bristollibdems.org/save_central_library
Update 13 December 2022
At the meeting of Bristol Council it was revealed that the current level of rent received from the cathedral school is £81,750 per annum. Staffing costs in 2021/22 were £1.6million. Other revenue costs such as repairs, cleaning and energy were quite variable year to year. In a verbal response to cllr Hartley the Mayor compared campaigning for saving the central library to “chasing the moon on a stick”, a metaphor you hear rarely but which is meant to suggest a pointless pursuit of the unattainable. A curious attitude to a core city service that has existed at its current site for 116 years and at an earlier site since the 17th century….
Boris Johnson is the worst Prime Minister of my lifetime, arguably the worst of the last century and maybe the worst of all time. In the line of fifty five Prime Ministers starting with Walpole, Johnson could be ranked 55th, a transatlantic partnership with his fellow New Yorker Donald Trump, ranked by most commentators the worst of US Presidents.
The chaotic and ungracious manner of Johnson’s resignation from the Conservative Party leadership and in time the Premiership can also be compared to Trump’s refusal to accept defeat. At least we are spared a storming of Parliament by well-armed right wing cranks. Johnson, unlike Trump, has lost most of his fanatical followers, a fact he doesn’t appear to accept given his repeated references to his “colossal mandate” from 2019.
Johnson is the first Prime Minister in the last century to be removed mainly for multiple personal failings, rather than policy differences within the cabinet or between government and backbenchers. The strong personalities of Lloyd George a century ago or Thatcher in 1990 were undoubtedly a factor in their downfall. But Thatcher was removed for stubbornly persisting with the poll tax, the main reason for the new Liberal Democrat party’s first by election win at Eastbourne in October 1990. She had also opened up what became a three decade long fissure inside the Tory party on Europe. Lloyd George was the towering figure in British politics, the most famous man in the world in 1922, yet he was toppled by a revolt of the backbench Tory MPs who wanted to end the Lib-Con coalition that he headed – hence the name of the ‘1922 Committee’ in the news every time the Tories have a crisis.
Johnson has been toppled by Tory MPs who had finally had enough of his multiple character failings. We’ve had Prime Ministers who were casual with the facts, or with money or with their sex lives. Johnson is the only one who combined mendacity, greed and lechery with an abundance of self- confidence and entitlement and a belief that rules were for other people. Anyone who worked with Johnson would have been aware of these failings, including myself.
Our parliamentary careers overlapped before he left to become Mayor of London. We were both members of the Education Select Committee and were our parties’ shadow Higher Education ministers so I saw him at close quarters every week for a couple of years and we chatted often. I was exposed to the humour and charm but like a lot of public schoolboys I’ve encountered I also found him shallow and lazy. His self-deprecating humour duped a lot of people but like all clowns it was just an act.
Tory ministers firing off their resignation letters in the last few days would have been even more aware of Johnson’s failings but looked the other way while they thought he was a winner. They turned on him only when he became a vote loser, after 3 by election losses to the Lib Dems, including the largest ever vote turnaround at Tiverton. Their sudden appreciation of the virtues of trust and rigour should be taken with a bag full of salt.
Johnson’s legacy will be a big win in the 2019 general election, he was undoubtedly a popular campaigner. He succeeded in “getting Brexit done” but with an extreme form of Brexit that maximised rather than limited damage to the British economy, leaving multiple problems for his successor. The covid pandemic obscured the damage and also the rudderless and chaotic style of government. Keen on slogans but not on detail, “levelling up” has not been defined with any clarity.
In the end it is fitting that Johnson was brought down by a colleague’s sex scandal that exposed his lies and carelessness. It is satisfying that his final days in (meaningful) office were farcical and humiliating. Our worst Prime Minister gave himself the most unedifying departure.
Finally, a personal choice of the best and worst Prime Ministers of the last century:
The Best – David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill for leading the country to victory in the two world wars and in Lloyd George’s case for putting in place many of the pillars of our welfare state, including state pensions, health cover, unemployment benefit, free school meals and council houses.
The worst – Boris Johnson, for all the reasons given above, plus Anthony Eden for clinging to the delusion that Britain could continue as a global force, a delusion that is long lasting in today’s Conservative party. Everyone knows of his big mistake of the Suez invasion but the more damaging decision derived from his political conceit for Britain was declining to join the European Economic Community as a founder member, making life difficult for all his successors.
The significant – Clement Attlee for the National Health Service* and extending social security*; Harold Wilson – for his government’s social reforms of the late 1960s, abolishing hanging, relaxing laws on male homosexuality and divorce and creating the Open University; Edward Heath for rectifying Eden’s error and joining the EEC; Margaret Thatcher for having a vision for Britain that she largely delivered through sheer force of conviction and will (this is not a note of approval of what she did!); Tony Blair for giving Labour 13 years in power with a lot of good done at home in health and education, devolving power to Wales, Scotland and a peaceful Northern Ireland (but failed to deliver other constitutional reform) but will be remembered for the disastrous invasion of Iraq and finally David Cameron – I’m clearly conflicted about him, having been a minister in the Coalition government that he headed, a government that was a paragon of virtue, capability and stability compared to the chaos of single party Conservative government that followed. But Cameron will mainly be remembered for the disastrous decision of his second government, calling an EU referendum for which there was no public clamour. Intended to settle disputes inside the Tory party it instead divided the country and shifted his party to the populist right, paving the way for the premiership of that flawed populist Boris Johnson.
**worth a note that all the main pillars of the welfare state were erected by three Welsh MPs – David Lloyd George, Aneurin Bevan (NHS) and James Griffiths, who ended the last remnants of the poor law and introduced benefits to alleviate poverty.
Roll of Honour of Liberal Democrat MPs elected
Since the merger of the Liberal Party and the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in March 1988 the party has elected 119 people to the House of Commons, representing 88 separate constituencies. Here is the complete list in chronological order from the first seat won in a by election in 1990, through to the 2019 general election and MPs elected at by elections in the 2019 Parliament:
1990
David Bellotti – Eastbourne by election, 18th October. Defeated GE 1992.
1991
Mike Carr – Ribble Valley by election, 7th March. Defeated GE 1992.
Nicol Stephen – Kincardine and Deeside by election, 7th November. Defeated GE 1992, MSP for Aberdeen South from 1999 to 2011.
1992 General Election
Russell Johnson – Inverness. First elected 1964. Retired GE 1997 and constituency lost.
David Steel – Tweedale, Ettrick & Lauderdale. First elected 1965 by election. Retired GE 1997.
Robert MacLennan – Caithness and Sutherland. First elected 1966 for Labour, then 1983 SDP. Retired GE 2001.
Alan Beith – Berwick Upon Tweed. First elected 1973. Retired 2015 and constituency lost.
David Alton – Liverpool Mossley Hill. First elected 1979 by election. Retired GE 1997 & constituency abolished.
Simon Hughes – Southwark and Bermondsey. First elected 1983 by election. Defeated 2015.
Paddy Ashdown – Yeovil. First elected 1983. Retired GE 2001
Alex Carlile – Montgomery. First elected 1983. Retired GE 1997.
Charles Kennedy – Ross, Cromarty and Skye. First elected for SDP 1983. Defeated 2015.
Archie Kirkwood – Roxburgh and Berwickshire. First elected 1983. Retired GE 2005.
Malcolm Bruce – Gordon First elected 1983. Retired 2015 and constituency lost.
Jim Wallace – Orkney & Shetland – First elected 1983. Retired 2001.
Matthew Taylor – Truro & St Austell (1987 by election – retired GE 2010)
Menzies Campbell – Fife North East. First elected 1987. Retired 2015 and constituency lost.
Ray Michie – Argyll & Bute First elected 1987. Retired 2001.
Don Foster – Bath. Retired 2015 and constituency lost.
Nick Harvey – North Devon. Defeated 2015.
Nigel Jones – Cheltenham. Retired 2005
Liz Lynne – Rochdale. Defeated 1997
Paul Tyler – North Cornwall. Retired 2005 (Also Liberal MP for Bodmin Feb – Oct 1974)
1993
David Rendel – Newbury by election, 6th May. Defeated 2005
Diana Maddock – Christchurch by election, 29th July. Defeated 1997
1994
David Chidgey – Eastleigh by election, 9th June. Retired 2005
1995
Chris Davies – Littleborough & Saddleworth by election, 27th July. Defeated GE 1997. MEP for NW England 1999-2014 and 2019-20.
General Election 1997:
Mike Hancock – Portsmouth South (previously SDP 1984 – 1987) Defeated (as Independent) 2015.
Richard Livsey – Brecon and Radnor (previously Lib 1985 by election – defeated 1992) Retired 2001.
Ronnie Fearn – Southport (previously Lib 1987 – defeated 1992) Retired 2001.
Andrew George – St Ives. Defeated 2015.
Colin Breed – Cornwall South East. Retired 2010 and constituency lost.
John Burnett – Devon West & Torridge. Retired 2005 and constituency lost.
Adrian Sanders – Torbay. Defeated 2015.
Jackie Ballard – Taunton. Defeated 2001.
David Heath – Somerton & Frome. Retired 2015 and constituency lost.
Brian Cotter – Weston Super Mare. Defeated 2005.
Steve Webb – Northavon. Defeated 2015.
Dr Peter Brand – Isle of Wight. Defeated 2001.
Mark Oaten – Winchester. Retired 2010 and constituency lost.
Norman Baker – Lewes. Defeated 2015.
Vince Cable – Twickenham. Defeated 2015. Regained seat in 2017, retired GE 2019
Dr Jenny Tonge – Richmond Park. Retired 2005
Edward Davey – Kingston & Surbiton. Defeated 2015. Regained seat in 2017
Tom Brake – Carshalton & Wallington. Defeated GE 2019
Paul Burstow – Sutton & Cheam. Defeated 2015.
Bob Russell – Colchester. Defeated 2015.
Dr Evan Harris – Oxford West & Abingdon. Defeated 2010
Paul Keetch – Hereford. Retired 2010 and constituency lost.
Andrew Stunell – Hazel Grove. Retired 2015 and constituency lost.
Phil Willis – Harrogate & Knaresborough. Retired 2010 and constituency lost
Richard Allen – Sheffield Hallam. Retired 2005
Donald Gorrie – Edinburgh West. Retired 2001. MSP Central Scotland 1999-2007.
Sir Robert Smith – West Aberdeenshire. Defeated 2015.
Lembit Opik – Montgomery. Defeated 2010
Michael Moore – Tweedale, Ettrick & Lauderdale (Roxburgh and Berwickshire since 2005) Defeated 2015.
2000
Sandra Gidley – Romsey by election, 4th May. Defeated GE 2010
2001 General Election
Richard Younger-Ross – Teignbridge. Defeated (at Newton Abbot) 2010
Annette Brooke – Mid Dorset and North Poole. Retired 2015 and constituency lost.
Sue Doughty – Guildford. Defeated 2005
Norman Lamb – North Norfolk. Retired GE 2019, constituency lost
Matthew Green – Ludlow. Defeated 2005
Patsy Calton – Cheadle. Died 2005
Paul Holmes – Chesterfield. Defeated 2010
David Laws – Yeovil. Defeated 2015.
Dr John Pugh – Southport. Retired 2017 and constituency lost.
Roger Williams – Brecon & Radnor. Defeated 2015.
Alistair Carmichael – Orkney & Shetland
John Thurso – Caithness & Sutherland. Defeated 2015.
Alan Reid – Argyll & Bute. Defeated 2015.
John Barrett – Edinburgh West. Retired 2010
2003
Sarah Teather – Brent East by election, 18th September. Seat abolished GE 2010. Elected Brent Central. Retired 2015 and constituency lost.
2004
Parmjit Singh Gill – Leicester South by election, 15th July. Defeated GE 2005.
2005 General Election
Lorely Burt – Solihull. Defeated 2015.
Tim Farron – Westmoreland & Lonsdale
Julia Goldsworthy – Falmouth & Camborne. Defeated (at Camborne and Redruth) 2010
Jeremy Browne – Taunton. Retired 2015 and constituency lost.
Stephen Williams – Bristol West. Defeated 2015.
Lynne Featherstone – Hornsey & Wood Green. Defeated 2015.
John Hemming – Birmingham Yardley. Defeated 2015.
David Howarth – Cambridge. Retired 2010
Greg Mulholland – Leeds North West. Defeated 2017.
John Leech – Manchester Withington. Defeated 2015.
Paul Rowen – Rochdale. Defeated 2010
Jenny Willott – Cardiff Central. Defeated 2015.
Jo Swinson – East Dumbartonshire. Defeated 2015. Regained seat in 2017, defeated again GE 2019
Danny Alexander – Inverness, Badenoch & Strathspey. Defeated 2015.
Mark Williams – Ceredigion. Defeated 2017.
Dan Rogerson – Cornwall North. Defeated 2015.
Martin Horwood – Cheltenham. Defeated 2015. MEP SW England 2019-20.
Chris Huhne – Eastleigh. Resigned 2013. Seat held in by election.
Susan Kramer – Richmond Park. Defeated 2010.
Nick Clegg – Sheffield Hallam. Defeated 2017.
2005
Mark Hunter – Cheadle by election, 14th July. Defeated 2015.
2006
Willie Rennie – Dunfermline & West Fife by election, 9th February. Defeated GE 2010. MSP Mid Scotland and Fife 2011-16 and for NE Fife 2016-
2010 General Election
Stephen Gilbert – St Austell & Newquay. Defeated 2015.
Duncan Hames – Chippenham. Defeated 2015.
Tessa Munt – Wells. Defeated 2015.
Stephen Lloyd – Eastbourne. Defeated 2015. Regained seat in 2017, defeated again GE 2019
Simon Wright – Norwich South. Defeated 2015.
David Ward – Bradford East. Defeated 2015.
Gordon Birtwhistle – Burnley. Defeated 2015.
Ian Swales – Redcar. Retired 2015 and constituency lost.
Julian Huppert – Cambridge. Defeated 2015.
Mike Crockart – Edinburgh West. Defeated 2015.
2013
Mike Thornton – Eastleigh by election. Defeated GE 2015.
2015 General Election
No new MPs
2016
Sarah Olney – Richmond Park by election, 1st December. Defeated GE 2017, re-elected GE 2019
2017 General Election
Wera Hobhouse – Bath
Layla Moran – Oxford West and Abingdon
Christine Jardine – Edinburgh West
Jamie Stone – Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross. MSP for same seat 1999-2011.
Brecon and Radnor by election, 1st August 2019
Jane Dodds (defeated GE 2019, but elected to Senedd as a list MS for Mid and West Wales in 2021)
General election 2019
Wendy Chamberlain – North East Fife
Daisy Cooper – St Albans
Munira Wilson – Twickenham
Chesham and Amersham by election, 17th June 2021
Sarah Green becomes the 116th elected Liberal Democrat MP
North Shropshire by election, 16th December 2021
Helen Morgan becomes the 117th elected Liberal Democrat MP and North Shropshire the 87th seat
Tiverton and Honiton by election, 23rd June 2022
Richard Foord becomes the 118th elected Liberal Democrat MP and Tiverton & Honiton the 88th seat won.
Somerton and Frome by election, 20th July 2023
Sarah Dyke becomes the 119th elected Liberal Democrat MP, regaining a seat lost in 2015.
The Case for abolishing Bristol’s Mayor
Bristol’s directly elected mayor is no longer needed. The people of Bristol should be offered the chance to abolish it, via a referendum.
The eight year innovation in city governance has side-lined and undermined seventy elected city councillors. While the office of mayor has improved the visibility of the city’s local leader it has not really improved accountability for big decisions. It is too easy for the mayor to avoid scrutiny and dismiss questions and criticism. The mayor is responsible for a large range of city services, from social care to museums, from recycling to swimming pools. This is too much to put in the hands of one individual if the mayor is not minded to share and delegate power to councillors. The mayor is not needed as an ambassador for the city and the region as that role is now held by the regional mayor of the West of England.
A confession – I have changed my mind on this issue. Back in 2012 I was marginally in favour of a switch from Council Leader (elected by the councillors) to a Mayor elected directly by the public. The Coalition offered a referendum to each of the main English “core” cities, Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester, etc, Leicester and Liverpool councillors decided to change their governance without a referendum. The government promised to set up a “cabinet of mayors” that would provide a strong voice for England’s regional capitals in Westminster. It was this issue that swung me behind the change. As one of Bristol’s MPs and a previous councillor I was frustrated that the greater Bristol and Bath area (the county that used to be Avon) constantly lost out on investment, particularly on transport. The cabinet of mayors would give regional capitals a way of influencing ministers. But in the end, only Bristol voted for change and the cabinet of mayors never happened.
Then in 2016 the by now Conservative government decided to set up a network of regional “metro” mayors, on a par with the Mayor of London. Since May 2017 Bristol has been part of the West of England region (a not very clear name) with its own regional mayor. At a stroke, Bristol’s city mayor was eclipsed as the most prominent and powerful local politician. It is the job of the regional mayor to win government investment in major infrastructure projects. It is also the role of the regional mayor to work with UK Trade and Investment on winning commercial inward investment and growing the region’s exports. The current city mayor does appear to enjoy flying around the world, burnishing his cherished global leader credentials. But they are flights of fancy, without a legitimate purpose.
So my main reason for changing my mind on the need for a city mayor is the creation of the regional mayor. As Keynes said, “when the facts change, I change my mind, what do you do?” But I’ve also changed my mind as a result of witnessing how the city mayor has failed to improve city services and the quality of life in general, particularly in the (Covid extended) five year term of the current mayor. Successful leaders don’t just send out strong signals. They also listen to colleagues and draw strength from their experience and skills. The current city mayor has presided over a game of musical chairs in his cabinet councillor team. The stability of a (normally) four year term of the mayor has been undermined by constant changes in the personnel of his cabinet. The mayor has also shunned scrutiny by “backbench” councillors, despite many of them having long experience in the running of the city.
Running a major city requires not just a strong and accountable leader but a team of talented councillors around that leader. The range of public services is too great for any one individual to have direct oversight. The experience of councillors from all four parties should be drawn upon to head up services or to provide scrutiny and challenge to those who are exercising power. A directly elected mayor can choose to ignore the wisdom of others, leaving councillors effectively impotent. A council leader accountable to all councillors has to work with their peers, involving more people in the making of decisions. Changing the system is no guarantee of high quality leadership, I was a young councillor in the 1990s when there were several dreadful council leaders. But the council leader system does at least mean an administration of some of the talents, rather than an administration operating on the whim of one mayor.
My Liberal Democrat colleagues on the council are trying to secure a referendum on the future of the city mayor. The current city council could resolve to hold a referendum in May 2022. In this year’s local election every Lib Dem candidate is standing on a platform of offering that referendum. If a majority of councillors don’t vote for the possibility of change then we have the option of securing the signatures of five per cent of the electorate, which would trigger a referendum.
I am fairly sure that Bristol will hold a referendum on whether to continue with the city mayoral model. In 2012 I voted for change and when I next get the opportunity I will vote for change again, hopefully with the outcome of abolishing the post of city mayor.
Statues, plaques and painful history
Statues have been moved and removed, defaced and smashed since ancient times. As ruling dynasties are supplanted and once powerful states are vanquished their replacements were often keen to sweep away the physical memories of their predecessors. During the last two centuries archaeologists the world over have found in rubbish heaps or river beds the busts or decapitated statue heads of former kings and emperors.
So while I was initially shocked that some protestors in my home city of Bristol toppled the statue of Edward Colston and dunked it in the harbour, when I reflected on it I thought it was an appropriate action. While it was the police murder of George Floyd in Minnesota that triggered the Black Lives Matter demonstration, the Bristol context was years of civic foot dragging and burying heads in the historical sands of the city’s involvement in African slavery.
Since the toppling of Colston we’ve seen the defacing of Churchill’s statue in Parliament Square, the toppling of Columbus in Baltimore, the decision of Oxford University to remove a statue of the imperialist Cecil Rhodes and Liverpool University caving in to pressure to remove Gladstone as the name of a hall of residence.
Colston was a wealthy man from the time of Queen Anne, who made much of his fortune from lending money to slave traders. He was also an official of the Royal African Company. His link to slavery and its 21st century descendant of racism is pretty clear. The case against explorers is quite weak, they didn’t decide the colonial policies that came later. The case against Rhodes seems to rest on a belief that imperialism was entirely bad, rather than him being the British equivalent of the Belgian monster Leopold II.
But the case against Gladstone is at the opposite end of the spectrum of 2020 judgement to Colston, it seems to me to be more to do with a left wing score settling against anyone (especially current Liberals) who doesn’t embrace the entirety of their world view. In their world, there is no room for balance or nuance. A historical life should be viewed in its entirety. Gladstone was clearly what we would now call a man on a journey. In his early years he was indeed the “rising hope of those stern and unbending Tories” but by the mid-point of his extraordinary political life he was the “People’s William.” In his career he achieved far more to improve Britain than the people’s Jeremy.
Statues and place names are physical reminders of particular points in our past. They are not in themselves history and by moving or changing them we are not erasing the past. If that past is uncomfortable for contemporary society then liberals have a duty to find a way to reconcile the need to understand history with a desire for a cohesive and inclusive society. Sometimes the balance will tip in favour of removal of the painful reminder – what could be more of an insult to a 21st century Bristolian of Afro-Caribbean origin than the statue of a slave trader in the centre of the city? It’s right that Colston will now go to the city museum, as part of the displays on the history of Bristol and slavery.
I’m reminded of a similar situation in Estonia, which I visited on a Liberal Democrat delegation in 2007. The liberal government had moved a statue of a Soviet soldier from the centre of Tallinn to a cemetery that contained war graves. The Estonians saw the Russians as occupiers and oppressors, not liberators. This caused consternation in Moscow and Putin responded with a cyber-attack on the Estonian economy. Most central and east European capital cities have statue parks of communist era politicians. Statues are indeed powerful symbols from the past. While on another delegation, to Australia, I saw Dublin’s statue of Queen Victoria which had been shipped off to a Sydney shopping centre, probably the world’s longest journey by a statue.
In most circumstances I believe the balance tips in favour of keeping the statue or place name but with an accompanying plaque or information panel telling the full warts and all story of the person who is commemorated. As liberals we believe in rational debate, a sifting of the evidence leading to an understanding of a situation, from which we can decide whether and how to change that situation or be content with how things stand.
A totally illiberal way to respond to our past is to demand a complete rearrangement of the facts of history so that they can be judged by or made to conform to contemporary values or opinions. I recently gave a brief talk to the Friends of a local library on the political language of George Orwell. We don’t live in an Orwellian society but much of his language and the tactics of the characters of 1984 has seeped into our current politics. I’m thinking in the context of this article about Winston Smith’s explanation of the work of the Ministry of Truth, “Do you realise that the past, starting from yesterday, has actually been abolished?…Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered….History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.” Some of the more extreme demands to sweep away all the statues and place names that commemorate dead white men come straight out of this Orwellian attitude, perhaps unwittingly. Yes there is an imbalance of representation in our public art. The answer is not to remove what we have but to put up more statues, busts, murals and paintings to women, people of colour and gay people. My nomination for the empty plinth vacated by Colston is Hannah More, a Bristolian author, educationalist and campaigner with Wilberforce for the ending of slavery.
To build a modern society that is cohesive and where everyone is valued and enabled to make a contribution, one of things we must do is understand why society is in its current state. That is the role of history and the job of historians is to give us all the complete and unvarnished facts about our journey from whatever point in the past to our present situation. That history must be inclusive, not because liberals want a current society that is inclusive but because if the story isn’t inclusive then it isn’t complete.
I’m a Welshman from a working class family. My favourite subject at school was history and I now live on the English side of the Severn as I studied history at the University of Bristol. I’m also gay, regard myself as a feminist and have campaigned against racism. While I don’t judge a book by its cover I do judge a history book by its contents. Churchill is supposed to have said that “history will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.” He did, won a Nobel Prize for his efforts and history has indeed been overly kind to him.
Until quite recently most of the history books studied at school or found in bookshops to enjoy for your own learning were written by white, male, straight, English, public school, Oxbridge (or Sandhurst) types. The stories they told were about men like them. All things good and indeed bad were done by people like them. Women were ancillary characters, with a few queenly exceptions. Poor people and slaves were mentioned in the context of the rights taken away or given to them by the ruling elite. The homosexuality of some of the ruling elite was swept under the carpet. One of the most popular articles on my blog is about the historic sites in Britain and their LGBT associations that almost always go unmentioned in their guide books.
Fortunately, schools policy in Wales is now in the hands of a female working class Liberal Democrat Minister. Kirsty Williams has just launched the first post devolution reform of the curriculum. I was delighted to see her say that history in Welsh schools will be “taught in a pluralistic way, which challenges both the amazing contributions of Welsh people in our own nation and across the world and sometimes things that should make us feel a bit uncomfortable.”
The young beneficiaries of Kirsty’s new curriculum will be shaping Welsh and maybe British society in the middle decades of this century. Fortunately, we don’t have to rely on our own school years to make us better informed. History isn’t nuclear physics, aspects of it can be learned throughout life by people of all abilities. Those of us who are campaigning to change society in a more liberal direction have a duty to study our past and act to make sure that our contemporary fellow citizens are able to live their lives without being trapped by their past and to look about them and feel that people like them are valued and celebrated in our public space.
This article was written in June 2020 for publication in Liberator Magazine’s July edition – https://liberatormagazine.org.uk/en/
Since May 2019 I’ve had the pleasure of being one of the Consorts of the Lord Mayor of Bristol. Prior to the Covid lockdown I attended dozens of events with my friend Cllr Jos Clark. At most of them at least one person would ask us what was the difference between the Lord Mayor and the Mayor of Bristol? Perhaps the best answer was given eight years ago by a previous Liberal Democrat Lord Mayor, Peter Main, right at the start of the first term of the first directly mayor George Ferguson, “he’s the power and I’m the glory!” It’s true that Jos does look rather glorious when wearing the full regalia of her ceremonial office. It’s also true that Marvin Rees has the political power in Bristol, too much of it in the hands of one person, in my opinion.
But what about the Regional Mayor, I hear some of you ask. Well he also has lots of power but is timid in his use of it and is almost unknown, even among well-networked movers and shakers. For better or worse, most people have heard of City Mayor Marvin Rees but few could name Regional Mayor Tim Bowles.
Visible leadership is supposed to be one of the advantages of having a directly elected mayor. People like to know who’s making the decisions. But they also say they expect accountability for those decisions. Sadly, across the West of England we have an invisible mayor who over the last three years has declined to expose himself to any scrutiny from councillors drawn from Bristol, Bath & North East Somerset and South Gloucestershire. While the Mayor of Bristol is more visible, he is similarly disdainful of scrutiny and makes decisions that ride roughshod over majority opinion in the city. He’s cancelled plans for a city centre arena and poured millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money into a failing energy company.
I should confess that back in 2012 I was a lukewarm supporter of the switch to an elected mayor in Bristol and all of England’s other major cities. I thought a network of civic leaders with popular mandates would rebalance government away from all powerful Westminster, where I sat at the time as an MP. But only Bristol chose the model and since 2017 we’ve had the network of regional mayors, covering most of the metropolitan city regions of England. The Mayor of Bristol is now a spare mayor and I and my Lib Dem colleagues in the city want to see the post abolished.
Complex public services in the city such as social care and special educational needs (both arguably rather neglected by Mayor Rees) and other responsibilities such as parks and libraries would stand a chance of being run better if we draw on the talents of all the 70 city councillors. But we want to go much further than just turning the clock back to 2012. We want to offer Bristol’s citizens the chance to have decisions made in their own localities with a network of Neighbourhood Councils. These would be like the town and parish councils that are normal in the rest of the West of England, everywhere from Bradley Stoke to Radstock. People in places such as Brislington or Clifton & Hotwells would elect community councillors, who would have the power to raise money to spend on local priorities. There could also be Neighbourhood Plans, backed by a local referendum.
When I was Minister for Communities and Local Government I streamlined the procedures for setting up new councils and Queens Park (of QPR football club fame) was the first new urban community council to be set up in London. If I am elected as Mayor of the West of England next year I will make myself accountable not only to the 190 councillors across the region’s three councils but will also have public question times everywhere from Southmead to Nempnett Thrubwell. Visibility matters in politics but government leaders are more effective if they are transparent and accountable.
The above was originally published as an opinion piece in Bristol 24/7 https://www.bristol247.com/news-and-features/
Bristol has made the news around the world with the toppling of the statue of the slave trader Edward Colston and its dunking in the harbour. Early this morning it was fished out of the waters and after a clean up will be on its way to MShed, the museum of Bristol’s own history. I hope the statue goes there in its newly battered, holed and tarnished form as the events of last Sunday are now part of the story of how Bristol has dealt with this troublesome issue of its history. It is a shame that the statue wasn’t moved there some time ago, which is something I first advocated in 2017 after years of frustrating debate about whether to put an interpretative plaque on the plinth and also whether the name should be changed of the nearby Colston Hall.
Bristol has at times debated, agonised and wrung its hands about what to do about the painful legacy of the city’s role in the slave trade and the wealth that the ownership of slave plantations brought to some Bristol families. Thirteen years ago those discussions were at their peak when the city and country marked the bicentenary of the ending of the slave trade in 1807. There were a large number of events in the “Abolition 200” programme and as the then MP for Bristol West I attended and spoke at many of them. These included the huge rally at the Temple Meads engine shed (then next to the Empire and Commonwealth Museum) when it was a great honour to introduce Jesse Jackson to speak.
Parliament also had an exhibition and several Bristol schools and organisations came to visit. There was a special debate in the House of Commons, in which I spoke. Thirteen years ago is a different era in political communications – I wasn’t a blogger then, Facebook was in its infancy and Twitter didn’t exist. So this speech has probably never been aired before, unless you’re an avid researcher of Hansard. I’ve just read it for the first time in over a decade and I think all of the words are still valid, so here it is, for the record. If you want to read the full debate, I’ve pasted the link at the end. The opening speaker was John Prescott, the then Deputy Prime Minister and MP for Hull, the home of anti-slavery campaigner William Wilberforce.
Extract from the debate on 20th March 2007
Stephen Williams (Bristol, West) (LD): It is interesting to follow the hon. Member for Battersea (Martin Linton), who was quite parochial in his remarks about various personalities from his constituency who played their part in historic events years ago. I will be similarly parochial about the role that the city of Bristol, which I represent in Parliament, played in events 200 years ago. The hon. Gentleman mentioned one of my predecessors, Edmund Burke, who bravely spoke against slavery while being the Member for Bristol, which was one of the reasons why he had to flee the city in 1780 and not contest an election again in that particular seat.
The question of slavery is undoubtedly an emotive issue for present-day Bristolians, and its legacy has been much discussed in the city. Bristol was one of the country’s three principal slaving ports. Once the royal monopoly on slavery that restricted the slave trade to London was lifted in 1698, Bristol merchants entered into the slave trade with some enthusiasm, I have to acknowledge, although by the middle of the 18th century the city was overtaken by Liverpool as one of the principal slaving ports in the country. As well as the slave trade itself—in economic terms, it is a moot point as to how much prosperity the slave trade brought to the city, because many slaving voyages ended in a net loss—the city prospered from the trades associated with it, such as sugar, tobacco and brass.
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Many of the slave plantation owners in the West Indies had a direct link to Bristol and contributed much to the city’s wealth. Ironically, the compensation that they received once full emancipation took effect in 1838 contributed further to the city’s prosperity.
Contrary to what many people believe, very few slaves passed through the city of Bristol, although many became servants there. In north Bristol, in Henbury churchyard, there is the grave of Scipio Africanus, who is buried there. In the city centre, we commemorate one of the few known slaves apart from Scipio Africanus, who was known as Pero and was the slave of a West Indies plantation owner who lived in the Georgian House in the centre of my constituency.
St. Paul’s, in my constituency, has the one of the oldest communities of West Indian origin in the country. The legacy of slavery and the racism that is associated with it is a very hot topic in my constituency at the moment; indeed, it has been a big topic of discussion in the city for many decades. Some significant progress has been made. The hon. Member for Battersea said that the first black mayor was in his borough. Bristol can claim the first Afro-Caribbean lord mayor—Jim Williams, who was a Labour councillor and became lord mayor of Bristol in 1990. I was pleased to play my part in the election of the city’s first black Afro-Caribbean-origin lady councillor—Shirley Marshall—in my constituency in 2003.
The question of how to commemorate the events of 200 years ago has been the subject of much debate in the city. How do we balance a recognition of the shame of the city’s association with slavery, which is much referred to by people from outside the city, with a commemoration of the blow for civil rights and human dignity that this Parliament made in 1807? In fact, the city and people of Bristol played a role in both aspects.
In the mid-1990s, when I was a councillor for the city centre of Bristol, a couple of Labour councillors and I mounted a campaign to ensure that the city owned up to its rather shameful past as regards its association with the slave trade, because there was nothing to be seen in the city’s museums that reflected it. That led to an exhibition in the Georgian House, which has been open to the public for about a century and was owned by the Pinney family, who were big plantation owners in Nevis in the West Indies. That led to a larger exhibition in the Industrial museum, which will lead in turn to an exhibition later this year in the British Empire and Commonwealth museum next to Bristol Temple Meads station. The new city of Bristol museum, for which I have campaigned for about 15 years, will open in 2009, on the back of investment from the city council and the national lottery. It will have a permanent gallery showing the warts-and-all story of Bristol’s role in the slave trade.
Mr. Steen: Has the hon. Gentleman any idea of how much new slavery there is in Bristol? Has he any idea of how many women and children there are who have been trafficked? I am not in any way demeaning what he is saying, but slavery is not dead, and it is certainly pretty active in Bristol.
Stephen Williams: I am not sure whether slavery is pretty active in Bristol. I heard the hon. Gentleman’s speech and his earlier interventions on other Members,
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and I recognise his passionate commitment to raising the issue of human trafficking. He and other hon. Members have mentioned prostitution, and that is certainly an unfortunate feature of a major city such as the capital of the west of England. In my constituency, unfortunately, there are women of various nationalities who are there, either because of their drug dependency or no doubt because they have been trafficked into the area, to satisfy the quite awful needs of some men in the city of Bristol. That is a matter of shame for all of us, and a reminder of the lack of human dignity that some people have to face.
How Bristol should face up to the events of 200 years ago is a matter of great debate there. Some people wish to erase all memory of the city’s role in the slave trade by altering street names and the name of our concert hall, and by not allowing a shopping centre to make even a convoluted reference to merchants. The hon. Member for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn), who is no longer in his place, mentioned the role of Edward Colston in the city of Bristol, and that, too, is a topic for debate at the moment. I believe, however, that the way to deal with the past is not to erase it from our memory but to recognise it, debate it and interpret it wherever we find an association with the past that is linked to slavery, be it a statue, a hall or a shopping centre. Wherever we find a link, however tenuous, we should interpret it so that people can understand the issues of the past, deal with them and relate them to what is happening today.
The hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) mentioned the apology that the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland had made on behalf of all of us in this regard. The question of an apology has also been a topic of debate in Bristol. I do not believe that the present generation of Bristolians or their elected representatives can apologise for the actions of people who were alive in the city 200 years ago. We cannot transfer guilt on to those people, particularly as only a minority of the citizens of that time participated in the slave trade or had a direct interest in the West Indies. Moreover, many ordinary Bristolians campaigned against the trade. It is better to recognise all facets of the trade and to understand our legacy. The city council has, none the less, debated the question of an apology and issued a statement of profound regret, which was in a tone similar to the one issued by the Prime Minister on behalf of the nation.
I want to talk briefly about the role of the city in the events of 200 years ago. As early as 1783, the Society of Friends in Bristol first mounted a campaign against the slave trade in which some Bristolians were engaged. On 27 June 1787, Thomas Clarkson first arrived in Bristol to gather the evidence that many hon. Members have referred to today. That evidence was subsequently used by Wilberforce in his parliamentary campaign. Clarkson’s 1808 two-volume account of his campaign was entitled “The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave-Trade by the British Parliament”, which was rather a long title for a series of memoirs. In it, he noted that Bristolians were not at all proud of the trade that was taking place in the city. He said that
“every body seemed to execrate it, though no one thought of its abolition.”
In Bristol, aided by Mr. Thompson, the landlord of the “Seven Stars” pub, which still exists in the city centre, Thomas Clarkson was escorted around the public houses where seamen were recruited to go on slaving voyages. That formed the basis of the evidence that he gathered to campaign against the slave trade in the country, and which he fed to Wilberforce for his campaign in Parliament. The evidence of maltreatment of the seamen aroused almost as much moral outrage at the time as that of the maltreatment of the captives. There were tales of floggings, burnings with hot pitch, branding with tongs and throwing people overboard.
In 1787, a local committee was established in Bristol for the abolition of the slave trade, bringing together Quakers, Anglicans and dissenters, as well as leading public figures in the city. Clarkson then left to gather further evidence in Liverpool. In Bristol, the debate raged for the next 20 years between the abolitionists and the West Indian interests that wished to perpetuate the slave trade. I have to say that my parliamentary predecessors did not play a particularly distinguished role in 1807 in the passing of the Act that we are commemorating tonight. The 1830 election, however, was fought directly on the issue of the continuance of slavery, and competing Whig candidates—one for emancipation and one against—stood. Sadly, the forces of emancipation were defeated—though certainly not disgraced—by 3,378 votes to 2,843. Of course, that was on a very limited pre-1832 franchise. The Act to emancipate slaves became one of the first passed by the reformed House after 1832.
The abolition of the slave trade in 1807 is arguably the first blow for human rights by any national Parliament on behalf of the peoples of other countries. In opening the debate, the Deputy Prime Minister referred to the teaching of history in our schools, as did other Members. I have spoken on black history month a couple of times since being elected a Member of Parliament, and I share with the hon. Member for Brent, South (Ms Butler), who is not currently in her place, the hope that black history issues will be integral to the new history curriculum, and I am assured that that has been the case in Bristol schools for many years. I shall invite all the schools in my constituency to come and see the exhibition in Westminster Hall. Cabot school in St. Paul’s in my constituency has already had an exhibition and commemoration of present-day and historical black heroes.
There is much cynicism about politics, but 2007 provides an opportunity for us to remind people of the good that politics and Parliament can do, as well as to remind them of how much good can be achieved by those who campaign outside Parliament. When I studied history in school, I learned of the success of the Anti-Corn Law League compared with the failure of Chartism. I was not taught at the time of the success in 1807 of the campaign from outside Parliament to end the slave trade. On Sunday, in Bristol, as in Hull and Liverpool, there will be a service in the cathedral to commemorate the events of 200 years ago. Across the city, the bells will be rung, by contrast with when they were rung on the many occasions that Wilberforce’s attempts to abolish the slave trade were defeated. When those bells fall silent, all of us in Bristol will have an opportunity to have a period of quiet contemplation
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and reflection on the events that have taken place in the city’s past, and on how we face up to the legacy of slavery in today’s society.
You can read all the other speeches and interventions from MPs here, including my correction of a Labour backbencher Jeremy Corbyn, who refused to accept that Whiteladies Road and Blackboy Hill were not connected to slavery –
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200607/cmhansrd/cm070320/debtext/70320-0017.htm
Bristol Energy – what are they hiding?
Bristol’s taxpayers have sunk about £40million into trying to make a success of Bristol Energy Limited. I say taxpayers because the money spent by Bristol City Council all comes from households or businesses, one way or another. But we taxpayers were never really asked whether we wanted to take such a large punt in the volatile energy market. We don’t know how our money’s been spent, despite repeated attempts to find out by opposition party councillors. Mayor Marvin Rees is determined to keep it that way, presiding over an energy company where we are all kept in the dark. He and his Labour colleagues voted down a joint Liberal Democrat and Conservative motion that called for an independent inquiry into the company’s finances.
I wonder why the Mayor is being so secretive. What is he trying to stop us seeing? Nobody should reasonably expect him to be an expert in the complexities of the energy market. But we are entitled to expect our political leaders to have a care for the stewardship of our money in their hands. It’s been a concern of many people for a long time that Bristol Energy was haemorrhaging cash. Rather than a return on its investment, the city was propping up an ailing and maybe ultimately failing company. When did Mayor Rees become aware of this fact? Did he understand the scale of the problem? Did he pay due attention to briefings and warnings? Or was he distracted by more interesting stuff in his in-box?
Mayor Rees and I are both keen watchers of American politics, so I know he will be aware of this quote – “You campaign in poetry but govern in prose.” It was said by the former (and father of the current one) Governor of New York, Mario Cuomo. The speech was a warning Cuomo gave his fellow Democrats that you can have all the highfalutin language and soaring phrases you like but the people expect politicians to work hard, study the detail and act to make a difference. Many of us have sat through a speech from Rees and wondered what it all meant. Anyone watching Rees at Mayor’s question time in City Hall will have cringed at the disdainful way he responds to both councillors and the public. This is a mayor who does not react well when challenged and appears to fear scrutiny.
Another well-known aspect of Rees’s behaviour is his taste for foreign travel. We have a city mayor who clearly enjoys globetrotting and one suspects has desires to be seen as a global figure. I’m not opposed to politicians travelling, I did some myself when in office. But the travel must have some purpose, to win investment for the city (which is actually the West of England Mayor’s job) or to learn some policy lessons to transform services in Bristol. Rees is actually in charge of several essential services in Bristol. The biggest, social care, is critical during the COVID crisis. But I suspect that Rees finds all this prosaic stuff about budgets and services rather dull. Much more fun to attend a global parliament of mayors.
Perhaps this is what the Mayor wants to keep from our eyes. That he was so busy travelling around the world and talking about illusory billions for an Underground that will never be built that he failed to act soon enough to stop the wasting of tens of millions at Bristol Energy. He managed to stop the true scale of the horror from emerging before the elections that were scheduled for May this year. Now the peoples’ verdict on his term of office has to wait till next year and by then we will surely know the full scale of the mess and what it’s cost us all. The outcome for Rees could be dire and maybe more people will conclude that it’s time to switch off the post of elected mayor too.
This article was originally published by Bristol 24/7 – https://www.bristol247.com/opinion/your-say/why-is-marvin-rees-being-so-secretive-about-bristol-energy/?fbclid=IwAR1ansCgqSwjHrMTVwMaOxyo54uDW-Oo6b_zFhfP68wvobyCfF1rSikUo_8
How to stop a Tory landslide
Boris Johnson looks set to achieve a landslide victory in the general election. With just four weeks to go the Tories are on 35% or more in the most recent opinion polls, enough in our fraudulent first past the post electoral system to secure a Commons majority for both Tony Blair in 2005 and David Cameron in 2015.
Our politics has become more fragmented in the last four years, with more parties attracting significant levels of minority support. There are also big differences between the nations and regions of Britain. The Brexit divide between Remainers and Leavers will shake up the normal pattern of voting in individual constituencies. Traditional party allegiances are being abandoned and some well-known figures from both the Conservative and Labour parties are standing as independents, or for the Liberal Democrats or are quitting the field in despair at the state of their former parties.
This fragmented and unstable backdrop could see candidates winning constituencies with less than 30% support from the voters. Such results used to be an occasional fluke, look up Norwich South in 2010 or Inverness in 1992. There will be many more in general election 2019 and there will be an electoral premium for the party with the largest concentration of minority support. That party is currently the Conservatives and it’s unlikely to change as I can’t see any signs of the 2017 Corbyn surge being repeated.
Left to its own devices, our electoral system will deliver a Tory landslide. It will take an unprecedented level of cooperation between the opposition parties to prevent such an outcome. It won’t be enough for the smaller opposition parties to cooperate. Labour are by far the biggest players in England and Wales and the SNP loom large in Scotland. Without their participation, any pact designed to stop a hard Brexit Tory government is doomed to fail or at best to make only a marginal impact.
Three electoral pacts and arrangements have happened in the last week. First, the Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru, the Green Party and assorted independents formed a non-aggression pact in 49 seats in England and 11 in Wales, under the umbrella of Unite to Remain. Then Nigel Farage announced that his Brexit Party would not stand in the 317 seats won by the Tories in 2017. These announcements were ostensibly meant to boost or diminish the chances of Remain candidates. But they also had a whiff of self-interest about them, with both the Greens and Farage not having the cash to fight every seat.
The most remarkable electoral pact is in Northern Ireland where parties have put aside their bitter rivalries to thwart the DUP. Sinn Fein have stood aside in both east and south Belfast to enhance the chances of the liberal Alliance party regaining Belfast and the SDLP regaining Belfast South. If Sinn Fein can work collaboratively, why shouldn’t Labour and the SNP participate in Unite to Remain?
There’s just a matter of days before the deadline for candidates to submit their nomination papers and hand over the £500 deposit. There’s a little longer for candidates to submit an official withdrawal notice so Labour, the SNP and the Liberal Democrats could easily put together a deal, if they had the will to do so.
To help them out, I’ve compiled my own list of constituencies where one of the parties should stand down as it’s beyond reasonable dispute that another party has a far better stance of stopping a Tory win. My starting point is the 2017 general election. But that threw up some extraordinary results, outside the norm in many seats. The local and Euro elections have also overturned some 2017 results, usually to the benefit of the Liberal Democrats. But I’ve set aside all those seats where both the Lib Dems and Labour might fancy their chances, such as Cities of London and Westminster or seats that have traditionally been a Tory – Lib Dem battle but Labour won in 2017, most notably Nick Clegg’s former seat of Sheffield Hallam. There are some others where local rivalries might get in the way of a harmonious deal, so I’ve left them out too. So the following ought to be non-controversial and an honest attempt to identify the party best placed to defeat the Conservative candidate. In some cases the seats are already covered by Unite to Remain arrangements but bringing Labour or the SNP on board would all but guarantee a Tory defeat.
England
Liberal Democrats to stand aside in 25 seats for Labour:
Dudley North, Newcastle Under Lyme, Southampton Itchen, Crewe and Nantwich, Canterbury, Barrow and Furness, Keighley, Pudsey, Hastings & Rye, Chapping Barnet, Thurrock, Calder Valley, Stroud (Lib Dems already standing aside), Norwich North, Bishop Aukland, Peterborough, Colne Valley, Stoke on Trent South, Telford, Ipswich, Stockton South, Bolton West, Northampton North, Warwick and Leamington and finally Hendon.
Labour to stand aside in 25 seats for the Liberal Democrats:
Richmond Park, St Ives, Oxford West and Abingdon, Westmoreland and Lonsdale, Carshalton and Wallington, Cheltenham, Devon North, Cheadle, Lewes, St Albans, Wells, Hazel Grove, Cornwall North, Winchester, Thornbury and Yate, Sutton and Cheam, Torbay, Norfolk North, Guildford, Berwick upon Tweed, Harrogate and Knaresborough, Dorset West, Dorset Mid and Poole North and finally two seats where Tory defectors are standing – Totnes and Wokingham.
Wales
Liberal Democrats to stand aside in two seats for Labour:
Preseli Pembrokeshire and Clwyd West
Labour to stand down in two seats for the Liberal Democrats:
Brecon and Radnorshire and Montgomeryshire.
Scotland
In the 2017 general election the Conservatives won several seats that for most of their recent history had been held by either the SNP or the Liberal Democrats. The split between unionism and Scottish nationalism is an obvious stumbling block. The question is, do the SNP want to maximise the chances of staying in the European Union, or do they think the prospect of a Johnson majority government enhances their own main objective of ending the British Union? If they genuinely want to obstruct the Tory path to Brexit then they will come to the table and do a limited deal on the following lines.
In Grampian there are two Tory seats that in most elections in the last twenty years were won by the SNP and two that were won by the Liberal Democrats. In the Borders there is a seat that has been liberal for fifty of the last fifty four years and one that has leaned more nationalist. Remarkably, given the party’s former hegemony in Scotland, there are no marginal seats where Labour is best placed to defeat the Tories.
Liberal Democrats to stand aside in three seats for the SNP:
Angus, Moray plus Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale
Scottish National Party to stand aside in favour of the Liberal Democrats:
Aberdeenshire West and Kincardine, Gordon plus Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk.
The above is a list of 60 seats either won by the Conservatives in 2017 or at risk of being lost to them in 2019 as part of their path to a majority in the Commons. If the Labour, Liberal Democrat and Scottish National parties stood down in favour of the party most likely to beat the Tories then Johnson could be deprived of his longed for majority. The deals already in place may help the Liberal Democrats to win a handful of extra seats but without the participation of Labour and the SNP the Unite to Remain initiative is doomed to failure. Voters would otherwise have to second guess a complicated electoral landscape and vote tactically. In 1997 that worked but politics was so much simpler at that election.
If a true Unite to Remain coalition can be put together then Johnson can be stopped. No party will have a majority of MPs and a unity government would have to be formed to legislate for a referendum on Britain’s future place in Europe. Just maybe Labour would also come to its senses on the need for electoral reform. Then we can consign electoral pacts and tactical voting to the dustbin, allowing people the pluralism in politics that they expect in all other choices in modern life.
Stephen Williams' Blog 