Veering to the Right

And so the Liberal Democrats have peeled off another right wing MP. After a day heavily hinting their ranks were due to be swelled by another Labour defector, it turns out former Tory minister, Sam Gyimah. You might recall he resigned from Theresa May's front bench, and fell out of the Tory leadership contest with zero support. And following his purge during the worst week ever, he's pitched up in the LibDems. He even has the requisite homophobic creds.

Reading his resignation note, you find the same crud last polished up back in February. The parties are inhabiting the fringes of political life, and there's this huge middle ground there for the taking. For Gyimah, we need to reject "polarised and divisive politics" and rise to the challenge of "bringing the centre together, through Brexit and beyond". Typical of Westminster people, he is utterly ignorant of the fact parties are responding to real divisions that actually exist, and believes they would go away if the right kind of (centrist) politician and (centrist) party was in charge.

To be blunt, we are getting to the point where calling the LibDems a centre party is stretching it. The election of Jo Swinson with her record as Orange Book austerity-enabling former minister reaffirmed the party as the heir to the disastrous economic legacy bequeathed by the Coalition Government and, by extension, taking responsibility for the very material conditions that gave us the leave vote. The party's movement into centre right territory is underlined by the strategy quickly assumed by Swinson; what we might call authoritarian liberalism. On top of retrograde market fundamentalism, we have seen the LibDems pitch to the right to gather up the soft Tory/centre-leaning/pro-EU vote who mostly stuck with May in 2017, but were very positively for Dave in the previous two elections. Having come to the conclusion there were no more pickings from Labour, and totting up the evidence from council by-elections and local elections, it's obvious where they should concentrate their fire. This switch helped win them a by-election, after all.

What's this got to do with authoritarianism? We've seen Swinson over emphasise the old anti-Corbyn markers, arguing the Labour leader couldn't possibly command the confidence of the Commons to stop a no deal Brexit because, um, she won't back him. Thereby overriding the wishes of her own membership, who two-thirds support a caretaker deal if it means stopping Johnson's idiocy and a second referendum. The tolerance of homophobia on the basis of incoming MPs peddling remain-at-any-price is another indicator of her elitist distain of the membership. You'll recall a couple of relatively high profile LGBT activists have resigned because of her throwing gay-friendly principles under the bus. But where we go from authoritative to authoritarian is via the party's new position of the EU.

During the summer, Swinson was caught off guard by Labour's seizing the initiative of what to do about Brexit. In the common approach all opposition parties have adopted over forcing Johnson to request an extension to Article 50, and denying him a general election has given Labour the mantle of leading the charge against no deal. Having found themselves outflanked, the only place left for Swinson to go was hard remain, and she has done so with alacrity. Asked about this on Andrew Marr, she was very clear those who voted for leaving the EU don't matter and besides, the simplicity of her position meant the whole thing can get filed away as a mistake and forgotten about. A bit like the latter half of the LibDems' name, it seems. While Brexit fatigue is a thing, and Labour should bear it in mind when we head into the general election, this lurch into an outright anti-democratic position is with a view to repeating their success earlier this summer. In a Brexit election polarised around leaving or remaining, she thinks her simple message will resonate. However, general elections are never about just one issue and her gamble could backfire. For instance, while there is a plurality who prefer remain to no deal or a customs union Brexit, that doesn't mean anywhere near the same numbers would like to see the referendum simply cancelled. Recent polling suggests those who voted remain have a greater attachment to the niceties of democratic practice than their leave counterparts. With hard remain going up against another vote, the latter certainly has more swing appeal to leave and remain both than the distinctly un-centre ground and extreme positioning of the LibDem leader.

In truth, in recent years our view of the LibDems has been skewed by the turns it took under Paddy Ashdown and Charles Kennedy. They emphasised a weak social democratic-inclined liberalism, and one Nick Clegg paid lip service to, despite the horrors he presided over, along with Farron and Cable. Swinson, by taking the LibDems explicitly to the right in the guise of being the remain party returns them to where they have sat historically, a certain yellow shading into blue. And while her strategy does make sense from a party-building point of view, lurching so quickly and violently to the right to chase those disaffected Tories runs the risk of gaining them at the expense of losing its base of the last 30 years. Let us hope this turns out to be the case.