The squeezed middle? The Liberal Democrats in Wales and Scotland: A post- coalition reassessment A.B. Evans Wales Governance Centre, Cardiff University [email protected] Do not cite without permission. 1 Abstract In the wake of the repeated electoral losses suffered by the Scottish and Welsh Liberal Democrats in 2011 and 2012 devolved and local government elections, it is perhaps unsurprising that recent analysis has focused on the 'toxic impact of the federal party’s coalition with the Conservative party' on the devolved state parties electoral fortunes. Certainly this significant electoral collapse, alongside the hostility to both parties recorded in the 2011 Scottish and Welsh electoral surveys, could be said to lend credence to such a research focus. However, this paper will argue that the real potency of the Westminster coalition has resulted from it exacerbating and exposing weaknesses that have long blighted the Liberal Democrats in Scotland and Wales. Indeed, by adopting an approach that places the Scottish and Welsh Liberal Democrats’ current woes within a historical context, this paper will contend that such frailties highlight structural weaknesses at the very heart of the Liberal Democrats federally. 2 Introduction: Scottish and Welsh Liberal Democrats and the Coalition Government For the Scottish and Welsh Liberal Democrats, their recent displays at the ballot box, the 2011 Scottish and Welsh devolved elections and 2012 local government elections, have been experiences defined by the despondency of lost deposits, grim faced candidates, humiliation and an emphatic reversal of years of progress.1 At first glance the Scottish Liberal Democrats’ fall appears the starkest, coming from a higher base at both Holyrood and local government (Black 7th May 2011 [online], Lindsay 5th May 2012 [online]). 2011’s Scottish parliamentary elections saw the party reduced to a rump presence at Holyrood, suffering huge swings and defeats in areas that they had spent years cultivating (Denver 2011: 34, Black 6th May 2011 [online]). The 2012 local elections saw the party further humbled, embarrassingly so in Edinburgh, and left without a single councillor on half of Scotland’s councils (Lindsay 5th May 2012 [online], Curtice 6th May 2012 [online]). Whilst the Welsh Liberal Democrats narrowly avoided a Scottish style meltdown in 2011, popularising a perception within the party that they had outperformed their Scottish colleagues, perceptions do not always do justice to reality.2 Despite only losing one AM to the Scottish Liberal Democrats’ loss of eleven MSPs, the Welsh Liberal Democrats’ proportion of lost deposits was higher than that suffered by the party in Scotland. The Welsh Liberal Democrats lost deposits in seventeen, or 42.5%, of the forty Welsh Assembly constituencies, as opposed to the twenty five constituency deposits lost by the Scottish Liberal Democrats (around 34% of the seventy three Scottish Parliament constituencies). Furthermore, whilst the 2012 local elections saw the Welsh Liberal Democrats incur fewer losses than their Scottish counterparts (sixty six councillors to ninety five), as a proportion of their councillor base, the Welsh party again fared worse, losing 48.2% of their councillors, compared to the Scottish Liberal Democrats’ 43% decline. To make the Scottish and Welsh Liberal Democrats plight worse, there appears to be little sign of light on the horizon. A July 2012 Sunday Times poll, for example, indicated that the Scottish Liberal Democrats now trail the Greens at four percent on the regional list (National Left 24th July 2012 [online]). For the Welsh Liberal Democrats’ an ITV Wales–YouGov poll, also that month, showed the party behind UKIP on regional list voting intentions (Shipton 5th July 2012 [online]). Certainly, then, both the Scottish and Welsh Liberal Democrats have suffered a stark decline in political fortunes. An electoral malaise that appears inextricably tied to the Conservative- Liberal Democrat coalition at Westminster. Indeed, only a glance at the polling data below reveals that the Scottish and Welsh Liberal Democrats (like the 1 Electoral data used in this paper sourced from the Electoral Commission: http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/elections/results 2 Interviews: Federal Party Employee 2nd May 2012 and FEC Member 2nd April 2012 3 party federally) saw their electoral backing fall almost instantly after the coalition was formed. Wales: UK General Election Polls3 POLL LAB CON LIB- PLAID OTHERS DEM ITV-Wales/YouGov, April 33 23 29 9 6 2010 Western Mail/R&MP, late 37.5 23.5 21.0 10.8 7.2 April 2010 ITV-Wales/YouGov, 1-3 May 35 27 23 10 5 2010 ITV-Wales/YouGov, Oct 48 29 8 11 7 2010 ITV-Wales/YouGov, end- 50 25 6 11 9 Jan–Feb 2012 Scotland: UK General Election Polls LIB- POLL LAB CON DEM SNP OTHERS Sun-YouGov, 28th April 2010 36 14 23 23 4 Scotland on Sunday-YouGov, 30th April 2010 37 17 22 20 4 Scotsman-YouGov, 5th May 2010 37 17 22 21 3 Ipsos Mori, 20th August 2010 40 14 13 29 4 YouGov, late February 2012 42 17 7 30 4 It can hardly be surprising, therefore, that a significant strain of Scottish and Welsh political discourse has been the claim that the Scottish and Welsh Liberal Democrats have been punished for the unpopularity of the UK coalition government (Bort 2012: 37, 50). This is a claim that certainly draws strength from the Scottish and Welsh 2011 Electoral Surveys, which saw the Scottish and Welsh Liberal Democrats record the biggest decline in popularity of any party in their respective nations and disaffection with the UK Government’s performance and Nick Clegg walk hand in 3 Welsh polling data courtesy of Prof Richard Wyn Jones 4 hand with perceptions that the Scottish and Welsh Liberal Democrats are incompetent and out of touch (Johns et al. 2011: 15-19, Wyn Jones and Scully 2011: 11-26). With such compelling data and such a sharp decline in electoral fortunes, it is almost tempting to blame the coalition Government as the root cause of the Scottish and Welsh Liberal Democrats woes. However, by locating the coalition’s impact on the Scottish and Welsh Liberal Democrats identities, their respective relationships with their political cultures and their organisational capacity within a broader historical analysis of both parties, this paper will argue that both parties have serious problems that are deeper rooted than the Downing Street Rose Garden. Problems that the coalition government has exposed and/or exacerbated. 5 The organisational capacity of the Scottish and Welsh Liberal Democrats Perhaps the most convincing evidence for this paper’s central argument is found in both parties organisational capacity. Absent from vast swathes of Scotland and Wales, the Liberal Democrats in both nations have suffered from a small membership base and acute organisational weakness, to the extent that despite formal constitutional autonomy, both the Scottish and Welsh Liberal Democrats have historically been organisationally dependent on the federal party (Bratberg 2009: 73-74, Holmes 2007: 536). It is precisely this longstanding frailty that has made the coalition Government’s impact so damaging. The Scottish Liberal Democrats’ marginal electoral position for much of the post-war period, alongside a weak membership base and highly limited resources, unsurprisingly meant that a defining feature of the party was organisational weakness (Lynch and McAngus 2012: 3, Lynch 1998: 23-24). This organisational underdevelopment undermined the party’s formal autonomy, with a reliance on the federal Liberal Democrats for assistance with policy development, funding and the general administration of the party in Scotland (Holmes 2007: 536-538, Bratberg 2009: 73). Electoral advances since the 1980s, however, led to an increase in their finances and organizational capabilities and by the end of the 2005-2010 UK Parliament the Scottish Liberal Democrats’ organisation was increasingly healthy, with an increased membership and a surplus in the party’s accounts (Lynch 1998: 19, 28, Scottish Liberal Democrats 2012: 4, 5). Yet, with only 4,158 members, the Scottish Liberal Democrats were still, as Lynch and McAngus stress, a small organisation with low membership in even core Parliamentary seats e.g. the 80 members recorded in Argyll and Bute’s 2010 Statement of Accounts or the 138 in Charles Kennedy’s Ross, Skye and Lochaber constituency (Lynch and McAngus 2012: 4). Devolution has, therefore, been critical to the Scottish Liberal Democrats’ organisational health, with small membership leaving the party reliant on the revenue streams created post-devolution e.g. the staffing allowances afforded to Members of the Scottish Parliament (Bratberg 2009: 73, Lynch and McAngus 2012: 4). The Welsh Liberal Democrats historically weak organisation similarly bred a dependency on the centre for resources and volunteers for the party’s daily operation (Bratberg 2009, p.73, Holmes 2007: 536, Thomas 2001: 124, Deacon 2007: 156-157). It was only in 1992, for example, that the party could boast full time headquarters in Wales and it took until after 1997 for a full time chief executive to be appointed (Thomas 2003: 180, Deacon 2007: 159). Despite such stunted development, the Welsh Liberal Democrats’ organisational capacity also appeared to have made some steps forward by the end of the 2005-2010 UK Parliament. A move to new Headquarters, a rationalisation of the party’s functions and the development of financial contingency plans and a Finance and Management Committee to keep a tight hold on expenditure and budgets have been 6 particularly significant, leaving the Welsh party in a position where resources were “tight but could be coped with.”4 However, the party in Wales was still a highly limited organisation. Official membership figures are unavailable, but the party’s support base was so thin in parts of Wales that it took the merger of a number of constituency areas just to create a viable local party (e.g.