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Today was the Liberal Democrats’ moment in the shop window: an opportunity to raise their profile to an electorate struggling to get excited by the election; a chance to promote the contributions of the party in government; and to make a pitch to the electorate for the chance to remain in power.
Nick Clegg’s offer to the electorate at the party’s manifesto launch in Battersea was a choice: who do you want helping to run the government after 7th May? Aiming to tap into concerns among voters in Lib Dem target seats about the priorities and motives of other minority parties, Clegg asked: “Do you want Nigel Farage walking through the door of No 10? Do you want Alex Salmond sat at the cabinet table? Or do you want the Liberal Democrats?”
Whereas in 2010 the party’s campaign objective was to make the case for multi-party politics and coalition government (“Don’t let them tell you that the only choice is between two old parties that have been playing pass the parcel with your government”); the party’s strategy for this election is based on an assumption that this argument has now been won and that, at this election at least, multi-party government is almost certainly the only feasible outcome.
Instead, the party’s challenge is to convince voters that they should be the junior partner in coalition, not the SNP or UKIP. While positioning the party as being equidistant between Labour and the Conservatives may not be particularly inspiring, it is likely to be successful at demonstrating that the party can moderate the extremes of the two larger parties by, as Clegg argued, “adding a heart to a Conservative government and a brain to a Labour government”.
The hefty 158-page tome sets out how that will be done by:
- Balancing the budget ‘fairly’ by borrowing less than Labour and cutting less than the Conservatives, with a focus on keeping the current 80:20 ratio between spending cuts and tax increases;
- Increasing spending on some public services including education and the health service;
- Raising the personal allowance to £12,500;
- Introducing new ‘green laws’ and committing to a low carbon economy.
As Clegg argued in his speech, the party needs to convince only a few hundred voters in around two dozen constituencies that they have proven that they can be trusted as a responsible partner in government and should continue after May. In a political climate where those with the loudest, most radical voices often prevail, we will have to wait and see whether a pitch based on competence and moderation can win the day.